Hivemind: Bitcoin Volatility, Perp DEX Trends, and Crypto Market Cycles

I think like at this point, like Bitcoin is really its own thing. And I think for investors that makes it a really nice asset to own. I think for traders it can be really tough because you don't know how it's going to react to certain headlines and stuff all the time. Um, like why was it strong with gold in the past and now it's getting trounced by gold? Why was it strong with NASDAQ in the past and now it's getting like Trump's by Nasdaq. But if you're like an investor and it's a part of your portfolio, it actually has a lot of nice— that's like reduces your portfolio risk by having it like so uncorrelated to everything, right? But it's just interesting that like we always seem to have this discussion whenever there's a macro thing. It's like, what is Bitcoin?

Nothing said on The Hive Mind is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is strictly for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our own opinions.

Not financial advice.

Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Hive Mind Podcast. I am your host today with Jose out, Ceteris. I am, uh, head of research at Delphi Research. We have on with us as always Jason Yanowitz, Ventures partner, and, um, it's been on at least once or twice, uh, Flip. He's kind of our, our perps guy, um, and there's been a lot kind of happening. I mean, there's always a lot happening in perps, so good to have them on. Um, so yeah, good to see everybody again. It's Wednesday, January 21st. It's 11:20 AM Eastern time, so Bitcoin is back close to $90K. The market's kind of like rebounding a little bit after, after the past, uh, few days of just, um, trash price action. Uh, what do we, what do we think about this little reversal? It's Davos now too, right? So there's a lot of like headline risk and a lot of headlines are moving, um, stuff this morning.

Yeah, um, I don't know, right?

A couple days ago everything looked pretty good, like, uh, generally speak— I'm not— everything, never mind. Bitcoin looks pretty good a couple days ago, um, and I still think it looks generally okay. Like, I mean, I would have much preferred not to see yesterday's, uh, candle, but like, you know, I'm looking at, you know, you, you have Saylor buying $2 billion right at like the peak or top of, of our recent rally. I don't— I'm actually not sure where he got the $2 billion. I wasn't really paying close attention to it, to be honest. But again, his execution was like pretty poor, wasn't it? Like $95 or $96 or something.

One thing interesting on that is, have you noticed how they don't— in the announcements now, they're not saying the average price. They're like making you do the math.

It's, it's, it's like, it's really hard to do. I know, right? Um, so like, I wouldn't be like— so I think it just comes down to like equities at this point. Like, I think Bitcoin is like generally doing well, holding in. I think, you know, flows have kind of returned. You had a couple days of, you know, outflows. Like, I think, I think appetite is starting to return to Bitcoin to an extent, at least much more than we saw in, you know, Q4 of last year. And What I'm kind of looking at is equities and what happens with kind of like tradfi markets. You have like a lot of, a lot of things seem to be happening again with, you know, JGB yields just spiking. There's just like a ton of shit happening in tradfi land that while not directly related to crypto, like if it causes equities to kind of pick up a bit, crypto being weak without, you know, a bid for most shit will just, you know, continue to get smacked. So like, kind of my, my, my, I guess, game plan coming into the year was like, I was going to see how the first couple weeks of January went with respect to like risk appetite. I wanted to look at a bunch of the perp DEXs to see like, what do volumes look like? What does open interest look like? Like, what, what does trading activity generally look like as like a proxy for risk and, and, and behavior? Um, I wanted to see how some of these perp DEXs performed post-TGE, which we could probably get to with, with with LIDR in a bit as like another, you know, kind of proxy of like where activity and, you know, capital will like coalesce to in that space, right? There's probably, you know, room for 1, 2, 3 good winners there maybe, but like there's not room for as many as there are. So like I think that would be a pretty good proxy. So I'm just kind of like using this month as like a gauge of like how I want to allocate, and right now it's kind of playing out to like, yeah, just like Bitcoin's look looks okay. Like, I, like, I don't think buying here or buying $75K, if you get like a retest of sailor's average, is going to really make a difference if you have like a, a 2, 3, 4, 5-year horizon. Um, but if you're like tactically speaking, like, I'm not really itching at the bit to take any like tactical trades right now. I'm looking at things like Hyperliquid with all these huge unlocks coming from the— or not unlocks, but like unstaking of these huge whales, right? You have that Tornado Cash whale, um, as well. So like, I'm looking at a bunch of these dynamics and just kind of waiting to see how they play out, and then looking to buy just like good coins that I, you know, that I can be comfortable holding because they're not complete shit. So like, it's just like the market is just like very— like, there's a couple good things out there, I think a couple good opportunities, but it's just mostly not great. And I think there's probably just better opportunities for tactical, you know, trades in other markets. Like, you know, small caps are ripping, right? There's just like a lot of shit that you could like probably have an easier time with than trying to pick out a few good alts.

Um, yeah, I would say you've played this quite well. I don't remember if it was right before or right after Thanksgiving, you mentioned you are, you know, yeah, you were just like, I'm done through year-end and I'm gonna wait through January. And I think you've done incredibly well. What are some of the opportunities you're seeing? I mean, we've had on-chain run a little bit over the weekend and then get whacked down. You're starting to see some life in some very small pockets, but it doesn't feel like a meaningful bid for any of the coins we know. And so what are you looking for more specifically on where you might get excited to bid?

Yeah, it's a good question. Honestly, like, I don't have a great answer for it. It's something I'm trying to answer right now. I'm trying to figure out what I want to bid. Uh, like, uh, the lower Hyperliquid goes, the, the more and more I get really interested in it as like a, a place to actually take a bunch of stables and just put them into. Not from like a staking yield perspective or anything, but just like, you know, it makes it like a— I don't know, conservative— conservatively just say $750 million a year, right? It's more than that, but just conservatively. And the further it goes down as you churn through a bunch of these people who are up over a year, many multiples like that. Tornado Cash whale who's been unstaking and selling like every week for the last— I don't even know at this point, for the last like month plus, he had like an average price of $8.8, right? So like these people are up and they're all churning through their positions, which I think is healthy, number one. Number two, the fundamentals seem to like— like generally what you look for is, right, like price, price and value, valuations going down, but all the like underlying metrics are stable or growing as like a really good sign of like dislocation in like a shit market. And it seems to me that Hyperliquid's like underlying, um, fundamentals are, are pretty resilient for the most part. Like obviously trading volumes are down, open interest is down, depressed from, you know, all-time highs. But like money-making, other revenue sources, the HIP3 things, there's probably pretty good opportunities there, right? I think Kinetic did really well over the last like month or two, but you have to be like really tapped into these ecos to, um, you know, be ahead of that.

