How To Make It This Cycle | 1000x Live

I think that there's a ton of opportunities suddenly that I haven't seen in over a year, sort of cropping up in these little pockets of the market. I've been super bearish altcoins versus Bitcoin, and I've allocated accordingly. But now I think that's changing.

Like, it's—

this is the time to lock in. It's not an accident that I've slicked back my hair and dressed like Steven Seagal today. Like, I'm focused and paying attention. And I think that—

is this you locking in, Joe?

Okay, you know what, guys, I'm getting excited. I'm trying to make a point here. Screw with my momentum.

All right, guys, how many listeners of the 1000X podcast do we have in the audience? Let's go. All right, so if you're a listener of 1000X, you know that this is all financial advice. You should be listening to what we say on stage and make investment decisions based off it, right? Is that right, guys?

That is, uh, absolutely 100% wrong. If you ever listen to anything that comes out of our mouths, you will lose money. That is a guarantee.

All right, cool. So that's the, that's the, that's the goal of today. We're gonna try to make everyone lose as much money as possible. I actually want to— why don't we start? Actually, we're gonna end up definitely talking about meme coins. I know we were joking about the last time we did this live panel at Digital Asset Summit. We talked about meme coins because that's all that was going on in March. Then they died, and here we are, and it's back again. But Before we get into the degeneracy, I want to actually get your guys' take on the general macro environment. So over the course of the last couple of days, we've seen, you know, China have its all-in Mario Draghi moment where they're throwing the kitchen sink from a, from a policy standpoint. And we've also entered a rate-cutting cycle here in the United States. Jerome Powell cut rates by 50 basis points. And I just want to get a sense from you guys, where do you guys think we are in this general um, sort of liquidity cycle?

I think we are on the eve, sort of the doorstep of a major asset rally. I am conviction long risk assets, especially crypto, because I think that this smells a lot like, let's call it, a smaller version of what the governments of the world did during COVID I think that once you see people start to step on the gas and make monetary conditions easier, more liquid, and start to, you know, cut rates and make things, uh, more friendly to investors, usually you get this kind of, um, this sort of like weird in-between time where things are supposed to take off but they're not, and that's your chance to jump in and get long. And I think that right now The major uncertainty that crypto participants and investors are facing is the US election in November. Markets hate uncertainty, but markets hating uncertainty is an opportunity for you to dive in, just like the uncertainty of COVID was an opportunity for you to dive in right before the money printer turned on. And just to quickly speak to the election, if they're already turning the money spigot on again, we've seen this movie before. And neither Harris nor Trump have any plans to turn it off. It's just a question of who can spend more and who can spend faster. They're both gonna, they're both gonna go crazy. We know this. Now's kind of the time where you have to, you know, close your eyes and dive right in.

I'm a little bit more tempered than you, Jonah. I think that we're definitely in an environment where things like equities can do extremely well. Right, based on everything, everything that Jonah said. But we're here because we're talking about crypto, and the reason I'm a little bit more tempered is because I think that it hinges a tremendous amount on the outcome of this election. If Trump gets elected, then obviously everything that we've been talking about for a long time starts to come true. Regulation starts to be a lot more clear. Interest in Bitcoin probably goes up based on the way that Trump has been speaking about it. But if Kamala gets elected, then we're in for a period of difficulty, in my personal opinion. I think that when you look at the broader macro picture, uh, and where people are going to allocate their money, one of the reasons that equities have done so well after the Fed cut rates is because the economy is doing well, right? And so the market interpreted this rate cut not as a panic cut into a weakening economy, but as a maneuver to land the plane effectively. And we're almost there, right? And what that means is that companies that are producing real assets, that are producing real services, that are generating real revenue will do well because the economy is doing well. And then now they're going to be able to borrow at lower costs and expand more effectively. But for something that is non-productive right now, like Bitcoin, what you need really to send this into the stratosphere is you need gen— general stimulus. You need general injection of money for basically no reason other than fear into the market. And so paradoxically, my viewpoint is that a recession is probably the best outcome for this asset class, that if we do have a recession, then what ends up happening is that it ends up becoming a V-shaped recovery because the Fed and because our government pushes all of its chips into onto the table, and they say, okay, well, we're going to backstop this, and now people are going to feel comfortable gambling again because there's all this excess money floating around. And so to end this yapping with something a little bit, you know, concrete is I remain cautious, and I remain underallocated relative to how I was earlier in the year, pre-the ETF. And what I'm looking for is, is I'm looking for a significant dip in asset prices before getting extremely long.

