Hivemind: Macro News Bearish, Crypto News Bullish & What We’re Bidding

The thing I think that's happened with, especially since Trump, is that just a lot of the corruption and scamminess that was like underlying this market got exposed. And then I think that plus the announcement of the reserve last weekend having like XRP and Cardano in it, to me it's just like, for me it was like the administration just doesn't understand crypto. Or just lumps it all in as basically a grift. And so there's no differentiation between like Bitcoin and Cardano and XRP. But it's like all this regulatory, all the regulatory good news just can't seem to pump the market because I think a lot of what it's saying is just like people don't believe that regulatory clarity will lead to actual use cases. They just wanted the government to buy your coins. 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. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Hive Mind Podcast. The goal of the podcast is to provide an inside look into what we like to call the Delphi Hive Mind, bringing together some of our brightest minds from each of the divisions to share insights, alpha, and shitposts. Today with us, we have the usual cast: Ceteris from our institutional research arm, Jan Lieberman, managing partner of Delphi Ventures, and Duncan, also known as Flood Capital, our shitcoin scavenger and investor. I'm Jose Macedo, and I lead Delphi Labs, our protocol R&D arm. Focused on incubating and accelerating new Web3 primitives. We haven't recorded in 3 weeks because the majority of the team was in Denver. It's been a pretty eventful 3 weeks. Alts have been pretty much down only. Bitcoin hit $78K briefly at the time we're recording now, which is Wednesday, the 5th of March at around 4:00 PM UTC. Bitcoin's trading around $88K. Alts have rallied a little bit from the bottom, but still most of them down like 50% to 70% or 80% from the top. A lot of this is— well, I don't know, what do we think caused this? People have various theories about it. Tariffs.

No, it's all macro. Everything, because everything There's been a lot of good announcements in like for crypto macro over the past month. Basically every case is getting ended, um, which is I guess like the biggest one. It seems like a lot of these ETFs are eventually going to go through. Obviously there's talk about Reserve and all that. Um, the SEC seems like they're putting together like a pretty friendly team, and so everything from crypto macro has been fine. Um, but yeah, it's totally driven by, you know, the top, right? The overall market. And this tariff stuff has obviously been spooking markets a lot, and it's kind of like going back and forth. And so, um, yeah, I don't really know what to like do when this is kind of the, the situation, you know?

Yeah, I definitely think that the macro stuff kickstarted it, but I think there's like a lot of kind of structural supply and demand imbalances like going into this. And then crypto is like super far out on the risk curve, which just causes like alts to mega nuke. Like we had, you know, all of the meme coin extraction that was just like ramping to like a pretty insane pace. And I think just like general exhaustion from like new launches and then like the macro stuff just kind of like tipped the hat in one way because equities are only down maybe like, you know, less than 10% from the highs. So there's still like, you know, could be more to go on that way. But I think like crypto, you know, is very liquidity sensitive, especially like all to just like the furthest thing out in the risk curve and like the whole financial market. So those things are kind of like the first to fall off as the market sells off. People get scared, liquidity dries up.

Yeah, it's been, I think, the most kind of extractive bull market, right? And that means it's a bit of a ticking time bomb. And when I say extractive, you have PumpFun, right? Every— you always get those tweets about them selling SOL. Like, that's just money taken out of the ecosystem. I think these president coin launches, you know, uh, have done it in massive size, right? Like, never before have you seen low 9 figs kind of just drained out. And so, um, I, you know, there's— I think that stuff is really hard to— that takes time for new money to flow in, right? Like, the market cap whole thing where, you know, market cap rips higher or slower, it's that like that, I don't think that is necessarily extractive in the sense that it's not as if, you know, the amount of market cap that was lost is the amount of money that was actually pulled out of the system. Market cap is just a function of like marginal price times supply. And so it's just if the bid dries up, market cap contracts massively, but it's not as if that's just capital flowing out that was, you know, unrealized gains, just round trip basically. And so here these are actual funds that the idea isn't to reinvest this stuff into other things, which you often see in crypto, is if somebody makes money in one thing, they're looking for the next trade. And so it eventually kind of gets redeployed. This is basically very much one-way flow at the moment. And I think that can put a damper on things combined with all the stuff you guys mentioned between macro and increased supply and launches.

Yeah, I mean, the Malay scam and the All that stuff was pretty, pretty bad for crypto too. People finally got to see like behind the curtain of what's happening with most of these meme launches and this narrative that these things were for the people, uh, you know, fair launch compared to utility coins is just like has always been kind of total bullshit.

I think though that this is what kind of happens when there's like a new game slash narrative in crypto is that it starts off like relatively organic. Like, the early memes, people bought because they liked the memes, you know, like, honestly, for, for the majority of it. And then, you know, WIF— I think WIF was like pretty organic. You can say maybe there's some cabal stuff, I don't know, going on with that, but I think that was like mostly pretty organic. And then, you know, some of the earlier meme coins, I think like Boden and stuff like that. But then, like, the further this game goes on The more and more of the later entrants who like weren't there for the original, original game either now try and like control this game. Right. And then basically at the very end of it, uh, I don't think even we shouldn't even call these like meme coins. Right. And I also think it's like somewhat unfair to group like Trump, Melania, and Libra with pump fun because none of those are pump fun coins and they're just like straight scams, pretty much, right? Um, and so this is what kind of happens though at the end of every like narrative. And once a game kind of gets run dry is that the majority of the profits are just now being realized by like a very small group, right? Like that group gets smaller and smaller over time. And, you know, I think the silver lining on the Libra thing is it does seem like memes— obviously everything, nothing has really come back since then, but But I guess like people now more so understand the game behind the curtains and will hopefully be like less willing to— I mean, there's like that JD Vance coin that might've done really well like a few months ago and it kind of fizzled out like pretty quick. Right. So yeah, I think we're like, it seems like we're moving on from the market we had, you know, in 2024, 2025 is a very different market. Like, the common theme is dispersion is still there, right? But I think what will get bid is like changing, right?