Yeah, and a lot of, a lot of that reflexivity in the revenue volumes is just cyclical. Like you're seeing it across the board in, in all the exchange tokens, and it's quite normal. And I'd say the distribution, to your point, like the distribution we're seeing in token changing hands now is quite bullish for, for a longer term, longer term price action.

So I mean, I don't have like many good opportunities. Like Hyperliquid is the one that I'm like, I I'm super like, I know it very well too because I've been following it for a long time. So it's something that like, I don't know, maybe that's like not a good thing, right? For me, being familiar or too familiar with something can be, I guess you could be complacent. But like, I don't know, I'm curious what Jan and Ceteris think when you just like look at the landscape of tokens, of something that like if you wanted to allocate like a significant, you know, like 5, 10, 15, 20% of a portfolio to as like a spot position, like where, like where would would you be looking in Q1 in terms of, of things that probably have a good amount of upside potential if the market recovers, liquid enough that you could do something like that and be comfortable holding it? Um, yeah, like, I'm curious, like, what that universe of tokens looks like for you.

This is basically just like going with my portfolio.

Yeah, so please, Setters, what do you, uh, what do you have?

I don't know. I'm still, I do think this year will be a turnaround year for Solana. I still feel good as like that being my L1 token that I hold. I still think Zcash is interesting here. I mean, Pump, I still, I don't know. I still think that like Pump has a lot in it. Uh, we kind of saw it a little bit over, you know, looked— it looked for a few days there that like the trenches were back, and then pump volumes were up a lot, and then bags came, and then you had, you know, I mean, same thing again, right?

Like actually one of the strongest coins, uh, year-to-date in crypto.

Yeah, I think that like nobody wanted to— I think there were some coins that like ending last year, nobody wanted to straight up show that they like own them. And I think Pump, there's like no communication for a few months. Seems like there's like this RICO lawsuit that I don't know how big of a deal it is or not, but it's something that like they're not talking about. Um, and so I think a lot of people just didn't want to have that going into the new year. Um, But, you know, I think that it was kind of disappointing that it again crashed and burned that like speculative area, right? Um, it looked like it was going to be pretty good there for a bit. And then you have the same old story where some like Web2 or like AI founder comes in and launches a token and ruins his life, right? Um, and I mean, didn't ruin his life, probably he'll be fine, but like Um, again, there was no follow-through, which is just the same thing we've seen over and over. And it's like, at this point, it's very hard for me to keep up with that sector of the industry because it just seems like it's just letdown after letdown. And this gas token thing looked like the first time that people were excited again that something was gonna, like, real come out of this. And then once again the, the founder's like, yeah, I don't want to have this token anymore. Um, and it kind of just like killed everything there. And then, I mean, the overall macro also just killed that too. So, um, it's clear though that there's always people wanting like that white whale token, you know. We were on Thread Guy stream like a couple weeks ago.

Yeah, the white whale one.

Like, I don't know. So like these, these meme coins still have— they still have this, this there's still enough speculative capital that's always kind of like playing in these areas. Uh, it's just like, I don't know, man, it just seems like lighting money on fire these days. But the, the moonshot's always there. I think with like Bitcoin specifically, um, whenever we get these macro— everyone's always like, is Bitcoin this like macro asset hedge? Is it like this tech stock like NASDAQ? And, um, I think like at this point, like Bitcoin is really its own thing. And I think for investors that makes it a really nice asset to own. I think for traders it can be really tough because you don't know how it's going to react to certain headlines and stuff all the time. Um, like why was it strong with gold in the past and now it's getting trounced by gold? Why was it strong with NASDAQ in the past and now it's getting like trumps my NASDAQ. But if you're like an investor and it's a part of your portfolio, it actually has a lot of nice— that's like reduces your portfolio risk by having it like so uncorrelated to everything, right? Um, but it's just interesting that like we always seem to have this discussion whenever there's a macro thing. It's like, what is Bitcoin? You know, like, is it this? I think, I think for Bitcoin, like, the long-term, the long-term use case is like very clear that a digital non-sovereign a bear asset, is something that you would expect to continue to be incredibly valuable in, in this world, and especially the way the world is going. But I think, like, still to this day, like, over the short, medium term, it's very difficult at times to understand what really drives Bitcoin price. And like, people will say, oh, it's OG selling, or at the end of the year is tax loss stuff, or like fund shutting down. Um, It's just a really— and then it looks like the start of the year, it turns out it was like mostly Sailor, right? Um, it's just a very hard asset to kind of predict over the short, medium term to me.

Yeah, on the, the Sailor front, uh, I think that caught everyone by surprise. He did.

Please, I had no idea where he had that money.

That's all, uh, ATM sales because he's still at a 105 or 1.1 MNAV. So I mean, it's not what he's doing before, but it's still technically accretive to shareholders.

And so, um, yeah, it's actually pretty good because it got down to like 0.8 or something.

Yeah, it got down, but it helped that Bitcoin nuked. Like, MicroStrategy sucked, and then Bitcoin nuking brings the, um, and so yeah, he's at— he's over one, he's able to do it. It's impressive that there's enough of a bid for, uh, uh, Strategy and for the equity. He's just selling equity shares. Um, yeah, he's deployed almost $3.5 billion this year alone. That is definitely what's been driving the market. It's kind of nuts to see that there's still, you know, that much, uh, supply overhang. Um, You definitely would have expected that to come down quite a bit with where prices are, but I think maybe there's some— you've seen some like the Quantum headlines, and, and, and so, you know, that might scare some people out. And then it— there's the domino effect of, oh man, if it's going to scare some people, then, you know, others will pull back. And, and so, uh, regardless of, you know, whether you think it's a real risk or not, it definitely has some impact on price. Um, particularly if, you know, you're thinking of this as the long-term buy and look away type of asset. This potentially, you know, invalidates that to some degree.

Um, yeah, I mean, for pension funds, right? Wasn't that like the guy's recommendation was like pension fund allocation, right? And it's, it's a good point. And it's like, it's true, none of us really know how big of a threat it is, but the market perceives it as a threat. And like, that's the bottom line. Whether or not you do is like irrelevant. It's It does, like the market obviously does, right?

Yeah, no, for sure. Um, it's a sum, I guess, you know, it can be an opportunity if you, if you think it's not, but it can be an overhang, particularly because it could impact future bids that are no longer going to be there. I don't know that this really changes the thesis for me at least. Um, so I'm, I'm You know, I think it's a headwind, but not an insurmountable one.

