How the US is Bringing Crypto Back | Round Up

There are a lot of people who are like, ah, too little, too late, whatever. No, not in the slightest. And Hayden had the best take. He said that the too little, too late, this is pandering crowd is missing the point. Dem establishment has finally realized that being anti-crypto by letting Warren run financial policy will lose them elections. This is a big deal. Nothing politicians care about more than winning elections. Welcome to the new era. Yeah, I couldn't have said it better myself. This episode is brought to you by Sei. Sei's V2 upgrade introduces the first high-performance parallelized EVM already live on public devnet. Mainnet comes later in Q2. You can follow along with the Sei journey on X @SeiNetwork. Sei is spelled S-E-I. Go follow Sei on X. Sei Network. Scary stat for you. The odds of falling victim to online crimes are 1 in 4. Aura provides digital security protection to keep your personal information, passwords, online activity, and technology safe from online threats. For Empire listeners, Aura is offering 14 days free plus up to 55% off an Aura subscription when you visit Aura, Aura.com/blockworks. Terms and conditions apply, see site for details. You'll hear more about Aura later in the show. This episode is brought to you by Kinto, the safety-first layer 2 that features user-owned KYC and native account abstraction to solve the two biggest roadblocks to mainstream adoption: one, security, and two, user experience. Their founder Ramon sent me the onboarding flow. It's engen.kinto.xyz. I would highly recommend becoming a founding member of their launch program. You'll hear more about Kinto later in the show. Are you tired of high gas fees? I'm excited to let you know about SKALE, a zero gas fee modular blockchain that's become a perfect fit for gaming and AI apps because of their instant finality and lack of MEV. Explore the SKALE ecosystem today at scale.space/ecosystem and stay up to date with the gasless blockchain on X @skale_network. That's @skale_network. Big thanks to SKALE for sponsoring Empire. What's up, everyone? My— ooh, not looking great today. Not looking great today. Yeah, I don't—

yeah, I don't speak— yeah, I was making me wake up early. So, uh, me, you got a little flight to catch.

I would love to push this thing back. I know, right? I haven't taken my morning walk, haven't seen my sunshine today.

Oh yeah, well, here we are. There's a lot to cover. Before, before we hit the record button, Giannis said something that, uh, is going to be probably the center of this episode. He said that he felt that last week had been the most important in crypto from an institutional standpoint, and I tend to believe it. So why don't we just start there?

Yeah, let's start there. So, um, so you bailed on us last week. Oh, so we should start with the YouTube comments actually. But you know, after we came out and said that we're reading the YouTube comments, they were the kindest YouTube comments I've ever seen actually. So we'll take the love, but we do need like one or two jabs every week to make this a funny section. So just, just calling that out. Um, also, before we get— before we actually get into the episode, dude, you missed the, uh, Monaco— you missed the Grand Prix, huh?

Yes, it's very loud. If you remember, uh, last year we recorded, you could hear the cars in the background when they were practicing Thursday, Friday. Uh, so I, I decided to leave this year and, um, spend it elsewhere and was actually in Miami meeting with Feels like everyone's in Miami. I mean, I was in New York, as you recall, with you guys. We did the event. Then Miami, you have the Frictionless guys. You had Casey who's starting Topology. You have a bunch of people there. And so I had a really good set of meetings. Felt like Miami's changed a lot, become an important crypto center. So—

What are you doing when you go meet with people? Are you deciding if you should allocate capital? Or are you just learning? Or what are you doing?

I'm observing.

Observing. No, let's say like when I go to San Francisco or something, like I'll go meet with, I don't know, some of the like protocol, like some of the big like CeFi founders or protocol founders, and we're trying to work out something between them and Blockworks. Like it's— so I'm just curious, like what are you, what are you actually doing in this case?

I've already— I'm already an investor in these funds and just wanted to catch up. Um, I generally think it's highly inefficient to travel. Like, business travel is very inefficient in my mind. But in this particular case, it was, um, sometimes it's just good to spend time, um, and, you know, I feel like if you go to New York, if you go to Miami or San Francisco, the benefit of those cities, or even London, is there's just high concentration of people. You can cover in 3 days, you can just sees many, many people. So yeah, yeah. And I'm not gonna lie, I, I haven't really kind of left the hotel.

Yeah, yeah. Santi texts me or tells me on a call yesterday, the day before, he's like, Miami's awesome, it's great, love this city. I think I got to drop my biases about the city being a party city. Like, oh, what have you been doing? He's like, yeah, I haven't really left my hotel yet, but you know, it is good.

I have left though. Um, but I'm here with— I was here with family too, and, and, um, so anyways, yeah, it was good.

By the way, apologies, uh, for anyone listening if my audio is crap. I've been, uh, booted out of my office, uh, my home office, because apparently we are wallpapering today.

So wallpaper's good. I like, I like wallpaper. You know the wallpaper I have back home that it's like fake books and everyone's like, why don't you just get real books? I'm like I do. I'm not just going to show you my personal collection of stuff in the back necessarily, although I have considered shifting the orientation.

Your personal collection, do you have any— like, you, you don't have a— you're like Mein Kampf sitting back there? Like, you got a book you can't— you got a book you can't share or something?

No, no, I mean, pictures and stuff. Yeah, yeah, I could do it. Yeah, speaking of, I bought another Harry Potter stuff.

You got it, let's go!

Not that one, that, that is going up for bid in 3 weeks. I considered, I considered preempting it, but, uh, uh, you know, auction people being auction people.

Yeah, what'd you get?

I had one of these, well, similar to that front cover illustration. The artist, I think it's Taylor, it's the only, the only sec— like the only second illustration that's out there that he gifted to a really good friend. And it's like a part of the initial print, uh, so it was like a teaser. It was the appetizer.

What'd you pay?

What a reasonably— I paid similar to a top-tier NFT collection in Solana.

It's a good way to describe it.

But like what I paid, what Mad Lads, um, probably what the base of the Mad Lads cost.

Sir, do you take Mad Lads for this?

That's what the Mad Lads for.

Do you take that original? By the way, we got a really episode that we recorded this week with Armani from Mad Lads and Backpack the Wallet and Backpack the Exchange, uh, and the protocol that he built that I forget, um, the name of it. Very impressed. So really good episode, that drops soon. Uh, we didn't talk about this because Quinn was on last week instead of you, but what did you think of the Punks? Um, so Punks came out, uh, last week or the week— I think it was last week— and announced that they had built these kind of like 3D They built this thing called Superpunk World, which is like a 500-piece collection. Um, and they're essentially these like what they call like hybrid 3D sculptures, um, that in their words blur the lines of race and gender and reflect upon virtual versus real world identities. It felt like a very 2021, 2022 type of thing to do. I'd say people really kind of blasted them for it. Probably a little bit of an overreaction just cuz people love to blast like the woke stuff these days, but What did you think about it as a big Punk holder?

What you just said.