Yeah, I would be curious. I heard two things there. So there was this idea of potentially a recession. I haven't heard the recession bull asset thesis, which I find very interesting. And then there's the outcome of the election. And I feel like there's been an enormous amount of airtime that's been dedicated to this. And here, like, to inject a little bit of my own opinion and maybe push back a little bit, Avi, is I don't know, it's so— it seems so consensus that if Trump wins, then we're going to Valhalla. And if Kamala wins, you know, it's like nuclear Armageddon and, you know, winter is coming and all that stuff. And I don't know, every single time— I don't have the gray hair that Jonah does, uh, in the good way, Jonah— but, uh, every single time I've seen everyone so lined up on that consensus, it hasn't turned out correct. So I mean, what's the, what's the other side for why this might not actually matter that much?

My, my best guess for price action, and you quote me on this, is that on a Trump election, you get a massive candle in Bitcoin. That candle gets sold into, people panic out because nothing actually is going to happen in the first year of the Trump presidency, or maybe 6 months, to make this asset class go up. And so then you probably get a lot of fear and disillusionment, and then that's probably when you actually want to buy. So whatever happens on the election night, if Trump gets elected and we're up 15%, I am basically selling everything that I could possibly sell.

I disagree. I'm buying it from you. I'm buying it right out of your order book. That's crazy. No, I disagree so much. Avi was saying before we were doing this panel that we have to create some drama and act like we're feuding. So yeah, you're wrong. Basically, the reason why I think you're wrong—

It's a fight night, guys. It's not too late.

Uh-oh. No, not that kind of feud. We're both super athletic. Wrong.

You're wrong.

Say it again. Anyway, so basically, basically the reason why I think you're wrong, and like, let's say that we go into the election night trading $65,000 a token in Bitcoin. Trump wins, we're up to $75,000 a token. I'm buying 75s, I'm playing for 150 on that. And I think that markets price the future, and I think that the immediate thing that would happen on day one of a Trump presidency is Gary Gensler goes back to academia. And I think that what happens on day one of a Harris presidency is, you know, you've seen like there was a lot of turnover in the Trump administration. You haven't seen that in the Biden administration. I think that the powers that be, you know, obviously you listen to like right-wing conspiracy sites or media outlets. They'll tell you, you know, they use phrases like the deep state. I'm not going to do that because I'm not really a partisan person. I'm more of an independent. But I do notice that in Democratic administrations, you tend to get lots of consistency and stability in terms of like staffing. I don't think there would be much change at the SEC, which basically means you have to price another 4 years of a legal and regulatory stranglehold on our industry if the Democrats win versus like cowboy mode if Trump wins. I think there is a big difference there, and I think that if you price in the net present value of 4 years of one or the other, that's worth tens of thousands of dollars in the price of Bitcoin.

I actually have a question for the audience here. Because I want to make a point that pushes back a little bit. So if you think back to 2 years ago, and then today, in the context of your crypto portfolio, who owns more altcoins today than they did 2 years ago? I know, raise your hand if you own more altcoins today than you did 2 years ago. Yeah. And I assume, well, raise your hand if you have a crypto portfolio. Yeah, okay, you see, everyone owns Bitcoin. And so what ends up happening is if Trump gets elected, because of the regulatory certainty that you're gonna get in altcoins, is I guarantee you every single one of you that didn't raise your hand, you're gonna sell some of your Bitcoin for alts, because it's gonna be a much better environment for altcoins.