Yeah, I think return to quality is probably, yeah, the, the most rational thing. And, and the only way that the, the meme stuff kind of ends is just when people stop bidding, right? And, and once it got max extractive, right? Like, PumpFund was really good in terms of actually creating an environment where these things can launch in a much less ruggable way than was previously set up. And so I think it created guardrails around launches for that. And then these just, you know, ended up skipping the pump fund phase, saw the market cap of the top memes and thought, let's just teleport there and then we'll sell it all to everyone at that price, which is, you know, completely counter to— I definitely think like—

Yeah, I definitely think zooming out, like on this cycle, I think like retail is probably pretty exhausted because I think this cycle versus like 2017 or 2021, if you frame it like that, I think retail has like had way less of a chance to make money this go around versus in those past two cycles. And I think that's what drives like a lot of the euphoria and interest. And like, you know, in 2017, you had like Bitcoin pull a pretty crazy multiple, ETH pull a crazy multiple, and just like, you know, this whole ICO boom. And then like once that kind of extracted all the money, the cycle ended, right? Once these ICOs extracted all the money, the cycle ended. And then you had in 2021, you know, a lot of people were able to make money because it was just like helicopter money stimulus phase where like a lot of alts, no matter like what you bought, just kind of went straight up. There's a lot of money in NFTs for retail. It felt like everyone had a chance to make at least some money. Whereas in this cycle, like meme coin, that was kind of true for meme coins in like early 2024, maybe late 2023, which is kind of like the sharp money that's all like, oh, these things like can rally a ton based on previous cycles. And then it turned into this game now where we hit like max extraction. And I feel like retail is pretty exhausted because every new retail entrant coming into the space, almost every new retail retail entrant coming into the space is losing money. I think that kind of like kills the virality effect that crypto has versus like in 2017 or 2021 or early 2024, like everyone was coming in and making money and telling their friends about it and talking about it versus now like people are coming in and just like instantly getting like killed and extracted from. So I think that probably puts in like a shorter term top for retail for the foreseeable future just because like no new retail entrant is coming in and making money and telling their friends and family about it because it's just like impossible to do. And then that probably is a shift back to fundamentals and quality for the money that's still in the space is kind of like, you know, etcetera, as we're talking about.

So I think I like, I agree and disagree with that in like different ways. I think in like all the retail that came in in 2022 and 2023 probably did well and probably did better than a lot of the OGs, I think, because they were using like Solana and, you know, that means you're buying SOL, then you're getting the Jito airdrop, you're getting the JUP airdrop, like all this stuff and those kind compound.

And, but yeah, like everybody coming in in 2022 or 2023, like you could still come in like late.

Yeah, the majority still comes late. Yeah, the majority that comes in late. Yeah, realistically, actually, I guess if you came in like March of '24. Yeah, like it's probably hard because like SOL's down from then. Obviously the memes of like employment, only things up is Bitcoin.

Since, since March.

The only thing up since that is Bitcoin.

Like in 2017, you could have come in like, you know, pretty late 2017 or just like any time kind of in 2017 and done well. In 2021, you could have come in like, you know, summer 2021, you could have done really well. Like you could have come in like relatively late into the cycle. And now it's like, okay, like you had to be like pre-March 2024 to have done that, like kind of well as like a retail investor. For most coins, right? So that's, you know, we're almost a year now and Bitcoin, you know, so like Bitcoin is kind of decorrelated from those alts, I think.

Well, I mean, it did. It's not you think.

Yeah, like I think as in it did decorrelate, but like that's, I think, different than previous cycles where we haven't seen this much of a decorrelation. And it's like just as a retail participant, it's so hard to make money. Especially when like everything's focused on these memes. And then like Libra was just like the, like the endgame of that. It's like, okay, this thing like rugs and it tops in 1 hour and rugs in like 2 or 3 hours. Right. At least with like Trump and Melania, like you had like, you know, a few days or like a few weeks or even like, you know, early Trump buyers are probably still on multiples, but it's like, then it just, we got sped around to like, okay, this whole cycle's out there.

I think the thing with the thing I think that that's happened with, especially since, since Trump, is that just a lot of the corruption and scamminess that was like underlying this market got exposed. Um, whether it's— I think the Malay thing was especially that, like, the, you know, the guy, the Kelser Venture guys, or guy, whatever, was talking about how there was a presale for the Trump coin at 500 million FDV and people got access to it. Um, And then just hearing that guy on a podcast for an hour talk about, you know, how this game is played and how they want to snipe it first so they can at least let the Ponzi run for a few weeks longer rather than it just dying straight away. Hearing about the Trump presale and obviously like the Melania coin the same weekend as the Trump thing done by these amateurs. You know, you literally have the President of the United States and his team who have access to you know, the entire industry, anyone they want, the smartest people in the industry working with this dude, right, on these launches. And then I think that plus the announcement of the reserve last weekend having like XRP and Cardano in it, to me it's just like, for me it was like the administration just doesn't understand crypto or just lumps it all in as basically a grift. And so there's no differentiation between like Bitcoin and Cardano and XRP. Um, you know, we just launch meme coins on this, on this thing and, and partner with these, with these like snake oil salesmen to, to do it and try and extract as much as possible. And to me, that's like, I don't know, I think there's some of that going on with, with like the price drops and stuff. And it's like all this regulatory, all the regulatory good news just can't seem to pump the market because I think a lot of What it's saying is just like people don't believe that regulatory clarity will lead to actual use cases. They just wanted the government to buy your coins. And obviously this is like very negative view on things. Like I'm still bullish crypto, but I am seeing a lot of this sentiment. And I do think the way the administration has engaged with crypto has been—

well, it's like a lot of people view crypto as a scam and then the administration is literally like promoting that side of it. And so I think that's the frustrating part where like, I think all we've— all people really wanted was like to stop the regulation by enforcement and to kind of be hands-off and kind of like lay some ground rules, right? But this is just going like too far on the other side. And then when the average person sees, you know, when I have like friends and family, you know, asking me like about this. And then they're like, oh, or XRP and like Cardano legit and stuff like that. It's just kind of frustrating, I guess.

Uh, like it's definitely gone way too far the other side, like cutting a bunch of jobs, you know.

Like, yeah, yeah, like cutting— yeah, you're cutting like park rangers and cancer researchers and stuff. And then what, you want to buy like— and it seems like they're not going to buy them, which I guess is good.

We don't know.

Yeah, you guys are—

that's the— but, but that's the other thing. But why are they doing these? Why announce it? Why announce it? Jason Yanowitz. Yeah, that's the other thing.

Like, there's definitely an element of like, just like inner circle stuff going on for sure.

The announcement, like whether you intend to or not, it's just such a scam, right? Like if you intend to, it's obviously a scam. If you don't intend to, then why announce it other than to enrich some people who knew about it beforehand? It just like, it's just a terrible look.

Who are you necessarily like blaming for this, right? Like I don't think Trump himself has any idea. What is going on with these things, right? Like, there's a lot of change happening. There's obviously going to be good change and bad change. And there's people kind of grabbing because there's so much change happening. You know, there's people grabbing to, like, make some money off of it. Maybe it's his inner circle or who really knows who's actually, like, benefiting the most from this. But I think this is just like part of the growing pains when he's literally trying to, like, rejig the entire establishment. And obviously it's like really shitty to see. That people are taking advantage of stuff like that. Even like, you know, that Hyperliquid whale went long like 300 million of like coins, like, you know.

Yeah, but that, that, that, that was coming, that looks like it was, it came from, uh, like stolen tokens. So I don't know if that was—

yeah, I'm just saying like, we don't, obviously we don't know any of these things, but it was like kind of funny timing. It's like the market's like mega nuked and this guy goes like 50x long leverage.

And then I don't know if you need— so I don't know if you need to like— I get it, like, who's to blame for this? I don't know. But obviously you'll need to— you need to recognize the fact that it's like terrible. What is—

yeah, it sucks that Cardano and XRP are better than what we would have had with a—

for sure.