Okay. Is it— what do you think? It was bad enough to reconsider your—

no, like, I mean, I would be lying if I didn't tell you I have reconsidered holding, uh, Punks in the way that I do. I said we'll always keep the one that I have, 9159. Some of the others, could I let them go? I'm not like— as I said, I don't— I've come on the pod saying that I don't necessarily like— collecting and investing is two different sports for me. Uh, when I went in and bought these or minted these Punks, I didn't necessarily think that they were like an investment. Um, but you know, I'm always open to reconsidering and Could there be more productive uses of capital? Maybe. Like, would I sell one or two Punks to buy this, uh, Harry Potter thing that's going up for auction? The estimate is $400,000 to $600,000. Yeah, I'll sell one or two Punks or whatever.

Yeah.

Um, like, on that basis, like, I know what I like more, and you know the answer to that.

Yeah.

Like, one is a one-on-one, and it just speaks to me in a way that maybe like, yeah, other punks like don't.

Yeah, I saw some different punk holders on Twitter. So Jonah, who hosts Sounds Next, one of the other pods, uh, he's a punk holder, said, this makes me want to delete Twitter, sell all my crypto, put on a suit, and become a junior corporate bond trader. Uh, Fubar said, all right, I might actually have to sell my punk if they're acting this ridiculous. Posted a picture to, uh, you remember Flat Stanley? The like cartoon Flat Stanley. I don't know if you read those child books, but like, you didn't read this? Here, hold on, let me show you this.

Let me see this. I probably did, but I just—

uh, this is a picture of the Flat Stanley, and then if you compare it to like what they look like—

I mean, it— can we go back down memory lane? Like, Meebits was not as— was actually favorably— like, it was well received by most in the community. Right, because you were— if you were a Punk holder, you received Meebits. They actually look more animated. And, um, I actually sold my Meebits.

Or did I?

I think—

I think I may have been like mint, I'm pretty sure. And then I don't know what happened to my Meebits. I forget what I did with that.

But like, no one ever talks about Meebits anymore in the same way that most people don't talk about Sequels or you know, there is a— you could argue there is a dilutive effect to, like— all right, let me ask you a question. You like Star Wars?

Okay.

What do you think about The Mandalorian?

I'm not a huge fan.

Yeah, maybe you like the first season, but like, no one's talking about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There are good memes like 'this is the way' and, you know, the small Yoda, like, because the Baby Yoda is really cute. But absent that, people think about Star Wars and you think about, you know, The Empire Strikes Back. Yeah, yeah, Return of the Jedi. Like, there is something very pristine about that. And look, in a similar analogy, Disney bought the, you know, bought it from, what is it, Lucas Entertainment. And you sort of knew that they were going to try to squeeze more dollars out of it because they needed to recoup the investment. Maybe that's sort of like the intention here. Like, it's— we've recorded these podcasts when Yuga acquired Punks, and I think they've done some good things, including most importantly the IP stuff, which they become more— they addressed it head-on. I think folks like G Money were really kind of pushing around, hey, what can I do with this? Like, I have a punk, a very well-known punk. I, I want to build my identity. Like, let's talk about IP. So I think Yuga has done good steps on that front. Launching more collections like this, I don't think is going to add— and let's put it this way, it has felt that most people didn't like him. Most people wouldn't buy them if it weren't remotely attached to like the Punk name, and maybe that, you know, has some sort of appeal. But on, on their own, like, you want to buy them, right? So, so like, the question to you is like, if you're Yuga and you're there, what do you do? If I'm in their position, I would just like try to create like something very unique that speaks to the current time of crypto.

Yeah, this is a—

versus this just feels like, uh Derivative of Meebits.

Oh, Yuga Labs, right? Like, people might— so Yuga started with Bored Ape, and they've been acquiring all these. They've essentially been trying to build an IP portfolio. So they've got Meebit, they acquired Meebits and CryptoPunks from Larva Labs in March of '22. They've got the metaverse game Othercide, they've got the art series Twelvefold, they've got, um, 10KTF, they've got— they just acquired, um, Moonbirds, I think it was. Um, yeah. The Proof Collective. The problem with Yuga in my mind has always been that they are focused on this kind of like the crowd that I think came into crypto at the pico top of the last cycle. It's this Web3 interested in the metaverse. I can't really put my finger on the specific crowd, but it's like, have you ever seen the parties of the videos of the Board Ape Yacht Club parties. There's like a bunch of dudes like dancing like this. Like, that's, that's the audience of Yuga Labs in my mind. Um, Miami Vice, or it's people who like work at, I don't know, Reebok and Adidas and Budweiser, and like nothing against them, but like they're into like the, the web, they're into Web3, they're not really into like crypto. And, um, historically talking to that crowd has been a losing game. Um, and trying to— and so I think that's what Yuga did here, is like they're appealing to that crowd. They're not appealing to the, to the crowd where like their real customers are. If you think about the like punks, like I've been to like David Hoffman's house in Brooklyn, like that dude's got a massive literally punk thing hung up on his wall. Like you've got like a punk as your PFT and you've got them for like your fam.

Like, uh, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, it's, uh, you know, people that don't protect Philips don't just try to collect, uh Hublot.

Yeah, exactly.

Don't try to mix them together. They, they won't have— you, you won't find necessarily a Patek Philippe collector having a Hublot.

Well, you can actually have the same parent company owner, I think, but yeah, Richemont, like, luxury conglomerates exist.

I get it, but they don't, they don't mix.

They don't mix audiences and markets.

Oil and vinegar, man.

Like, uh, yeah, yeah. So what Yuga did here is they said, okay, we know our Bored Ape audience and we're going to try to apply that to the— we're going to try to talk to the CryptoPunk audience like they're the Bored Ape audience, and they could be more different audiences.

So I think on this point around NFTs, we're not going to make this episode about NFTs, is look at them— it, it is relevant in the episode of Armani that we just recorded. It has felt to me like the innovation in the NFT space has sort of been like non-existent. There is so much that you can do with NFTs. And I understand prices are down and floors, you know, it's— the attention is not on NFTs yet, it's on meme coins, which, you know, is an NFT in and of itself, but more accessible, not capped with 10,000 or just a high floor price. But, you know, you could argue memes are not that very different than what people from an emotional standpoint want to feel when they're buying these things. Right? Now they're just buying memes on Pump and Fun, or just they're buying WIF or whatnot. Um, so the question is like, well, let's— if you're thinking about NFTs, I think the potential is there. Retail's here. Like, um, this just felt like, to your point, just not very innovative. And I was thinking the other day, the most interesting thing about NFTs I think will be earned NFTs, not purchased NFTs. And I'd like to see someone come up with something more novel than just a 10,000 collection out there, you know. Give me the possibility of proof of space and time and doing stuff and, you know, doing something in an interesting way. Because ultimately, that's what— when people talk about their experiences, it— sure, you could say, hey, look, I own this Punk or I own this item, but you associate it with what actually happened. It's like sort of that classic Patek Philippe, like you never own it, you just like take care of it for future generation. That's sort of their hallmark. Ultimately, like, what would you care more about, the, you know, Tensorion or MATLAB that you purchased? And maybe that has a very deep meaning because you bought it at the time where Solana was like coming out of a difficult, difficult spot, or the, the 20 NFTs that you collected because you went to a concert and you met an— you like music, you met like, I don't know, like a particular band that gave you an NFT in their first, first concert in the US. Like, what are you gonna, what are you gonna like talk about in your collection? What are you gonna display?

