Unchained - The Chopping Block: XRP’s DeFi Comeback, Trump’s Crypto Picks, and Bitcoin at $100K - Ep. 746

Episode Date: December 8, 2024

Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner get together and give the industry insider's perspective on crypto. This week, Laura Shin joins the crew to tackle a whirlwind of major market trends and policy shifts.They dive into Bitcoin’s historic leap to $100K, the unexpected "dino coin renaissance" with legacy tokens like XRP and ADA soaring, and the NFT market’s surprising revival. Ripple’s DeFi ecosystem and its place in the broader crypto landscape spark a spirited debate on "chain biases" and decentralization. On the policy front, the team unpacks Trump’s pro-crypto administration, featuring bold regulatory appointments that could redefine the industry. Plus, a look at the dynamics of memecoins, token launch strategies, and the future of ICOs versus airdrops. Show highlights 🔹 Bitcoin Hits $100K: The crew celebrates Bitcoin crossing into six-figure territory, discussing market reactions and the volatility surrounding this milestone. 🔹 Dino Coin Renaissance: Legacy tokens like XRP, ADA, and HBAR are skyrocketing, signaling retail’s return and sparking debate about the sustainability of these "boomer coin" rallies. 🔹 Memecoin Mania: Memecoins as "crypto gaming 2.0" are dissected, with insights on their role in market dynamics and their surprising impact on Layer 1 ecosystems. 🔹 Ripple's DeFi Evolution: Robert shares his deep dive into Ripple’s AMM features and emerging DeFi capabilities, addressing "chain biases" and decentralization concerns. 🔹 Trump’s Crypto Revolution: The panel analyzes the implications of Trump’s pro-crypto administration, featuring key appointments like SEC Chair Paul Atkins and Crypto Czar David Sacks. 🔹 NFT Revival: A surprising rebound in NFT markets sees CryptoPunks, Bored Apes, and Pudgy Penguins soaring, with speculation on what's driving the renewed interest. 🔹 Regulatory Shifts Ahead: Predictions on how new SEC leadership might redefine crypto policy and the industry's hopes for a safer, more transparent regulatory environment. 🔹 ICOs vs. Airdrops: Exploring token launch strategies, the conversation evaluates the potential for a new wave of innovative fundraising models. Hosts ⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly  ⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly  ⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate ⭐️Laura Shin, journalist, author of ‘The Cryptopians,’ founder and CEO of Unchained Disclosures Timestamps  00:00 Intro 01:06 100K Bitcoin & Dino Coin Renaissance 04:11 Unit Bias and Retail Investors 12:05 XRP, Ripple & DeFi 24:53 Trump's Pro-Crypto Administration Picks 37:53 Does Laura Own Crypto? 41:18 Regulatory Surprises and Nominations 45:05 NFT Market Revival 51:41 Memecoins and Market Dynamics 56:48 Future of ICOs and Airdrops Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But I think this kind of like reinforces my point, which is like, I say like three nice things about Ripple and like a couple of tweets. And like there was like some publication that wrote about me as like, oh, DFI, OG, Robert Lesser, it's like Ripple Stan. Not a dividend. It's a tale of two Kwan. Now your losses are on someone else's balance. Generally speaking, air drops are kind of pointless anyways. I'm in the trading firms who are very involved. I like that eat is the ultimate puns.

DFI 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 perspective on the crypto topics of the day. So quick and chose for us to got Tom, the DFI Maven and Master of Memes.

Hello, everyone. Next, we've got Robert, the Cryptoconisaur and Tsar of Super State. GM, everybody. Back on the show, we've got Laura, a CEO of the show. Hey, everyone. And I'm the CEO of the head hype man at Dragonfly.

We are early stage investors in crypto, but I want to caveat that nothing we say here is investment advice, legal advice, or even life advice. We see Chavez blocks at XYZ for more disclosures. So it's a pretty historic week. Bitcoin has finally crossed 100K. We are now officially in six figures. Okay, yeah, let's get the little clap around. Let's do our metallic clap. Oh, yeah, the little one.

There we go. There we go. There we go. It was a little funny because Bitcoin crossed 100K. Everybody celebrated. Everyone had all their 100K content ready to go. So Coinbase had this amazing video of this guy who had recorded a video in 2013 when Bitcoin first crossed $100. And they brought the same dude to come back out and record the exact same script and sequence, but with it being 100K and him being 10 years older.

And then the next day, Bitcoin went down below 100K, came down to 96. and then now it's back up 100K. So I think I'm not doing the celebration again. I feel like, okay, Bitcoin's at 100K. Let's just all agree to not sell below 100K anymore so that we don't have to do this again. In addition to it, so Bitcoin's been up about 35% in the last 30 days. ETH is up about 50% in the last 30 days.

So ETH seems to actually be outperforming Bitcoin. And Seoul, weirdly enough, and much to my surprise, is only up 28% in the last 30 days. Only. Only, only. Well, so here's why that's so notable. So beyond just Bitcoin hitting all-time highs and getting into the six-figure club, there's been a number of other tokens that have pumped like absolutely bonkers in the last 30 days. So these have been often called the dino coins, called dino coins because they were coins that were very popular in previous cycles.

Some people call them the boomer coins. So some of the coins that have pumped like crazy in the last 30 days, XRP is up 338% in the last 30 days. XRP is up 338% in the last 30 days. Tron is up 94%. Hedera Hashgraph, the token is HBarr, is up 500%. Ada, which is Cardano, is up 242%. XLM, which is stellar, is up 3090%. You've got things like Iota and Dash that are pumping like crazy.

So there's been this kind of dinop coin renaissance that has gotten a lot of people thinking, like, oh my God, is this really what it looks like when retail comes back is they pick up all the old coins they were buying and they pump them up like crazy. So it seems like the things that are beloved by this cohort of crypto investors of the salinas of the world and the things that people are looking at and say, wow, this is really gaining a lot of steam and it's got a lot of real adoption and traction. These have actually underperformed this month relative to the dinah coins and ether and a bunch of other stuff that probably was recognizable to people from the previous cycle who maybe

are coming back in. So want to go around the horn, get your reactions to, first of all, Bitcoin 100K, and then second, the Dino Coin Renaissance. How does this strike you and where do you think this is going? Is this what the cycle is going to end up looking like? Laura, let's start with you. I mean, so I have a couple of thoughts. First of all, as you mentioned, this always happens back when it's kind of more like a peak. And it's a sign of retail coming in.

And by that, unfortunately, what we do mean is people who aren't really in the know in crypto, you know, silly things like Uniport. bias, I think, play a big role in these types of rallies. But what's interesting to me is like, can you explain what unit bias is? Oh, just that, you know, for many of these coins, like the prices are just really low per unit. And so I can't remember who tweeted this when I saw some tweet where somebody was like, oh, I just watched a TikTok video where basically this person went, you know, onto, I forget what exchange, but, you know, they went on this exchange and they showed how they were going to buy a coin. And in the video, they were like, oh, well, Bitcoin is really expensive. And so they just kept scrolling until they went to like the bottom of the chart where the like,

quote unquote, cheap coins were. And of course, it's, I don't know what they bought in the video, but it was something where, yeah, it's not something where crypto people that are in the know, I actually think it's like going to be valuable. And this person was like, this is cheap. Therefore, I'm going to buy, you know, like whatever, 10,000 of that. You know, whatever. You mean like 10 billion of them because they're like 0.