I don't actually know.

I don't know for sure, dude. That's the most naive opinion I've ever heard in my life.

We would have had the god—

I think that could be like 45 everyone would be getting sued out of their ass.

But like, the courts have— people were winning. Like, people were legit winning against like the SEC in the courts. Yeah, right. Like, Ripple fucking won too.

Like, the people— there are people that could win, but there are a lot of people that couldn't even afford to fight.

Yeah, don't give me— listen, I'm not saying the other way would have been good and we would have been like rocketing and everything worse. I don't know if it would have been—

the really bad part here is that, that Cardano and XRP got mentioned in the reserve, right? Like that. And then the—

oh, there's a lot more than that.

The loosened regulatory climate created opportunities for grifters to do more grifting. But like, it was, it was almost inevitable without creating a very strong regulatory framework right out of the, out of the gate. And that wasn't going to be possible because that has to go through legislation. So just the environment of, all right, we're not going to be ruling by enforcement, which has opened the doors for grifters and like grifters are going to grift, right? There is no world where you could have had both. And so like the really bad stuff has just been announcing that, you know, Cardano and whatever, any part of the reserve, if they're, you know, Cardano is like, I think one or two—

Trump and Melania, you don't think that was really—

Yeah, that sucked.

I agree. But like, that's just a function of like the open nature of the regulatory environment. I think you'd rather have—

people need to take responsibility for buying this shit.

It's like 100% obvious, but I think it's just, it's like, it's much better than the alternative.

I agree, but like, we do have legis— like regulations around gambling for a reason, right? Like it's not a socially valuable activity to have a bunch of people Obviously there's the freedom argument, but there's also the fact that we have regulations around this stuff because it's not socially valuable for your entire populace to just be gambling on stuff that also doesn't contribute to the economy at all.

Right.

If you're buying stocks or something, at least there's— or utility coins, I would argue, at least there's some contribution to people building real shit.

Basically with the window of we don't have rules yet, but we're not really going to enforce. Eventually put in the rules. And in that period in between, max grift is kind of what happens.

I guess for me it's like Harris and the Democrats just saw crypto as a total grift and wanted to kill it. And the hope was that the Republicans would see like the value in crypto and promote it. Whereas I feel like Trump just saw crypto as a total grift and he was like, all right, let's party, you know? Yeah, well, I just think it's too early.

It's too early to tell. Obviously there's people like, I think how the conversation probably went is like someone run up to him is like, we can make you like a billion dollars if you launch this token. And he's like, oh, is it just like selling my merch? And he just says, sure, I'll send out a tweet. So like he never talked about it after that ever again. Right? Like he literally mentioned, oh, I heard the launch went well.

Like I, I, yeah, I don't know if we have to debate this too much. I think, I think we can agree that like, okay, it's, it's Yeah, it's, it's better than like it would have been if like Camelot won, but I think a lot of people are kind of disappointed as how it's like kind of gone so far. Yeah. Because it's just kind of exact, it's, it's really exemplifying a lot of the worst parts of the space and that is the frustrating part. And I don't think it's like, there's a lot of people I think to blame for this.

So yeah, we can move on. Maybe, maybe a move. One interesting thing you guys are talking about how this exposed memes and stuff. So are memes dead now or what do you guys, what are you guys thinking? Maybe, Jan, let's start with you.

I think it'll take a while, but I think you'll see resurgence when Bitcoin starts ripping again and animal spirits come back. People forget quickly. You probably end up getting like a resurgence in some of the classics, to be honest. And some random new funny ones. That like, I don't, there's not going to be this world where I don't think celeb tokens are going to be massive without some like really improved utility or access, you know, some of the kind of things that excited us early on about athletes getting involved and celebrities getting involved and using it actually in a productive way that, you know, engages with fans and rewards them. Um, but like these pure memes at like high FTV launches, I think, are toast because there's not going to be a bid for them.

Yeah, yeah. I think there's like a few categories of memes, right? There's like the OG whatever ones, like Doge. They're celebrity coins. I agree, celebrity coins were never memes. They were always just like grifts. Uh, I think like Mother is the only one, like Iggy, That's the only celebrity coin that actually she tried to like make something and it still is just like down only. There's these like country coins, which like those aren't meme coins, but they're launched on pump or sometimes not. They're just like, I don't even know what the hell those things are. There's like hot topic of the day coins, you know, like Peanut, Mudang, stuff like that. Maybe these like you call these attention assets, maybe those things. Come back when stuff gets crazy again, especially with this like TikTok thing, right? The Reddit guy, if he's gonna actually buy TikTok and put it on chain, um, you can definitely see stuff like that come back, right? I think that was the Pump Funds founder's whole thesis, right, was like tokenizing TikTok. And so if the Reddit guy is going to do that, uh, put it on chain, then you know there's going to be assets with all that. So you could definitely see kind of this like attention trading stuff come back again. But I do think people are like, you know, looking past into other areas. I think what's taken the meme bucket, obviously the AI stuff took the meme bucket in like Q4 of last year. Now that's been pretty wrecked too. And right now it's hard to see what people want to bid, right? Like, because everything's down. Like, I'm bullish TIA, but It's, it's, you know, it's like I'm— you're trying to look for legitimate tech now. I feel like that maybe has gone hammered a lot, uh, over the past year or so. And for me, I feel like TF fits that bucket. Um, and it's like you're trying to look, you know, you look through the top 100 assets and say, what do people actually want to buy out of these top 100, right? Uh, I think it's— I don't know, there's not a lot.

Maybe actually going— I don't know, you guys want to ask? I want to actually go backwards to some of the, to the macro stuff just to see how long you guys think this regime will, will last, right? Because if you take Trump at face value, Trump and his, his cabinet, um, they're talking about like the, the 10-year specifically in the short term being the main thing they're, they're focused on, right? And with— and I mean, there was a great post by Dalio, I don't know if you guys read it, I linked it on Twitter, about what you need to do to get the deficit down to this like 3% of GDP target, which is basically like a $900 billion a year reduction. And I think the most interesting thing for, for that, or from that for me, was just how much more effective interest rate reductions are than like literally anything else. You know, like, um, there's, there's some numbers on it. I don't think we need to go through them now. I put them in a, in a tweet a while ago, but it's like way more effective than both tax spending increase and then a reduction in, in, uh, sorry, then a spending decrease or an increase in tax revenue. And this doesn't even account for the second-order effects, right, where these things are, are deflationary, whereas, um, a tax, whereas an interest rate reduction is, is inflationary. But if he does have to get the 10-year down and do these tariffs and raise tax revenue, reduce spending, like, it's going to take a while. And it's hard to see assets do well in that environment. At least that's the argument we're seeing a lot from, from macro people, right? There's uncertainty, you should go to cash. I mean, Stephen Cohen was bearish for the first time in, in, in a while. There's been a bunch of people saying this. What are you guys thinking? And how do you think— how long do you think it lasts and how are you positioning for it, I guess?