Yeah.

In terms of the, I guess, the smaller stuff, when money isn't really flowing into crypto, like, you know, there are periods where money is just flowing and you see that in terms of the pace of ascent for some of these, the quantity of them that are ascending, right? It's just like a function of how much capital is going into them. And, and the, the length and, and height that they can get to. And so in these environments, I feel like if you're not in some insider cabal where you're getting a really early look, like, you, you have to be so quickly in and out of this stuff because you see the drawdowns of it, right? It, it, it, like, on one hand, it can be beneficial if there's only one asset running because all the hot ball of money just focuses on that, but, um, it's still a pretty treacherous game and one I don't think I can, I can do well. And so I usually just sit those out and then, um, just watch them rip and then watch them dip. Um, it's, it's actually kind of relaxing, to be honest, versus trying to stay on top of all of them, just like assuming you're not going to make money on this and it's easier to just not focus on it. Uh, yeah, pump. I mean, I think for me it's, it's, um, and this applies to venture also is just looking at revenue-generating businesses that have some degree of moat, that, that are also somewhat cycle agnostic in the sense that even in a down cycle, like nothing here is cycle agnostic, it's just the degree to which it is. And basically, you know, in a world where you're at the bottom of the cycle, is this thing still fundamentally fairly or like cheap? In, in a, in a, in a decline, that I think that's like a good floor-finding exercise. I mean, like, even Pump, if you're looking at 30-day revenue and annualizing it, you know, no one would say that trenches are hot, but they've been pretty— they, they definitely picked up recently. And I think it's trading at like a 5x buyback on FDV, right? So you have that, um, and buybacks are great, but the thing is they, they, they, they don't necessarily offset flows. So I think what we'll see come into play at some point is the 1-year anniversary for it, right? I don't think it's a factor yet, but there will be some front-running of that, whether that's people hedging to lock in the, the gain and, and kind of, you know, running the risk of keeping that trade open, um, for a shorter period of time, or, or just trying to— people trying to, yeah, hedge somehow, uh, or, or people just getting out of the positions that are liquid in anticipation of people selling or hedging. So that could be a headwind. But, um, I mean, yeah, the, the price of it is— the, the fundamental, fundamental basis is pretty good. The DEXs, I think, are still reasonably cheap. I mean, it'll be interesting to see what happens with the, uh, launch of, of NYSE. I think that's slated for sometime in '26. I'm not necessarily holding my breath, but But I think that could be a boon for liquidity on perps. I still think, you know, there will be people who want spot and there will be people who want perps. But the issue on the equity front on the perp side is just like having market makers do that well. And so if you can have the on-chain assets be there, I think that bolsters liquidity a lot. It helps with funding rates. There is a part of the cost of the funding rate situation is this off-chain hedging and off-chain market making that needs to be done. And so if you can bring that all on-chain, I think it does reduce costs and ultimately can bring funding rates down or just increase liquidity. And that has, you know, knock-on effects in terms of assets like Athena, which they can do basis trade on some of these assets. And, and, you know, people naturally want to be long Uh, the, like, equities, obviously there will be shorts, but I think overwhelmingly people prefer to be long that stuff. And so Athena actually comes into play in a really productive way because they're the short leg, right? They hold spot short perp, and so they can provide that sell-side liquidity that most people are worried about where that's going to come from. Um, so I think that, that could definitely be a boon. I don't really see that being too big of an issue for, um crypto in particular. I'm sure it's going to be KYC'd and gated, right? And so you basically have the people that want to follow those rules can, can bridge the liquidity, and then everyone else who doesn't want to can just benefit from that liquidity existing in, in, in an area that they can access.

Yeah, I think net-net it's gonna be massively beneficial for a lot of these, a lot of these perp DEXs. To your point, the liquidity will just continue to get better. Um, to put it kind of super simple on why this is important, it's like equity perps are pretty well known for having horrible after-hours and weekend trading. Uh, lots of, lots of shenanigans takes place. Funding gets out of whack. Instead of pricing, you know, the New York Stock Exchange, the NBBO, uh, for pricing, they, they go after— they kind of do their own internal pricing, and that's when pricing can get way out of whack because ATSs don't even— alternative trading systems don't even run on the weekend, so they're having to do a lot internally, which just makes it really, really tough. So with 24/7, when this does go live, it should help traditional equity perp models pretty well. Now, what, what does this do for CFD type of model, something more akin to what Osteum will do and Variational will do on the RFQ side? You know, TBD. Those are, generally speaking, just the SOFR plus whatever premium they want. But I think Overall, this is a net beneficial for everybody using traditional funding on equity perps. You know, I think this is ultimately good. I mean, I think there was a lot of people bear posting that this is the death of PERP DEXs, but I think the narrative over the last 2 to 3 years has been that we ultimately want to replace TradFi rails. And now it's like, okay, they see the threat, they're coming in to play ball, and now it's time to step up to bat and perform at a very high level. I think there's a few teams that'll do that and continuing to, uh, innovate and push forward. Some are partnering with TradFi people, some are doing it completely internally. But net-net, I think this is very beneficial, especially for people who love trading equity perps. Yeah, there's still a cost of carry for that trade, and you might be better off holding spot, but if you want to play leverage on some sort of event, like let's say, you know, Nvidia has earnings on Thursday and you want to place the trade a week before, you can actually hold it through the weekend and, you know, go go to sleep at night, like, decently well, um, if you think that's an attractive entry. So I think those types of trades get a lot more attractive, and you can kind of sleep better at night with those.

Yeah, and just to add to that, the, uh, you know, early on, part of the crypto thesis was kind of a regarb, if you want to loosely call it that. And, and with these players coming into the space, you still won't be able— like, they're almost reintroducing the regarb in terms of users not needing to KYC to access the liquidity, right? So I think like, yeah, like you mentioned, the 24/7 component, you see a lot of these platforms needing to, uh, reduce the amount of risk they're able to take because they have to warehouse it or get creative solutions in terms of how to not be too exposed in one direction. And so, yeah, I definitely see it as a boon, um, big time, and hopefully can also help with options space as well.

But we'll see.

How do you think this helps with the options space a little bit?

Uh, well, if it can, I think you can get equity options because you need, uh, the spot, whether spot or perp liquidity, to be there for market makers to hedge, uh, to provide. Like, if they want to sell calls, they need to long somewhere else. And so if they need to do that on centralized or like on, on non-crypto rails, it's a lot harder for them. But if you can kind of do it here, um, it's potentially viable. But it'll be an interesting test to see because, you know, that this is always that Perps are preferable to options because they're easier to understand. It's very vanilla. It's pretty linear in terms of exposure. And so it'll be interesting to see if, like, the whole market for equity exposure just continues to be dominated or is dominated by perps in the same way that crypto ends up being.

I think largely they probably do. To your point, they're just a more simple instrument. And I mean, internally, I've been quite bullish options in crypto. And I still am, but not for retail. I think it's, it's, it's a good revenue and business line for these Perp DEXs. They have a lot of pricing power, should be a high margin business for them. But it's largely catering to institutions. Like, I think if you can do that well on the majors, especially players who are more focused on the majors, I think that's an optimal way to hedge. I think for hedge funds that have a lot of the long tail, I think hedging via options is actually quite poor. And I think 10/10 is a great example because at the end of 10/10, your, your alts were still like broad basket was still down 25%. But after that wick was over, ETH was, you know, down 3 or 4%. So all of a sudden your hedge in that moment was quite horrible using options. But if you were able to do that on the perp, on the long tail, it works quite well. So I think it'll vary per hedge fund and per manager. But I agree, I think, I think it's going to be a high, high margin business harm for a lot of these teams that got to get it nailed down.

Yeah. And then the other question, I guess, is you see a lot of like, uh, retail participation on— in equity options on the zero-day expiry stuff. And then the question is, you know, it is comparable to mega high leverage, uh, perps, but it's—

it's—

perps are path dependent, right?

If it—

like, if you're 100x levered and it wicks down 1%, you're out. With an option, it can go down 3% and then pump back up and you're still fine. So there are trade-offs there. I think your payout is going to be quite a bit higher on the 100x depending on, you know, where you're buying your option. But, um, yeah, it'll be interesting to see if we see some kind of movement, uh, there. Maybe if I like— is Robinhood or one of these guys gonna provide a front end to get exposure to these equity perps, do we think?

Or Um, I mean, the speculation is LIDR, obviously. Uh, every— everyone speculates that, and, you know, Vlad's talked about it a little bit, and whether that happens or not, TBD. Um, communications with the team is that they, they are partnering with, with Robinhood in some capacity. I think Robinhood's a great distribution angle, but I don't think it's the end-all be-all for LIDR. Um, like, the team is obviously quite talented. Um, they built in-house RWAs per Spot. The bridge even is all in-house, and so they didn't leak value anywhere. And I think that's a very strategic move on their part. I think Hyperliquid has leaked value to Unit, and I think if they could go back and they had the capacity, they'd want to build the Spot instead of let Unit come in and do that. So they're not leaking, leaking any sort of value there. And I think Hyper— or Lighter is very in tune with that and realizes they don't want to leak value. So I expect as they build out their, you know, unified margin, their options, as they've got net interest margin on deposits in the bridge um, and integrations. I think they'll be very keen on like keeping that value in-house. Now what does that look like with someone like Robinhood? Obviously, yeah, they'll bend the arm type of thing.

But why would Robinhood then want to leak value to like— exactly, because they already have everything, right?

Yeah, with Kalshi, like eventually Robinhood, you know, pawned Kalshi out and built it in-house.

And so this is obviously because they have the users already doing the activity that they're going to be doing anyway. You're just giving them a new product under the same user interface that they already like, right? Why would you—

it's super intuitive, super easy. They got their 401k, their trading accounts all in one spot. So I think it will be tough for, for those guys to leave. I do, I do agree. But I think ultimately, back to the conversation on NYSE listing, uh, the— and moving into 24/7 and having digital securities on there, uh, I think ultimately they, they're competitors at some point. They won't admit to it now, and they'll say You know, the market is super competitive, super big, but ultimately I think they'll end up competing for the same users and same liquidity and same flow. So I think they'll end up competing at some point down the road, but no one wants to hear that.

It's not good for the bags.

No, not good for the bags. And no one wants to talk about it.

They're just using it for settlement to start, right?

I don't think there's been like any clarity even on that yet. Like it's all speculation right now.

Gotcha. Yeah, how have you, uh, how have you felt about Lighters Everything post-TGE? Yeah, I've been quite—

yeah, so I got to meet the team in here, down here in Miami, right before TGE, and my one piece of feedback to those that I talked to was, hey guys, you need to be transparent on your tokenomics and your financials, uh, whether that's, hey, we're doing X amount of buybacks, or hey, we're doing buybacks but it's going to be 10% because we're putting 90% into growth and operations for, you know, our native, a native stablecoin, options, building out the sidecar, unified margin, things like that. I think that would go a long way. They didn't do that. Tokenomics were released really, really late. They're still not clear. There's no guidance on how much will be used for buybacks, which I don't think necessarily matters, but we just need to know that there's like that conversation is happening and where Flow is going. I'm firmly in the camp that one of the reasons Hyperlinkable is such a good asset to own Last year was because they were hyper transparent. It's like, hey, I know 97% of revs are going to buybacks. As an analyst, that's an easy asset to bring to IC. Like, that is quite easy, easy. You can model that well. That's an easy asset to go to your— if you're a PM, that's an easy asset to go to your LPs with. Like, that's a good story to tell. With LIDR, you can't tell that story yet because you don't know where dollars are flowing. I don't think we need a true income statement yet. Cash flow statement, balance sheet, things like that yet. But like, I think it's pretty clear we're moving that way with the new market structure bill. And so I think this should very much so get ahead of that in some degree. And so I was quite disappointed that they didn't really lean into that. After conversations with the team this week, I think, think they realized that mistake. I think they'll start leaning into that a bit more because it's really hard to model an asset, an investable asset when you don't know where any flows are going. And so that, that gets, that gets really hard. But overall, I think that the team is— the product is still good. They're working on their sidecar EVM that should be out in a few weeks, and then unified margin will come after that. I would expect that to come in vaults, so you'll be able to deposit into the LLP and use some of that as collateral on your PERP positions. And then I know they're building out options. I'm hopeful they're building out this internally and not using Derive or Cayenne or something like that. And so if they do that, I think that's a high margin, that high margin business arm for them, and then they've got net interest margin on deposit. So I think they're, they're in a really good spot. They just need to flip, uh, the script on, uh, transparency around financials, and then I'm a lot more optimistic. I think they're in a prime spot to dominate the US, them and Osteum specifically. I think those two can be big players here in the US. They really just need to lean into the transparency and the US market structure bill and kind of get ahead of the curve, and then they're gonna be in a great spot. The product is good, um, they just need to be more clear with, with allocators and retail on where flows are going and financials and things like that. Because outside of— because outside of like Ossium in the US, they don't have too much competition. Variational, I'm actually not sure where they're, they're based. Um, so I think, I think they've got a good path to dominate the US. And if, if you end up do having, you know, crypto rails, you know, doing some settlement and whatnot for bigger players, who do you think it's going to be? Do you think it's going to be Hyperliquid, who's not US-based, or is it going to be Lider, who's a US-based team who has their founder in DC all the time and meeting with regulators? Who's it going to be? And I think that's, that's, that's an uber bull case. But even without that, I think they have a great product and, and new business lines coming that are going to be high margin.

