118. State of Crypto Christmas Special: With Crypto Curious

Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Berks Podcast. Today we have something a little bit different. We've done a collaboration episode with our friends over at the Crypto Curious Podcast, which we'll get into right away. You get all of our thoughts and previews for the Christmas break and into 2024. Enjoy.

One of the big questions is, what is money?

For practical purposes, it exists in a.

Series of heterogeneous databases, very different databases.

Do you believe in crypto digital currency?

May be an answer. Is the highly speculated asset.

I do own bitcoin. There is no second best.

Welcome to the Crypto Curious Podcast, proudly brought to you by the Bamboo app. CryptoCurious is your go to source for all things cryptocurrency. Whether you're a seasoned pro or new to the crypto world. We've got you covered. Each week we'll break down the top news stories of the past seven days, giving you the information you need to stay on top of the latest trends and developments. Plus, we'll share quick bites of news and insights that you won't want to miss. If you're new to crypto, we recommend starting with our early episodes where we break down the basics and give you a solid foundation to understand the crypto world. Join us as we explore the ever evolving world of cryptocurrency and educate ourselves along the way. Today we're doing something a little different, a Christmas special if you will, and joining forces with the crew from the Ben and Bergs podcast. That's Ben Simpson, Crypto Curious regular actually, and his co host, Aaron, or Bergs as he's known. And these guys make up an important part of the Collective Shift team. And the Collective Shift is an education platform here in Australia, if you haven't heard of them. So we're still going to bring you the news that you need to hear about this week, but we're also going to bring you a few predictions that you might find interesting as we head into 2024. So, welcome to the podcast, Ben and Bergs and Blake. How you going guys?

Good, Trace. Thanks so much for having us.

It's been a little while since we've caught up, but we wanted do this collaboration because I think a lot of our Bennett Burg's audience probably don't know a lot about Bamboo and we've been friends for a long time. It's a killer app. I think everyone should download it. Everyone should be sharing with their friends over Christmas time. So I thought it'd be an epic opportunity to come together and collaborate. And it's always good to see Blake in his, you know, fully sublimated bright unicorn T shirt.

I was actually looking for a Christmas Santa hat as well. I think it would just top it off, but didn't have one handy, mate.

That would ra. Just a cherry on top.

Yeah, look, it is always good. We've had you on. We've had you on the podcast twice now, Benny. So it's always a. It's always a good time to have you, have you on.

Yeah. And maybe for the listeners benefit, it might be worth just going over exactly what Collective Shift is, guys.

Yeah, so we've been building a crypto research and education platform now for a bit over three and a half years. So we've got about a thousand members that subscribe for investment research and analysis. So basically, if you're sick of getting your information from YouTubers and influencers that are just promoting all sorts of nonsense content online and you've been scammed and you just really need a, you know, a guiding hand. We're an independent platform that just helps people navigate the markets a bit better through our online membership portal. So, yeah, we have like a dashboard and analysts are providing your ratings on old coins and new trends that are coming up and you get a personalized strategy call with one of our team. So we're just really here to help you, guide you through the markets and, and hopefully make a bit of money. This bull market.

I think two of the really important value props for Collective Shift is that, you know, most people don't have time to deep dive into what's happening in DeFi or NFTs. I don't even have time to figure out what's going on in this space. And then on top of that, you provide the community as well for people to support one another as we navigate through the wild west of crypto.

Yeah, thanks, man. So, yeah, we don't, we, we don't do buying and selling. We're not an exchange. We just giving you all the tools, insights you need to go and execute. And, you know, one of the biggest, oldest strategies that we continue to teach is dollar cost averaging. And, you know, it's why we love bamboo, because it's just a really awesome automated way to do that. The audience that we have and that you guys have are very similar. You know, all trying to navigate the waters of crypto and do it, do it in the right way for sure.

And look, those waters that we have are looking a little bit greener and healthier at the moment. So everyone's everyone's in a better mood and let's start talking about the markets right now because we've had eight weeks straight of green for the first time since 2017.

How good does it feel? We went over to Melbourne, we saw you both over there, it was amazing. We had a couple of green candles leading into that and bitcoin is absolutely pumped since then. We've had a bit of a retracement, but it feels so good. My texts are blowing up from all my old mates. I want to get into crypto now, so you know what time it is. And we're starting to taste the reward for going through that bear market.

Oh, it's, it's funny, isn't it? I spoke to someone on the phone yesterday and that she's like, oh, crypto's back. And I was like, didn't go anywhere. What are you talking about?

Oh, yeah. And it's amazing, isn't it, when you're an absolute idiot, you're a weirdo because you're in crypto. You invest in it, you work in it, all of a sudden the price goes up and you're a genius and everyone loves you.

I think it's important, like, as we go into this bull market now, like we're going to see a lot of volatility and like at the time of recording, you know, we had a huge liquidation yesterday. About $150 million longs were liquidated in about 45 minutes. It's important, I think, for everyone to remember that maybe haven't been at through a bull market or, you know, it's been a little while since you've been through it is it's completely normal to have these big corrections in bull markets. What happens is that people get super greedy, primarily traders that then get leveraged up and have a lot of leverage longs and get wiped out throughout this sort of market. So one, be careful if you're training, but two, for those that are long term holding, this is just absolutely normal. When you have eight straight green weeks, you do need a pullback. It's really healthy for these sorts of corrections. So no need to panic and no need to try and time the market and get in and out and try and like do all these sorts of things because it, it just has a probably double negative effect when you try and navigate around it. Best to just sit and hold.

Yeah, exactly. And it's not unusual, you know, from looking at a historical perspective to see 50 drawdowns in Bull runs, which can be, you know, hard to navigate. Pretty scary, but I think that's really due, you know, and, and as we move through more and more market cycles, we're seeing, you know, more and more leverage come into the system. You know, different things come into play, like much, much larger derivatives markets, you know. So I think we'll, we will continue to see those, that volatility and if.

You are concerned about this small little drawback, maybe it's your first cycle or your second cycle. Go back a couple of episodes and listen to the Bamboo podcast where Tracy interviewed Michael Saylor. I've listened to that about 15 times. It is incredible. He will set you right. Here's the biggest, biggest bitcoin bull and just his long term view really puts things in perspective and it'll set you right.

Yeah, he's pretty amazing. So with that boys, let's get into the news this week starting with the release of a16z's crypto outlook for 2024. So venture capital investment firm a16z are deep in the web3 and AI space. Each year they take a comprehensive outlook for the year ahead. Now this piece is a bit of a treasure trove of predictions and insights cover from the next wave of crypto users experiences to the rise of modular tech stacks. It explores how AI is not just integrating with blockchain, but transforming it and exciting implications of AI advancements in the gaming industry.

Yeah, that's right. These guys are deep dive in every aspect of the crypto sector and they know it inside out and they have incredibly good analysts looking at, you know, the trends and the way that the technology is moving. They're talking about, you know, how gaming's changing from play to earn to play and earn. And they're looking at, you know, innovative NFT use cases and new, you know, technology like snarks that help with security and processing computation on blockchains. So yeah, it's fascinating read. We'll put the link in the show notes. But yeah. Ben Bergs, did you guys have a look at it? Anything jump out at you about the, you know, emerging trends in the industry for 2024?

Yeah, I think the gaming sector for us is one we've kept an eye on for now for a little while and finally like, you know, for a lot of these games that have been built over the last two or three years finally starting to hit, you know, the market. So Illuvium came out with their game that hit epic game stores last week and gaming tokens have just pumped.

Right.

So you know, Immutable x was up 100% last month luvium up 130% ron prime up, you know, a couple hundred percent. So these games are starting to get a little bit more interesting I think to play that was the biggest problem. Like a lot of these games were just pretty crap to be honest. And now they're finally starting to get to a point where like gamers actually want to play them. And even more so you're getting these bigger gaming traditional studios coming into the web three world like you know, Ubisoft, Zynga, they create Farmville, Final Fantasy, etc. So you know, it's not only getting the interest from Web3 builders and players, but also the Web2 space, which is really exciting.

Yeah, not definitely. A lot of these games are coming out now after, you know, raising large sums of capital and taking several years to build out the product. Star Atlas is one that we're looking at as well, that we thought was really interesting. But there's, there's just so many as well. And I think in, in the west we really don't have that much visibility about what's happening in the east, you know, in China and where gaming is, is gaming's huge.

What about you Bergs?

For me, the one that jumped out as a tech head that builds a lot of tech is the rise of the modular tech stack. A16Z have framed this as focusing on the benefits of modular open source tech stacks over monolithic architectures. Great. Especially in enhancing permissionless innovation, specialization and competition. Right. Word salad. What this actually means is instead of creating big closed source massive apps, think like you know, Microsoft, the things that they create, they're creating things that are open source on the blockchain, things you can actually see and use and you can grab that composable. So that means you are starting not at zero, but you're starting at 100. You can change it by 3% and you can innovate at the speed of light. This is why we're getting so much innovation in the blockchain space. It all changes within a week because it's open and anyone in the world with a computer can do it. I absolutely love this trend.

Okay. I didn't realize you were such a nerd. That's cool.

Thanks Trace.

Well, I mean I didn't have a big read but I'm big on the comeback of NFTs and I like the fact that they were pointing out that the use case for NFTs would be increasing with the mainstream brands and identity representation as well with the physical goods. So this is your Nikes and your shoes and all of that kind of thing. And the bridging with the digital world. So excited to see what other kind of big brands might jump in there.

And it's not just. I might just point out that it's not just a growing market, like a massively growing market, but you know, the technology is growing and evolving and creating more use cases that the months go on as well. So there's like a compounding effect there from an adoption point of view.

Absolutely.

All right, as we round that out, like Blake said, we'll put a link to that report in the show notes below for anyone who's interested in having a good look there. I think we'll move on to our next story. This one's caught our eye as it continues to talk about the NFT market resurgence because contrary to popular belief, NFTs are not fading into obscurity. Sotheby's, the prestigious 270 year old auction house, how bloody old is that? Is making a striking statement by hosting the first sale of a bitcoin ordinals collection. Now this marks a really significant moment in the intersection of traditional art and digital innovation. Again. So the collection is being created by a pseudonym artist known as Shroomtoshi and is titled Bitcoin Shrooms. So this offers a kind of unique blend of pixelated art, which a lot of them on the bitcoin network are at the moment. And this one narrates Bitcoin's 13 year journey, infused with the cultures and technical references that come along with bitcoin. So this one is pretty interesting, I would say, boys.

Yeah, we're going to continue to see adoption of NFTs by broader, by the broader market. But I think what's really important to point out here is that the ecosystem of Bitcoin and NFTs on Bitcoin is growing much faster than other ecosystems. And because of the advent of the ability to inscribe your NFTs into the Bitcoin blockchain, I think that all bitcoin based blockchains like Doge, like Dash, are going to start implementing the same technology because you know, they're all, it's the same, quite a similar code base Monero. So I think we're going to see a massive growth in this space of NFTs, not just on Ethereum or Solana, but across the whole ecosystem.

And I love this. It really shows the permissionless nature of a blockchain. You can do what you want as long as it obeys the protocol and the consensus rules. And I Just love that the ordinal guys are just really just going for it. And the bitcoin purists absolutely hate it. And it's like, no, you wanted this freedom, this is what you get.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Did you guys see that conversation about the devs wanting to change something in the bitcoin code to allow for this not to happen moving forward?

How crazy is it that bitcoin people are trying to censor their own blockchain?

Yeah, that is amazing. Yeah, yeah.

It creates a lot of tension because the miners generate additional revenue if the block space is being bought up by people, you know, using it for NFTs. So it's obviously great for miners, which creates a conflict between the devs and. And also the max maximalists that believe in, you know, the satoshi's vision.

Exactly. And then there's a competing interest. Right. So there's different incentive structures there. So it depends, like, who's going to win and who's going to play out. Because you can change the rules and what you actually do and you can mine certain things and your protocol will allow certain things. That's, that's fine. You can create your own version or your own rules, and that's what bitcoin is about. But then the market will come through and decide what's actually on the bitcoin blockchain.

I just cannot believe how NFTs are just back like that all of a sudden. And it's because of ordinals, you know, the market's meant to move in this certain way. So bitcoin, Ethereum, the alts, you know, I wanted to ask, like, what is going on? What is going on here right now? How are NFTs back?

People are making money. They're speculating. People are just speculating and they're flipping.

They're speculating and flipping again. Where the hell did this come from?

They're speculating, but also it's pretty cool when you put things on a blockchain and you're experimenting and it is like on the hardest blockchain on the planet, the most expensive, and it's inscribed there forever. There's something cool about owning a piece of that, even though it might seem like it's trash, but it's there forever. Literally, it's going to be there long after you die.

But again, this is all pointing towards NFTs being back. And actually over the weekend, Ethereum Blockchain, which has been the king of NFTs, always having the most traded volume and a lot of the top collections, has been surpassed by Solana and Bitcoin. Both are having more volume than Ethereum. So that is huge news for sure. Okay, let's shift gears a little now. Next up, we're going to tap into the personal insights of our co hosts. We're always curious about what's catching the eyes of those who are deeply entrenched into the crypto blockchain space. Like these guys.

Amazing.

So I'm turning the spotlight over to the boys to find out what's really sparking their interest. Guys, we'd love to hear about your favorite projects or tokens that you're excited for in 2024 and beyond. So tell what it is and why they're capturing your attention. Bergs, I'll go to you first. What are you liking? Tell us what's caught your eye.

I'm a big fan of Veefriends and I've liked this since the beginning and I do own a veefriend. I own a lot of stuff in the ecosystem. I was quite late into it. I just love that they keep innovating at the speed of light. So you've got Veefriends 1, which the original tokens released two and a half years ago. You had book games on Immutable X, which was a really wild mechanism where Gary released these. If you bought 12 of his books, you got an NFT. He ended up selling over a million books before anyone had actually read that book. It's a bestseller before anyone's read it. And these poor people that have bought thousands of books, they got pallets rocking up in their New York apartments to get these NFTs. Absolutely amazing mechanic. And he's got Vee friends too. What? Yeah, and he's done tons of collaborations with Snoop Dogg, Reebok, Mattel, Uno Crocs, and he runs his VCON conference every year. You can only get a ticket if you own a vfriend. Ben's been to it. It's amazing. They've got the best guests there. You learn a lot, you come out pumped. And they've got heaps of things like eruptions burn mechanisms to get rid of all those book games tokens, over a hundred thousand of them. And he's just constantly experimenting with NFTs and backgrounds and scenes and token gated access. And I'm just really excited to see where this all goes because he's been building and compounding in a bear market and he wants to continue this forever.

Okay, that's interesting. I mean, look, we do report on everything he does here in the podcast. Because like you said, he's doing a lot. He has been around for a long time. The conference he does is always huge. Gets everyone along to that. I really liked his Master of the Universe collab that he did. Probably only really appeal to the people of my generation, but.

Yeah, yeah, and, but the thing is he's a massive nerd and he's a collector. Like he even sent me these cards because I own a veefriend and he teaches people how to open the packs and like how to put them in like a little plastic slip and wear gloves. And I'm like, I'm doing all this stuff and I'm not even a collector. And he's just building this series of collectors. It's amazing.

You've just said that you felt like you're in late, but mate, it sounds like you're super early. Sounds like you're like right in there.

This is crypto. Even though you work there, you always feel like you're late.

Wow, okay, cool. But that's a good one. That's a good one. Look, I'm sure he's going to have loads in store because he's always innovating, he's always right at the forefront. Gary Vee. So that's a good one. I wouldn't even have. Yeah, I wouldn't even have thought of that one. What about you, Beno?

So there's one I'm super bullish on in the defi space. I'm a huge fan of defi. It was an area that probably got the most hit in the bear market. Defi had a huge retracement, Most tokens down 90%. But there was one that made it through the bear market. So it's called Maple Finance. It's actually a Sydney based company. The founders from Sydney, it's been around for a little while. I know you guys are familiar with it. I think Blake, you have a different opinion to me. But basically it's a corporate decentralized marketplace where institutions can get access to capital. The reason I like it is because one, they made it through the bear market, but number two is they're starting to build products that give exposure to real world assets or RWAs. And, and we believe this is going to be like a new trend. It's not a new trend, but a growing trend. In 2024 we can actually get exposure to real world assets on chain, which is really exciting. And yeah, as I said, most of their competitors basically died in the, in the crunch of sort of 2022. And they're starting to really get a lot more contracts and exposure to not only Web3 companies, but Web2 companies as well. So it's got about 100 million in total value locked on the chain. And yeah, just one that I'm pretty bullish on for the next couple of years.

Certainly an interesting project, Ben. They do lots of really great stuff. But is it decentralized?

Look, it's not fully decentralized, but in saying that like, you know, I think that's for me anyway, actually one of the, one of the reasons why I like it because it's not just fully relying on customers in the decentralized world. So whether or not you have a viewpoint of like, you know, fully decentralization or it's crap, like, I don't necessarily have that opinion. I actually think.

For some utility and some use cases, a bit of centralization is okay. Bitcoin, not so much, for example, but not definitely.

I agree with that as well. You need some centralization points if you want control and you want to move fast. The extreme example is a DAO where it's completely decentralized and they have coordination issues and it takes a very long time to get things done. So if you start kind of centralized and then decentralized parts over time, that's a really good model to get there quickly.

Yeah, and rightly so. These guys do in depth credit checks on those that are borrowing capital. You know, for example, you know, looking at the balance sheets of these hedge funds, for example, or these businesses which you want, if you're lending, you know, large sums of capital. But you know, just because it's administered by smart contracts doesn't necessarily mean it's, it's decentralized, so. But not awesome work over at Maple.

Another example of that is like, you know, the flow blockchain. So flow blockchain is one that's not really spoken about too much.

It's.

It's basically like an Ethereum competitor, but like basically super centralized in the way it's built. But if you look at the clients that they have that's building on top of them, like Ticketmaster, the NBA, the NFL, ufc, like these big brands, some, some or Most of them, Web2Brands specifically don't actually want a fully decentralized, decentralized model because they have no control over it. They don't actually like a decentralized model because if they make a mistake that they need to rewind it and they can't do it on fully, fully decentralized blockchain. So centralization is important for some People.

And Blake, what about you? What's your one of your favorite projects going into next year?

Yeah, I've been deep diving onto the base Layer two chain that Coinbase has developed. It uses optimism or optimistic roll ups as a scaling solution on top of Ethereum. I'm actually working on a new project at the moment and we're looking at using Bases, our N chain and we looked at all the Layer two solutions across the ecosystem and we felt that Base we were going to get the most support from. From a business point of view, I think that's going to really stand out to people wanting to find a solution because Coinbase has such a mature ecosystem of developing products and taking them to market. We've found that team over at Base has been really great to chat with and work through some initial ideation with and I think as a result of my experience, others are going to have the same experience and Base is going to do very well over the next couple years.

Yeah, that's a great one. Love Base.

Like, do you think it's bullish that they're not actually creating a token? I saw Brian Armstrong come out of the day and basically say that they're not going to go down the path. The token. Like I actually kind of think that never.

He said never doing it.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a hard one. I'm not. Obviously tokens have their positives and negatives, but I could imagine that you're issuing a token. Being a US based company, there's complexities, particularly if you are listed because then there becomes tension about where you're pushing your revenue back to shareholders or back to token holders, which is a complex thing to navigate.

All right, folks, I think we'll leave that there. I'll put some details in the show notes below. I'm going to leave mine until next week because Craig also would like to be involved in this. So my Craig and myself, we're going to do a little chat next week. So I will though put some details in the show notes with regards to Vee Friends, Maple and Bass for anyone that like to look a little further into those. And we're going to take a break here, folks, but when we come back, we've got loads of short, sharp news bites to get through.

Welcome back, folks. You're listening to the Crypto Curious podcast for a bit of a Christmas special where we are joined by Ben and Bergs from the Ben and Bergs Podcast, part of the collective Shift Group. We're going to jump into Our short, sharp news bites. Now there's a few I'm going to kick off first, ladies first, and this one is Fidelity. They've reportedly met with the SEC again to discuss its proposed spot Bitcoin etf. This is just Groundhog Day, folks. Each week in the newsbytes, we're talking about someone that's chatting about their etf. So apparently they've provide, provided some more details in regards to the company here. They've amended part of their filing. Have they also added an ETF for Ethereum? No, they haven't. So just more details to come here as we await this spot Bitcoin etf. Again, Groundhog Day. So same old same old there.

Yeah. All right, next up we have the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF. So they've developed a fund and they've been able to seed that fund with a hundred thousand US dollars investment. This is a crucial step in the process of listing a traded fund. They have built that out now. So it just looks like this is really all in preparation of next year and then listing that fund. But it does seem like a particularly small investment for a BlackRock fund, a Bitcoin fund.

So why do they. So did we decide why that was the case?

It's probably just like the initial kickoff or something, right? Like they've got tons of assets under management. They've got trillions and trillions. It's probably just a part in the process to kick it off. But look at that last part next year. How exciting is next year going to be just with ETFs and the halving, let alone everything else that's going on? It is going to be crazy.

Yeah. So you guys in the camp that they're going to leave it to the very last minute and do it on like the 8th of January. Is that what you guys think?

Honestly, I'm not too fast. Like if it happens in December, fine. If it happens in January, fine. I just want it to go through and I want more people to get into bitcoin and get exposure.

I think the longer the better. I'd rather, I think it can go as be pushed out to a market.

Blake loves the long. He's, he's, he's on the March camp. He's like longer, longer.

Well, then it gives you more opportunities to accumulate.

That's it.

That's it. So you can accumulate more bitcoin.

Another big merger we saw this week was crypto media site Decrypt merging with a decentralized media firm, Rugradio. These are two pretty Big powerhouses in the space. Rug Radio has been around for a little while and they're like basically the opposite of decrypt in terms of a purely decentralized model. A lot of great journalists there and yeah, they come together to plan on, collaborate on advertising deals. I don't know exactly if they're going to become like one brand, but I would probably go to say that one of them was probably struggling. I'm going to say like probably Rug Radio. I haven't looked at this too much but you know, as a fellow media company, you know we rely on subscription fees so you know, we were okay during the bear market. But if you were just relying on advertising, you know, you're probably in a lot of strife. I saw, you know, a lot of layoffs from Cointelegraph, CoinDesk. A lot of the bigger players were laying off a lot of folks and I think for a decentralized model would have been even harder. So nice little acquisition slash merger there for those guys and yeah, I think that going to be some more awesome content coming out from them next year.

Pudgy Penguins to launch Webkins like virtual world in 2024. So good old pudgies, oh, they're doing so well. Announced it will soon be entering the online gaming industry with Pudgy World Interactive Digital Playground and it's expected to launch early next year. And they're going to offer a variety of gameplay options and aims to provide more opportunities for Pudgy Penguins fans to interact with the brand. The NFT project's been a standout in 2023. Their community's been really, really strong and it's one of the most sought after PFE projects in the space.

Killing it. Yeah, absolutely killing it.

And it's got a toy line that debuted on Amazon. How good? In Walmart stores and they're on track to do more than 10 million in sales for the second half of the year. They have one of the strongest communities I love just the memes like the Copium and Hopium memes and how good are these guys have come over the tops of like bored apes with their land and different virtual worlds and they're going to release it before anyone else. I absolutely love to see this.

I know that was the best acquisition ever. All right, let's move on. We've got Robinhood who's launching its crypto trading app to all eligible users across the eu, which is huge. It's a massive step forward for its international expansion that it's been planning. This move took place a Week after the firm's debut in the UK, Robinhood Crypto will be in compliance with the EU's comprehensive crypto regulation framework that's been in place for the last six months. The expansion marks its change in tone after Robin Hood delisted quite a few tokens like Cardano, Polygon and Solana earlier in the year. So that's Robin Hood in the news again.

This is so good and if anyone hasn't watched the movie Dumb Money, go and watch it. It is so, so good. It is about a guy, roaring kitty, deep value and what they did with the GameStop stocks and heaps of Robinhood action. You'll get all the feels if you're in crypto, you'll get all the memes. Brilliant movie and great to see Robin Hood bring crypto to the eu.

So Coinbase rolls out crypto transfers via links sent on WhatsApp and Telegram. I saw this announced a couple of weeks ago. This is a really cool feature. So basically like if I want to send money to, let's say my brother who isn't a big crypto guy, it will just basically pop up like hey Ben sent you $25. Click here to claim it. You'll click the button, it'll load you straight up into Coinbase, you verify and then you'll get that in Stablecoin. So really acting like a tech company now. Coinbase like rolling out more like you know, I'd say like non crypto native products and just really cool ways to I guess expand the adoption of why crypto's so awesome. And this is a great way like stable coins to be adopted in the more sort of general population. So really cool feature they've rolled out.

All right, next up we have Circle. So Circle produces the well known, the second world's second largest Stablecoin called usdc. Yeah, Circle is partnering with Nubank in Brazil to distribute their product in Brazil And Nubank has 85 million users. So I just think this is really interesting. It kind of reminds me of like soft American imperialism. Partnering with banks and giving them your digital dollar to circulate within their economies. Might not be necessarily into in the interest of the broader economy, but definitely is a product that comes in handy for locals if the local transfer rails are slow compared to USDC for example. So you know, we might even see more of this in places that you know, have your poor banking systems. You know, we'll see Circle come in over the top and provide them a technical solution to for people to transfer value.

God's unchained launches to 200 million Amazon Prime Gaming subscribers. So God's Unchained is a web free card game launched on Amazon Prime Gaming. 200 million subscribers are offering exclusive content integrating with AWS and Immutable X have an amazing partnership with AWS. They're getting everyone on board. There's heaps of incentives there and I really like to see gaming and blockchain together. And this is going to be a huge narrative for 2024.

No, it's an interesting one. Those guys are kicking goals.

I think that's it for the news this week, guys. Anything else we want to finish on before we finish the pod? Any nuggets of goodness or market commentary? Any price predictions that we want to make?

So as Trace mentioned, the Bitcoin ETF upcoming date for the next decision point is in early January. I think it's January 4th, 5th, 5th or 6th. Expect a bit of volatility around then. You know, I think it's probably, I'm not sure what Bloomberg reported it to be, but I think it's about a 90% plus probability that it gets approved. The market, in my opinion, has already started to price that in. If the 10% occurs and it doesn't get approved, I would, you know, fully expect a pretty big retracement and a market dump. So just be aware of that. It's also could be a, you know, more of a sell the news event as well. So we could see some volatility around that period. Again, that's nothing to panic about. I think even if we do have a bit of a pullback, the fundamentals of a Bitcoin ETF is literally going to add new capital to the market. So I think you expect volatility, but I don't think there's too much to action around that point as a long term holder.

And I think it might be worth pointing out, Ben, that it could take six or 12 months before these funds to grow to critical mass because it takes time for BlackRock and other fund managers to go out to sell them and then to do, you know, the paperwork if needed. And then also, you know, for the, for the funds to come in, you know, that could, that can be a process and you know, there's internal corporate processes for larger institutions and organizations to move through in order to get access to these products. So, you know, we, we might not see, you know, much volume initially. It might take 12 months to build.

Can I ask a question that isn't that the point of them getting their tickers and everything ready on the exchanges so they can act quickly as soon as it is approved.

Yeah, but you know, at the end of the day they still have got brokers that are going to go out and sell this product to their client bases. Yeah, it is self serve for millions of people or hundreds of millions of people. But you know, there's also that segment of the market that will take advice from their bankers and from their fund managers about how to weight this in their portfolio, timing your internal corporate governance that they need to abide by when investing into a new asset class and so on.

That is spot on. And when you think about it, it's like any adoption curve. You have the early adopters, then early majority, late majority and then laggards and people have different risk tolerances. People don't understand it. And the one thing that I can say to people listening to this podcast is buy Bitcoin and buy Ethereum. The user experience is horrendous. But now you've got apps like Bamboo where you can dollar cost average and make it very, very simple, get in before everyone else does, hold it and rent it back to them. Go and listen to that Michael Saylor podcast that you guys recorded and you will understand why now is the time.

Thanks Berg. That's all makes a lot of sense. And you know what, thanks guys for joining us today and spending a bit of time with us and going through the news. We appreciate it if you guys are listening and you've got a portfolio sitting there with a bunch of altcoins that you don't know what to do with and you're still a bit confused about this market. Then again, as Blake said, the collective shift is there to help you out with that. And we'll also leave their details in the show notes below because that's what they're there for to help you sort that portfolio out.