So I hear this a lot in oil markets. Everyone, everyone this, everyone that. Everybody I talk to is long diesel, everybody's short propane. No, everybody in this room is long Bitcoin, and I think that if you look outside of this conference center, out on the streets, the mean streets of Salt Lake City, you're looking at some people who are probably a little bit cautious. And so I'm not banking on this room's participation. I'm more hoping that outside capital comes in with more regulatory certainty.

I— okay, definitely outside capital, I think a little bit more comes in. But this is a point about Bitcoin and altcoins. This is even here at a reasonably crypto-native conference. A lot of people have consolidated their portfolio into Bitcoin. And so good trade, by the way. Yeah, great trade. If you did that, that was a— that was the right decision, right? Because you look at Bitcoin dominance, it's just gone straight up. I mean, altcoins have basically done nothing all year.

And what about memes?

And I mean, memes, memes have done really well. Memes have done really well. But I mean, actually, the Jonas point, the meme segment of crypto is kind of divorced from a lot of the rest of crypto. It's a lot of people that don't own anything but memes, right? Their entire, their entire portfolio is very NFT-like.

It's very NFT-like. It's like a lot of buckets of crypto trade based on beta to Bitcoin. It's like ETH and Solana, etc., although that's breaking a little bit with ETH at the moment. But then it was like NFTs were just, they were on their own planet, they were on their own universe. And they had, there were two cycles actually to NFTs that actually feel super similar to me to the current meme coin meta, which is in the beginning there was like couple of NFTs that just exploded. It was like Punks, Apes, and those things just went parabolic. And then there was a lull and then there was this explosion in dispersion. And then there were tons of different collections and they were all going up, but a little bit less 'cause there were just way more. And it feels like that's where we are to me, to editorialize here with meme coins, where we had the first run, right? We had the Bonks and the WIFs, et cetera. And there were a couple of like blue chip memes. That sounds funny to say, but whatever. And now it just feels like there's a million of them. I mean, how do you guys feel about that?

Yeah, I mean, I participated in one meme that I could identify with and kind of wrap my head around. Joe Bowden. That was a fun ride for all. 15 seconds, but at the same time, like, I think that our friend of the 1000X podcast, our friend Ansem, says it very well. He says that imagine, you know, you're not supposed to compare these two investment assets. You're supposed to compare it to a casino or a lottery. And if Gen Z realizes that, you know, instead of going and buying a lottery ticket at the gas station with a, you know, billion-to-one odds, they can basically just fire up a meme with a funny cat pic and get rich quick, maybe 1 out of every 1,000 times, that lottery's gonna get played all day on a global basis way more frequently. And I kind of buy into that framework. I think that it is intelligent. And in the absence of, as Chris Dixon said earlier today, regulatory clarity for the more, air quotes, real use cases for crypto, that's a real outlet for some of the desire to accumulate wealth kind of in our space that's sort of allowed right now. So I'm not bullish memes because memes is a space— if you were equal weight all memes, you would basically lose all your money. I'm just bullish the idea of memes and bullish the concept of, you know, trading them if you can get in early to one that actually has some virality attached to it.

Yeah, I agree with you, and I do want to step back for a second and just talk about bubbles and mentalities towards assets like memes. A lot of people outside of the crypto world view crypto the same way that people in the crypto world tend to view memes, and that's, okay, this is nonsense and it's a complete bubble and it's going to collapse at a certain point and then it's going to die. And I think that's the wrong mentality to take. With everything in life, there's a way to win. You just have to really think hard about it and try to find your edge. And so even if you think that memes are the worst, most horrific thing in, in this world, and they're all going to die, and they're all going to go to zero, uh, there, there's a way to figure out how to invest in these things or trade these things properly, uh, and how to actually figure out, okay, well, if a group of 100 memes exists, how do I rule out 70% of them and invest in the 30% that show promise of potentially going up in the future? It's like, as George Soros said, if you see a bubble, Don't run away, pour some fuel on it, light it on fire, right? Double, you know, figure out how to win that game. And that's the mentality that I take towards memes. Even if you believe that these things won't have any future. Now, I happen to believe that they will for one reason and one reason only. There is a massive, massive, massive wealth transfer that's occurring over the next 15 to 20 years from boomers to Gen Z and to millennials. And candidly, we love to gamble. We love to put our money in things that might 100x, that might 1000x. And you can see it when you look at DraftKings. You can see it when you look at casinos. And the reality is that this is the best casino that's ever existed in the history of the planet. And it's candidly a lot of fun. And so even if you don't believe in real utility, there's a wealth transfer to people that believe it's going to be fun. And so there are going to be a lot of people on the sidelines looking at it saying, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening. But there's a market.