It's funny, so Mad Lads are, are actually that for me. Like, when I think Mad Lads, I think about a dinner I had with, uh, Tristan in Denver in the like absolute depths of the bear market. I think it was February '23. Like, you know, the prices started turning again in like, let's say, beginning of Q2 '23, if I remember correctly. At some— maybe July '23. Um, but like February 2023 was about as dark as you could get. And I was with— at a dinner with like Tristan, Stani, some other people, and we were talking about NFTs. And they were like, you know, peak O'Bear. And Tristan's like, we're launching an NFT collection. Everyone's like, what are you doing that for? And he's like, you know, he had this whole thesis for it, like building community and then launches a product on top of that. And so I actually associate MadLads with a moment in time. It's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's move on to the ETH. So your question at the very beginning.

So why do you think last week was the most for folks.

Yeah, I was reflecting on last week, and, um, it didn't really hit me until I was at this dinner a couple of nights ago, which I'll talk about. But my takeaway is last week was the single best week that the industry has ever had in, in the history of the industry. Um, there have been better weeks for maybe price, price action, or even though, you know, things did run like 20%, there's been better weeks for price action. There's been better weeks for, like, I would say, like, crypto nativity and several companies raised big rounds, or, you know, Coinbase going public was really exciting, things like that. But this was the single greatest week in terms of like general institutional government-level thinking around crypto and like narrative building around crypto changing. So if you think about last week, FIT, SAB, ETH ETF, Gruenberg getting the axe, CBDCs, Trump turning on crypto, which then turned Biden on crypto. Biden then waved the statement on FIT. Schumer has turned on the Dems and is now supporting crypto. There's a massive 180-degree change. Again, it was really exciting. Watching Trump talk about Bitcoin like that was nuts. Maybe I can even play the clip for people who missed it. He's talking about self-custody. And there's a whole backstory of that statement there, and I can share it if interesting. But I went to this dinner that was hosted by Portal Ventures, which just— yeah, shout out to Katrina and Evan and stuff there. Portal Ventures, less known name, but they're probably one of the best, like, first checks into companies these days. Like, they do a lot of pre-seed investing.

Is this Insight?

They— yeah, Evan's ex-Insight Venture Partners. They're a real— yeah, they're really good. They've been in a lot of the really good, like, pre-seed. They're like, you launch a product and 3 weeks later, like, you'll— maybe Portal can lead your pre-seed.

I've done a few investments with them.

They're great. So the whole conversation was like very— can't share who they were. They were like, kept laughing at me like, hey, media guys, this is off the record. But so I can't share like any of the names or anything like that. But There is one of the largest, like a massive fund from Hong Kong there, one of the biggest Silicon Valley venture firms. It was a very big trad fi dinner, I'd say, like some big lawyers and stuff. The conversation, I would say, the theme, if I could summarize it in 2 sentences, was up until a week or 2 ago, they will not touch crypto. And the reason they won't touch crypto is still FTX. So in my mind, FTX is so far in the past. But for a lot of the folks who maybe like had LPs who they had to describe to them for weeks or months why they invested in FTX, like it is a big thing to get over that. This is the first time that they're like, okay, okay, I'd consider allocating again. Like this is clearly a US This is now a US thing that politicians are talking about. Okay, this seems here to stay. So yeah, it was a— now that being said, they're still not allocating and they're still— and they're still not doing anything with a 10-foot pole. But it's— I see the gears turning a little bit, um, unlike a month ago where a dinner like this, they'd be like, I'm not touching it, I'm not interested.

Yeah, yeah, I'd be— I know I wasn't here for the episode last week, but I would definitely agree that the crypto has become one of the more interesting topics of this election. That was not on my bingo card. That was in the very hopeful box of if this ever happens. Like, crypto at some point will become something that politicians rally behind to appeal to a younger voter base that cares about it. But I never thought it would be this election cycle, and certainly not at the presidential level. Yeah, maybe at the local level. Um, but yeah, it's, it's definitely felt like it has opened. Just to recap the things that in my mind have been most impactful, the— started with, uh, speech Trump gave at Mar-a-Lago. Ryan Selkis was there and a few other folks, and he He very openly talked about being pro-crypto and it being important for the US to maintain a competitive edge against places like China. And he rallies behind that. And I think it's important. We've been advocating for that here and behind closed doors. And it is the message, right? The US is losing its competitive edge. These are serious companies that are going overseas. You don't want that. You know, you know, there might be a risk of just like, you know, human capital and resources and capital is going elsewhere. Like, that's just not very American. Um, and so it started there. That to me was very— that I think that detonated a lot of stuff. The, the other one was the, the vote, right? The SAB 121 or SB 121. Where you saw Democrats, you know, detracting and falling out of line, right, party line. And I think realizing, hey, maybe it's interesting because at some point they're going to do stuff that doesn't compromise their ability to get reelected. And I think they're just appreciating that, you know, them voting against that was not something that, that it's probably going to hurt their career.

Yeah.

And so that was also really— because historically, I think the Democrats have just been very united against his front, right? Top-down directive, like, you know. And, and that was really, um, the second most important thing. And, you know, I think to your point, that really quickly percolates down to Wall Street. And in my mind, all of this can be summarized in one thing, right? I know you like to talk about like last cycle is so obvious, COVID. And I, and I'll go on the record saying this cycle will be very— couple of key moments. It's like we had a Bitcoin ETF that absolutely legitimized this asset class. Like there's no question this is no longer like not an asset class. The second one was in short order you had an ETF also approved. And that is the second point I'm trying to make, is Wall Street now understands, and Wall Street can now make money out of this industry. And they're gonna— historically they've been anti-crypto, but now that they can make money off of these ETFs and whatnot, then, then they're on our side. And that has an incredible amount of call it political goodwill to will this into existence and make sure that, you know, are we going to see a SOL ETF or a DOGE ETF this year? I don't know. There are certain things that need to happen first, but I'll put my money on them being here, more ETFs coming in the next 12 months. Yeah, faster than most people think. Um, and, and I think, uh, anytime— I'm not gonna try to pretend to time how these institutions are gonna come, when they're gonna allocate, but if I've learned anything in prior cycles is that the things that you think are not going to happen or will take long to happen just happen faster. And sometimes it's sort of that thing like what you think is going to happen in 10 years happens in 2, and 2 in 10.