No, you're— I mean, I've used Hyperliquid, not Lider. I do like it. I think it's a good product, uh, as well. Um, so yeah, I mean, I agree. Um, he's kind of playing the, uh, the lobby regulatory, uh, card here. I mean, smart, right? It's like kind of like the Coinbase approach to an extent.

Uh, so I'm also like somewhat concerned for those that don't know, they increase their fees or they're raising their fees to market makers. Um, while I've been in the boat that I think they have pricing power there, I wouldn't raise them this much. Um, so what they're doing is they're requiring market makers to stake They haven't been clear on what amount, but stake X amount of LITE to get the discount back to the current fee model that they're at. I think this could pull liquidity on their platform and widen spreads a bit, which I'm not too optimistic about. My thing is you should probably keep market maker fees as low as possible for as long as possible, which gives you time to ship differentiated products, which is your options, unified margin, you know, debit cards, on/off ramps, things like that. And while keeping liquidity really good, because then once you have those products, then you have sticky users, sticky liquidity, and things get a lot, a lot better for them. I mean, because ultimately their model, the PFoF model, trading fees themselves aren't the long-term moneymaker for them. It's the insular— ancillary products and flows.

Yeah, so I don't know, I don't know if I like that model. Yeah, as a market maker, basically all your profits can be wiped out instantly buy the token just like dumping. Yeah, for some reason out of nowhere.

Yeah.

And then you can say, oh, you could like borrow the— borrow the— if you're holding it and the token, but then you're paying the funding costs with it. And, um, it's not clean. And it does—

that's increasingly hard because a lot of these people forget market makers, they're also usually investors to some extent. And when they can't model a floor price for an asset which comes back to the transparency on financials, they're not going to step in and bid. Because to your point, if all of a sudden they're bidding at $2, it drops to $1.50, they can't take that kind of hit like that.

I mean, can you imagine if you had to buy DYDX to market?

Yeah, exactly.

It went down like every day for 3 years.

So like, I mean, it's so like they're— I mean, clearly to me it seems like it's like, okay, like they want to sink for, for, for the token, uh, but like it seems like they could probably get a similar result by like, you know, with, with USD staking or something like something that's different. Like, I don't like if they want to like, I don't know, this seems like a very suboptimal solution.

I think they chalk it completely. That's what I would do. I'd be like, hey guys, this is a, this is a bad idea. Let's go back. Like, that's, that's what I would do.

I'm very against at this point, after all the years we've been here, of like forcing people to own tokens for different reasons. Like, I don't think these utility-type plays ever really work. They always just add friction. They always turn people away. And there's been enough times people have got burned now that I think there's just a lot of just apathy towards any of these models.

What would you, uh, I mean, if you— what, what, what would a better solution, Flip, look like to you? If, like, if they were, I guess, kind of intent on increasing fees, like, what would you do instead of this? Because this obviously doesn't seem like a good—

I think right now I'd leave as, as is.

Just not even try it right now? And just—

yeah, no, I wouldn't, because your money makers are going to be these other business lines, and that's how you're going to build brand reputation. And that's where I would lean into. I would— I mean, again, I think the reason you keep fees as low as possible is you're buying your time to ship different products. Yeah, I think that's what they should keep doing. That's what I would, I would do if I were them. And then you can really— and then also you have to stake in order to get access to the LLP.

How much more are they making from this increase? Like, assuming volume doesn't leave, assuming market makers don't pull liquidity because—

yeah, because it depends. Yeah, because we don't even know like what tier—

how many—

how much you have to stake to get to this fee? Level, you know.

So you—

we don't, we don't know. There's not much transparency. That's been super vague, um, which should be out in the next, you know, 8, 9 days. Um, so we'll know more then and we can talk about it next week. But right now it's, it's very vague and I don't love that. And they're doing similar stuff with the LLP where you have to stake in order to deposit. I don't love that because they're trying to bring down the LLP TVL because they want to be able to have higher yield there. Because law of large numbers, once you're a billion-dollar market maker, you, you can't keep running the same strategies to get the same returns. And so I think they should just let it keep growing, let it keep growing. And you're not going to have these crazy 50% APYs in your vault. You're going to have somewhere between 8 and 10. I think that's just fine. I don't think you should be optimizing for max APY in your, in your vault at this point in their, in their, their life cycle.

Makes sense. Um, yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't think I have any more questions on LIDR. I think you, you, uh, hit everything there.

Are they able to, to just— because, you know, like, the perps business from a revenue perspective is very attractive, right? That's, that's very high margin revenue. Um, yes, it's volatile with activity, but it's still fairly consistent and, and can scale well. Um, I guess it, it's not necessarily that sticky because people can choose somewhere else to trade, whereas a product like a credit card or something like that is definitely a bit more sticky. Once you're in, you're in. So, uh, what I was going to get to is, does the math math for them to get a decent amount of revenue from these other ancillary services compared to the trading side? Because I get to some extent, if, you know, it is somewhat of a commodity providing trading, and so, you know, you definitely have this— assuming everyone's getting relatively comparable execution, you do have this kind of race to zero on fees. And so it makes sense to try and win that and almost use it as a loss leader to build out you know, your user base for these other assets you can monetize. I guess the question is basically, you know, how, how monetizable are they? And, and when you do monetize them, does it get to a big number?

Yeah, I would— options, it depends what you charge, uh, but I would just— yes, like I've been modeling the numbers. I'm not at a spot, like, going back and forth with the team that I feel comfortable sharing them, but like, yes, they should be, you know, great revenue drivers that, like, perps you know, for the foreseeable future, it will still be the main revenue driver. But options should come in at number 2 quite shortly. And I think ultimately what these, these guys end up doing is doing a subscription model, um, similar to Robinhood Gold. I think ultimately they end up doing a gold service to where all of a sudden, you know, I'm a retail user and I want to pay whatever, $4.99 to trade on Lido. And in doing so, like paying for this service, I all of a sudden can use my LLP as collateral on my perps. Then I also get access to options, which will have a higher fee. So I think there's interesting ways they can monetize that going forward. But like, does the math math? Like, yes, the math is good, but it ultimately depends what they're going to charge on those products, which I'm not sure. That was a non-answer answer for you, Dion.

No, no, I get it.

Right on. Um, I don't think there's anything more to talk about. Perps, really?

Burnt out on perps now.

Yeah, I don't know, man.

Cedrus doesn't even trade perps, bro. He probably hates these conversations.

No, I mean, he's an angel.

Come on.

Yeah, yeah, you disclosed your Monad angel even when it wasn't brought up, and you haven't mentioned the Lighter angel once.

No, no, no, I'm not an angel.

Fuck yeah.

Which I think is cool. We'll see how it's a Solana one.

Um, it should be good.

Yeah, I think they're, they have like a testnet right now. So we'll see how they go. I mean, the Solana specific perk market is wide open still. And I do think that there will be a winner there. Right. Um, because there's just a lot of people that use Solana and would rather just use Solana for perks. Right. So I still think that that alone is like its own opportunity. And then there's like the bigger which is like going after hyper liquid and stuff, right? Uh, but, um, I'm more interested on like the technical, you know, size of perps rather than just like raw, um, as a trader. Um, but, uh, yeah, I don't know.

The—

it's funny that the market totally just retraced everything as we've been— this happens every time on this podcast. It's It's like, we think it might be okay, and then, uh, full retrace of everything. I don't know, this— it's funny, this kind of reminds me a bit of— I mean, last year I guess was worse to start the year, um, because it's like down only every day. This day there's like— I don't know, it goes up and down and stocks aren't like terrible yet. But, uh, yeah, did you guys see, um, so XMSOMonero has been performing quite well to start the year. And there's always kind of this like Monero versus Zcash debate. It turns out like the reason for the Monero pump is someone stole like what, 200-something mil and then was just swapping Monero on like different DEXs to then to get out. I think that So we kind of talked about this internally on like the research call. Like Monero versus Zcash is really interesting to me. I think that Monero is really like a pure privacy play. It's also associated with like nefarious criminal activity, right? It's like it is the privacy coin for criminals as it stands today. And a lot of people who are bullish on Monero will tell you that you want to own the privacy coin that criminals like, right? Because that means it's doing its job well, uh, and that's a, that's a thesis with it. Zcash sits in this interesting kind of like middle ground to me where I don't know if it's fully a privacy play. I also think that Zcash has done a good job of like— Zcash, the privacy narrative for Zcash is, it's from like a freedom angle and like individual liberty and out of like the, the eyes of the government and stuff. Whereas, uh, the Monero privacy angle seems to be more about like, um, like all the way, um, just like pure crime privacy, I guess. And maybe, maybe that's wrong, but like that's my perception and that's I think the perception that a lot of the market has, right? Um, And, but then Zcash also has this like Bitcoin hedge angle, which I'm not sure if Monero has. Like, if you think about institutions, if they were to buy a privacy coin, I find it really hard to believe that they would. And I mean, maybe they wouldn't buy privacy coins at all. Maybe, and like, that's probably a good thing, like, that it just is a totally individual thing. But, um, it would be really hard for me to see any sort of like big money, even like funds, get really behind Monero. Um, whereas Zcash, it seems like there's, there's much more willingness, uh, to get behind it. And then Zcash has got like this tech angle. Um, it's like the quantum thing with Bitcoin, right? Some people are looking at it as a hedge now. Not that Zcash is quantum resistant, but there are, you know, paths to make it. And like the shielded pool by nature makes the coins less quantum hackable to begin with and everything. Um, so I know I've kind of just been thinking about these two recently because I think that privacy is clearly, um, a narrative for this year and it will be moving forward. Like, I definitely believe that privacy is coming back. And so it's like Monero is pure privacy, Zcash is kind of this hybrid with like privacy and then this other like quantum ZK tech stuff, right? And I mean, I own Zcash. I don't own Monero. But could I see a world where Monero is the one that does way better this year? I could, for sure. But I think, I don't know, I think these like are pretty, it's like an interesting dichotomy between the two. And just seeing like what moves prices, like A lot of Zcash's movement at the end of last year had to do with the Winklevoss twins aping at that, right? And then a lot of the Monero price action this year had to do with the $200 million hack. It just like, it just kind of shows the buyer base. And you can say that like, the tech, like at the end of the day, it's like criminals could use Zcash as well. But the thing is that like, they don't. It's like when Thorchain was used as like North Korea's money laundering thing. Like, it doesn't matter that Thorchain is like this permissionless DEX thing. If it launders enough money for North Korea, it's going to be under the purview of regulators, like regardless of any of these arguments you make, right?

So for me, because I don't know enough about either of these things to have a strong opinion, My strategy is I own both.

Yeah, I mean, that's obviously a—

I don't know which one will win, but if there is a privacy coin that wins, it's probably going to be one of them. And if one wins, the other will probably win too, just not as good.

So like, yeah, there's nothing worse than being right on the thesis and expressing it.

Exactly. I just own it. I— yeah, I mean, I don't own Monero yet. I still have some Zcash that I was buying. Uh, towards the end of last year or whatever. Um, but I, I'll probably, probably pick up some Monero. That's like my, my plan. And it's just like, yeah, I just owned— it's not like a basket of L1s where there's like a fucking hundred and you have no idea, like, right? It's pretty clear there's only two.

Yeah, yeah, it's pulled back quite a bit. Like, what was the, the time period for the TWAP into it.

And then, yeah, I was gonna say, it's pretty strong, like yearly, like it wasn't like fucking spiking, but it was just like continually grinding up for months and months and months.

Uh, well, the big move, it, it, uh, basically fully retraced. It's not liquid at all. So on Jan 1, it was $4.20. Today it's $5.08, so it's still up a bit. But from Jan 11th, which I think the hack was on Jan 11th, okay, or Jan 10th, I know the hack was Jan 10th, I think. And basically from Jan 10th to the 14th, it went from like 450 to 750, right? And then it's kind of like consistently now drawn back down.

So it's where it would be if that hack didn't happen, right?

Basically. So there's still, there's still like, you know, there, there is this privacy narrative and, and these two, there's like a lot of, yeah, it was January 20th. Uh, sorry, it was January 10th. So that's exactly when the chart turned.

Yeah.

It was $282 mil, uh, Litecoin and Bitcoin due to hardware wallet social engineering scam. And then yeah, just instantly started converting to Monero. That's a lot of money, man. $300 million.

Like, holy shit.

So it all, it all, like, do we, do you know what time period it went into the, the, the chart at? Like, it was just an order of days, or like over the next 2 or 3 days, right?

It was just TWOPed, I believe, from Jan 10th to the 14th, or— yeah, yeah.

I mean, Zach tweeted about this on the 16th, and so it was done by then, I'm assuming. Yeah, maybe not.

It was on its way down. Yeah, it already peaked. It peaked on the 14th, so it was it like had that ridiculous— so if the hack happened on the 10th, the next day is when—

I don't know if they topped it all actually, but so like there might have been front running of this too. People saw that this guy was doing this and so there was more buying of Monero for sure.

People would—

yeah, whatever happened to—

uh, so I was wondering how long it took. Basically, if you did it over the course of hours, then you don't really have that much time. If you're doing it a long time period, then you have Yeah, whatever happened to the BAT token?

I got the whole privacy meta going on. You've got, you know, Brave's, you know, it, you know, they're a token and it's like not moved. Is anyone following that?

Brave for privacy? Wasn't Brave like the Brave token was you watch ads and you get some tokens back and like that was how it works? Yeah, there's nothing to do with price.

So I just looked, it's still trading at almost 300 million market cap.

I think it's more the bright— the browser was private. Yeah, and the, the demand for a private browser would lead to—

yeah, I actually use Brave.

I did too, to this day.

Yeah, it's just like I've just been using it and I don't know, I still use Chrome for some things because sometimes, uh, sometimes some websites don't like Brave.

Uh, so do you accrue BAT tokens?

No. It tells me though how much time I've saved. It says that over my lifetime I've saved 2.5 days by watching ads, by blocking trackers and ads, 40 gigabytes of bandwidth saved, and 4.3 million trackers and ads blocked. So I don't know if that's real or not, but it makes you watching ads go on news websites or like— I don't know, maybe it's just like pop-ups. The thing is you can like install your own like anti-pop-up stuff, right? I think when they started doing this, it was— people didn't like build this in as automatically and everything. You had to download these weird extensions. But now I think it's pretty common to just block that stuff. Um, yeah, I don't know, I still like it as a browser. I don't use it for any like privacy reason. Like when I did at the beginning, for sure, I didn't like know any— like when I— I didn't know any of this shit, man. Um, So I even like with VPNs, I'm like, I turned my VPN off my phone a few months ago cuz I was like, what am I actually getting with having a VPN on, on my phone? It honestly just makes my life a bit more annoying cuz like a lot of things don't like it and then I've gotta turn it off and I gotta turn it back on and it's just like, I don't know, I still keep it on my computer, but even still it's like. What is the real benefit I'm getting from it? And I've kind of brought this up and a lot of people will say how like you actually should not use, like VPNs are oversold for their like, you know, privacy benefits and all this stuff.

Yeah, it's, I think it's good to use when you're using public Wi-Fi.

Oh, for sure. Things like that, 100%.

Yeah. Or just apps that, um, I can't access wherever I am. Yeah.

I mean, I, I was, yeah, I was never under the illusion that using a VPN was a super private solution. It was mostly just to like geo, like avoid geo.

Yeah. I mean, that's probably, and that's the thing, right? That's how I've just always used it to use it. I felt like, oh, I need to be protected. Like I need, it's like I feel naked if I don't have a VPN on, but I think that's just like a psychological thing.

Something I started last year was, uh, I just don't do crypto on my phone. If I'm out and I'm not at my apartment, I just don't do it. Such a better— I mean, I do have, I do have like a hot wallet to like ape some shit if I need to, but like, I've basically never want to do stuff on my phone if I'm out. I want to not have to think about trades and positions and stuff.

Like, I mean, I've basically never been able to do stuff on my phone. Um, there's one time when I was testing one wallet and it was kind of cool. I was just trading, I had like some dollars in it, and I was trading some like Solana shitcoins like MOTHER and, uh, some other stuff. And, uh, I remember I was in Japan and I was still able to trade some like, I think, what was the other one, GEEKO or GEKKO or something? I was just trading these like meme coins, you know, with a few bucks. Um, and I was like, yeah, this is kind of fun. But, uh, yeah, I've never been the mobile trader type.

I had centralized exchange access on mobile and then I never touched mobile in ETH land. And then once memes in Solana became a thing, it's when I, I, the only wallet I have access to is a Sol wallet on my phone.

Sol meme wallet on my phone. Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because you already kind of expect that money to be zero.

And so, yeah, I'm just trying to be as like, as quickly as possible be exit liquidity for someone who's an insider. All right. Is there anything else you want to talk about?

It's been 55 minutes.

Uh, are y'all familiar— just one last thing— are y'all familiar with Jason Yanowitz's kind of, uh, structural cyclical framework where he talks about cycles? Well, the way he, the way he kind of talks about cycles is— I mean, it's nothing, no rocket science. I'm just gonna kind of throw my own spin on it. It's like you've got your— you've got early consolidation, and you have the early, early bull run, which, you know we might have seen with Solana moving early. And then with the wealth creation, really saw it with hyper liquid to some extent. And that's kind of like phase 1 and 2 of a market cycle. Then phase 3 is, is wealth distribution, and you start to see a lot more PVP. So we saw that with memes. And then most recently we saw this with Perp DEXs. Perp DEXs were very PVP. There were incentives everywhere. Everyone was fighting over which Perp DEX was going to win and which one had the best incentives and points and things like that. And then you really start to have wealth, uh, destruction, and you have down only, down chop. And I think the start of that really was like 10.10. That was like the moment something had really broken. We had, we had wealth, uh, distribution with all the PVP going on with PerpDEXs, and then we had the wealth destruction with 10.10. And then we had, we've had the sideways chop ever since. And now we're kind of at the point where I think we're in what he'll call Phase 5, which is, which is the low. Where, where bad news is no longer nuking markets. Good news is also no longer nuking markets. And we saw that kind of late last year in late 3, early 4Q, where, where good news was getting sold off, bad news was just nuking prices. And now we're at the point where, you know, Bitcoin was down 2% yesterday, and you had the NASDAQ and the Q's down 2% as well, and you had Nvidia down 4%. And so you're starting to see crypto, our Bitcoin asset, really start to react better than equity assets for the first time in 4 months. So that's something I've been watching, is like we talk about equity cycles and market cycles, is we're in this like lull period, and you go from this low into the consolidation and into the early bull. And that's kind of why, you know, for the first time in months, I've like actually started to deploy some capital and buying reflexive assets because it feels very much so that bad news is no longer nuking markets. And yes, there might be some idiosyncratic stuff with certain tokens where, where good news gets sold off. But generally speaking, it feels like we're in the bottoming phase in crypto, at least. And so that's something I've been thinking a lot about is like, where are we in, in this smaller, you know, 6-month, 12-month cycle? I mean, it feels very much so that we're in the low bottoming period right before you start to see the early signs of bull, which we might have actually seen over this past weekend with Ralph running and some of these tomato and AI coins really cooking. You're starting to see some life in some random places, but I think, I think we might be at the spot where I'm getting quite optimistic that, uh, buys in this range are getting decent.

Yeah, I mean, I was getting optimistic too, and the last few days have been like—

yeah, it would have been a lot better if Saylor didn't just tell us he aped 2-point-something. Um, But if that being the driver of relative strength, I agree on a longer-term horizon. Right now it's, uh, it's a good bid, but it, uh, like, I wouldn't be surprised to see like high 70s, low 80s, and, and that I think would be a really great time to, to bid, uh, because yeah, for me, you know, I think Brawley's thesis hasn't changed. And so, uh, yeah, the painful thing is just in that world, alts are going to be looking pretty ugly.

But I, I still think, like you mentioned, yeah, if you zoom out, uh, I think like in no rush to bid, but I think steady DCA from here over the next month or two, call it Q1 as a, as a whole, I think it's, it's getting really attractive. And that's kind of what I've been doing, buying the reflexive assets that might still have 20% down, but I'm okay with that because I've missed the first 60%, 70%, 80% down in some of these names.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, that framework's like, I think it's, yeah, it's similar to like a lot of ways that other people have like spoken about it over the years. Like it's kind of like, right, you have like 10/10, which pretty much just nuked every— everybody who's like active in the market just nuked, right? And then you have like, so that's your like, you know, price-based capitulation right there. And then you have like what I forget who initially called it's like price-based capitulation, then like time-based capitulation, which is effectively the wealth destruction and then the lull, right? It's like whoever didn't get wiped out by the nuke gets wiped out by the sideways downward chop after the nuke, um, and then it allows whoever's left or new money to come in to, you know, pick up the pieces and accumulate and, you know, set up the foundation. Yeah, it's like, I think that generally makes sense, and I think, yeah, Q1 is, is like the period you look for. And I think all of the things you mentioned as like factors or proxies of what a, like, reaccumulation might look like are true. And it's kind of like, look at other things that we were talking about before, just like general trading activity on the Perp DEXs, right? Is that, is that recovering? It doesn't need to be at pre-10.10 levels, but, you know, you look at trends of things, right? Like, is it increasing week over week, like trading volumes, open interest, right? Um, stuff like that is like a sign of risk appetite. Trench, trench graduation rates on meme coins, right? Like things that are like potentially leading indicators of flows into these names. I think, yeah, it's the best way to judge if that reaccumulation is going to happen or not. And I think you're starting to see that, yes, a lot of those things are pointing in the right direction. But yeah, to Yan's point and the, the point we made earlier, it's like if, if we retest Sailor's entry, which seems like a meme, right? Like it's such an obvious meme. It's like a CME gap meme or some shit. Like it just seems like it's going to happen because it's like a funny outcome. It's a meme. Like, everybody's gonna, you know, think of all the memes. Like, it'll be like a Titanic meme with Saylor when he's finally underwater. Like, just like, it just seems so obvious and funny that like the simulation will have it happen. So yeah, like visualizing what your favorite altcoin looks like if Bitcoin's like, you know, -10% with a liquidation into $76K or something, it's like Yeah, that could not look great, but if you're not dead, probably a fantastic, fantastic buy, which is, you know, where I would shove whatever money I'm willing to stake in crypto back into the market.

Yeah, the, uh, I think you often see the, like, just in terms of Saylor price, you often see that, uh, not, not even the meme people just trying to dunk on him saying, yeah, oh man, look, he's bad, is that his cost average? That's not the right way to look at it. You know, what you compare is the price of strategy when he started buying to now.

Yeah, that's not what— that's not what Peter Schiff likes, dude. Peter Schiff's—

yeah, I know, I know.

Every time he tweets undersellers, like, announcement of buys is so funny. Like, today he was— literally yesterday he was like, oh, after 5 years of buying Bitcoin, it's only up 20% from your entry. Not much to show for it. Should have bought gold.

Yeah, long price strategy. Yeah, it's, it— I mean, it's a convenient narrative I'm looking for for someone who's, you know—

yeah.

It'll definitely be somewhat of a magnet. Um, yeah, it's—

yeah, it seems—

and then the lower it goes, the better his MNAV goes, and he can just start— like, there is some resiliency to the model in that he can— like, the lower it goes, the more cash he kind of gets, unironically.

And also, like, it's, it's new Fed chair, front running is coming for that. Like, even if, like, there's just so many things coming down the pipe, like election midterm year, like, I don't know, I just don't see a world in which, like, Trump and Bessin aren't like, okay, like we clearly can't go into midterms with like markets in like some kind of, you know, February, March, April tantrum, like tariff tantrum, like type pullback or something. Like we're, we're very clearly in a world where politicians are like, do these things right. Like it, I don't know. I, it's hard for me to get bearish with like the backdrop of 2026.

Yeah, you also have the stimmy checks that will probably come from tariff stuff. But the question is basically, you know, last time we got them, you had deployment across both equities and crypto as just great price, great places to speculate. But the question is basically whether that'll continue here. I assume you get some retail activity on stocks, but question is basically, will people No, it's going to go to draft accounts for the World Cup. Yeah, yeah, true.

Let's be— that's where I'm going to send it. Let's be real.

All right, let's, uh, I think we should wrap it. But, uh, cool. I think that was a good episode.

Um, hopefully, you know, well, we started and Bitcoin was $90K and it's like $86K or some—

$85K, $87K, $87.5K right now.

Must have been a pretty bad show.

So we'll see where we are in 2 weeks. But, uh, yeah, um, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for everybody on the episode. And, uh, yeah, we'll see everybody again in 2 weeks. See you guys. See ya.