Yeah, I've been talking to Cedric Yanowitz a bit about this last week in Denver, but I think that it's going to be like kind of a short-term pain for long-term gain type sort of deal. So with the interest rates trying to get them down, I think there's a massive refinancing also. Like, yeah, so on $30 billion of debt, at 5% interest rates, that's like $1.5 trillion, you know, which is like 7% of GDP or something. Obviously not all the debt is at that level and Fed funds rate has come down to 4.5%, but it is like a massive line item on the deficit. So getting that down definitely helps. I think like there's a lot of debt coming up for refinancing. 'Cause like if you think about 2020, that was like 0% interest rates. And then like, you know, this is the 5-year term where a lot of that debt's coming up for refinancing. So trying to get the 10-year down, you know, both to refinance like the US themselves and then also just like the private sector refinancing, you know, going from like refinancing at like 1% to like 5%, you know, is a massive jump. I think that's why, you know, quite a few people are bearish. And then kind of just like the divorce with China and the rest of the world, you know, throwing up these tariffs. Trump had an executive order where he's like banning Chinese private investment into certain like critical industries in the US. Basically taking like private, like Chinese private capital, like leave the US. So some people have talked about fears around, you know, China's basically been recycling their massive surplus into US equities the past 15 years. So if that flow were to start to reverse, that could be bad. So it definitely feels like there's a lot of risks. I think that Trump's probably going for kind of like short-term pain for long-term gain. I think that one of the craziest things is you know, the US reliance on China on like defense tech and just like, like manufacturing, I guess more so defense manufacturing. We see this like Russia-Ukraine thing as maybe like a trial run for a China-Taiwan type, type event. And basically like with the US kind of pulling out of Ukraine, I feel like China could definitely come in and take Taiwan. And I've listened to like Paul Merlucky, the CEO of Andrel, talk. He's probably talking his own book book a bit, but he's saying like, you know, China can make as many missiles in a week as the US can make in a year. They have 350x like the, um, ship-making, uh, capacity. You know, uh, Mark Andreessen's talked a lot about, you know, how all the US drones like for the military are bought from China. So I think like a lot of people like in this cabinet kind of understand that the US is like beholden to China on a lot of these like real things. And maybe things got a little bit more real during COVID or Russia-Ukraine. So to reshore some critical manufacturing is going to take a big shift in how the world has been functioning in the last 20 years. So yeah, that's probably short-term bearish for stocks. And like Bessin has even said, Wall Street's had a really great 20 years. We need to put Main Street ahead and US manufacturing ahead. So I think I'm definitely pretty cautious over the next let's say like 3 to 6 months depending how things play out. Obviously, like all roads lead to printing eventually. And maybe this is like, okay, let's frontload all the pain and bad news, make all the hard decisions, try and set up the US for like a longer term, like in a better position. And then like, you know, you turn on the printer, you do some massive infrastructure bill where instead of sending like $350 billion, $250 billion to Ukraine to like you know, have weapons blow up, you like invest that in like a bunch of factories in the US, right? So I think that it's probably short-term pain for a longer term.

The government's not going to invest in factories though, right?

Yeah, well, no, they could, they could do massive infrastructure bills. Like, what's the difference between sending, you know, all this money to a foreign country for a war versus actually spending it on like factories or like, you know, something within the US or like giving incentives. Um, so that's kind of how—

maybe sending like US weapons though, right? The money is invested in like US weapons, like US defense company weapons, and sent to the, to Ukraine.

But, but yeah, yeah, that's still like money that's being government-based for those, and those blow up and are nothing for the economy versus you build a factory, it's actually productive. It's not a productive use of capital if it's just going to go into missiles that are blowing up, right? So I think so, I could see something like that happening. And so I'm kind of in the camp where it's like short, short-term pain, maybe like 3 to 6 months, maybe longer. And then eventually something will get bad enough, or they'll have their ducks in a row where they can do this, like, you know, massive stimulus into maybe midterms, or the end of Trump's term or something.

Yeah, what do you guys think? Maybe Jan on the macro side, or how you— how long you think it lasts? How are you preparing, positioning?

Yeah, I mean, I'm in the same camp. I think it's short-term pain. I think it's probably just consensus at this point. Um, the— yeah, the tricky thing is, is kind of like how long it lasts, and then, you know, how people want to play it. I think what you end up getting is a bunch of chop here and there, right? Headlines, people trading a lot of buy the rumor, sell the news type setups, um, a lot of kind of, uh, traders coming in when, when one side gets blown out, right? If there's just like, you know, poor positioning and then the market moves against it and you have this kind of blowout move, I think you'll just see trades around that, but Yeah, I guess that, you know, what you end up trying to do is find good alts and get good entries in them. Crypto tends to front run a lot of things. And I think alts tend to front run BTC on a lot of this stuff. So, you know, we've seen some degree of bottoming on some of these alts where, you know, Bitcoin takes a leg lower and they don't really move. The tricky thing is, you know, whether you'll see a bid into them and it gets harder and harder as less money comes in and people tighten up their purse strings. I think it's gone into a just, you know, extract profits mindset versus, you know, long-term conviction hold mindset, which is very reflexive, right? If everyone started, as more and more people start to do it, then that's really the only way to to play it, and that makes getting in and out of this stuff very toxic. You end up, you know, on a move higher, you think we're breaking out, and then you buy, and then you end up getting chopped up. So I think it's like a— it's a tough market to trade if you're not good at it. And it's, you know, not everyone's good at every market, and I think it's important to understand where your strengths are and make sure you're preserving chips if this isn't an environment for you. And I think it's not the environment for most. Um, if this isn't for you, then you're probably better off waiting for very clear entries versus, uh, getting impatient and trying to catch a multi-day move kind of thing. Because unless you're ready to trade out of it, chances are it's, it's going to reverse. And then it just— there's like the mental component too. I think if this, you know, takes weeks or months it just drains and demoralizes people. So, um, yeah, all that being said, we are, you know, like, sentiment can reverse very quickly. And we saw it like after $78, right? We moved to $85, and then a reserve announcement happened and we pumped $10K in like no time. And so, um, I do think that there's still a lot of dry powder that's looking for a reason to buy, particularly on the Bitcoin side. So I do think the Reserve is a big one, right? So if you look, Reserve, the initial deadline was 180 days. So that puts it into like August. And then the Sovereign Wealth Fund, which we haven't heard much about, that deadline was early May. I do imagine there's going to be, you know, some rumors around can happen with that and whether it can be a Trojan horse for, for, uh, PCC ownership. It is a tricky narrative though, right? If you're really emphasizing cost cutting, then how do you kind of reinvest some of the, the cost-cutting capital into speculative assets that enrich a certain portion of the population? Um, maybe there's a world where you're swapping gold for it, right? That becomes, I think, a much more palatable, uh, way to deploy that money into Bitcoin. Um, and then, yeah, the— I think there, there are going to be quality alts there that end up gradually being more and more, uh, where the supply gets gradually more and more cornered into higher conviction, uh, owners. And so that, like, a bottoming process where BTC dips and certain alts don't really dip is indicative of that, where you kind of see some true seller exhaustion. I think seller exhaustion only happens in these like just prolonged downward markets because you have enough data points to, to show that, all right, maybe we're actually seeing a bottom here and the marginal seller is gone. So I think like, yeah, finding plays you like and looking for those opportunities is probably the, the best bet you can do right now to, to really capitalize on explosive moves higher.