I agree. And I think that, you know, my advice to people who are interested in memes would be don't buy WIF. That trade is already played out, right? Buy something early. Get in. If you're early to the parade and there is no fundamental value attached to these things, as we all know, So if you're just trading a psychological bubble-type asset with no underlying value, you can't be the greater fool who buys the highs. So the best way to ensure that you aren't that guy is to ignore literally every meme that has existed for more than a week or two and try to get in early on some of them. I think that people who get shilled on things that, like, WIF and PopCat and whatever else is up a lot, You know, that's kind of stupid. So memes as a space are interesting. And to Avi's point about the wealth transfer, that is a big infusion of cash that's going to be ongoing, trillions of dollars worth that are going to be ongoing. It's going to make the COVID stimulus look like, you know, spit in the ocean. So a lot of that will go into gambling on memes because that's what younger generations do. Like, I talk to younger commodities traders all the time, and all they want to talk to me about is crypto. They don't want to talk about oil. So it's like, true story. So basically my thinking on that is that as that wealth transfer occurs, you know, there's the saying on Twitter, you have a few years to hyper-gamble your way into elite status or you become a wage cuck for the rest of your life. You know, it's an obnoxious statement, but it's kind of true. My personal arc has been to hyper-gamble in the way that was available to me in my early 20s, which was to try and become a trader on Wall Street. And now you don't need to have that. You don't need to go to a good college to get a job at— well, I got one at Lehman Brothers, unfortunately, but you don't need to go to an elite college to hyper-gamble these days. Crypto is the world's trading floor. And I do think we'll see a lot of younger people try to turn, you know, $25,000, $50,000 inheritance into $500,000. Like, you know, a gentleman that Avi and I spoke to earlier today. So yeah, I think it's gonna continue.

Is there, um, now I hate, like, I don't want to be this guy, you know, uh, it's like, but because I hate the VCs trying to over-intellectualize meme coins, but is there something more to this? I just, I don't know. One of the, as a consumer of memes outside of crypto on my social feeds, I actually use them because they're funny, but they also kind of tell me what the zeitgeist of culture is at the current moment. Like, an example would be after you watch the presidential debate, right? There's the news, which I basically don't listen to very much anymore, and then I look at my social feed and I see what the meme artists are doing, and I kind of look at who they're making fun of, and I'm like, "Ah, that person lost." Like, that is— I know that's kind of silly and stupid, but, you know, these are comedians. Comedians are also really good at this. Comedians are really good at finding out who is the incumbent in power, and they punch up. They just feel it instinctually, 'cause if you punch down, it's not funny. So you can always tell who's in power by who the comedians are making fun of. And it's kind of something like that with memes. You almost squint at memes and you're like, is this some kind of market-based algorithm for attention? And it's so early and you really have to make a stretch to make that happen, but it kind of looks like that to me.