Yeah, exactly. But, you know, that's how those people think where they, don't really understand the technology or like what makes any one of these coins valuable. But what I was going to say is to like in the past where these tended to happen like at the peaks, I actually don't. And I'm not saying that we're not going to have some kind of a peak here because I do think, you know, the trend typically is that in the fall is when we get more of a peak or at least, you know, maybe at the latest into January. And then after that it kind of might go down a bit. But the point is just that like generally this whole.

cycle has been very strange and different from all the other ones. You know, it was like the ETFs kind of kicked things off even before they having. And, you know, traditionally, I think the other ones tended to have some kind of a technological driver that drove the run-up. And so in this case, you know, I guess you could say it was like ETFs and the meme coins, which I'm not sure if there's any sort of technological, you know, driver to that. So anyway, all I'm trying to say, say is that it just feels like in a way the ETFs kind of brought in a bunch of money that probably should have come in earlier if the SEC hadn't sort of like artificially prevented the launch of the Bitcoin and ether ETFs.

And so anyway, so all I'm trying to say is that yes, typically that would be like a sort of top signal. And it might be. But just because of the way this cycle has played out, I'm kind of wondering, like, doesn't it sort of feel like we could probably run more next year? Am I wrong? Like, what do you guys think about that? Yeah, well, I'll preface by saying that I am not an expert at these things.

If I were an expert at these things, I'd be running a Bitcoin trading hedge fund or something instead of being on a podcast. So, you know, take any predictions. Or both. Yeah, take any predictions I make with a grain of salt. But, you know, personally, I feel like, you know, 100K is a very nice milestone, but that it's a small milestone on Bitcoin's greater journey. And, you know, when you look at why has Bitcoin been rallying, it's really, it started pretty much on the day of the election with, you know, Trump's victory. And it's because of the expectations about what it means for the U.S., but also the entire world when it comes to Bitcoin. I mean, there's already talk of not only, you know, all of the accommodative and pro-crypto cabinet and agency picks that he's making.

it's not just, you know, a huge number of pro-crypto folks getting elected to the House and the Senate. It's, you know, the drumbeat of conversations that are increasing about things like how does the U.S. manage its Bitcoin stockpile? Does that evolve into being a strategic Bitcoin reserve? Things that would have sounded crazy two years ago, you know, how is the U.S. government buying or managing Bitcoin, you know, is now, the mainstream conversation. And, you know, A, it's kicking off conversations at other sovereign levels about like what is, you know, each other country's approach to Bitcoin as a strategic asset. And I think in a lot of ways it's beginning this global game theory domino of respect

for Bitcoin at a geopolitical level. You're seeing it in, you know, Jerome Powell making somewhat what supportive comments just like two days ago, which is what kicked us over 100K, you see it from Wall Street chiefs, you know, in their remarks, you know, showing respect to crypto. Like all of a sudden, this is an asset class that's being taken seriously at the highest levels of power. And when you look ahead to what that means, you know, if you play out the game theory, if you play out the domino effect, if you play all of that out, there's a plausible path at this. there's a plausible path at this point for Bitcoin to reach gold-like valuations, right? And that's not unreasonable. And so, you know, I think in a lot of ways this rally is different. I think there's going to be a lot of fits and starts to it.

I think, like, in a lot of ways, it might be like a multi-year rally that's extremely volatile as, you know, the probability of these huge events, you know, occurring, you know, seems likely and then unlikely and then likely. Like this might be an extremely rocky ride. But I don't think this rally is over because the inauguration hasn't even happened yet. The session of Congress hasn't even happened yet. The conversation is right now limited to a very small group of industry folks who spend all day in this. Most of my normally friends have no idea that Trump's even pro-cryptop.

And so I think the real fireworks happen next year. And I think this is a small piece of it. Tom, what's your take? I think the point on sort of legitimization of the asset class is real. Like, I think if we, it's always hard in the moment, but if you zoom out, like, there's been such an insane overtone window shift in terms of like the acceptability of Bitcoin. And that was almost like a default, right? It's like, of course you're going to have some exposure.

The question is, how do you choose that exposure and how much? And like, that was not even on anyone's radar, you know, six, seven years ago. It was a fringe alternative asset for like tech people and kind of weirdos. And now it's like, yeah, this is part of your portfolio. It's being addressed at sort of the sovereign level. I think for the dinoco thing, I agree. I think it's also like everything kind of like the pipeline. It's kind of like Laura was saying, it's people pull up Coinbase or maybe coin market cap

and they look at what's cheap. And I mean, obviously crypto is weird in that you can buy stuff highly fractionalized in a way that you can't for, you know, equities, for example. You can't buy like a, you know, fraction of a piece of Apple stock unless you're using like a fractalization service. That's a separate thing. And so people are like, you know, what can I get for 10 bucks? And the answer is you can get a few XRP for 10 bucks. You can't get, you know, a Bitcoin for 10 bucks. And I think that that's part of it.

There's also this kind of rumor, which I don't think is true about that was kind of funny that Trump was going to make no cap gains tax for crypto that was made in the U.S. And I think all these dino coins are like sort of original. some of them U.S.-based teams. And so it's kind of like, yeah, if you want no-cap gains on your winnings, you got to go domestic, got to go onshore. Wait, by the way, you guys, did you see this Quart tweet, which I just have to quote. It was so funny, I thought. He said, I asked a ripple holder why I should invest in XRP. They said, imagine being able to invest in Swift, to which I said, okay, what would I want to invest in Swift?

And they said, do you know how Swift works? And I said, no, do you know how Swift works? And they said, no. And I was like, oh, my God, that is, that is like a really good description. Okay, hold on. So, Robert, you have been out there on Twitter defending the honor of XRP. I've also heard that a lot of the demand for XRP is actually institutional, not just retail, although obviously retail is also buying XRP.

So it's important to understand also when we talk about this rally for XRP. XRP has now flipped Salana and Tether to become the third most valuable cryptocurrency. On a fully diluted basis, there's over 200. $130 billion of fully dilated valuation for Ripple for XRP, about 140 billion, I believe, circulating. Massive, massive rally, huge quantity of capital. Multiple days, XRP traded more volume than Bitcoin itself did. So, Robert, give us the steel, make us the bull case for XRP and why you're interested

in what's going on to that ecosystem. Sure. So, you know, interest follows price. Like, I'll be honest, you know, as of like two weeks ago, I was not very interested. in ripple, right, because of the appreciation of the asset. A TikTok that you watched? Oh, okay. No, I was going to like.

There was some guy scrolling down a coin market cap. No, I don't have TikTok. I'll be honest. You know, the propaganda about it being a Chinese app, I just, I don't use TikTok. Anyway, so, you know, because of its 4x rally is like a large cap asset rallying 4X in a short amount of time. I mean, it draws attention, right? And, you know, I decided to dust off, you know, my computer and go and see what I could actually, like, experience on the Ripple ledger, not blockchain, the Ripple ledger.