And I think if you've been in crypto for any length of time, you know, it's really hard to catch these bottoms. And like, once— what generally the crypto like reacts so much quicker, right? It bottoms first, and then the generally crypto bottoms, and then macro gets worse, and then all the macro prognosticators come out, you know, like more pain ahead type people. And generally at that point it's like pretty close to, to a bottom, and then it, it, it pumps off that and like leaves a lot of people behind. You know, happened to me many times over the years, especially initially. You know, it's very easy to rationalize selling a bottom in crypto, which is why I think so many people do it and why the— why it pumps so quickly off them. Um, on the macro stuff, it's interesting. I don't know, I know people don't come to us for this, uh, but it's, it's interesting, like, from the article, like, just how much we need to cut. I just wanted to, like, kind of go over it quickly. So from the Dolly article, he suggests like you need to cut basically 4% of spending, which is about $250 billion, and increase tax by like tax receipts by about 4%, which, which is about $180 billion. Spending like 70% of government spending is the stuff that you can touch and that they promised not to touch, right? Social Security, Medicare, et cetera. Which, which means that the 4% actually becomes more like 13%, right? That you need to cut off the discretionary stuff like defense and discretionary, which is quite a lot. And it's going to be painful. And then raising tax revenue, that's the other one where tariffs have been projected to bring in about $180 billion. But if Trump does his, his tax cuts, that's going to cost like $400 billion or more in, in in, in revenue. So there's still like a $200 billion hole basically, um, even with, even with the tariffs, which just means either you need to cut even more out of, out of spending, right? Um, or you need to lower interest rates more, which, which I think you can only do by really cutting spending if you're the government, at least like fiscally. Um, and then I'm curious, like with Doge, how many of these people can get re-employed productively? Like, you know, the people who are working at USAID, like the, all the Washington, um, complex, like all the nonprofit people, like they, they kind of relied on a system that doesn't really exist anymore. So I, I'm wondering how much you just have, like, I don't know, I do think AI is gonna like structurally increase unemployment. Um, and I wonder if like these 400,000 people, whatever Elon wants to let go, if they, if they ever like find another job.

And if—

and I think all this leads to basically like my main thing with this is it all leads to rate cuts, you know. The question is like how long it takes, but the endgame is always just like rate cuts and money printing. And I don't think there's really another way out. Like none of that is true. The original Bitcoin and crypto thesis hasn't really changed.

I do think like, you know, What he's doing is really good for America. Onshoring production.

Yeah.

Reciprocal tariffs. Like this, you know, there are costs with deglobalizing, but the resiliency is a monster benefit. And it also just brings back a lot of jobs that left and like left parts of the country that have been hurt the most. Right. And so having these tariffs and these foreign country or foreign companies now building, uh, onshoring production is, is, I think, a really strong catalyst. And we've seen how quickly those things can get built up, right? Like, Elon spun up these factories, and having him to some degree involved, um, I think will be really bullish. And, and so, like, yeah, there is pain, but I don't know if it'll be as long as possible because, like, once they're— you're starting to see some glimmers of it, markets will begin to price that in, right? Right now it's just, it's like, it's especially gloomy because you just have no concept of time on this pain. But I think once there's like some degree of certainty, right, markets hate uncertainty, and this is like peak uncertainty on so many levels.

Yeah, but like on a relative basis, it's definitely going to be structurally more expensive to onshore stuff, right? Like, But I think that that's the trade-off. It's like the resiliency versus, you know, when everything's fine in the world, it's like, okay, yeah, like let's max out, um, you know, how cheap to make things and profit margins and all these things. But then, you know, Russia-Ukraine happens, like something would happen with China and Taiwan, like anything like that where, or like COVID where you're like, all of a sudden it actually matters where things are made and like manufacturing, you know, something like things get real. Then that's where like that cost is. you know, well worth it. But in kind of like the peaceful times, it's like, not really, it doesn't seem worth it at all. And that's what's going to like kind of bring down stock markets and stuff, because it's just, there's no way it's good for, for numbers in, in the short term. But, you know, if shit were to hit the fan, it would be very, very bullish America, which I think is, you know, probably the right thing overall. But it's just going to be hard to see, I guess, like how long it takes and for the market to adjust that, because it is like a massive regime change. Of like, you know, since 1971, the whole, you know, reserve currency status of the dollar has been we'll send you dollars, you send us stuff, and that's just like hollowed out the whole country. So it's a reversal of that trend that's been in place for like over 50 years is pretty big. So I don't know how long it's going to take. But yeah, I agree with Jose. All roads lead to printing eventually.

I mean, the bear case is like the last time there were tariff wars like this, it led to the Great Depression. And so that was a different time when you didn't have like the US dollar was in the reserve currency. So if it got to that again, then you just start, I guess, turning on the printer and like reversing.

But that's in 2016. No, like Trump.

No, no, no. I'm saying like to this level and the tariffs against like China and stuff, right? It's, it's different. These are like blankets on allies and everything. So yeah, I don't know. It's like, I'm not the one to navigate this really. Like I, I'll keep looking for like things I like.

Are you selling any crypto or are you just holding?

What I have, what I have. I don't think I'm changing like my stable versus non-stable, and I'm not selling like other assets to buy more crypto, you know what I mean? Um, I'm kind of just going with the flow at this point because I really have no idea Um, like I'm still, I think as I said at the beginning, like all the macro crypto stuff has been good, right? And I do think AI will still be a driver for crypto as well over the next few years. And so there's like these two competing forces and the, the one, the, the macro stuff, the tariff stuff, all that stuff, I have literally zero edge in. And so it's, it's like. I, there's nothing I can really do with that.

Uh, yeah, yeah.

On the good announcement front for, you know, these cases, so I think there are certain things that move price and, and certain things that don't necessarily move pricing, or rather move price immediately, and certain things that don't. So I think those cases, you know, the, the, the more prominent effect is the builder appetite, which I've kind of heard anecdotally from various people, both in terms of actually building and just existing builders that want to take more risk. Like, seeing cases dropped against people who, you know, might necessarily— shouldn't— might not necessarily, uh, need to be dropped or, or shouldn't be dropped, um, I think really opens the door for people who are thinking, I'm going to be doing something much less risky but was previously deemed risky because of the, the regulation enforcement, but now it's You know, if that— if the case against XYZ was dropped, then what I'm doing should be totally fine. And so, but again, that operates on a lag. So, you know, you're not going to see the effects of that for a bit.

Agreed.

All right.