I mean, I, I actually, I think you're right. The only thing that I'd point out is that there's hyperfragmentization. In terms of memes and content on social media and online. The stuff that you see is not the stuff that everyone else sees. There are like thousands of little subcultures and subpockets, and it actually is one thing that I'm generally worried— it makes me worried about the country, is when you have these pockets that don't interact with each other, they don't talk to each other, they just view their own information. I mean, this has been talked about ad nauseam, so I won't talk about it here, but I do agree with you on the point that they tap into something more visceral, right? It taps into the unspoken emotion of what a country or town or city is feeling at that moment. And it is expressed through this humor. And that's actually important to pay attention to because what you'll find is that you'll find that, I mean, if you look back at 2016, uh, a huge driver of Donald Trump's campaign was his online presence. Were all the crazy memes that were posted on Reddit that would go extremely viral. And I actually, I remember that pretty vividly, that that was— it got people talking about Trump in a really big way, as he had this massive online presence. So I do think that there's some signal in that. And that, you know, I— we started this podcast because we used to talk to each other on the phone, you know, for maybe once a week, once every 2 weeks for an hour, and we would always come away with actionable insights. And so that's one of the things I like to do on the podcast, and I think why we've managed to garner an audience is because we always— we don't like to just talk high level. We like to talk, okay, well, we've talked the high level, what are you going to do with it? And so just to do that with the meme discussion, it's exactly as you said, is what, what really resonates with people and when does it resonate with people? One of the best ways to figure out what you should be allocating to is when you're in a lull, when the market is down, when nobody is talking about memes, maybe when Bitcoin is $52K. $55K, everybody's desperate, everybody's scared. Go into the channels, go into the Discords, go into the Twitter chats. What is still being talked about? What still has community engagement? Who are the craziest mofos that you can find that are still engaged with these projects? And that's when you find alpha. 'Cause a lot of the things that don't last, when things look bad, everybody gets out. But if you can identify when things look really bad, oh my God, there are these 5 communities that are still like producing the craziest stuff. Uh, that's actually a pretty good signal. And, you know, I would put it on your calendar, like if Bitcoin's down 20%, 30%, run that exercise, go do that. I think you'll come out pretty happy.

So I, I wanna change the topic here from, from memes. I wanna ask you guys a couple about a couple of things. Um, AI, and then I wanna ask you guys about credit. And on the AI, let's start with the AI side first. And, you know, how many folks in this room use ChatGPT or Claude or something like that on a daily basis? How, how many would you say you use it more than Google now? That's nuts. That is crazy. If I, 2 years ago, if I'd said, hey, there's a device that you're gonna use more than, there's an application you use more than Google, I would have taken the under 101 times out of 100. And there's obviously an enormous amount of capital that's getting plowed into this space, and I do wonder how that impacts the capital that might find its way into crypto. We are not the newest, shiniest thing anymore. I feel like one of the things that crypto had going for it was, all right, when they open the liquidity spigots, which they have to do, then the money is going to flow to crypto because whether or not even you really believe in it, you believe that it's going to go up because we're the riskiest of the risk-on assets. But now there's kind of AI, and I wonder if it competes with investment in crypto. What do you guys think about that?

I don't think it does. I think that from an investment perspective, the two spaces are, except where they overlap like TAO, BitTensor, you know, just speaking about the crypto as an asset class versus AI as an asset class. From an investor's perspective, those two spaces are orthogonal. Like you don't, I don't see, crypto venture capital is its own practice and its own little world. And investing in AI as an individual is kind of impossible. So for a retail investor, you kind of can't get exposure to this stuff. And as an institutional investor, like, you haven't really— how many benchmark, like, mega VC firms are there out there? There's a16z, there's Sequoia, there's a couple others. They're not like getting rid of their crypto arm to invest in AI. Like, all that capital is available to both asset classes. So I don't really see the two spaces as competing. I see them as more synergistic in general because, you know, this is actually, I'm stealing one of your arguments, Avi. If you're a retail investor and you want to invest in AI, to credit Mr. Feldman here, very wise trader, you can't get into the best deals in the like trad AI space. You have to go for a DAO, you have to go for something with a token because you're not an accredited investor. And so ultimately, just to wrap this thought up, I think that, you know, Sorry, I know you wanted to divert from memes for a second, but I think that crypto x AI is a meme. Like, TAO is a meme coin for now, even though the use case is plausible. But it's a 5-year, 5-year bet. It's a VC bet. So for now, it's just like, what's going to get a good narrative and get some hype and focus and attention? And I don't think it sucks capital out of crypto.

Yeah, I mean, at the, at the end of the day, the people that are diverting their capital away from crypto to AI, it's Silicon Valley. That's, that's who's diverting it. But from the beginning, crypto was not really a Silicon Valley thing. I'll be honest, most of the capital that came into crypto was from everyday people. It was from randos from all across the world. Silicon Valley definitely had a part and has funded a lot of, you know, very interesting projects, but they're not a driver. They, they didn't build the asset class. I mean, they candidly, Silicon Valley built AI, right? That's, that, that's their thing. Props to them for it, but they didn't do that with crypto. And so I do think, well, in the short term it diverts capital, not really in the long term. And to the point that Jonah made that he so kindly stole from me and then told all of you, you know, it's true. You can't, like, you just can't get in. There's nothing that you can invest in as an average person other than Nvidia and maybe data centers that focus on AI. I mean, you can go short Duolingo, I guess, but other than that.

Yeah, I mean, the only place where AI really detracts from crypto is morale and sentiment. Like, I remember when did it really start to blow up? Was it late '22? It was '23, wasn't it? When Gensler basically started a big crusade against crypto post-FTX, and then AI just blew up. I remember crypto as a community just feeling really bleak and bearish, like, oh no, like now there's a new shiny thing and no one's gonna care. But I think what's encouraging about crypto is that there is something beyond just the technology. Crypto keeps central banks honest. It is a foil to centralizing forces in the technology industry, which AI is. AI is definitely, it's got this Skynet-like kind of sinister quality to it, and it takes so much money and compute to train one of these big benchmark models like what Claude or ChatGPT are running on top of. Like, that doesn't feel very good.

Where are the articles about AI energy? I've seen hundreds of these things about Bitcoin energy over the years. Where's all the— where's all the articles?

Well, there's— I mean, like, Amazon just bought Three Mile Island. That's a—

that's pretty baller. I can't even fault them on that.

That is very cool.

Actually, such a—

like, if you talk about putting your nuts on the table, that's a big one. Like, that's crazy.

If, you know, sorry, but it's indicative of, it's indicative of how much energy they think they're going to need. And, you know, the competitive vector that they want to approach was just cheap energy. I mean, that's crazy. Um, all right, moving on from there, I want to ask you guys about credit. And part of the reason why I think we went up so hard, so fast, so viciously in 2021 was you had these desks, right, like the Genesises of the world that were funding these like carry trades or arbitrages, which turned out not to be arbitrages, but they were essentially creating credit for people that wanted to go long or short in crypto. And that space was the biggest casualty, I would say, of the last bull market. I mean, those just blew up extremely publicly. That was, you know, the BlockFi of the world. That was the Genesis of the world, the Celsius of the world, etc. And we haven't really seen a credit complex get built out in crypto since. And how does— how do you guys imagine that coming back?

I mean, it exists, it still does. And you're just looking in the wrong place. It exists on exchanges in a huge part. I mean, open interest across Binance, OKEx, all the places that allow you to trade on futures has gone through the roof and You look at the CME, you know, I do think that there is definitely still some risk there. It just turns out that the business of offering credit in crypto without other business lines turned out to not necessarily be a good business. You'd make money, you'd make money, you'd make money, and then when everything unraveled, you would die. And if you didn't have that money to, you know, that all these exchanges get from your actual transaction volume, you just ended up in a really tough spot, which is why I think nobody's tried to rebuild that business, just because people realized it's a really bad business to build.

I kind of disagree with that, actually. I have a slightly more nuanced take, but you're not wrong. And what I'm about to say is my opinion. It's not a statement of fact, but what I would humbly posit to you, Avi, is the idea that, well, look, when I was running crypto trading at DRW, we were big, we were power users of the crypto lending industry. We trade, we, you know, Anchorage, BlockFi, we were, we were in, you know, neck deep with all these companies. And from my background as a credit trader as well, what I'll say is that crypto lending is an industry, there's nothing unique to crypto about it. The reason why all these companies blew up is not because it's a bad business, it's because they had bad risk management. So if you just implemented a proper risk management framework, you can hold tokens on balance sheet and lend them out without blowing up in a bear market, provided you've just analyzed the credit of the people that you're lending to and who, who, you know, who you transact with. So basically the problem with the crypto lending industry is that it was crypto native and the risk management was terrible. Everybody blew up in the bear. What you need is somebody like a State Street or a BNY Mellon who does stock lending and understands how to model risk and model variance and model credit which is what they do all day. There's nothing unique about crypto. It's just a widget that has X percent annualized volatility, and you run your risk models on that. Basically, the expertise for that is not crypto-native, it's trad fi. So I— this is another Trump trade. I think that if— just to finish this thought, sorry for rambling— if Trump—

ramble away, it's okay—

if the SEC becomes friendly to crypto and provides a framework, I think you will see the trad fi lending industries that operate in other asset classes bolt on crypto with their existing frameworks and do just fine. But without that regulatory clarity, I think they're going to not touch it with a 10-foot pole.

Yeah, I mean, I don't— I actually don't disagree with anything that you said. And when I say that it's not a good business, it's because of the people that comprise it, right? So when you think about who is State Street going to be willing to lend to, it's actually a pretty small group of people, and their borrowing volume is going to be pretty small. I mean, there's a sort of a limit to the size of the industry right now. And if you want to go past that limit, then you're lending to people that you probably don't want to be lending to.

So let's do a bet between you and me, and maybe the audience can monitor this and you can bet with each other as well. Contingent— let's not make it political— contingent upon regulatory clarity and an SEC that accepts crypto's existence— Harris could put one in there as well, just like Trump could— contingent upon that, By 2028, my bet is that the crypto lending industry is flourishing and it just looks a lot like the trad fi lending industry. Would you bet with me on that?

Well, you have to define what flourishing means.

Well, Ippolito is going to be our judge.

We can hash out the details over drinks.

Okay.

We can do a Polymarket on this. It'll be up in no time.

You know, your definition of flourishing different from my definition of flourishing.

Let's make it his definition.

That's perfect.

Can we get any lawyers in here that can help us with this?

No, please, please.

All right, guys, I want to get a sense of where you see opportunity today. Broad question for crypto in general. You know, obviously Bitcoin is kind of its own. We haven't really talked about this. Some people like classify Bitcoin as its own special snowflake. Maybe Bitcoin trades differently relative to even like Ether, Solana, or alt or something like that, depending on who wins this election. But, you know, how do you kind of— when you look out into the crypto world, you know, where do you bucket, you know, opportunity, risk? What looks interesting to you?

Oh man, everywhere.

Yeah.

I mean, if you're a trader, it's everywhere. This market is still remarkably inefficient. I mean, if you just do the work to figure out, you know, what the heck is going on with specific assets. And when I mean do the work, read some filings, read some blog posts, Go look at the data. I mean, one great thing this year was Helium started signing up, you know, thousands of users a day, started getting contracts with a lot of the large telecom companies, and it was actually a pretty good service, and it was trading really poorly until people started to figure this out, and it took months. I mean, another example is just news is poorly digested by the market. And so if you pay attention to things that come out and the market hasn't reacted to it, then you can put on some really nice trades. I mean, I just— an example of this was when the SEC appealed the Ripple, the recent Ripple filing, and it took 20 minutes for Ripple price to react. If you're paying attention, I mean, that 20 minutes is basically free money. Right?

It's—

these things exist in the, in the world of trading. Now, in the world of investing, what I like to do is I like to think about what's going to do really well when everyone's eyes are on this asset class. Like, where are people—

which they're not right now, which they're not right now, which they're not.

So where, where are people gonna pay attention? And the two best sectors that I can come up with are DPIN and AI. And so the question is, how do you invest? And my answer has always been, you wait for an extreme in the crypto market and then you allocate. I mean, I, I always think it's a mistake to allocate when you're not at, at an extreme. So for example, allocating on a day where Bitcoin is up 3% probably isn't the right move because you tend to get these like pretty nuts, uh, nuts days, um, you know. And so it's, it's about waiting for the right moment, getting a good entry price, and then allocating to the right sectors, and then just waiting.

So my answer to your question would be like, normally I'm a pretty sleepy investor in crypto. I, I've found that I do better when I just hold on to core positions. The last year and a half has really been about Bitcoin dominance on an inexorable rise, and I've been pretty much 80% in Bitcoin. I think that's changing now. I think that there's a ton of opportunities suddenly that I haven't seen in over a year, sort of cropping up in these little pockets of the market. I've been super bearish altcoins versus Bitcoin, and I've allocated accordingly, but now I think that's changing. Like, it's, this is the time to lock in. It's not an accident that I've slicked back my hair and dressed like Steven Seagal today. I'm focused and paying attention. And I think that—

Is this you locking in, gentlemen?

Okay, you know what, guys?

I'm getting excited. I'm trying to make a point here. Screwing with my momentum, Avi. So basically what I think, like the chief came on our podcast and shilled TAO, not financial advice, of course. And it really awakened me to the possibility of basically there are going to be pockets of crypto that take off like crazy, that 10x, 100x. And I think TAO is an early indicator of that. I think that like it's notable that suddenly an altcoin can perform for basic, like a big one can perform for basically the first time since 2021. And I think there's gonna be tens or maybe dozens more of these things, more than 100 of these things. And to use Avi's framework that I actually like a lot, he tweeted out, you have to pick the right sector and then pick the fastest horse within that sector. You can't look through the Discord of every single altcoin, so you basically have to pick a sector. Avi said DePIN and AI. I would say RWAs, AI, and DePIN are the ones that I'm focused on. There are a few strong horses in there, and then once you see one start to break out during a time when just before that asset class gets mainstream attention. Like, you don't want to be allocating after a friendly SEC gets installed and then lays out a really clear framework for RWA, you know, crypto assets, right? You want to be in before that happens. So basically, we're at the point in the cycle where pre-election you have some opportunity to pick winners ahead of a big ripper.

All right, final, final question for you guys. We've got 3 more minutes here. So how many folks are joined crypto in the last year or two, something like that? Oh wow, we got only OGs here. All right, never mind. I was just gonna say, you know, I think the irony of crypto is that you do have this environment where retail is positioned to make money at an earlier stage than almost any other sector that exists in the world, which is awesome. That's so great. I also think that probably the majority of retail investors have actually lost money doing this. So what advice would you guys have for someone that doesn't have the institutional training that the two of you do, that wants to make money in this space?

I mean, it's just— it's all about patience at the end of the day. I think we all get very accustomed to making money very, very, very quickly in this asset class. It's like you wake up one day and your portfolio 5Xs. And then you wake up in a week and it's down 50%. I mean, things move fast, but you have to move slow. If you don't have the time to spend, you know, 6 hours a day staring at charts, just don't. Just relax, be patient, you know, do your research, make your bets, and then wait. And when things get like absolutely nuts, you know, when literally everyone and their mother is talking about crypto, celebrities are painting Bitcoin on their nails, You know, that's when, you know, if this podcast starts getting like 100,000 listeners an episode, I'm out.

I am done.

It's over.

Yeah, I agree with the general thesis of Avi's comment is don't overtrade. I think that overtrading, you know, seen it in commodities, seen it in crypto, that's how people chop themselves up and earn very average returns in extreme parabolic environments and lose all their money in other environments. So not overtrading is key. I think not using leverage is key. Bitcoin being a big part of your portfolio is key. Having liquidity to buy other assets when the prices look good is key. But ultimately, I think the smartest way for new entrants to the space to make money is to listen to podcasts, learn, understand the fundamentals of the space, many of which are totally—

Which podcast, Jenna?

There's one called 1000x.

Yeah, I've heard of a good one. Pretty good one. Yeah, you just have to, if you find that you're not interested in the space, like you're not like drinking in podcasts and content and crypto Twitter, it's probably a time to dial back your activity and just sit in Bitcoin and do other stuff. If you really care a lot, the opportunities will come. I've found that in my commodities career, as my interest ebbs and flows. I'm always better at trading when I care more. So gauge your own level of excitement before you start to trade. And if it's subjectively low, you should ease off the accelerator.

All right, fellas, that is all the time we have. Guys, give it up for the 1000x guys.

Thank you guys so much.