Because I hadn't used it probably since 2013 or something like that, right? Like, that was probably the last time I'd done a transaction on Ripple. And I think even then it was like some test transaction of like, send one Ripple, you know, somewhere. Like, I never actually used it. And so, you know, for me, I basically decided to like spend a weekend, you know, reacclimating myself with the blockchain. You know, I've been an Ethereum person since 2017 for the most part. Like I'm not a maximalist, but like most of the activity as users on Ethereum, all of my

building as a builder in the space has pretty much been on Ethereum. And so for me, I've been basically living in a bubble, you know, for a long time. And so this is just an exercise in, you know, user experience and trying something. something new, but I decided I was going to use Ripple and like get in the weeds of it and get deep in it. Like see what's changed in the probably 11 years since I'd used it last. And my interest in it came from the perspective of DFI. I mean, at this point, I'm a DFI guy in a lot of ways. And so I basically want to see like, where's DFI at?

Because like I've been seeing some tweets about like DFI is coming to Ripple and all of this stuff. And so, you know, I got to sort of like play around. I bought a couple XRP on Coinbase and sent them to a Ripple wallet that I'd created. And I was like going to explore the chain. And to my surprise, you know, they've actually started bringing a lot of defy like concepts to the Ripple ledger. So, you know, Ripple has, since I last looked 11 years ago, has natively integrated AMMs into the logic of the ledger itself. It'd be like making like, you know, an AMM a first class object in the Ethereum blockchain that's like, you know, hard-coded, like they've hard-coded AMMs.

Basically Uniswab v2, you know, with a couple bells and whistles on top, like really interesting ones. Like, you know, how do you have AMMs without any governance, like for like fees or like creating new pools or like, you know, anything like that? There's not smart contracts to create the AMMs or just native objects. But they built in these interesting things like tokenless governance of the AMMF or the LPs do governance to set fees. And there's all like native in the ledger.

It's really quite cool. I mean, it sounds like osmosis or something. A little bit, yeah. Yeah. And on top of that, like they've basically built a Web 3 like stack, you know, when it comes to like interfaces and when it comes to wallets and when it comes to interacting with it. In a lot of ways, it feels like defy on Ethereum, circa 2019, where you, you know, have

primitive interfaces that you can interact with AMMs on, right? Provide liquidity, like do all these things. But they don't really have good generalized smart contract program ability yet. There's a lot of hope that they can bring that in with a side chain to Ripple, the Ripple EVM. And so ideally you can move an asset from Ripple to the side chain in one transaction. It does defy things, whether it's like using his collateral to borrow some other Ripple asset or doing a more complicated trading operation and then come back.

And the goal is to get, you know, to a place where you have the EVM like an Ethereum or like any of the Ethereum L2s, but integrated, you know, completely into the ripple ledger. And so, you know, for me, this was, you know, a fun process. I learned a lot. I got to see some of the nice things about it. You know, I personally am a little bit like, you know, I have chain biases, right? Because for the most part, I'm an OG who's been a part of the Ethereum world. So I sort of like. So I saw a tweet from Kane where he mentioned the reason why.

why many people don't acknowledge the presence of XRP in the DFI universe is because of chain racism. Can you define what chain racism is? Yeah, so chain racism is this inherent bias against a chain for really like no good reason. And oftentimes if you spend the time to actually explore it, you might like it a lot. And so I think a lot of people in the ecosystem are chain racist. They have biases for no good reason. I think oftentimes they don't even know why they, you know, feels a certain way about a blockchain, you know.

So, Robert, would you say you're pro-chain social justice? Yeah, I'm not, I'm not really a woke person, but I am 100%. But in this regard, yeah. In this regard, I am all about blockchain social justice. Like, I think people need to wake up. I think they need to, you know, be more open-minded. I think they need to try new blockchains. Like, they should get their hands dirty.

They should see what they can, you know, build. They should see what the experiences. like the transaction process and it might be educational. But Robert, I have a question. Do you feel that development of Ripple is decentralized? No, no, no, no, no. Oh, okay. Well, I don't think development of Ripple's decentralized.

Shouldn't that be what, like, DFI is, though? Like, isn't that? Laura, that sounds kind of chain racist. Yeah. It's a definition. No, Laura, you are showing some of your biases here. Like, you're like, anti-Ripple. I mean, like.

No, wait, wait, but isn't that? Am I wrong? Are you being snarky, Robert? Or are you, like, being real? Because No, I'm being, I'm not being snarky. Robert is never snarky. Excuse me. Yeah, yeah. But the definition of defyy is decentralized finance. So you think it's okay that it's not decentralized. Well, I think there's a lot of a spectrum, right? So, you know, the Ethereum blockchain is a ledger that you can at this point have an incredible confidence that the transaction. are censorship resistant, tamper-proof, and we'll do what they're supposed to do.

There's other concerns like MEV and how like transactions get processed. But like for the most part, you know, you can have a complete confidence that the transactions will get validated correctly, right? And there's not going to be a double spender. There's not going to be an error, right? At this point, like, and the transaction level is incredibly decentralized and sound. Ripple as a ledger is centralized, right? I don't think there's anyone out there that's saying it's a decentralized ledger.

You really have to trust Ripple a lot more than you have to trust, you know, the Ethereum community of validators. But DFI is not just the transaction validation. It's also everything built on top. And in a lot of ways, like a uniswap v2 like AMM with like no governance, you know, is more, you know, trustworthy because it's more trustless, than something that requires like a, you know, very active governance process. You know, there's so many different vectors of centralization and decentralization and like what you can trust and what you cannot trust that I can see situations

where you might trust a certain defy application on ripple far more than you would, you know, some other type of defy application on Ethereum, right? And so I don't think it's an oxymoron. I think you can get to decentralized financial activity that works the way you want it to work, even on Ripple where the validation of transactions is a centralized. One other question, because I just looked up the Elektra Capital Developer Report on this. So they're saying there's 166 monthly active developers. And even like Cardano, which I know is also a blockchain that people kind of lump in with XRP or Ripple, that has 635.

So even that community is like quite a bit larger, but, you know, Ripple's been around even longer than that. Just what's your take on that? My take is, you know, they don't really even have full smart contract programmability yet. So why even be a developer yet? Like I can't even fathom what a developer up to this point would do building an application on Ripple, like for the most part. So, you know, I think they'll get there, right? I'm not, I don't. They need another 10 years.

Yeah, I don't, I think I have like five XRP. I'm not speaking as like a big XRP guy here. But, you know, you certainly sound like a big. The way you're defending it on the show. I can't remember talking about XRP for the past 10 minutes. Someone has to take this inside of you. Someone has.

We've done way normal content now that Bitcoin's at 100K. It's like Robert explaining XRP to Laura. Yeah. This is a shopping clock is an ivory tower podcast. Out of the ivory tower. I'm just saying this one. We're getting 100,000 views on this, on this episode. I'm telling you, Colin.

We're going to re-branded the chopping dag next week, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and I don't want my questions to make it sound like I don't ever think Ripple could get there, but, you know, like some of the jokes were making, like, they've been around for a long time. Let's, hold on. We got our Iota segment coming up next, so let's move on. Cardano after that. I mean, but like.

Yeah, we do Cardano. But I think this, like, kind of, like, reinforces my point, which is, like, I say, like, three nice things about Ripple in like a couple of tweets. And like there was like some publication that wrote about me as like, oh, DFI, OG, Robert Lesser, it's like Ripple Stan. You know, it's like this is the level of like, you know, experimentation and like mutual, you know, understanding that we're at right now where it's like an Ethereum person says anything even vaguely pro-Ripple. They're like a Ripple person all of a sudden, right? And it's like we have these like incredibly like divided camps of, you know,

crypto allegiances. And it's like unfathomable that like, you know, you can support another ledger or another blockchain. It's like I think there's some interesting things in ripple. I think there's some interesting things. Probably on Cardano. I'll be honest. I've never used Cardano.

I don't have a wallet. Maybe like two weeks from now I'm going to get a Cardano wallet and test out what's on their chain and be like, I'll write a couple nice tweets about Cardano, whatever, and I'll freak out. But I think there's something positive to learn about from almost any blockchain. Like there's got to be something that they're doing unique that's right, you know, amongst, you know, all the things that different chains are trying in their quest for relevance that are worth learning from.

Yeah. And I don't, and like I said before, I don't want to make it sound like what you're doing is a bad thing at all because like if there's anything I love about the crypto community generally, it's that people are very open-minded. They're very like early adopters. They kind of like see the future well before it happens. They just are people who, like, I feel like that's a certain kind of intellectual quality where you can like see a spark in something and play it out long into the future and like see that future before other people can. And so that's why, you know, I would never say like you should, you should, you know, be 100% certain that like certain chains are never going to work out or whatever.

And I do think that sort of like intellectual flexibility comes with, you know, the ability to even see the value in crypto. like, you know, back in 2014 or whatever. But I do still think the questions that I was asking were valid. Because I think you're a little chain racist answer for all. Yeah, that was a long-winded way of saying, guys, I have a lot of chain friends that are, you know, like, I'm not chain racist. Okay. All right. Let's move on.

Let's move on. We've done our XRP segment. So I want to talk a little about the regulatory side and what's happening now with Trump's new picks to lead part of his administration. So we've got some really important names. that we need to work through in terms of understanding what this next four years is going to be looking like with respect to crypto regulation. First up, Paul Atkins.

Paul Atkins was nominated as the new SEC commissioner. He was actually a former SEC commissioner under the Bush administration. He was co-chair of the Token Alliance. So he's actually been fairly positively inclined towards crypto. He's been pretty active in the crypto industry, especially on the Hill. He's an advisory member of the board of Securitize,

as well as a few other crypto projects, concluding reserve, which is a decentralized stablecoin. He Hester Perce and Mark Elliott, who currently SEC commissioners, were actually staffers for Paul Atkins. In general, he's, as far as people can tell, he's very in favor of loose crypto regulation, does not like regulation via enforcement. And everything that he said so far publicly about crypto indicates that he's very much on the side of laissez-faire, taking a step back, and being more chill with respect to

the current stance that the SEC is holding. All that being said, it remains to be seen what he's going to do with the current set of cases that are still in flight, whether he's going to drop them, whether he's going to push for some kind of light settlement or whether some of the cases that are close to the finish line, you'll just let them finish to their terminus.

But at least what most people are projecting with Paul Atkins is that he's going to be much more pro-crypto. And when Trump announced Paul Atkins, he said specifically in the announcement, Paul Atkins is going to be pro-crypto. One more name I want to throw in the mix is David Sacks. So David Sacks was appointed just yesterday to be AI and Cryptozar. So now this, of course, is a new role.

We have not previously had AI or Crypto Zars. David Sacks, of course, is host of the All-N podcast. He was formerly part of the PayPal Mafia. He was C-O there. He's now founder of Kraft Ventures, built a company called Yammer, which he sold to Microsoft. He's been an investor in a number of crypto projects. So famously, he's a big investor in Solana, which weirdly did not pump. on an announcement that he became CryptoZar.

But he also was investors in a number of projects including DYDX. I remember he was involved in something called Anchor, which was like a security token project a while back, back in like 27, 2018. So he's been definitely around the hoop with respect to crypto. And he's been pretty outspokenly in favor of a pro-crypto legislation happening in the U.S. as well as in favor of Fit21 on the All-In Podcast. So he's now going to be

Cryptozar, again, unclear what exactly that is going to mean. But largely, my assumption of what Cryptos are means is that he's the person Trump is going to be calling when he asks like, hey, what do I do about crypto? David Sachs is going to give the answer. Last thing, we've got Scott Besant. Scott Besant is going to be Treasury Secretary. He's also been pro-crypto, although not nearly as involved in the industry,

part of the PayPal Mafia, head fund executive. And according to Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, quote unquote, the most pro-in-eval Pro-Crypto Treasury Secretary with strong ties to the tech industry. So that's the lineup we have, all very strong picks with respect to their stance toward the industry. And I think that's part of the reason why we saw Bitcoin being propelled up above 100K. So it looks like we're going to be in for a very pro-crypto four years.

Robert, as the regulatory expert, what's your take on this lineup? And anything, any of those three names that jump out to you the most? Well, first off, I'm going to disclaim the title of regulatory expert. I'm a regulatory amateur, but maybe compared to some people I know more. Anyway, just to speak about these three positions, you know, I haven't met Paul Atkins. You know, the people I've spoken to speak about him in reverence. I mean, like he's unbelievably respected by those that do know him. You know, I've friends that have interacted with him and like they all speak about him, you know, with reverence as this guy, you know, being phenomenal.

The views that I've seen of his on crypto are fantastic. You know, the fact that he's been, you know, around for a while, like in the space, you know, not necessarily super actively is fantastic. And, you know, most importantly, you know, from the perspective of being chair of the SEC, you know, he, I think has an institutional experience that's going to bring credibility and respect back to the agency that's been damaged. And, you know, I think in terms of, you know, picking the right candidate, you know, from what I understand, like, Paul Atkins will be the right person to sort of like change direction of the ship from one being that, you know, that attacked

crypto aggressively in the U.S. to one that, you know, can navigate, you know, swinging at the other direction that being neutral or positive or like open-minded about how to use a new technology and can do it in a way that, you know, most likely works well with all of the other staffers of the agency. You know, he's not an SEC novice. He's in as much as it gets, an SEC, you know, veteran. And so I think he's the absolute perfect pick for the role and highly optimistic. When it comes to, you know, David Sacks, like I have interacted with him, you know, I can say from personal experience, he's great. He's knowledgeable about crypto.

He's knowledgeable about AI. He's knowledgeable about the venture stack in general. I think the czar role is a little bit of a policy role, as I understand it. I think it is yet to be seen what that role specifically entails besides sounding really awesome, whether that's navigating the sort of relationship between the executive branch and the legislative branch and we're like coming up with a unified policy. but, you know, whatever the role winds up being and what he's supposed to be doing in the role, I'm excited about it. You know, I think we have someone with a lot of hands-on crypto experience in that role.

There's, yes, there's candidates that would have had more hands-on-crypto experience, right? The person with more hands-on-crypto experience would probably have less AI experience, you know, and vice versa. You know, I didn't know. And might also have less credibility on the hill. Yeah. I didn't know, you know, that this is going to be an AI and crypto's our role. I think a lot of people heard that there was just going to be a crypto czar as a role. And in thinking about that role in people's heads, like the short list of ideals candidates,

were different. It would have been people that were exclusively crypto for the most part. But I think because the role is an AI and crypto role that David Sachs is a fantastic pick. I mean, like, I can't see that many people that would be a better pick for that role. I mean, he was an early supporter of Trumps as well. I just think, like, you know, he'll be able to. successfully navigate what that role needs to be. And I think he'll write this sort of like job description of that role and what it does because we've never had one before. And lastly,

on Bessonet Treasury, I mean, he's, you know, unbelievably respected by Wall Street. You know, I think that's one of the most important pieces of this is knowing that there's someone that Wall Street trust in the role. Because I think, you know, Trump is going to be proposing somewhat complex, you know, policy here. A tariff-based policy is really hard to, like, implement in the modern era of extremely intertwined economics. Like, you know, the Treasury Secretary is going to have to sell somewhat novel ideas to the world, right? Whether it's moving to tariffs, whether it's changing, you know, the structure of taxes and, like, how they work, whether it's a strategic Bitcoin reserve of some kind. I mean, whatever is, he's going to have to sell that to Wall Street. And

the Treasury market. And it seems like he's an unbelievable pick for it. I've, is someone I have not met and I don't really have too many second degree connections, so I don't have that many personal, you know, anecdotes about him. But, you know, from a distant perspective, he seems like a great fit as well. So I'm, I'm pretty happy about all of those picks so far. Nice. Tom, let's get your reaction. SEC, Cryptozar, and then Treasury. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to defer to Robert. on SEC and Treasury picks is not, you know, really my area of expertise. I actually thought SACS was kind of a strange pick for the AI and Cryptozar.

And then the more I've kind of digested it, the more I've also kind of come around to Robert's point of view, which is like, yeah, you need someone who hits on all these different variables. And you also want somebody who is in Trump's camp for what is kind of an unofficial role. And there aren't that many people who check those boxes. I think my worry for the Cryptozar initially was that they're going to pick someone who A, lacked credibility to someone, some crypto insider. And it's like, who is this weirdo that is going to...

Some random executive we've never heard of. Yes. Or it's going to be someone who's just a total maxi. And they're like, oh, you know, just Bitcoin Reserve. Everything else is kind of scammy or whatever. And I think Sacks actually kind of threads that needle pretty well. So, and he's also just obviously a very smart guy. So, yeah, I've actually come around to him as a pick.

I think it seems great. Laura, what's your reaction, those picks? Well, so I'll just start with, David Sacks, we came out with a story today where basically when this news broke on Thursday night, my new regulatory reporter, Veronica Irwin, who's amazing, found out like from all of these, you know, sources that she's in regular contact with, they were all kind of blindsided. Nobody knew that, you know, it was, they all thought that it was definitely going to be just a CryptoZar, not a combined role. And the people that had kind of been, the names that had been

circulating amongst that crowd before the announcement of David Sachs did not include anything like David Sachs. And interestingly, a lot of the discussion centered around the fact that I guess, so this new crypto's our role would be something that hadn't existed before. But kind of like understanding generally how those types of roles work, it was thought that this role probably could not own crypto according to. I think it's like the Office of Government Ethics or something, some rule that they have. And so the names that had been floating around were not like, they weren't like bad or anything.

They just weren't who the crypto industry would probably put forward because of what they thought had to be this rule that they couldn't own crypto. What were the names that were being floating? So Chris John Carlo was one, who's the former CFTC chair, crypto dad. Another one is actually Ron Hammond, who is not as well known. he figured his exact title, but he's at the blockchain association, and he's pretty young. And I think he, you know, in his role as a lobbyist, maybe had an eye on, like, doing something in government at some point. So he, even though he's very much, you know, super into crypto, can talk very fluently about it.

He actually, I think, had never purchased crypto because he kind of knew someday he might. I don't think, you know, when he started, I don't think even this notion of a crypto's already even existed. but he just kind of knew like, oh, at some point I might, yeah, want to do something in government. So, but there just were so few crypto people that didn't actually own. Sorry, can I interrupt? Do you own crypto? No, I, no. I never asked you this.

You don't own any crypto. No. I mean, so that I'll just explain. Can I give you one ether so you now own crypto? But okay. Is it ever owned crypto? Okay, so I've explained this multiple times, but people, yeah, don't always remember. So here's the deal.

Back in 2015, when I first got into Bitcoin, I did buy several Bitcoin. And I then, I don't remember when I did, but I later also bought some Ethereum. And then I was, so I was initially freelancing at Forbes, but then later when I went full-time, their policy was if you write about something that you own, you just have to disclose it. That's it. Just if we disclose things on this show, you know, please see chopping block. X, Y, Z for disclosure. Yeah, but, but you know, you're known as an investor, right?

Whereas, like, when I quit Forbes full time, I then wanted to be able to write for any publication. And literally the very first publication I ever freelance for was the New York Times. And they definitely would not let you own something that you write about. So at that time, I was like, oh, I'm realizing this going to be an issue if I ever want to freelance for, because there's like a whole bunch of publications where that would be the rule, not the disclosure rule. So I was like, oh, I actually should get rid of all these cryptos that I have

because it's going to make my life as a journalist difficult. So I did. But honestly, sometime in the last year, I was thinking like, oh, this is kind of silly that I'm doing this because honestly, what happened was when my book came out, I was supposed to write like an opinion piece for Wired. Like, you know, when you write a book, like frequently, you'll write little things for other publications.

But they ultimately, like, wouldn't let me. And they said, well, you know, you have a publication that takes sponsorship money from crypto publications or sorry, from, crypto companies. And I said, oh, but I am a subscriber to Wired. And if I look at my magazine, all of the ads in here are from tech companies and you guys cover tech as an industry. Like, this is how so many publications work. Like, that's just a normal way that, you know, like you can cover an industry, but then you also serve up ads that your audience would be interested in. But yeah, they wouldn't let me. So then, anyway, so the point is in the last year,

I've been thinking like, oh, this is silly. I have my own publication. I should probably start buying my own crypto. But I, you know, I've said this multiple times. I have a lot of health stuff going on. I, like, my whole life is full. It's like full with work, health. And like, that's all I have time for.

So I have not actually gone about buying crypto, but I will probably change this rule for myself. And then the last thing I should say is that I, that my company did buy some ether and Saul, I think, for different like things that we have to do. do that involve our reporting. But that's like company money. It's not to enrich ourselves. It's just because we actually have to use it for our work sometimes. So I would say that is, I had no idea that you didn't own any crypto. That is absolutely bizarre to me. I mean, I thought it was bizarre to hear about

like somebody who's lobbying for the crypto industry who doesn't own any crypto. But I'm like, okay, if you have political ambitions, maybe I get it like crypto is like your pet issue that is on your roadmap or whatever. But I'm like, you've been, you've been along for the ride every, fucking step of the way. And you're just like, everyone's telling you about these tokens that are going up 100x or whatever and like people having life changing economic outcomes. And you're just like, oh, cool. Just write about that and talk about it. Well, yeah. But I mean, I've been a journalist for, you know, whatever, like 20. But you like left your publication to like start your own business to go all in on the crypto industry growing in importance. You know, like it's not like you're just like,

Well, I'm just a journalist, whatever. Who cares? No, but that is it. I mean, like, just so you understand, like, the reason why I love what I do is because I literally love coping crypto as a journalist. Like, it's definitely the most fun I've ever had in my entire life in my career. There's no question about it. And so, like, I get so much joy from that. I'm not saying that, like, I'm completely, like, you know, immune to the notion that, oh, it might be nice to, like, make some money from this. It's not like I, you know, it's just, it's a little bit secondary because, first of all, I definitely make better money than most journalists. And second, I'm having so much fun doing this. And third, like I said, for me, it is more important to be able to write for like any publication. It's just that even though I am not owning any, some places still won't let me write about it for them.

That's why I'm like, well, this is stupid. So anyway, yeah, that's that's why I will probably at a different point. you, I sidetrack you tremendously. Finish your thought about the regulatory picks. Oh, well, just, yeah. So basically, it was surprising to my reporter and myself that the whole crypto policy community was like kind of blindsided by the nomination of David's Axx. Like, they didn't seem to know.

They didn't even realize that we're going to be combined. But, you know, on the flip side. But I don't think it's a bad nomination at all because, you know, I mean, we've all seen like stuff with Goatsy and, you know, just like, like, I. AI 16, like all these things with crypto and AI coming together. Those are your two citations? Yeah, I mean, you could own those without being conflicted. That is very true.

That is very true. Maybe that's a way to start building your crypto allocation is through, as you call Goatsey. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Goatsey, I feel like it was the first one that really took off. I could be wrong. Don't call it Goatze.

Just call it. Please. Just call it. Anyway, the point is that. Because, you know, he obviously saw that that was going to be a thing very early. I feel like that just says a lot about kind of like his ability. David Sachs? Yeah.

Yeah. People are going to take off? No, no, no. He saw the goat sea. He was able to see. Oh, God. No, no. He had a tweet that people.

She started it. It wasn't me. He had a tweet that people were sharing from, I forget what year it was. Was it 2017? Did anybody see this tweet? I think I saw it. We're talking about AI agents paying each other, micro transactions, crypto. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly. And it's from seven years ago. It was like 2018, yeah. Yeah, I forget how many years ago. But so, yeah, I don't know much about him. I think, you know, most of us would say, okay, he is not anybody who's been like core in crypto or at least not had that kind of visible presence. But the more I learn, I'm like, oh, okay.

Like I think, you know, he understands this. Paul Atkins, I think, is excellent for SEC chair. You know, as has been mentioned, he is not a regulation by enforcement person. And what Cody Carbone of the digital chamber said on my show today was that about the enforcement actions, he would guess that Paul himself is actually already looking at what's happening, you know, just from the full gamut. Like, what's been sent out in terms of Wells notices, like what's actually already in the courts, you know, what are the. stages of everything and like what are the arguments being made like blah blah blah so he's probably already trying to figure out what to do when he arrives on day one cody's bet is that he's not going to just come in on day one and be like all of this ends like every single piece of litigation

is over because he said that will not win him fans in his own agency um so it'll probably you know be some kind of more recent approach but one other thing that we discussed is i don't know if you guys saw John Reed Stark tweeted that basically in recent weeks, Gary Gensler elevated a few senior staff into enforcement and trial positions that are like people more affiliated with Gensler. And these are permanent positions. They like can't be undone. They would typically be announced, but he did not announce them. And so John Reed Stark said something about how this would be like Gensler trying to lead from the grave. So we'll have to see what happens with that. You're saying the deep state is real.

Gensler is creating a deep state within the SEC. Kind of. Yeah. But, you know, from my perspective, as somebody who believes that what Gensler has done has put the U.S. behind, I feel like Atkins will help make the country competitive again, which is why I keep seeing a lot of tweets from people saying, I'm moving to New York or whatever. And that makes me happy. Okay.

Last story I want to get through is there seems to be alongside all the dino coins pumping and all these positive regulatory news for crypto, there's a little bit of an NFT revival going on, which I think a little bit, again, in the spirit of things coming out of left field that are reviving from the last cycle. So punks, for example, are up 66% in the last 30 days in terms in the floor price. In each of the terms? I think that's in dollar terms, but I should probably verify that. Let me see if I can give you the answer to that. I believe this in dollar terms. In dollar terms, it's up 67%. So obviously in ether terms, that's less. Okay, the floor price right now for CryptoPunks is 42Eath. For board apes, it's 21, Eth, which is up about 88% in the last 30 days.

This is ether terms. The punk's floor price November 9th was 26th. Now it's 42Eth. Oh, wow. Oh, these are price in ether terms. Oh, I see. Sorry, my bad. These are up in ether terms, which is even more in dollar terms. So add another, you know, 50-ish percent to that in dollar terms. So floor price now for Cryptopunk is 170K. For a board ape, it's 85K. For a Pudgy Pinguin, it's 75K. So we now have very significant rebound.

Pudgy Penguins are up 120% over the last 30 days. And we've seen volumes also increase pretty dramatically. 7-day volume is up about 50%. 24-hour volume is up about 89%. although interestingly the total amount of addresses that we see trading have not changed that much but we might be seeing a little bit of a NFT renaissance so Robert as our crypto connoisseur what's your take on what's going on right now in the NFT market and secondly did you hold so I've held my NFTs you know that being said I've not been following the NFT market for the last

couple months at all so like all the numbers you're quoting me are news to me this is not an area I'm spending any research or monitoring time. So I have... How does one actually manage as an OG NFT person? How do you, like, where do you go to check what's going on with the NFT collection? I go to Cryptopunks.app as my first stop, usually, just to check out the crypto punk market as a barometer for everything else. When I was checking things, I mean, honestly, I would just hop on blur. I haven't used blur in a hilariously long time, but I'd hop on blur and go to their like overview page and like sort by whatever market cap or something like that.

Because that would always show the most important collections, you know, from like punks to apes to doodles. Like pretty much all the top collections are, you know, sortable by market cap, you know, penguins, whatever. And so like that's a pretty good overview. And that was always how I did it. There's, I'm sure, more sophisticated tools. I think Nansen developed some stuff, you know, but for me, it'd be like just going on the websites

and, you know, monitoring. So, okay, how are you feeling your NFT collection being raised from the dead? This is not something that I spend much time looking at. So, okay. I will, like, if I start seeing headlines on Bloomberg about, like, NFTs going wild, I'll be like, ooh, like, let me, like, you know, actually spend some time looking at this and seeing if I want to sell some stuff and all of that. But until that point, I'm just, I have too many things to focus on assets.

I can't spend time. Okay, but what is your, is it like, okay, I have like my wine seller. and I just have them there forever. Is that your attitude towards NFTs? Or is it I'm waiting for the right moment to sell these into a rally? Yeah, I mean, it's funny because, you know, I think even a wine collector would be willing to part with pieces of their collection at the right price, right? That's just, you know, how it works.

So you can acquire more wine at, you know, the price you want. So I think there's definitely things I would sell. But for the most part, you know, I'm generally in the mindset of like, you know, what difference does another five years make? Fair enough. It might age more finely with time. Sure, sure. Tom, I know you're a world famous milady's collector.

How are you looking at your collection? Tom, you're one of the top. They're looking great. You guys want to, I'm a top milady. I think so. I'll take it. I got my milady coaster. I got my milady coaster.

Product placement on the chopping block. That is a scary looking coaster. You see the chopping block that X, Y, what do you mean? It's cute. Tom, look at those eyes. You don't think it's cute? That is not really cute. It's scary looking.

cookie. A cookie. It's weird that's such a dispersion like, okay, obviously like penguins, they're just with the chain and pengu, which is also weird that's a token on Solana, but that's a whole other thing. I was just like they're doing an FTT holder air drop, which I don't know what that is all about. We're token logic in general. There's a couple of the allocation. Yeah. There are still people who hold their FTT. Well, they're getting Pingu. So yeah. Somebody has to hold it otherwise, yeah, like the token didn't go away. So, obviously, someone holds it. So I understand why my penguins are pumping. You know, they're not some exciting stuff.

The other stuff feels kind of random. It's like, like, you know, why is other stuff pumping? I don't quite know. Maybe it's kind of excess liquidity from these other assets kind of spilling back into NFTs. Like, you know, if you look at the actual volume chart, it kind of reminds me of, you know, the meme with like the guy in the third place who's like pouring champagne on himself. And it's like, you know, it's a little like that where it's like, okay. this big like 2021. I'm going to superpose that on the screen here. Yeah.

And so it's like, all right. I'm going up a little bit, but, you know, in relative terms, it's still very small. So I don't know. It feels, feels, it feels strange. It doesn't feel as sort of overly euphoric, broad base as I think a lot of the other crypto asset rally. Is it not part of that dinop coin recovery that people woke up from the last cycle and they were like, oh, I remember these.

Oh, they're really cheap now. I guess I'll buy a few. If that's true, I think hash masks would be, would be pumping. but maybe people are going back on open to your players. I mean, Hasmas was like really like one tiny little sliver of a moment. I don't know. I mean, because it's all the more key stuff, right? It's like, you know, it's punks and it's apes that are doing really well.

So that would make sense that these people who woke up and are just like, oh, yeah, I remember these and I've got some XRP gains. Might as well roll them over. Yeah. I mean, Haseeb, I agree with you. I think it's people getting more speculative. like they have some gains from, you know, whatever, BTC, Saul, now, Eath, and then, you know, they're putting it into things that are more speculative.

Oh, oh, you guys, I just was wondering, now that Trump is coming in, and now that we might get like, I don't know, for instance, Hester Perses token safe harbor and stuff like that. And, you know, we have all these, like, new startups about token launches and stuff. Like, you know, like, I feel like part of the reason mean coins did. well as because, no offense to you, hopefully you won't take this badly. But I think people, you know, they're sick of VC coins. And so I do feel like that was like part of the reason for being coins doing well. So I wondered, like, what do you think will happen to token launches once the Trump administration comes in? Okay. So first of all, I want to respond to that

because I just had a tweet storm exactly about this, which is that, I mean, I've been saying this on the show for a while that I reject this like revolt of the public framing for meme coins. But I think a large part of the reason why it doesn't make, like, why it really doesn't make sense. It's very obvious now that it doesn't make sense is that I think the right way to understand meme coins, is that meme coins are basically a game. They are actually, like, in a way, the best success that we have out of GameFi. Once point of time, we thought GameFi meant that you takes an MORPG and you slap a token on it and you can, like, you know, move your sword from this game to that game or some shit like that.

I mean, that still sounds awesome. Okay, I want that. Does it? Because I don't see me going to be playing this. And I like that idea. I will say nobody's playing any of the things where you can export your swords from game to game. So I'll say you guys are full of shit. You will not play that game.

No, I think it will happen someday. It's a cool game. It has already happened. It has already happened. No, it has. Go look at all of the, okay, yes, it's hard to make cool games. It's hard to make games that are fun. But the idea of games with NFTs that are the assets that you can export and take to other places, that has been tried.

It is not the thing that makes a game successful. the thing that I think did really work in GameFi is meme coin trading and meme coin trading what is it a simulation of it is a simulation of crypto trading but crypto trading as crypto became more developed became lower volatility the assets became more mature it's a it's a lot less fun than it was in 2017 where 2017 it was just like a raucous good time you just you know you don't even read the white paper you're just like look at the website you're like oh this looks great this looks like it's the future looks like a strong team I'm going to ape into this thing and now you know, in 2023, 24, everything is a lot more mature. You have to like go to a bunch of research.

You have to go on Nansen. You have to go on, you know, Artemis and look at stats. And, and it's just like, it's like, you know, it's like stock analysis. It's actually kind of boring and slow and just requires a lot more work that's kind of busy work from the perspective of the average person. Memecoin trading takes what's fun about crypto, about crypto trading. And it just like turns it up to 11. And it's super simple. It's super high octane, extremely high volatility. It's like all the stuff that's fun about crypto trading with none of the annoying stuff of actually doing research. And so what you saw was that during the, like, you know, during August, September, when we were kind of in the doldrums, where there was low volatility and prices were just kind of drooping downwards.

Memecoin trading was about 25% of total volumes on finance. Today, it's about 10% of total volumes on finance, which makes sense because crypto trading is fun again. Because volatility is way up. Any random token can pump for any reason. It's back to that same frenetic energy that people associate with crypto trading, which is why they're back and why retail is having a ball again. And so the idea that's a, oh, there's a, there was a paradigm shift. And now people no longer like VC coins. They don't like tech coins. And now they only like meme coins. I just think that was wrong. I think what people were doing was they enjoyed the game. of trading random tokens,

which is what meme coins fundamentally represent. But that game, one, on a relative basis, is less attractive when the normal coins are doing that anyway, and they're bigger, and there is a fundamental story behind them. But second is that all the mean coin stuff actually makes the layer one stuff more valuable. Like, Solana is more valuable because there's mean coins on it, right? Optimism, which is, you know, the super chain, which has base on it,

the demand for base, the demand for a lot of stuff. Like, you look at AVAs, you look at Aptos, A lot of stuff happening on there is meme coins. And meme coins drive demand for the underlying layer ones and they make them more valuable. Uniswap, radium. They all became more valuable because they service the meme coin economy. So the idea, it's like arguing that, oh, well, a lot of people playing Axi Infinity, doesn't that drive value away from all the VC coins and all the layer one?

Like, no. No, it's the opposite. This is what's giving people demand to come on these blocions and use these things in the first place. So that's why I reject this contrast. And I do think that meme coins right now, they're at a lot. lull, meme coins immediately after Trump got elected, they rallied like crazy. Now they're actually dragging. Meme coins, if you just look at, you know, what's pumped the most in the last 30 days, it's actually mostly non-meme-coins that have done the best. I think when we go to a lower volatility

world, meme coins will come back and they'll start to become more attractive on a relative basis. But right now, I think that's a much better explanation for what you're seeing with respect to meme coins and non-mean coins. Okay, but then leaving aside the question of VC coins versus meme coins, what do you think of, you know, ICOs versus AirDrops? Do you think air drops will become less of a thing? Okay. Where is this ICO talk coming from?

Who is talking about ICOs? A lot of people are talking about ICOs. I see this in random court. I'm like, dude, ICOs, Trump is not going to bring back ICOs. Like, where is this coming from? I was just saying, like, Hester Persis a Safe Harbor token proposal.

The Safe Harbor token proposal is not like you can ICO. That is absolutely not what that says. Well, I mean, it does. It does provide a way in which people can fundraise for tokens. Isn't that the thing? It's like you have a three-year period after launch in which you can decentralize. And, you know, they're going to figure out with the budget. It's a three-year period after launch for your token to not be considered an unregistered security.

Yeah. That is not the same thing as you can sell this token to random retail investors. So, okay, it is true. I don't remember all the- The ICO bubble. Yeah, the ICO bubble was such a fucking disaster. There's no way that anybody from. this SEC is going to replay that? There's a bunch of new, so there's Legion, there's, I forget,

but there's a bunch of new things that are working on the ICO thing like, shoot, I forget, Kobe has one, I don't know. Yeah, Echo, but Echo's not an ICO platform. I mean, it's like a credit investor, you got KYC and then you like, you know, get an allocation. It's not like a sort of bonanza. It was more like a syndicate type thing or something. Yeah, I think Infinex is, kind of experimenting in this area by telling these NFTs and the NFTs, it can eventually could convert into some tokens. So I would say the thing that is like most ICO-like, but it's still a far cry from like 2017. It's more how do we sort of give the public access to, you know, be able to buy this thing and put money in early. But like it's, you know, also like a live

functioning product that's not, you know, give me, give me a bunch of money. I'll go build Uber and a blockchain. Yeah. So let's reiterate what ICOs were because I think it's important people to understand. There's a lot of people who've come into the industry since like 2020 or 2020, and they hear about ICOs, and they were like, oh, that sounds so great. It must have been so democratic and everybody was able to get rich together and the VCs didn't get in early. So what an ICO was in 2017 was it was some people had an idea of a thing they were going to build and they just put on a website and they said, give us a bunch of money and we promise we're going to build it and we're going to make the value accrued at this token.

And they raise shitloads of money from random people on the internet. And most people never delivered anything because, of course they wouldn't. Why would you get a bunch of money up front with no protections, no covenants, no legal contracts, and just raise a bunch of money from random people who don't know, you don't know who they are and they don't know who you are. And then you eventually have to, like, do a bunch of work and give them something back that's valuable. No funding for anything has ever worked that way. Obviously, that's bad.

That's a bad idea. I mean, it worked for Ethereum. It did work for Ethereum at a time when this concept barely existed. Ethereum was the first major ICO. And then there were a few early Ethereum ICOs like Auger and things like that that that actually did end up building their products. But when it became popularized and people learned that, oh, I can raise a bunch of money by just having any bad shit crazy idea throwing out a white paper and having a contract

that people can send money to, then you just had all sorts of grifters and scammers. and people lost shitloads of money. Yeah, by the way, if you want to know more, read my book. It's all about this. Okay, there you go. So all that is to say, I think what may come back,

what may come back, right? If you look right now, for example, at things like CoinList or Tokensoft, right, which are these accredited investor, you can invest in a pre-launch project that has a bunch of disclosures and documentation

or what they're doing, and there's some legal contracts that exist between the buyers and the sellers. These things fell out of favor under the SEC, or under this SEC, because they were perceived as, even though these are formally legal, they may make it look like you're advertising to U.S. investors,

you're soliciting investors, you're creating more of a U.S. nexus, and it's just dangerous to, like, have all these U.S. investors on your cap table. So just don't do that, right? It's not that it's explicitly illegal or it's obvious why you shouldn't do this, but people just avoided it for general risk avoidance. This kind of thing probably will come back and will become much more normalized is that, yeah, you know, sell to accredited investors, right? But that's why we have accredited investor laws is so that people are not taking advantage of grandmas or other people who just clearly are not sophisticated enough to be making investments into early stage projects because they don't even understand what they're supposed to be deligencing.

What disclosure is they supposed to look for? What, you know, like if you're selling a token to my dad, okay, I will say, fuck you. like absolutely not but like if if my dad wants to invest in something he should be asking me he should not be directly going to anybody who's just selling him something on the internet um and that's what a credit investor they're obviously not perfect and they're moving or he should get it for free because of an air drop for using some sure exactly exactly air drops absolutely i think air drops us investors that is coming um but the idea that we're going back to icos and that's how tokens are going to get distributed to retail if if that's what you mean by icos like yeah

No fucking way. Absolutely not. And for good reason. I mean, yeah. For some reason, you're right. I don't have like exact facts on how this might change. I have just perceived in different ways that like, first of all, perspectives on this are changing and like potential, you know, the perspective of regulators might be changing.

But, well, I don't really know. So we'll have to see. I mean, look, Paul Atkins is not like burn it down, you know, like fuck it. Let's just let's just make it a. total anarchy. Yeah, no, I don't think it would be like the 2017, 2018 era of ICOs at all. That's not what I'm saying. And the case law there and the rules are pretty clear. So creating a safe harbor says that there's a way for your token to not be a security and you don't have to register. And ideally, I think what we'd see from this SEC to be clear is not, okay,

they ignore crypto and they let it be the Wild West. What people are excited about is that there will be rules. And the rules will be clearly written of here's what you need to do in order to to be a decentralized network and not be a security. And if you are in years one through three, you know, still decentralizing, here's the parameters around which it's okay. And here's what you can do and can't do while you're in this playpen, right? But probably one of the things that you can't do is just do a fucking ICO. That is one of the things that's probably not in the list of in the safe harbor rules.

Yeah. And I wasn't saying exactly that. I don't know. I've seen the rules. Right, right. But that's the shape of it is that we're not going to come at you and sue you and try to drag you to jail because you launched a token and you didn't register with the SEC, right? That's what the Safe Harbor rule is supposed to be for.

Not great, now you can just do whatever you want. Yes. Anyway, fine. We're over time. Yes. By the way, last two second factoid that I think people might be interested in. When I did buy those initial bitcoins,

they were in the $200 range. And the ether, I'm pretty sure I bought it $7. So people might be impressed that I, for, no, for went all that. or yeah, gave up all that for, you know, whatever. But anyway. Okay. I appreciate you establishing your new cred's on the platform.

All right. We're going to wrap. Thanks, everybody. See you all next week. Thanks. Bye.