Let's move on to crypto stuff. You guys all went to ETH Denver. I didn't go. I was in Mexico chilling. What were the vibes like at ETH Denver? Like, give me the update.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

So I've seen a lot of people talk about how depressing it was and everything. I have a different take. I think ECC was depressing when I was there in the summer. It was basically all the same talks from a year before. Everybody was talking about like Solving and like Intents and L2s and it was the exact same talks, exact same people from a year before. There was nobody at the main conference. And it was in, I guess, a depressing city. So, I mean, overall ECC I felt was really bad vibes. I think with ETH Denver, it wasn't, I think maybe the reason why I don't think ETH Denver was as bad is because I'm not an ETH maxi. Right. And like reflecting on it, yeah, there weren't, I didn't go to any, you know, Ethereum-specific events or anything. A lot of these I was going to were AI events. Um, there was like a Searcher event, which is definitely more Ethereum-focused, but it still had like Anisha and other teams and everything. And so I think for especially the AI stuff, there were a lot of people that were pretty enthusiastic, um, about that. And that kind of brought like a new form of energy. I think, you know, people all understand that the perpetual infra thing is not going— as like, is basically over. Uh, but I don't think that's depressing. I think that's like a good thing, right, to kind of shift the market dynamics. So I don't know, I don't know if people have other takes. I didn't think it was— I didn't think it was as, uh, you know, depressing as people are saying on Twitter. It wasn't as electric as Breakpoint, but like Breakpoint was also basically the top of Solana this cycle.

Um, it's just like, why does ETH put Max Resnick— like, it's, it's like weird cuck behavior, right? You just, you just want to watch your, your chain get abused. Like, what is— you know what I mean? Like, Solana on Breakpoint, you would never see, you know, I don't know who the biggest Solana critic is at this point, but they would never like put him on a stage. Gabe Shapiro, exactly, talking about Solana. Like, yeah, I don't know what this cuck Ethereum thing is, but it's weird. Yeah. Jan, Duncan, any other takes on ETHDenver?

No, I mean, it was definitely very, at least the events I went to, very AI-centric. So I guess I avoided the the most depressing elements of it. Um, yeah, it seems like with ETH it's like bullish the ecosystem, bearish the asset kind of thing. Or, um, and so that, that makes the environment like you can cope your way into being compelled about stuff, but, but it's hard when the number kind of continues to go down. Consistently.

The operation was a success, but the patient died, right? That's the— that's basically how I view Ethereum these days. So yeah, maybe people are disappointed because of that. I don't know.

I don't know if I have—

yeah, I don't have much more to say on ETH Denver. I mean, the focus is definitely AI, right? So as much as all this AI stuff sold off a lot, it got pretty wrecked. I'm sure that sector is going to come back relatively strong at some point, you know.

Yeah, maybe let's go into that, like what we're, what we're all bidding in this, like what we're all bullish on in this, in this market. I wrote a post on, on Twitter. I ended up having, having a fair bit of cash after this decline just because of the USD farming that I was, that I've been talking about for a while. And I've been bidding more aggressively than in quite a while recently. And I kind of focused it around what we discussed on the Hive Mind a few episodes ago, where we said there's like a light moaning in the background. It's gone now.

It's drilling upstairs.

All right. Okay.

My roof.

Yeah.

A light moaning.

Yeah. Just a little light moaning going on in the background. Focused it around like, I think there's 3 apps, like crypto things with PMF: token issuance, stablecoins, and exchange. And kind of want to own the leaders in each of those. And to me, obviously, I don't think I'm going to go over the Enya thesis again. I think they're the leaders in stablecoins. They just had the unlock today, which is what a lot of people have been waiting for. I actually think it's going to end up being a bullish unlock, but it's a very big one. So we'll have to wait and see, um, on that, um, for the reasons kind of— yeah, I just think what are the conditions for, for bullish unlock? You need it to be telegraphed, like big price drop leading up to it, ideally a lot of secondary volume, an asset that people actually want obviously is a— it's kind of a must, um, and then, and like negative funding and price drop leading up to it. Kind of saw it— there's only a few of those in crypto, but you kind of saw it with like Aptos and I think SUI, Ondo recently was, was one of those. Yeah, I think this could have the—

so we didn't have this, we didn't have a bullish unlock though. So we got wrecked on its unlock, did it? Yeah, it was last, it was last June. And I know because I was holding it and I didn't think it would be too bad and then it got destroyed. But then all the, like, it pumped a ton after, right? Uh, look through the summer and everything.

Okay, interesting.

The actual unlock was very bad. You can go look at the dates wrong.

Okay. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it goes anyway. But I'm looking to— I have about 50% of my exposure that I'm looking to acquire post-unlock just because I assume there will be some sellers just given the size of it. And then, yeah, I think Sol is still the leading candidate to be the winning generalized execution layer. And that's like a big TAM, even down I think 95% nearly on, on rev. It's still leading Ethereum on fees most days, and it's like definitely the leading L1 on this and definitely on app revenue and stuff like this. So I think it's a good bet. I'm looking at others too, starting to look at doing some research on others, Sonic and a few others. I'm definitely interested in SUI too. Curious if you're still holding that actually. I just don't see that many apps there.

Yeah. I, yeah, yeah. I still hold it not as much as I did. I still like the tech, but yeah, there's still not a ton of apps there. I think like for me, there's nothing super obvious right now. It's like, you know, I think Solana restaking eco is kind of interesting. I think like Berra is kind of interesting just because it has like a ton of incentives going on right now. For like actually bidding a specific asset, the only thing I've kind of changed my mind on is TIAA, just because I do think that like the environment has changed a lot. Like the market's changed a lot. I think there's going to be a pretty big opportunity for them over the next couple of years. Pretty much Base right now is taking like half of ETH blobs. I think they'll continue to take most of them. Uh, Ethereum is doing like some upgrades, uh, Pectora testnet today, which ended up— it went through a bit of a hiccup, uh, for like 5 hours. But I think that was like, uh, specific to that testnet. So I don't know if that's going to delay the update on mainnet or not. Um, but regardless, like, I think that Over the next couple years, I would expect Ethereum— I mean, I would expect Celestia to start taking more and more of like the DA market. And I just think it's been like hammered so much. I still have a lot of questions on like the long-term viability of like DA only as a revenue driver. Like you need to, you kind of need to dream a lot. You need to have some pretty big expectations for the amount of transactions you're doing. But I don't know, there's a lot of things. It's like looking specifically at revenue for TIA is kind of mid-curve because they can like 100x their cost today and nobody would notice. It's like, you know, it goes from like 0.00002 to like 0.0002 or something per transaction. So it like doesn't matter. And they're starting to talk about that more. I saw Mustafa had like a forum post on that. I think some of the supply side stuff they're doing Uh, which I would never buy something just because like of changes in the supply side alone. Uh, but I think combined with like me expecting Celestia to see a lot more adoption over the next couple years is also good. And I mean, listen, it's like a hundredth of the valuation of ETH, right? I think you, like me personally, I try and look for relatively, and like the tech is good too. Like the Celestia team is really strong. And I believe in them as a team, right? And so I agree. And so it's like, when I look for things, I always buy stuff with, you know, 1, 2 year kind of timeline. Like when I was buying SOL in '22, '23, I wasn't expecting it to like pump right away, right? I was just starting to get very interested in it because I thought I had a good chance of like coming back. And I kind of feel like TIA is in that boat now. I think for infra, like abundance and just a lot of throughput, is kind of like the only long-term solution you can really do. And like Celestia and Solana are just kind of like different ends on that spectrum, but kind of doing the same thing with like beefy hardware. Right. And, you know, Celestia gets— like, they just need to win rollups basically over the next year because they get a lot of economies of scale when they start and a lot of good network effects when they start. Adding more. And so the left curve, it's like a, it's a pretty big left curve thesis for TIA for me. It's like, it's a hundredth evaluation of ETH. I think it's going to get, start to get a lot more rollups. I can see it doing like the majority of rollup data in 2 years. And if all those things come true, I don't think the revenue matters too much in transferring it from like a hundredth of the value of ETH to like maybe a tenth or something. Right. And like, that's a very, you know, that's a trade that I think is relatively attractive at these levels. So that's kind of like—