And so Yeah, that's, um, there was this, there was this, uh, so the president of the New York Stock Exchange was speaking at Consensus yesterday, and I just turned on a random clip and was watching it for a sec. Look at this quote. President of the New York Stock Exchange, they asked her about launching crypto trading. Will the New York Stock Exchange launch crypto trading, spot crypto trading? Like, will you be able to trade Solana in a New York Stock Exchange-owned entity? She said if there were if there was clear regulatory guidance, it would be an opportunity to look at. And then just kind of like smiled and said— you got the feeling that they're doing something. And I, like I said in this tweet, like, I would guess this happens a lot sooner than people are predicting.

Yeah.

And look, if the New York Stock Exchange launches crypto trading, then, uh, then NASDAQ launches crypto trading.

So like, crypto allows financial institutions to monetize and earn a different revenue line. And it is now allowing brokers and financial advisors to sell an ETF with a higher fee. And also, my interactions— like, when I was at ParaFi, like, we were pitching DeFi, I was very surprised. And I've always been very surprised positively like even going to talk to regulators about proof of stake and staking and validation and running your own node and whatnot in 2019, 2020, you would be shocked. And I know we've had multiple folks in the Blockchain Association, and they'll probably agree with this, the, the, the staff in these agencies, in these companies, have had a better part of a decade to understand and study this asset class. It sure has evolved quite a bit, But a lot of the core components have been, you know, they've had multiple years to study this and they're quite knowledgeable. And I think at this point, like, when I went and talked to allocators, they're like, we don't disagree with anything that you're saying around DeFi. Yeah, maybe the smart contract risk and we need insurance and whatnot. But again, it sort of all hinges on the reason why 9 out of 10 someone wouldn't give you money to invest in crypto is that regulatory lack of regulatory guidance. So the question is, this cycle, like, how much capital do you think has been sidelined waiting for clear regulatory guidance in the US, in the world, in the largest financial market of the world? Because, yeah, you've seen a rally that no one expected.

So let me, let me give you, let me give you a data point too that we have. Is so last year, 38% of the speakers of permissionless dropped out. Last year's Permissionless was honestly a nightmare internally because the regulatory apparatus was cracking down so hard week after week on crypto that we had 38% of the on-chain speakers dropped out in the last month. So whether it's Uniswap or Aave, like, none of them would come speak in person at the event because they were worried about honestly being on US soil. Look at the speaker list that we have today, who are— they're flying into the US. Some of these guys live in Europe, they're— some of them live in Asia, they're flying to the US. So you got Balaji, uh, you've got the big names like Tom Emmer is coming, Paul Gruel, Chris Dixon, Novogratz. Like, these are names that we weren't able to get last year. And then you have the protocol founders, Shriram, Keoni from Monad, Evan the Sui founder, Ben Jones Optimism founder, uh, Devin the OpenSea founder, uh, Harry the Arbitrum founder, like the protocol founder.

To be fair, like all those guys live in the US, right?

A lot of those guys live in the US, but they wouldn't— but last year, like, man, emailing people, like just trying to get them to come speak at a US event was impossible. They wouldn't do it. And now they're like— it is a complete— it's a complete 180. So, and then I think on the allocator side too, it's like— I mean, let me share this clip. Can people, um, If I share this, Santi, can you hear it?

Sure. I will ensure that the future of crypto and the future of Bitcoin will be made in the USA, not driven overseas. I will support the right to self-custody to the nation's 50 million crypto holders. I say this with your vote. I will keep Elizabeth Warren and her goons away from your Bitcoin, and I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency.

First things first is credit to where credit is due. Obviously, Trump does not know much about self-custody. I think David Bailey from Bitcoin Mag is the one kind of behind this, advising Trump on a lot of these things. And so I just want to give credit where credit is due. Big shout out to, uh, uh, to David Bailey for, for what he's been doing behind the scenes. So when I saw this, I think a lot of people said, wow, that's amazing, if Trump gets elected, it's gonna be so good for crypto. My reaction was, what is— like, that, that speech right there, those 40 seconds, just forced Biden's hand. And sure enough, it came out last night. Uh, The Block had a, had like this exclusive where they said Biden campaign ramps up crypto industry outreach in surprisingly, uh, in surprising tone shift. And their, their like summary was, uh, Joe Biden's reelection campaign has begun reaching out to crypto industry players over the past 2 weeks for guidance on crypto community and policy. Sources told The Block they noticed a significant shift in tone from the Biden administration and campaign towards crypto, with a new willingness to understand crypto and their communities. And that is like, that is the impact of that, of that Trump statement. And I think Hayden from Uniswap had a good— there were a lot of people who were like, ah, too little, too late, whatever. No, not in the slightest. And Hayden had the best take. He said that The too little, too late, this is pandering crowd is missing the point. Dem establishment has finally realized that being anti-crypto by letting Warren run financial policy will lose them elections. This is a big deal. Nothing politicians care about more than winning elections. Welcome to the new era. Yeah, come on, couldn't have, couldn't have said it better myself.

Yeah, I mean, I tweeted about this last week, you know. One, you can no longer not talk about crypto or care about it. And yeah, I think that you saw it with SAB121, or SB121. Just people have been— are now feeling the pressure that if you're anti-crypto, you're gonna have a harder time being reelected.

Yeah, I mean, your point— I think your best point there is like you said 5 minutes ago, is the last cycle The last cycle, in hindsight, it felt obvious, but maybe in the moment it didn't because the world was crashing, and it really didn't. But you had these moments looking back where it's just like Paul Tudor Jones comes out, calls Bitcoin fastest horse in the race, start pumping egregious amounts of capital into the system. And looking back, you're like, man, that was so obvious. Right now, the moment I would just have everyone slow down and think about, you now have a presidential election where Both US candidates are pro-crypto. We've never had that in the history of crypto. And we've got the ETFs and we're entering a season of like, you know, and you have rates got jacked up and now maybe rates are getting pulled down again. Like it's putting rates aside.

You have infrastructure, you have good applications. It's easy to onboard people and there's stuff to do. But like, yeah, I feel— and tell you the truth, like, and maybe this is— I'll go down as— and this might be made a meme, but I feel very calm. I have my thesis this cycle and I keep reevaluating it, but it's further solidified. We talk about the celebrity stuff that is happening. Again, people are— it's reminiscent of last cycle top signals. And is it a top signal? I don't, I don't think it is in, in the slightest. Um, but, uh, yeah, you know, people I know here have commented that I'm very arrogant with my thesis on Solana. And I just— for me, it's, um, it is further crystallized and become clearer. Um, and I don't, I don't think we're in, in later parts of the cycle. I think of anything like having the ETF in short order, because there was like 3 weeks ago people saying, oh, the ETF may happen like maybe a Q3 kind of thing, and now you have it. Yeah. And so I think maybe I'm reading too much into that, but I have— let's put it this way, my thesis hasn't been invalidated yet, and I continue to, if anything, sort of accelerated I've deployed even more capital outside of the system, uh, because, uh, yeah, I just— I feel— I feel like we're— you know, this cycle might be, uh, quite big. I still stand by my price predictions that I did in December, by the way.

Remind me of those.

1,000 SOL, 600— uh, 6,000 ETH.

What do you think Bitcoin gets to?

Such a difficult question, but like 100— I'm also like thinking about the actual flows, but, uh, 120 to 150.

Yeah, that's, that's—

I think that's kind of the, the fan— like, who knows when you have a couple Sovereigns who might just come in and just But it is— I'm just thinking of like the amount of flows that is required. Yeah, because if Bitcoin's at $250,000 or what is Cathie Wood's price target? Like, she was here on the pod, like some— she's always thrown out crazy stuff. But what was it like? It was more than— I was like $250,000, $500,000 now.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that's like— I don't wanna— that's not my base case, let's put it that way. But because if Bitcoin's at $250,000 to $500,000, what is everything else?

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Have you made revisions to where you think we are in the cycle, how things are?

Yeah, I revised where we— where I think we are on the cycle. So I have this, um, the thread that I put out in February. I said there are 4 phases of bull market. We just entered stage 2. I'll give you the 30-second high level on it. Stage 1 is rebirth, where you've got like the exhaustion from the bear market still exists. There's like sparks of hope that pop up. Everyone's still focusing on the bear market blowups. Prices are quietly recovering, but like people don't really talk about it. Only the deepest, like crypto natives really realize it. Most people are still in disbelief that we're in the bull market. That's phase 1. Stage 2 is where we've been at. Stage 2 is excitement. I'd say we are— the first half of this year was excitement, right? Bull— bear market has officially ended. Coins are hitting, are nearing all-time highs. Some have even blown past all-time highs. Everyone in crypto understands we're in a bull market. But like your normie friends still aren't texting you. I'd say there's like a weird combo of like anxious and excited. Stack is growing, don't feel like you own enough coins. You start to see companies start hiring again. I made the joke of like your friends start ordering guac at Chipotle again. Like everyone feels like they're starting to win again. That's the calm before the storm. That's where I feel like we've, we've been at for the first half this year. What I tweeted on, um, this weekend, I said stage 2 is coming to an end, stage 3 is around the corner. And I originally thought stage 3 would come around the election, maybe this fall, September, depending on who was going to win. Like, when I thought it was going to come up, September, October, November. I've accelerated when I think stage 3 will come, uh, just because of what we've been talking about on this podcast and like the complete 180 reversal in policy and regulation. Um, stage 3 is euphoria. Like, everything you own blows past all-time highs. There used to be a new narrative every month. Now there's a new narrative every week. Private markets get crazy. VCs start to announce their $300, $400 million funds near the end of stage 3. You start to like really skip due diligence, race to deploy. Everyone's announcing a new $100 million raise. We're mainstream again. Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg, CNBC, they love crypto again, weirdly enough. And then at the end of the cycle, like the weird stuff starts happening, like You see like Fortune 500s buy Bitcoin. You see like the athletes and the artists get involved again. Uh, you see the celebrities get involved again. Like everyone starts to believe that like crypto is going up forever. And that's when delusion starts to seep into decision-making, I'd say. And, and then you have like the, the last leg of the cycle, which is kind of like dis— disconnection from reality a little bit. Um, and that'll— that's a mid-2025 thing, I think. But yeah, I've kind of accelerated when I think things will start to get a bit crazy. And we saw that we actually—

because of the celebrity Iggy and, uh, Caitlyn Jenner.

And so I didn't— I posted that before, like, just on the back of, like, regulations and the 180. And then sure enough, this week, like, yeah, you had— I mean, let's talk about the celebrity stuff. You had, like, I think Caitlyn Jenner came out, created her own meme coin, which was a Jenner, but it was created by this guy, and it was a scam. I honestly haven't paid too close of attention to it.

TL;DR is I think he's had a track record of scamming, and, uh, his social— a lot of these celebrities have a social media team that candidly doesn't have a lot of understanding of crypto and unfortunately tends to reach out to the wrong characters to inform their strategy. And in this case, they had been working with this particular person that has, uh, anyone in crypto probably tells you run away from. Yeah. Uh, and then they, they did a series of launches. Turns out that they launched this Jenner coin. Turns out Caitlyn Jenner didn't own any actually, and so she never got the coins. And so it was just a very messy operation. Um, and but then Iggy, uh, what is it, last name is, uh, Lea? Yes, yeah, the Australian-American kind of, um, artist. She hosted a Twitter Spaces and I actually joined, kind of, I, I always, I joined for most of it and I was quite surprised with her understanding of crypto, her kind of sense of like reason. She was like, no, I'm not gonna work with this idiot, Sahil. Someone— there's subtle things that she's like, no, I'm never going to connect my phone number to my Twitter, like I'm not dumb. Like she said that, I was like, okay, she's, uh, she's sophisticated. And, um, you know, of course she's playing with memes. She's like, you like— you know, people are asking, do you like cats or dogs? Obviously, you know, people want to off of that like run a meme, right? Um, and she also said, uh, one of the more interesting— I tweeted, she said, uh, I think crypto is— she did a series of like hallmark tweets. She says crypto's sexy, you know, she, she likes Fantom, she's using Fantom. Um, and also, um, she said, uh, that she found crypto more interesting than her OnlyFans, which I thought was very interesting. I think she's making a lot of money off her OnlyFans account. Someone asked her that if she launches her token or meme coin would that allow people to then subscribe to her OnlyFans account? And she said, well, I don't know how that actually would work. So anyways, she was also with her brother who was seen— he's like 10 years younger, but I think it's like 20-something. She's 30, in her early 30s. But that— maybe I'm trying to not look at it for what it was last cycle. Um, I do think that of course it's on Let's just, let's just get a couple things out of the way. People in crypto, like, there's nothing wrong. People come to the space because they want to make money. Speculation is— I'll keep saying it— speculation is, is a, is a huge driver for any technological revolution. Um, I think the, the manner by which it happens obviously is important. Um, but, um, yeah, like, we know how historically celebrity coins have gone down and a lot of them are frauds or scams, you know, like, uh, there's a number of our— like Soulja Boy and some of these personalities, like, you know, even FTX endorsements, right? Um, but let me ask you a question. If crypto goes mainstream, like, don't you think that it's sort of like gonna— it's inevitable that you have not just celebrities, but athletes and major football clubs and entire entertainment industry, music industry, like adopt this technology and try to figure it out. Are they going to get it perfect the first time around? No. I think you can look at like how the internet evolved and how music, like Napster versus Spotify, like that was a messy— what I'm trying to say is technological revolutions are messy. And you don't usually get it right the first time. The further challenge that this space has is that you don't have one chief marketing officer, one product officer, one CEO. You have multiple projects competing for attention in this chaotic world where furthermore capital is moving way faster and at a global scale. And so there are weird experiments. Sometimes it's difficult to observe these because if you've been in the industry long enough, you sort of say, yeah, this feels and has a lot of hallmarks of a scam. But like, I don't think— I think it was Ansem that tweeted, um, and I sort of agree with it, which is, if we are from this point forward, if we're going to treat every celebrity that comes into the space, every artist, every company, as a top signal and be critical and not help them out, then I think we've lost the plot. And I think the best we can do as an industry is actually extend a hand and say, we can definitely do better. And the only thing we can control as an industry is make sure that these people are listening to a panel, a group of the right set of people, you know what I mean? Not this random Sahil guy who has a long track record of scamming people, or Sams of the world, you know what I mean? Um, So I welcome any and everyone that wants to think about how to use crypto in their strategy, you know what I mean? Yeah. What's the difference between LVMH doing, um, pendants of Punk holders and selling them for like $20K and a celebrity doing their own coin? I guess one of them, it tells you very quickly if the price goes up and down. If the price goes down, it's a scam. If the price goes up She's the best thing in the, you know, she's the best artist now of all time. And but if your pendant, you know, maybe doesn't have as liquid of a market, but if that pendant goes down in value, it's like, oh no, no, it's, you know, Tiffany, you know, Tiffany is Tiffany. I don't see the distinction.

Here's the distinction in my mind. So the distinction in my mind is that these folks have never ever come into the industry. They've never once said they're interested in the industry. They've never once, like, been in the industry. And like, their first time ever mentioning crypto is promoting a token. So I think the right way to— here's, here's my, like, jumbled thought on this because I haven't been paying too close of attention. Um, all right, first thought is like, we want mass adoption. Like, eventually these celebrities are going to come into the industry, and that is a good thing. Like, you want everyone in the world paying attention to crypto. So that's, so that's a really good thing. Um, on the like, and there was more than just Iggy, right? It was like Rich the Kid, Trippie Redd, like Davido, which I think is one of the biggest artists coming out of Africa, I'm pretty sure. Um, I, I haven't tracked that. Yeah, he's got like 65 million followers or something like that. So anyways, there's a lot of celebrities doing it. There's a right way and a wrong way to do it, I think. So if you look at like, um, yeah, LVMH, like LVMH has crypto people in-house. They were looking for like multiple years at crypto. There's a top-down directive from, uh, who's the rich dude, Bernard Arnault, who runs LVMH, like has a big crypto portfolio, um, and is like a big NFT collector. And like, so you— there's kind of this like ethos I think that permeates crypto and, um there's like a genuine interest from the top about LVMH. The— what bugs me is when— it doesn't even bug me. I don't pay— I spend no mental energy on it. It's just not going to end well when like a celebrity who's not— and they're not all the same. It sounds like Iggy actually has like a brother who's actually pretty interested in crypto, whatever.

She is. Yeah, I mean, or she is.

So like, I'm not gonna bucket every— all celebrities are very different, right? But someone who just comes in is like has never once mentioned crypto, has zero interest in crypto, and you can kind of tell that, and then they launch a meme coin, like, I promise you that ends in tears. Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, but eventually we're going to need like these people. Like, my thesis on crypto is that all the world's value will live on-chain. And there's two types of value. There's financial value that's like traditional Wall Street, which is moving into DeFi. And then there's things that like the world has never really ascribed monetary value to. In like a very clear and obvious way. And that'll also move on-chain. And that's the like music and all that kind of— and attention and all that kind of stuff. So the celebs are part of the second part of that.

Yeah, I think a lot, a lot of these celebs— and I do consider like one of the observations someone said was a lot of these celebs are like past their prime. And it's like seeing celebs do like ads for products, you know, sort of like a meme, right? Like if you're starting to do like, you know, Old Spice commercials, you're kind of like not doing blockbuster, like Grammy Award-winning movies, Oscar-winning movies, you know. So I get it. Um, humans are going to do things to, you know, you know, if they see an opportunity that they can make money. Well, there are ways of doing that, right? As long as you don't compromise your values, principles, Pools. Yeah, I agree. Like, most of these celebrities, like, it's important, you know, it's a, it's a cash grab, you know, call it as such. This is why, again, as an industry, that the only thing we can do— like, let's put it this way, we're not gonna— we're likely gonna see more of this across the board, a lot more space continues to grow. So the question for us that have been around and the industry is, what can we do to help you know, you know, educate them, create a platform for, you know, helping them understand this and somehow monetize it. Like, you know, of course they're going to want to do something if they're attaching their name and their followers and their attention.

So yeah, I think you'll, you'll probably see a couple startups this cycle get funded on the back of working with Hollywood, like almost like a, like crypto-native agencies or a crypto, like a tech platform but you'll probably see it funded by someone who's deep in the Hollywood scene, in the same way that there's a lot of great DeFi platforms that were started by like ex-Capital Markets guys.

Yeah, like who is talking to— what is it, the, the talent agency company?

You need, you need people who— CAA and Endeavor. CAA and Endeavor. Endeavor, Endeavor.

We— you need— I was actually looking at Endeavor last night because I was comparing it, they— and it was Karate Combat versus like, uh, the, the traditional like Ari Emanuel and, uh Mahan, I think, have a public company called KO Group, and that trades at $18 billion. I was just looking at their stats. I was looking at the company.

My buddy was the guy at Endeavor who runs celebrity investments, essentially, but not actually investments. It's like you get 10% of a company to promote them. So like, you'd like, I don't know, like Rihanna doing coconut water or whatever. That's exactly right. So like a clothing brand would come to them or like a pizza brand would come to them and be like, hey, we want like a mid-20s celeb who's like really good looking and they'd go to like, I don't know, I don't know mid-20s celebs who are good looking, but they—

Oh my God, no, no, no, Sydney Sweeney.

So like, okay, so they go to Sydney Sweeney and they've got Sydney Sweeney and they're like, hey Sydney, we've got a pizza brand. You just need to, they're gonna give you 15% of the company, but you gotta like pump the hell outta that pizza brand. I mean, and it works. And it's like massive drive.

It's funny because I've come to this realization, like, the more and more— and in this trip I've met like someone who actually like worked with, um, Sydney, launched her own clothing brand, swimwear brand, and she ended up ditching it. But what was funny, it was, um, she said, yeah, she— in the second season of whatever she was wearing, she had contractually said that she was going to wear this. And I was like, wait, yeah, this also obviously on what they wear on stage. Like, absolutely. Like, they, um, you know, they, they're promoting stuff. So anyways, like, this is what, like, a lot of the crypto native people that don't understand how Wall Street works or how the entertainment industry works, it's like, no, no, no, these guys have been peddling shit. It's like a—

and it's a move. So what's happening here is an evolution. Okay, is this— is it marketing? Influencer market. Let me make a comparison here. I'll make the comparison between If you look at celebs and how they got paid on social 5 years ago, it was all ads. Like you, you'd post an Instagram pic and you'd say hashtag ad and you'd get paid $200K for that. Now you see much less of that and you see them all have their own products. They have their own skincare brand, they have their own bathing suits, whatever it was.

The Kardashians have done this exceptionally well. Like what's she did?

Uh, yeah, exactly. Jenner.

They all, what's her name? Yeah. Yeah.

Kylie Jenner. So if you think about how the celebs got paid off of crypto in the last cycle, it was like FTX ads, big sponsorships, LeBron doing an ad for Crypto.com, Matt Damon doing the ad for Crypto.com, all that kind of stuff. Now you're going to see them try to do their, do their own products. What I will say is, on the— I'm very bullish on them doing things on-chain. I'm extremely bearish on meme coins launching a token. Memecoins as a tokenized representation of any celeb. Like, I, I love memecoins, but I think a big memecoin, like a good memecoin, needs to embody an ideology, uh, fair enough, race or class or sexuality or geography or politics. Overthinking it. It's some dogs, cats, dogs, dogs. I mean, like, yeah, exactly. But like, what does that represent?

More general than is— yeah, I see your point.

Like, WIF in my mind represents like just crypto people. Crypto people have fun on the internet and are cute.

Dogs are cute and this is the cutest dog out there.

That's exactly right.

So obviously I'm biased. Obviously I'm buying—

um, not buying, biased. Roden, Trump Coin, like all these things, like those are the good meme coins. Like, yeah, uh, you know, Jenner Coin, not a good meme coin. So Yeah, agreed.

Um, what else can we talk about or worthy of talking about?

You can talk about a lot, but what is worthy of the Empire pod?

That's— yeah, the, the— so I want to, I want to float. Oh, go ahead. Mount Gox was moving some coins. It said that they were going to move in— they were doing like a test, uh, trial run of in advance of moving some coins. But people are tracking those wallets. Um, so I, I came across— I was reading— so I like Shane Parrish. Um, he has a great newsletter, and he had an excellent, uh, you know, segment in his newsletter to talk about hard work that I tweeted. And that spun up a whole series of conversations with different people reflecting on their success. So What I wanted to do is I had a really good conversation with one, one and two people really, and I want to bring them on the pod to go down and discuss this. Um, and they're like four parts of— it was all about hard work and the different types of hard work.

Will you share it? Will you share the five types of hard work?

Yeah, yeah, I can, I can share them now, I think. Uh, so I'll read it actually. It's, uh, I tweeted about about it. And I actually may, may want to end this podcast just getting your perspective. And I— we asked Armani this. Is it this one? Exactly, yes. And I wanna— we also asked Armani this in the podcast yesterday about what he thought the success at Backpack and had been. So yeah, Shane goes on to say there are four— there are different types of hard work. First one is outthinking. It's a better strategy, a shortcut. The second one is pure effort. So you're working longer, the intensity of it. The third one is being opportunistic. So you're positioning yourself to take advantage of change. I think a lot in crypto has been that. Fourth is consistency. So you're just doing average things for longer. And the fifth one, which is different than consistency, is focus. And a lot of that is saying no to distractions. And I thought it was an excellent observation. So I am curious, uh, in the success that you've had of building Blockworks, like, or just investing, however you want to answer the question, like, what of those 5 do you think speak most to you and your success?

Outthinking, pure effort, opportunistic, consistency, focus. If I had to rank all of these, probably, I mean, 2 and 4, pure effort and consistency. I don't think— I think it's probably different. I think most founders, I mentioned this with Armani, would say some combo of 2, 4, and 5, pure effort, consistency, and focus. But especially with a business like Blockworks, like, this isn't, this isn't a rocket science business. Like, we're not, we're not building like the next generation smart contract protocol to eliminate blah, blah, blah. Like, it's, you know, we're not building rockets, we're not building AI. Like, we're building a digital media business that drives into conferences, which drives people into a subscription data and research platform. And that basically just takes a ridiculous amount of, like, a ridiculous amount of execution. And I think execution is just a byproduct of consistency and effort. So it's actually, it's funny, Mike and I have talked about this a lot. I think investors make better podcast guests and founders— founder— I enjoy talking to founders more, but they are not as good on podcasts. And the reason for that is building a company comes down to execution and ability to execute. And I think being a good investor comes down to thinking. And oftentimes you're trying to build these big theses about the world and like your thesis on Solana, like very different than other people's thesis on Solana in like, you know, let's say a year and a half ago. For me, like, man, just stay the course, effort, consistency, outwork other people and just try to stay alive, essentially. And I'd bucket that into consistency. There are things like opportunistic, like we have done things when we saw folks like, I don't know, CoinDesk and Cointelegraph not covering the industry like how we thought it should be covered. Like that was our opportunity to launch a better news business. When we saw other platforms not building a research and data platform that we thought was, was, you know, world-class, that was our opportunity. But, you know, I think a lot of people have tried to do that and they can't execute it. So being a founder, I think, just comes down to execution capabilities.

What do you think? For a founder or for me? For you. Um, opportunistic and focus. I would have probably said consistency, uh, up until 3 years ago. Why is that? Because I've been in the space for a long time. And I've just stayed. And I've, uh, I think, I think being a part opportunistic in crypto, like anyone that discovered this and has discovered this even to this point, has been opportunistic, you know, because it's, it's an industry that is still discounted. It is hard. It is, you know, you might think it's easy, but if you're, if you've been here for, for a long period of time, I think you are a person that taking risk requires you, like, to be opportunistic. Said differently, if you're not taking risk, I don't think you're an opportunistic person. And if you're in crypto, you're taking risks, so you're opportunistic. Um, it's sort of that idea that if you're positioning yourself in an uncomfortable spot, you're pushing that frontier. Um, and so taking risk, I think, involves three Um, and I've— and I think I still take a lot of risk in my portfolio. Yeah. Um, I wanna— I steer more towards focus because the example is someone that discovered Bitcoin early on and has only focused on Bitcoin has been a consistent person. He's sort of focused on that particular ecosystem. Uh, someone that I think is a maximalist is very consistent in his thinking. Um, and I think sometimes as an investor, like, I would caution someone from being overly consistent because, because then you're not willing to change your mind. It's sort of that idea of like, oh, I'm rooting for the New York Giants, and you never want to change because you're a Giants fan or whatever. Uh, maybe it's a stupid example, but what I'm trying to say is oftentimes we, we, we try to stay consistent even though we feel that we need to change because of ego. Because of fear that we might be not called, we might detract from a community that we've been the long part of. And I think in early-stage investing, and even in this industry that I bucket wholeheartedly as still very early stage and in early stages of inception, you don't want to be necessarily consistent. I think you have to be consistent in your process, in the way that you absorb information. And as a framework of an investment, I think as you develop a process, I think you want to be consistent in that. The things that you do to position yourself to take advantage of opportunities. But I like focus because in order to, you know, markets are competitive and I think you need intense focus to understand things before other people do. Yeah, because you could position yourself and be uncomfortable. And look, everyone was hearing Solana, people were vocal tweeting constantly, right? But if you're not focused, I think you will likely be carried away. You need resolve. And I think you have to go deep to understand this tech, you have to go deep to talk to people. And the most wonderful thing is it's an open source movement, like the access to information of founders is unparalleled. Like, you have people like going on this podcast, you can go to their Discord channel, like you can be intensely— I think you need to be intensely focused. And also, I would also actually think both from an investing standpoint and founders, you can do a million things in this space, right? Even as a founder, you can try to experiment so much. But you— I think to really win a category, you need to be intensely focused. And so I'd rather be focused than, than just consistent. Um, so anyways, that's a long-winded answer. Well, I'll say is I never want to do one, outthinking. I never want to assume that I'm smarter than other people. I just think markets are— it's hard to— let's put it this way. I think the people that blow up might say that one has been their thing. Long Term Capital Management, 3 Hours guys embodied that, I think, in a lot of ways. So I just think you should never think that you're smarter than other people.

I agree. As a, as an MO. Yeah. I mean, there's one thing on here for founders that it comes down to. There's one thing that it comes down to for founders that is not on this list, and it ultimately just comes down to resilience. I think like the most— the best founders that I have met are just the most resilient people. And like, if I think about the number of times that Blockworks probably should have failed, or like Mike and I had to stop paying ourselves to make payroll, or, you know, 82% of our revenue got wiped out overnight in COVID. Like, I think there's just a resiliency. It's not a hard work thing, but, you know, effort.

Would you say that's pure effort?

I think it's probably pure. I mean, look, there's this— yeah, it's probably pure effort. There's this, um, there's this Marc Andreessen quote. It goes something like this: the world is a very malleable place, and if you know what you want and you go for it with maximum energy, drive and passion, the world oftentimes reconfigures itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would originally think. And it's, uh, I think it's a spin-off on the Steve Jobs quote, which is something along the lines of like, when you, when you look around at the world, like, and start to realize that everything around you was created by people who are no smarter or no different than than you and me, the world becomes a much more interesting and fun place. I'm botching, I'm botching both those quotes, I'm sure. Uh, that's essentially being a founder is just like picking something, going at it with maximum drive and energy and just being resilient and not willing to quit.

So that's the, I love that Steve Jobs quote. And I think a big part of your discovery maybe as a founder or as an investor is to always be opportunistic and position yourself in an environment where you can be surrounded by people that you think are highly successful. And then you'll realize like, because sometimes we glorify founders, you know, from the out— like, and once you get to know them, and if you have that opportunity, it sort of puts a human element to that. It's like these people actually go through the same struggles, same problems. And in their journey, we're no different than you and I. And so You know, maybe there's like a savant out there, you know what I mean? Like folks like Elon Musk or whatnot, but— or Jim Simmons, you know, some of these people like— but there's like most founders are just like, uh, you know, doing things that are normal and going through the same struggles, you know? And, uh, sometimes they feel so far out. And, and I think being surrounded by— sounds like you are in a position where you're going to these dinners, you're talking to these people, and you're like are they fundamentally different? That you see a lot of parts of yourself and you then believe it, like, I can actually make it. You know what I mean? Maybe if you met a media exec like Bloomberg or whatever, you're like, sounds like what he's describing in the early days. Like, I'm kind of going through— you, you kind of— there's a, there's a, there's— I see myself in, in what he was doing, and, and if he can make it, then I can make it. And candidly, I think that what— that is probably what makes America the best place in the world still. It's this idea that like, you know, people celebrate success and failure. And it's an environment where you can go to these institutions like Harvard or not Harvard or just Silicon Valley and through osmosis just surround yourself with these high caliber people that will actually take an interest in you. You mean like, I felt that culturally in America, people are more likely to open the door and say, yeah, oh, you're building a company? Like, I'll talk to you. I'll give you advice. The, the mentors— put it this way, other than my dad, 3 out of my 4 mentors, and I tweeted about this, are all American, are all in the US. Think about that. And I've traveled, I've lived everywhere. Like, there's just this idea in the US of more— like, whereas in other places it's more hierarchical. It's like, oh, you weren't, you know, you're not old money, like, we can't talk to you. Like, no, you know, it's like— and, and I think for that reason the US is, is still the best place in the world because they care less about status, um, you know, hierarchy and class, and more about you're someone that's smart, I'm gonna open the door, I want to talk to you. And that's amazing. That truly is amazing. And as long as the US doesn't lose that, I will bet all my chips on the US.

I agree. I agree. That feels like a good place to wrap, man. Um, God bless America. I gotta do a plug for Permissionless, which is, um I mean, we're pumped. We, we had a, we had a big conversation after last year's permissionless, like, do we do it in the US or do we go somewhere else? Do we go to Europe or we go to Singapore? And look, we made the decision to keep it in the US and Miami. Yeah, very good about that. We're not gonna be—

it's gonna be Miami. I'll bet.

I'm going on the record, it's Miami. No, it's in, uh, it's in Salt Lake this year. It's in Salt Lake. No, no, I know, like, the following future, future ones. I plead the Fifth on this one. I can't share my top secret, top secret Blockworks strategy. My ticket me for everything on the podcast. But, uh, go— if you guys have made it this far, come to Permissionless. We've got an Empire code for you. Um, it's usually Empire 10, but I just typed in Empire 20 on the event to see if it actually works. And Empire 20 works. Empire—

this is gonna get bought in heavily.

Let's try to find Empire 25. No, Empire 25 doesn't. Empire 30 doesn't. So I would recommend going on, uh, the Permissionless page The code is Empire 20. Looks like it works, but you could try like Empire—

you could try, uh, Empire 90, and it's— that's my code to you guys.

I think, I think we're going to be capped at 20. I think, uh, the marketing team told me Empire 10, but Empire 20 seems to be working.

So I got a different code, it's Empire 90.

Yeah, Empire free. Uh, I will say we just, we just, uh, signed this thing to get a podcast studio. On site. We're actually going to have like a Blockworks, like Empire Podcast studio. So come hang with Santi and me and record the pod. Great.

We're on the dot for an hour. 9:09. Um, thanks everyone for listening, and, uh, we'll be reading the comments. We didn't read any this time, but, uh, we will, uh, we will.

They're too kind. We need to read some spice. Jab. Here's my call to action: go, go buy your permissionless ticket and then go either give a little jab to either me or Santi. We'll see We'll see, we'll see what the comments say this week.

Nice. All right, okay, nice.

All right, see everyone, have a good weekend, and I will see you Tuesday.

All right, cheers.

All right, you heard about Sei a couple times, just want to give them one last shout out. Big thanks to Sei for sponsoring this episode of Empire. There are a ton of reasons to build on Sei. If you want to get in touch with them, you can reach out to me, I'll put you in touch directly with the team. You can also get in touch with them on Twitter @SeiNetwork. Can follow the journey at Sei Network. They are currently live. They've got Sei V2 on public Devnet today. Mainnet goes live later in Q2. Really excited to have Sei sponsoring and partnering with us on this episode of Empire.