What are the network batteries?

It has to do with like bridging mostly. So like when you use the same DA layer with bridging, it's a lot safer obviously because you're not trusting all the data is on the same shared layer. Right. And then they're also working on stuff like, like the ZK rollups. Yeah, exactly.

Right.

There's also this paper that was released by the Bain guys, which was, you know, you can actually use a DA layer to verify computation. And so what this means is that you can basically just have like ZK rollups are just all like verified by Celestia, right? Instead of just posting their data there. So that could be like a potential kind of cool Unlock. Um, it's just like when I look at the, what I consider legit assets, right? It's like Bitcoin. Sure. Yeah. Bitcoin's great. Do I think Bitcoin, I'm not one of these guys who thinks Bitcoin's going to be like $500K in 2 years. I just don't. Okay. I think like maybe $150K, $200K in like a good market. ETH, I don't know. It's ETH is like, I think ETH is a fine asset. I don't, I'm not like a major ETH bull. SOL, it's like, do I think SOL is going to $1,000? No. Do I think it's going to $500? Maybe like, I don't know, maybe, but that's like what, a 3x from here? And then, you know, you look at all the other stuff and a lot of these L1s I'm not interested in, a lot of the DeFi tokens I'm not interested in. And so it's kind of like, what's a relative, what's like a legit, a legit like product, right? That is at a good valuation. And that's kind of what I see Tia and like, listen, it's I'm still very skeptical, as I said, of like the long-term purely being a DA layer, if that can be kind of like sustainable. But I think, you know, that matters more when TIA is trading at $20 versus when it's trading here post-unlock. And as like, it looks like some underlying fundamentals are getting better. So that's kind of how I view TIA.

I mean, I was, uh, I did the— invested in TN, didn't sell any of that. And I'm— one of the big things for me betting on projects in crypto, especially now when I'm trying to consolidate into things that I think are long-term winners, is just the team. And I do think the Celestia team is just like one of the best out there and has been since we first invested back in '21 or whatever. Um, feel similarly about the— about, um, Athena and Solana, like just teams we've spoken to for years, know really well, and have a lot of faith in. Uh, the last one I'm— I've started to bid finally is Hyperliquid. Um, I'm curious. Yeah, like, yeah, I mean, obviously exchange is the most profitable business model in crypto, but I actually think they have a decent shot at doing all three, like exchange, L1, and stablecoin, which is basically the three biggest business models in crypto, um, all in, in one platform. And it's, yeah, it's sort of like if if Solana had like Radium integrated right into the, into the L1. One way of, I think, thinking about it, or, but something a lot better than Radium, obviously, like an order book based, uh, plus, plus derivatives.

A lot worse than Solana, but also a lot worse than Solana.

Yeah, but I mean, yeah, it remains to be seen how they're, how good their L1 is. The main, my main reticence with aping this in size is just that I don't know the team. I've never spoken to them. And they take a lot of shortcuts, like throughout everything, you know, from the beginning with the, with going closed source, with the number of validators, with the Bitcoin bridge. So I think there's just a lot of like risk that's hard to quantify. But I do think at the valuation, which I consider it's like around $11 billion or whatever right now, because 30% is in treasury. It looks pretty decent.

Um, yeah, like they're making, like, even this past week, it's obviously been volatile, but they've been making like $2 million a day straight to the burn. So it's like $700 million a year on Jose's adjusted market cap of $11 billion, um, is still like pretty attractive for, you know, one of the best businesses in crypto growing really fast. You have the call option of the L1. Assets are going up consistently. Yeah, I can't really speak to the security stuff, but they've had no issues so far and they're holding a lot of money. So I think there may be a bit of Lindy in that, but that's not my area. But definitely on a multiple and growth perspective and just like core business model, it seems to be really attractive. Hype is still like, yeah, it continues to be my biggest position. I think BTC hype, SOL, ENA, you know, maybe I'll look at TS Setters has been pretty good on those infra plays. He was bullish SOL early and SUU. So yeah, maybe we'll take a look at that. But I think like those 4 or 5 names seem to be pretty like you can have like pretty good certainty that they'll be around in a few years. I think.

Yeah, you just look for stuff that should continue scaling and isn't aren't hyper-reliant. So it's like fundamental businesses that aren't hyper-reliant on, on unsustainable speculation. Um, and I think those are because they're like, they make money on just broader demand for the space. Um, so yeah, those kinds of, kind of the one that I've been bidding. Uh, and then I have some TIA, but like, the crypto is a graveyard of relative value comps. I think that stuff is, is, uh, not super foolproof, particularly because that you're assuming that the other leg is actually properly valued, right? Rather than it being over and maybe it compresses the other way. But, or, or like what's baked into the premium, right? Like Ethereum isn't fundamentally based on fees. It's, it's like the moneyness and the, the status is like the first prominent smart contract layer. So yeah, I mean, I bought some TIA just because it looks like it's actually bottoming out around this $3 level and you've churned through a lot of unlocks and you have catalysts in an environment where you don't really have too many. So yeah, no, the Cetera shill worked on me. And other than that, kind of being patient. I don't, I don't know that there are any other obvious home runs. Like, you can do these virtuals.

The AI coins. Oh yeah, sorry, go ahead, maybe finish with you.

Yeah, Maker has the interesting thing of just like, it's got that million-dollar buyback. I forgot, I need to look, I forget the specifics of it, but there's a world where something like that makes sense. Um, it's a game of hot potato though, so like that, you just need to be kind of aware of the trade you're going into. Where it has a finite length and you obviously want to be getting out with buffer room because everyone else is thinking about it similarly.

And then, yeah, maybe like Liquidity and Aave, Ekubo, or, you know, Jordan constantly throws it on our—

Yeah, I mean, if like your position size goal is $100, then yeah. Like some of those make sense. But if you're trying to put anything with a comma in it, then like, good luck. Yeah.

I mean, Liquidity, you can—

Liquidity.

Yeah. That was mostly a dig at Aave. Yeah.

Liquidity is pretty lit. Yeah. As is Aave. With Aave, obviously they've absolutely crushed it. It's just, I feel like cash flow turning on for them could actually just like not be super bullish because people realize how little they make.

It's just a net interest margin game and it did like, it's not super exciting, especially if the demand to borrow isn't high, right? Then like the spread can't be high.

Yeah, yeah, they do have like the stablecoin and stuff and like other areas that they could, they could push into, but, uh, And Liquidity, how do you feel about that? It's like, it's trading like $80 mil fully diluted. I honestly haven't done too big a dive on it. I just want to go read it, read our report on it.

Yeah, I don't have a good opinion on it.

Duncan or Cedars, have you guys looked at any of this?

No. I think one thing though is that like in crypto more than other industries, uh, like yeah, Aave is a fantastic product, fantastic team. They're like the pinnacle of ETH DeFi, but that's not a reason why the token should go up at like this point with the price it's at. Right. And, you know, I saw someone today that was tweeting about like Lido. Why is that not, you know, pumping more? Because it's like a legit project and like, I get it, but it's just those— there's— it's hard. Like DeFi, there's no reason to value a DeFi token on anything other than pure fundamentals. Right? Um, and I just think a lot of these are probably priced pretty appropriately.

Yeah, and the reason we're giggling is because, um, we're going to start making a list of all the things Satoris pronounces uniquely, and Lido being a popular—

what else? What else?

Uh, well, just like you— cabal. How did you say it?

Cabal.

No, no, no. That's not how you said it.

Cabal?

Cabal.

Maybe I say it both ways. Yeah, I definitely say— No, I say ETH.

No, there's other stuff for sure. It's just like not coming to me.

Well, yeah, I say Binance. I know that that, that English is a good one.

It's just like old money finance guy.

Yeah.

Finance. I don't know. And yeah, so what about your iBags then, Jan? Are you adding? Are you—

yeah, uh, I mean, I'm basically just kind of holding what I have. I, I'd like to wait for a more prominent reason to buy right now other than them being down.

That's how I kind of felt with them. Uh, like, I did put in some money the other day. I ended up keeping most in stables because the market ended up like ripping during that time. And I was like, am I gonna buy more? And it's like, I don't know. The thing is, if they rip, they have a lot of upside. And it's just, I don't know, those things are— I get fooled on those like every day pretty much. It looks like they're gonna start breaking out again, and then it's right back. Uh, it's like a guillotine market, you know, not a chop market.

So I do think though, like, once BTC starts catching a bid, whenever it's— I'm not in this mindset that the cycle is done, right? And cycle is just determined by whether BTC is topped. Like, once that starts going, people will buy all sorts of random shit for absolutely no reason. So I think like as quickly as people are saying it's over, they'll be saying we're completely back and just start FOMOing into random stuff.

So I mean, at some point, yeah, like I agree, I'm positioned that way, but I do think at some point that the alts have to prove themselves and they won't just like forever be beta to BTC, right? Like because BTC has proven itself, um, at this point, and then it's like, okay, I wanna, I wanna get rich. Like I think AI being such a strong narrative could end up also stealing some of this mindshare from, from crypto where it's like, you know, alts were kind of the way that people thought to get rich and speculate in '21 and even, even 2017 and stuff like this.

But now maybe it's like Palantir or AI stocks, you know, and yes and no, like, yeah, it's just like it's hard to get rich on AI stuff if you're retail. Yeah. Or it's hard, like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's also hard to get rich in crypto now, um, but I think it's easier for people to imagine a path where they can get rich in crypto versus like nailing Nvidia early on kind of thing.

Yeah, it's true. Just public markets just don't have enough juice left in them.

Yeah, which is like why pullbacks are good. Right? Because it actually does kind of— you need a pullback to get a meaningful leg higher because then the risk-return is really solid and people start piling in. That's not drilling, that's just the guy upstairs.

No, that's just me drilling a door for my prisoner upstairs.

I think the, uh, just talking about Hyperliquid, I think the bear case— I'm like neutral on Hyperliquid, okay? But it probably seems like I'm a big Hyperliquid liquid hater. Um, and like disclosure, I'm a Monad angel, but I think that like with both Monad and MegaETH coming to market soon, um, and you know, I think a lot of the hyper liquid, uh, the price of the token is because it's becoming, you know, an L1, it's doing the HyperEVM. I don't think so.

I don't think it's—

Yes, it absolutely has, man.

Right now the price is on like circulating market caps like $5.5 billion and it's burning $700 million a year.

I'm like, okay, well, okay, okay, we'll see. We'll see.

I think it's taking market share from Binance. Like it's 8% of Binance market share, 20% of Bybit, 20% of OKX. Like it's actually like it's getting up there into the big leagues.

Yeah. I mean, so MegaETH and Monet aren't going to be competing against that, like perps product. And so if they continue to like dominating that, then it'll probably be fine.

But yeah, I think like what big thing for, for them obviously, and I think the big product that's not really available now is kind of like a, a coin margin per product that is actually accessible by everyone, right? Like that's what they're building towards. CEXs have that, no DEXs really have that. So there's no way to kind of have like easy access coin margin, which I think is really what's one of the biggest unlocks right now because everyone is deep in alts and wants to bid majors and can't. And so if you could actually use coin margin to bid majors like that, I think is a pretty big unlock. So I mean, they're building towards that, right? Building spot BTC liquidity, which allows for BTC to be used as collateral and then kind of go further out. On the spectrum.

But, um, yeah, I think the other thing, the other— other than the shortcuts, the other thing is like, how big is this no-KYC trading market? Like, how much bigger is it than— what are you guys laughing at?

Is it—

it's big.

Well, big market.

I think one of the bear cases is that like, uh, you won't have a lot of professional firms using it, especially because like North Korea has used it, right?

And so I think there's at least a professional firms on it, but maybe not like sitting at all the time. Why?

Why?

I guess maybe like and stuff, but like why would you use it as your main trading venue versus like a Binance, as our friend would say, or, uh, You know, or Bybit or whatever. Like, it just seems like, you know what I mean?

Why would you use it? Well, it's where all the, like, a ton of retail flow is there.

Yeah, it's true. Uh, uh, it's like, since they have so much retail flow, that doesn't make it very enticing to professional traders, right? Um, that's kind of how you get professional traders to use anything, right? Use a venue. Uh, anyway, should we wrap it?

We've been like, oh yeah, let's wrap it.

Let's do it. All right, guys, it's been another episode.

Some good announcements on Friday.

Yeah, maybe we should do a— we suggested doing a live show during the Friday conference.

Well, it's going to be late. Maybe we'll do another episode next week. We'll see.

Yeah.

All right.

Thanks for tuning in, guys. See you maybe next week or in 2 weeks for another episode of the Hive Mind. Bye.

See ya.

Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye.