Polymarket's $2B Deal with ICE Changes Everything | Weekly Roundup

The technology changes so, so fast that if you're not close to what's going on the ground level, you're kind of going to miss these big kind of generational opportunities. Do you actually think that the users on Polymarket understand which blockchain it's on? And I remember having this conversation with Shane, like, it's like, hey, why is it on Polygon? He's a very practical-minded CEO and leader, and I think very much obsessed with what does the end customer see?

Basically congratulated him. He said, thank you. Uh, you know, today was a day to celebrate and to smell the roses. Tomorrow it's back to war, right? And that has always been his mindset, is every day he wakes up going to war to win this market and to build the business that he thinks, uh, is going to just be, you know, generational.

This episode is brought to you by Blockdaemon. You'll hear more about them later in today's episode. The Digital Asset Summit, our premier institutional conference, is right around the corner in London from the 13th to the 15th. We'll be be at the old Billingsgate with some of the largest banks, funds, and allocators as they explore how to gain exposure to crypto. We'll have a ton of great speakers including Dan Morehead, Joe Lubin, Guy Young, and a bunch of amazing side events so you can meet some of the largest names in the industry. So follow the link in the show notes to find out more and use code EMPIRE200 for £200 off your ticket. Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Blockworks. Our hosts, guests, and the Blockworks team may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to Empire. We got the roundup. We got Rob back in action.

Rob, I almost have forgotten that Rob was part of the crew. Honestly, Rob joined us.

I can tell you something. It was 2 weeks ago. In that 2 weeks, I've had like 4 people come up to me and be like, you've really transformed Empire. Like, you should keep doing what you're doing.

I'll tell you what. Let me tell you something.

I'm going to tell you something.

Your cousin, your wife.

No, no, no, no, no. It was like, literally in Singapore at this like side event, a guy who's like a sales guy at like one of the custodians, came up to me and he was like, I just want to tell you something. He's like, you got to keep doing what you're doing. Like you've transformed that podcast. That's it. Now every week.

And then, and then I heard any asks you to custody all the Dragonfly assets.

And then I heard it from another VC yesterday. So, you know, I'm just telling you, like we're, we're a team, but it's been brought to another level, you know, like it's 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 5.

So, all right, well, should we have a prediction market of, or like a real-time barometer of like sentiment of Empire Pod? Like, where, where's that, Jana? We got to do the TB, the, the tickers in the bottom. We got to do sentiment live stream.

Coming, coming, sir, coming. Yeah, we have nice new design for Empire coming out. We got the tickers, we got all that stuff. The whole—

listen, I gotta get on the graphic though, okay? Like, you know, right now I'm tagged on the Twitter, but the graphics—

Rob's that kind of guy that you extend a hand, he chops off your arm.

Rob's in the middle of this picture right now too. We're just That's kind of funny.

Rob, baby steps, baby steps. It's like investing, you know, it's like you gotta, you gotta work your way up to it. It took me, for what it's worth, it took, listen, man, I'm just gonna say it took me 3 and a half years to get a hoodie. 3 and a half years to get a hoodie.

Well, that's because no one got a hoodie. Mike and I are so cheap with merch. We were so like, no one gets merch. We don't know. So you stupid use of money. I now actually think it's a good use of money, but yeah.

Santi, I don't know. You said it's like investing and I think you understand now how I invest. And I don't invest with any patience whatsoever.

No, no, we, we got that from the get-go, man. There is, um, you've been busy, sir. Uh, I mean, look, there's a lot to talk about, guys. Going back to business, um, let's, let's start with Polymarket.

Let's start with Polymarket. So I think, um, I think you two can both do some victory, uh, laps here. Um, Santi, obviously you were at ParaFi when you guys did, um, Polymarket very, very early. I think, I think, uh, Ben and ParaFi are Maybe the largest shareholder from second, first or second largest shareholder.

Yeah, I think they're, I think they're number 2 behind Founders Fund. Founders Fund. Well, and now ICE. So they're number 3 behind ICE.

Yeah. So the big news is they are raised. They raised, they are raising, they raised $2 billion from ICE. ICE owns NYSE and a lot of other capital markets businesses, but most well known for owning the New York Stock Exchange. And they invested $2 billion. as well as a, they have a data distribution deal or markets distribution deal as well with the New York Stock Exchange and ICE, uh, at a, I think it was $9 billion valuation. Shane becomes the, I think the headline was the youngest self-made millionaire in the, uh, billionaire in the world. Um, people proceeded to share a lot of cringy internal screenshots, which, uh, you know, I can rant about if we want, but anyways, hats off to Polymarket. Nice work to you too. Um, but would love to hear maybe more color on this deal. Polymarket also announced— Shane also announced two other deals that had happened that never really got announced. One was, I think, led by Founders Fund. One was led by Blockchain Cap. I might be getting that wrong, but yeah, maybe you guys could give us a little bit more color on, on just like, yeah, the success story here.

Yeah, I mean, Santi's been— yeah, he's been in it longer, so he should do more of the conversation about the, the early days. We, um, so that round that happened in 2023, late '23, early '24, Um, we did alongside Founders Fund. They priced it. We were the largest investor in that round. Um, and then the— you mentioned the next two rounds. The next round was led by Blockchain Cap right before the, um, right before the election, uh, which we also participated in. And then there was another Founders Fund-led round out of their growth fund earlier this year, um, at a $1.2 billion valuation that we also participated in. So, so we've been backers of Shane for, you know, call it you know, coming up on 2 years. Um, we've known him for a long time. We've been, I think, believers in him as an entrepreneur for— since the beginning. He's like got such, you know, just incredible ambition, maniacal focus. Like even during the worst of the bear markets, '22 and '23, he just was always convinced that he was going to create a generational company which will create the markets for every— everything. He, I think, you know, is obsessive in a way very, very few entrepreneurs are, you know, there's a lot of entrepreneurs. I mean, there's two entrepreneurs on this podcast with me. And like the level of obsession that he has is just a level that I think very few people are able to reach.

And that was— can you go deeper on what that actually looks like? I think a lot of founders maybe are listening, being like, I'm obsessed, I work hard. And I've spent a little bit of time with Shane, and I, I know what you're saying, but only because I've spent some time with him. Can you maybe go deeper on that?

Yeah, I think with Shane, um, he had a, he had a vision very early on. And, you know, he was not the first prediction market to get launched. And Santi could probably talk a lot about this too, because he was there in the beginning. But he was not the first prediction market to get launched. He, you know, there was Augur, which obviously Joey Krug, uh, was one of the founders of and is at Founders Fund now. Of that round. There was, you know, Kalshi was launched actually before, um, for Polymarket. But he had this vision that at— when he's a young guy, that he was going to create a market for everything. That was the vision. That was the thing he said from the earliest of days. And then he put it in his tweet yesterday, right? Every time I have talked to him since then, his belief was that, uh, prediction markets and event contracts created better information flow They needed to exist to coalesce information and incentives, and they needed there to be a market for everything so you could have direct access and a way to express views. That vision of his started, I think, in the late 2010s, and every single time you would talk to him after that, that was what he was building. There was never, "Oh, hey, listen, I don't necessarily have PMF yet," or, "Hey, this market hasn't done well. Maybe I'll do something else." There was never, oh, like, you know, I've had this, um, he did the, the, you know, he kind of had this thing with the CFTC in which they settled and he didn't waver at that point. You know, FTX went down, he almost ran out of money, he just paid himself less, kept working on it, right? There was never a time where I think he had anything on his mind other than, I am going to build this business and no matter what people are saying to me, no matter how bearish people are, no matter how little money I have, no matter how the market is perceiving what I am doing. I know that this is going to be a generational company, and I am going to build it, and people will understand eventually. And, you know, yesterday, uh, or 2 days ago was kind of the culmination of that. But, and I wrote a tweet that I put, I also think it's the beginning of now the rest of the world realizing what he said, right? And now the rest of the world coming into understanding that he is there needs— this needs to exist, right? And I, um, him and I exchanged a few texts on Tuesday. And, you know, to his credit, and I love this about him every time I talk to him, he said, you know, basically I congratulated him, he said, thank you, uh, you know, today was a day to celebrate and to smell the roses. Tomorrow it's back to war, right? And that has always been his mindset, is every day he wakes up going to war to win this market and to build the business that he thinks, uh, is going to just be, you know, generational. Um, and so that's what I loved about him, man.

Um, as, as has been tradition now, everyone's tweeting about like screenshots about conversations with Shane. I, I'm going back down memory lane.

Are you pulling up some old emails here, dude?

No, no, no, not emails. March 2021, we're closing the round. Um, it was I think the first round at like 15 million or so.

15 million, I think so.

We're like sub-20. We participated, and it's, it's, it's, you know, testament of what Rob's saying. You know, I go back, and we were back in the early days. Shane and I were going back and forth.

What's that, a 600x? So it's $9 billion.

We are, uh, you know, I will say Shane is one of those founders that— and I tweeted about this the other day— which is, what was different? Because you had Augur. Funny enough, Joey started Augur, didn't work, now is a founder's fund, did the round, one of the later rounds, um, on Polymarket. And look, there's a couple things of like why this actually worked. And look, a lot of it is easy to like in hindsight try to like diagnose and like path dependency and whatnot, but it really starts with founder. I mean, Shane, Shane was early in Ethereum. He was like a crypto, you know, a cypherpunk was at NYU and kind of had started Union, didn't work out well. And then I was like, hey, I want to do prediction markets. It's the future of media. I'm like obsessed with this idea. And we share with that. Like, I was like, absolutely. Like, you know, Parify, we had been investors in Augur. It didn't work. And so it's just a really good example of you, it pays to revisit the thesis, which is a lot of times people make an investment, doesn't work, and say totally discredits the category. Crypto, how many times have we been in that scenario where like DeFi didn't work? And so, okay, you discredit that, or perps on-chain didn't work, and then you have Hyperliquid. So again, like, the technology changes so, so fast that if you're not close to what's going on the ground level, you're kind of going to miss these big kind of generational opportunities. Um, I think poly market prediction markets are still very, very early. Um, this idea of putting markets on everything is, is just nascent, right? Um, but yeah, it's been a long, long grind in the making. Shane is just super adamant about idea— this idea that prediction markets are going to be huge, and he stuck with it. Um, I, I guess like it's important to underscore, you— timing is important. The elections were super important, right? Uh, I would say like there were key pivotal moments in the evolution of, of Polymarket that you had like the first Trump election where it was contested and it was super heated and the attention just went to Polymarket cuz it was like a market and people were pointing to that.

And then you also have the downfall of mainstream media and a—

Correct. And Trump got deplatformed.

Yeah.

And then you had, you know, geopolitical tension and people are looking at like, you know, events in the Middle East and like, I remember it is in my estimation like the most breakthrough kind of consumer application that crypto has had, and I tweeted about this the other day, which is maybe something that we can talk about here or not. It's this idea of like, do you actually think that the users on Polymarket understand which blockchain it's on? I would tell you like, you, we all know where it is, but do you like, it's on Polygon. And I remember having this conversation with Shane, like, it's like, hey, why is it on Polygon? And he just, He's a very practical-minded CEO and leader, and I think very much obsessed with what does the end customer see. And then of course the crypto native crowd jumps in and says, well, what happens if Polygon's down? That's going to disrupt the service and all this. And it's fair, it's true. But you know, it's one of those, it's just a good example of, um, do one thing really well and just continue to double down on that. And it's not to say Polymarket's perfect, by the way. Like there's a tail end of markets that You know, liquidity, sourcing liquidity for markets had been an issue and the Oracle dispute resolution had been an issue with like UMA and there was contentious stuff about how to do that. And, um, but yeah, no, it's, yeah, hats off to him. Shane, you know, we'd love to have you on the pod now that you've announced everything. And I know he was, I know he was sort of in a quiet period to get licensed in the US and whatnot through this acquisition, but we'd love to have him on. I think he, it would be a great conversation.

He told me his next media appearance in the US is going to be 60 Minutes. I think so.

Yeah.

Oh, 60 Minutes.

Well, I don't, I don't know if he's actually doing that or if that was—

rather do 60 Minutes than Empire. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. That's insane. That's great. Come on, Shane. Across 30+ networks and 180 endpoints, Blockdaemon Earn Stack unites staking and DeFi into a single institutional toolkit for crypto rewards with multi-layered security, full asset control, and 24/7 support. Blockdaemon Earn Stack is built for scale and regulatory clarity. Non-custodial staking and seamless DeFi access all in one stack. Direct access to DeFi with no intermediate smart contract or vaults. To book a demo, make sure to click the link in the show notes or head over to Blockdaemon Earn Stack to find out more. Thanks to Blockdaemon for making today's episode possible. The machine economy is here. Devices are monetizing data for their users all over the world. Tokenized robots are generating revenue for token holders. The first machine economy free zone is live in the Emirates, and it's all happening on Peak, the machine economy computer. Head to peak.xyz. That's P-E-A-Q.xyz to find out how you can benefit from the age of automation, or click the link in the show notes to find out more. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply. I have a question for you guys. So Shane, if you spend time with him, I'm going to— people will laugh at me for saying this, but like he has aura and he has, he has like a way of carrying himself. And actually I've talked to ex-PolyMarket people who, you know, built, helped build PolyMarket with him. And I was like, was, you know, what's Shane's like deal? Like, is he a really good engineer? They're like, oh no, not at all. They're like, is he like an amazing product designer? Like, he does product design, but he's not like world class at it. And I'm— and they're like, I was like, what's the deal? He's like, he just drives the company forward.

Oh yeah.

And he's got kind of like a way, a vibe of doing it that makes other people want to be around him. And I remember being at like the All In dinner with, you know, Chamath and Kalkanis and all these guys in Miami. And Shane walks into the room and it was like, it was like Trump walked into the room. I mean, like everyone basically just like, there's all these famous people in the room. Everyone goes towards him. So I guess my question to you guys, like Rob and Santi, as you coach other founders— now, Santi, you're in the founder seat, and like Rob, you look at a lot of founders— like, what is the lesson to be learned there?

Listen, I think in my mind what Shane does is not something that can be learned, right? And so there's all these things that you can learn as a founder around, you know, business development and, you know, kind of convincing people to do the things that you want and engaging with them where they're at and those are not the things that like Shane does really well and the reason he gets people to do what, you know, is good for Polymarket, good for him. What Shane has is he just has, to your point, a, an ability to share his vision and get other people to buy into his vision, right? They're one of the most important things, and I'm sure both of you guys know this, that you can do as a founder is you can hire top talent, you can get investors and partners to share your vision, to want to be a part of whatever you're building. And it is just, again, I think his maniacal focus and his belief and unwavering, just like, like there is no time in which you would talk to him and you would think he ever doubted himself. Right. And like, I'm sure internally, I mean, I guess I'm not sure, but my guess is internally, at some point over the last 5 years, 6 years, he doubted whether or not this was the right path forward. Uh, but, and never at any point did I talk to him that it did not seem like he actually believed he was going, he was going to build a generational company and that it was not just that he was going to build it, but this was it. And it was always going to be this. And so I don't know if you can learn that, right? But what I do think that, you know, maybe you can take away from it is that it is important to be the evangelist for your company. It is important to be a storyteller. It is important to get the right people around the table, to hire the right people. That is probably the number one thing that you see all of the best entrepreneurs and CEOs do. They tell the story in a way that gets everybody else excited and brings everyone else to the table.

Yeah, invert, always invert. Yeah, I agree with that, Rob. I agree. Santi, I'll help you tell your story. Um, what about on the fundraising side? Because there's a lot of companies that are doing really well right now and a lot of people fundraising and a lot of people raising a lot of money. To go raise $2 billion is not your typical throw together a deck, put the data room and like go talk to some VCs type of, type of thing. How does something like that come together?

It's almost— so just, I want to make one point of clarification is they raised $1 billion in primary and then there was a $1 billion tender. So it's, it's a billion that's injected into the company. Got it. The— but regardless, it's $2 billion from ICE. So, so your point still stands. Those deals are almost a little bit different typically. And I don't have like full transparency into how this, you know, happened with Shane and Polymarket, he obviously wanted to keep a lot of it close to the vest as it was coming together, didn't want it to leak, etc. And we don't have a board seat, so we weren't there at the board conversations. But typically in the really strategic deals, the ones that come from people like ICE, they're both on the M&A side and the investment side, they happen very much in a kind of a principal-to-principal relationship. So, you know, the founder of one talks to the founder of the other, and they hammer out details pretty quickly among the two of them. And then they go tell the team to transact, right? And they say, okay, well, like, listen, like, wouldn't it be interesting if these are the things we did together? Don't you think this could transform your company? Don't you think this would be well received by the market? You know, you saw ICE's stock price traded up on the day. It was like up 2%, um, after the announcement, right? And they said those types of deals happen almost more informally than a lot of the deals that happen with financial sponsors and that are maybe even smaller because they're the visionaries in the room who decide to do them together. And then they go and they tell everybody else to figure out a way to make the math work.

Yeah, very much so.

I mean, we've all seen the deal with Elon tweeting with, uh, with Larry Ellison's like, I think you should put a couple billion dollars in the buying Twitter and it's like, how much? And like, I don't know, at least one. It's always like a— it's always like some of the larger deals just come together easy, far easier. And especially if it's not like a sponsor-led process. So yeah.

When— so Shane's been teasing a token, right? He tweeted out BTC, ETH, BNB, SOL, POLY. Do you guys have any thoughts on if this comes? I mean, it seems pretty obvious that it's coming, but any thoughts on when it comes?

I think it makes sense. Um, the question is, what is it actually— the skeptic in the room might say, what does the token do that you're not already accomplishing today in the platform?

Yeah, I think, um, is it going to be a distraction? And the other reason maybe not to do it would be, does this prohibit, uh, does this prohibit a, uh, an IPO? Right. I don't think so. My, my, my guess is that Polymarket will be one of the early companies to both IPO and have a token. Um, that's right.

Or be acquired.

Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. By, by ICE.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's clearly no reason for someone like ICE to do this deal unless they weren't considering future M&A. Right. Like every time you see a deal like this, like that is the consideration, right? Doesn't mean it will happen, but that was, that was my first thought actually.

It's like they're going to buy within, you know, 16 months or so or 2 years.

Yeah. How big of a dagger is this for Kalshi?

I will say one thing on the record. I've never forgotten that Kalshi threw shade when, when Shane— you never want to kick someone when they're down. And that just has etched an impression on me that I would never use Kalshi for that reason. And obviously I'm biased, but like, what are you talking about here?

Are you talking about the, um, the Antonio Brown tweets?

Dude, they hired a bunch of people to, to throw shade on Polymarket when, when he was down and the CFTC investigation happened. I think when he went to— when the FBI raided his, his apartment. You just don't do that, dude. Like, focus on your lane, and if you want to win, win on a, on a fair basis. Not just— you never want to throw shade on a competitor. Just don't do that. And so I don't care how good of a product it is, I will never use a platform out of principle because of that. And I've never— I will never forget that.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna say something here that I, I probably— I think I've said privately to people, but I probably never said publicly, but I'm just gonna, I'm gonna go for it, uh, on the, on the podcast. Um, I had a reporter bring up to me somewhat of a conspiracy theory But, um, when, when the raid happened, uh, I guess, you know, whatever that was, November of last year, um, it was broken basically while, like, the news was broken basically while it was happening by a guy, a reporter called, uh, Dan, uh, Primek. Um, he's kind of like a, yeah, he's like a tech reporter, VC reporter. Um, as absolutely as I understand it, and this, and I'm also, uh, regurgitating what I was told by, by this other reporter. Like, he has absolutely no, um, uh, contacts at the FBI. He's never broken like an FBI, uh, report, uh, deal before. He's never, you know, broken any sort of like DOJ type of story before. Um, but he does happen to be close to a bunch of people in Silicon Valley. Um, and there is a belief among a lot of the media community that the, um, people either at Kalshi or close to Kalshi leaked under— heard it was happening as part of the, uh, maybe as part of some of the investigation and, uh, leaked it to, uh, to Dan to, uh, to put that, uh, to put that out there. And that's why it got basically broken by a Silicon Valley tech reporter. Um, and then of course, you know, we know for a fact that they went and hired a bunch of, um, you know, basically, you know, KOLs or, you know, people on Twitter to go and like tweet about it. Right? Um, and then, you know, we've seen, I think, what looks like a significant amount of astroturfing, uh, over the last, you know, few weeks specifically ahead of this announcement. And it just sort of feels like there is just a habit of, like, you know, unethical behavior, um, that, uh, for me is— talks a lot and says a lot about, um, you know, whether or not, like, I I would want to interact with, you know, that business.

Lesson, man, you want to, you want to preserve your reputation. Like, you want to win, win fair, win because your product's better. Um, and, and, you know, don't, don't discredit a competitor. Like, just win because you're better.

Yeah. I asked, um, we have an episode actually with the Calshi founder coming out that I recorded with him, and I asked him some of this stuff. Uh, we recorded in person. It'll either come out this coming week. I'm trying to get— there's a big acquisition that's getting announced on Monday or Tuesday, and I'm trying to have them break some of— have that announcement go live on Empire. So we'll see if that happens. So if that does happen, then Kalshi will go live the week after. But yeah, you guys, you should listen to that episode. The last thing, and then we can move on from Paul.

Can you give us like a little, like, you know what he said to— Yeah, like, what is the response?

I mean, the response is basically like, competition, you know, competition drives us to be better and we're friends. And I was like, I don't think you guys are friends. Don't seem too friendly. But there's more. Don't want to spoil all of it, guys. You gotta get people to listen to the podcast.

Tune in.

Fair enough.

The last thing, then we can move on from Polymarket, is so Shane announced these rounds and I was reading through it. It was like, I mean, it's a hell of a list, like Ari Emanuel and Sadiq Navaal and Rick Rubin, Ron Conway, Travis Kalanick, and then Saquon Barkley. And I was like, I was like, Saquon, that's crazy. And I was like, okay. So I started Googling Saquon's investments. Listen to this track record. He's invested early in Ramp, Anduril, Polymarket, Cognition, Anthropic, and Neuralink. He's invested all of his endorsement money the last 4 years into Bitcoin. And he's an LP in Founders Fund, Multicoin, and Thrive. I think he might be the greatest general investor of this generation right now.

Dude, ESPN 30— what is it? 30 for 30 or whatever that episode, like most of the time they do it on athletes that go broke, but like he's up there with like Shaquille O'Neal, I think also has made more money outside the court than he has in his entire like NBA career just because he was so good.

A lot of these guys just take their endorsement money now. They don't like Marshawn Lynch famously didn't spend a single dollar of any of his contracts. Yeah.

Marshawn Lynch. I guess Magic Johnson also has like a huge portfolio outside. Like, but yeah, I think, I think he might be the greatest to ever do it.

Yeah. Yeah. Across 30+ networks and 180 endpoints, Blockdaemon Earnstack unites staking and DeFi into a single single institutional toolkit for crypto rewards with multi-layered security, full asset control, and 24/7 support. Blockdaemon Earn Stack is built for scale and regulatory clarity. Non-custodial staking and seamless DeFi access all in one stack. Direct access to DeFi with no intermediate smart contract or vaults. To book a demo, make sure to click the link in the show notes or head over to Blockdaemon Earn Stack to find out more. Thanks to Blockdaemon for making today's episode possible. The machine economy is here. Devices are monetizing data for their users all over the world. Tokenized robots are generating revenue for token holders. The first machine economy free zone is live in the Emirates. And it's all happening on Peak, the machine economy computer. Head to peak.xyz, that's P-E-A-Q dot X-Y-Z, to find out how you can benefit From the Age of Automation, or click the link in the show notes to find out more. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply. I'd love to talk about this idea of the stablecoin duopoly coming to an end. There was actually pretty interesting news this week that kind of went under the radar, which is Jupiter is launching a new stablecoin on Solana in partnership with Athena, actually. So Jupiter, I think people don't fully understand just like how massive the Jupiter ecosystem has become. And Jupiter sits on a lot of the trading that happens and like money movement that happens on Solana. So they're actually launching JOOPUSD and they're doing it with Athena's infrastructure and backed by USDTB and USDE. And it actually reminded me of this Nick Carter piece. So I don't know if you guys— Robin Santi, did you guys read this piece? The Stablecoin Duopoly is Ending.

No, I skimmed it.

Yeah, yeah, it was a good piece by Nick. It basically just makes the point that like, look, in, throughout history in crypto, we've had two stablecoins, Circle and Tether. And now you have, uh, both with Genius and all these other companies that allow you to launch stablecoins like M0 and Paxos and Agora, you have the ability for, you know, hundreds of people to have their own stablecoins. And, you know, it's like two years ago we were all talking about does it make sense for everyone to have their own chain. Now we're talking about does everyone have it make— have— does it make sense for everyone to have their own stablecoin? Um, but yeah, I'd love to get your guys' take on just like, uh, Rob, I know you spend a lot of time in stablecoins. Like, what, what do you think happens from here? Like, who— you know, we, we really only have a— it, it is USDC and Tether, and their market shares are coming down a little bit, but like, they're still obviously the dominant players. Um, who, who else becomes dominant here? Like, will we see a bank have one of the biggest stablecoins? Will we see a fin— you know, a fintech will be crypto-native people? Like, how do you— what do you think about this?

Um, I don't think it'll be crypto-native, uh, so I think I would rule that one out.

I—

listen, there are two things that are happening here, which is that incentives are driving every company, every wallet, every fintech to want to have their own stablecoin, right? Um, either it's for branding reasons, it's definitely for economic reasons, Um, it's because they want to control the way those economics are shared. There's just a very clear understanding that these companies, if they own the distribution already, they don't think they should be sharing all of those economics or giving up all of those economics to, you know, whoever the issuers, right? Um, and they also think there are things that they can do around loyalty. There are things that they can do around, you know, additional yield. There are things they can do around that create like stickiness in their product if they have their own stablecoin. That is the incentive. And so we are in what I think are the early days, actually, of people launching their own stablecoins. Now, the fact of the matter is, is that people don't really want to launch their own stablecoin in so much as that they have to go manage their own liquidity and they have to build out their own APIs and they have to build out the wallet infrastructure, etc. What they'd rather do, of course, is they'd rather go and use, you know, one of these service providers who has built the API connectivity into all the ramps who have built, you know, direct mint/redeem, etc. And so, you know, that's why you're seeing people use, you know, Bridge and Agora and Paxos and etc., right? And so, and Athena, of course, the— that's going to continue to happen. Now, will any of these single, like, issued stablecoins for, like, a specific fintech or a specific financial services company be humongous? Unclear to me, right? Because they're, you know, typically only really distributed at the, like, point of contact in that, you know, whatever that, that, that company is, right? And like, I mean, we've seen this with PayPal, for instance, right? We've had pay— PYUSD, you know, that's issued by Paxos, and they've done a little bit of work to distribute it through their own you know, application, right? But they haven't really pushed it as hard as they could have. Um, and then they've done, you know, work to incentivize adoption of it in DeFi, which really just meant paying a lot of money to DeFi proto— to people who are holding it, right? But, and it's grown, and it's grown to some level because of that. Will it grow to, you know, $150 billion or $200 billion or $300 billion because of that? Unclear to me. Especially at a time when, you know, PYUSD is maybe the only, like, you know, big, you know, fintech to have one out there at the moment. But now let's say that every fintech has one, right, in the future. And so I think we're just going to start seeing a lot of fragmentation, and there's still going to be, you know, call it like the big general purpose, you know, stablecoins that are out there that are continuing to do well. But that said, like I don't think— like, I think Circle is in a somewhat tenuous position because they're really focused on being like the regulated stablecoin and for like, you know, business-to-business transactions, etc. And it's like very clear that, you know, if JP Morgan were to tell all of their customers that they could do treasury management on a JP Morgan stablecoin and it was better for them, that like the people who are using Circle now for that purpose like maybe wouldn't use, uh, you know, USDC anymore. Um, I think Tether is like very focused on you know, the global south, and they have brand recognition in the global south where like people don't say, I want a stablecoin. They say, I want, you know, a— I want Tether specifically, but they're still very much distributed by like the centralized exchanges, right? And so the centralized exchanges were to, to, you know, say, hey, we want, you know, more of the yield. That could be a problem for them. So there is still, I think, opportunities or like, you know, surface area for attack. Um, and I— but I think we're in for a, um, a multi, you know, month period, maybe a couple year period of just like disaggregation. Of stablecoins.

There's always like a bundling and unbundling phases, but like the reality is, where does the brand and recognition— at the end of it, it ends with one thing, which is the US dollar. And so people, people are not going to necessarily have an affiliation, is at least my hypothesis around, hey, I want Tether, USDT, or USD-E, or PYUSD. It's like, it's, uh, I worry if you're in that game, stablecoin issuers, and it's challenging. I'd rather PayPal. My appreciation is they haven't really pushed it as much because primarily last year it was difficult from a regulatory standpoint.

They're pushing it now. They're doing it now.

I was talking to one of the board members. They're definitely pushing it now. PayPal actually as a company is deeply, I think, over— they've been— I mean, the stock has not behaved quite well. But it has distribution, has all these merchant relationships. They're in an interesting position to really accelerate that. And I think ultimately I would, or maybe you're become, I guess like maybe Rob, you can help us dissect because you were investors in a couple of these, but like Athena taking an interesting approach to becoming like a white label kind of provider, so to speak, in partnership with Anchorage, right? The first Genius Act compliant stablecoin. Coin, and then you have stablecoin issuers like Agora. Like, how do you— not to spend too much time on this, but like, where— difficult to say because you're investor in all these, but like, where do you think— what's a more defensible business model? Athenas or PayPal's or Agora's? How do you kind of see the stablecoin map matrix?

Do you want to be the platform that lets people issue the stablecoins, or do you want to be the stablecoin issuer yourself?

Or the distributor, or the distributor be the issuer. And if, and so then it just collapses one layer.

Well, I think it's, that's a bit of a misnomer of a question. Um, and maybe you're nice, you're smirking. Um, but the, the reality is, is like being the infrastructure, like Sandy, I'm invested in Athena and Agora, but being the infrastructure layer Uh, is I clearly, I'm not, it was this Kelsey conversation that just happened. So, um, no, no, but, but the, being the infrastructure layer is potentially defensible depending on, you know, how much infrastructure that you're able to provide. Right. So I think like Santi, your point is getting a little bit too, like if you are just the stablecoin issuer, is that a defensible piece of the value chain? Right. And I think if you looked at how Circle has kind of changed their business over the last year, it's clear that they're telling you in the market that they don't think just being the stablecoin issuer is defensible, right? What they're telling you is that they think they need to be doing other things that make them into a payments company, that, and that is where they get defensible, that is where they make their margin over time. Um, I think that is probably right. Right. If you look at Bridge, what has Bridge done? Bridge is now, you know, they're, they're the stablecoin issuer underneath a few of these things at this point. Um, but they are also offering people, you know, orchestration. They're also people, people, virtual accounts. They're offering people, um, the on-ramp off-ramp. They're offering people the card product, stablecoin product. And I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anybody that would tell you in any one of those products they were the best offering. Right? Maybe on, um, on part of the orchestration, their API— they have really good APIs, or at least on a relative basis, some other people. But, you know, most of what you hear in the market is that, like, there's not a better credit card provider, there's, you know, a better stablecoin issuer, but there's, you know, maybe a better on-ramp/off-ramp, but there's not somebody who does all of these things, right? Um, and so they go and they offer this consolidated, uh, product in a way that is, is good, um, for, you know, a somebody who wants to build you know, that type of business. And that's sticky because they now own so much part— so many parts of like your business and what you do and how you create value. And so I think that's where we're seeing everybody move to, right? Um, Athena is a little bit of a different, uh, uh, point because everything that— like, Athena is a company or a protocol that is focused on accruing value to their token. They're focused on accruing value to the protocol. And they're not focused on accruing like equity value in the same way. And what accrues value to a protocol is often different, I think, and we can all debate on what that looks like. Then what accrues value to the equity, or at least it can be the same, but there are other things that accrue value to the protocol. And that's just like, I mean, if you look at the price of tokens, what is the most correlated thing to the price of most tokens? It's TVL, right? And so increasing TVL is probably in and of itself good for Athena, and it accrues value to the token holders, accrues value to the protocol, it accrues value to everybody. Else. And so they have a bit of a different incentive, I think, than, you know, these other people that we're talking to. Um, owning the distribution is also great, of course. Like, it is very hard to build a distribution network. Um, it is probably harder to build a distribution network and then also harder to lose a distribution network than it is easier to build, um, a Uh, you know, the infrastructure layer, but then, you know, maybe easier to lose, but there's reasons to build on both parts of the stack, especially if, you know, and especially in the direct-to-consumer side where winning eyeballs is a knife fight and it is hard. And there's, it's very unclear on how you actually do that, uh, for a lot of new, new companies.

Um, yeah, I would say just most protocols.

Yeah.

TVL has been, but also velocity of that TVL is probably important for certain protocols, like, like, depends on if Hyperliquid, for instance, its velocity, I would say, oh, is important. But yeah.

Don't you think the winners are just wherever the customers are? Like Fantom launched their stablecoin. It's like, you know, you're not going to have like right now you open Fantom, it's like USDC, USDT. It's just going to say, it's just going to say dollars.

Yeah, well, and that's what I'm saying. Like, it's hard to build trust. Like, are people going to be nuanced enough or have a preference for which stablecoin? No. If it's regulated, if it's compliant, like If you, if you have the trust that you have through your platform of choice, uh, your bank, your neobank of choice, which is an evolving narrative now, shocker. Uh, but like Plasma, for instance, hey, like, people are going to care necessarily what type of, you know, provider in the hood. I don't know.

Um, did you see that Coinbase, uh, updated, you know, on Coinbase you get 4% for holding USDC. You see, they took that away unless you're a, um, yeah, they're, they're bringing the, uh, non-member rate down to 0% APY. So if you are a Coinbase One member, Like if you're a subscriber, you know how they have their SaaS platform? If you subscribe to the platform, uh, if you're a Coinbase One member, I think it's $5 a month or $10 a month, you get 4% APY. But if you don't, you get 0% APY.

The multiple on recurring revenue is much higher.

Revenue, baby.

Isn't that what Robinhood does too? Like, isn't that Robinhood Gold where like you have to pay for the monthly and then you get 4%?

I didn't know that.

That's where your boy Omar, who's a huge Robinhood bull, might come in.

But you are too, so I thought— I assumed you—

no, no, I, I, yeah.

But here's the— I was on Real Vision earlier this week, uh, and, and someone asked me like, what is it about stablecoins that make it so interesting? And I think it was— it's like, go back to simple, like, lack of financial literacy. I remember reading stuff like the amount of money that has sat in a checking account at JP Morgan, if you look at their earnings over the last 4 years, is staggering. Yeah, and you would think that people would be sophisticated enough to like sweep that into a money market account.

And $4 trillion right now is earning 0%.

That's exactly what I'm saying, which is like the other part of like in crypto we love yield and we're so mercenary about yield, uh, but like the average consumer doesn't necessarily think in those terms. I will say like in all my learnings in crypto, like MetaMask, I was really surprised when they were like making staggering amount of fees. And you're like sitting there, you're like, gosh, why are people paying a crazy amount to swap through this front end? It's like, man, like people will pay for convenience. I think that this does not go away. And so again, if you have the trust of the consumer, you can do a lot of things. Coinbase, how many times have analysts gotten it wrong where they're like, oh, it's going to zero, fees are going to zero, they're going to be eaten away. And it's like, well, Coinbase is kind of synonymous with crypto. So you have your assets there, it's fairly sticky retail base. Like people are not necessarily like going on-chain, you know, to clip a higher yield. And so it's, it's just a learning for me because I think in crypto we are super sensitive to these things. And then you one-click, you know, you migrate from one protocol to the other and you're chasing, you know, yield farming and all this crap. But it's like, that's not how your normal, your normal consumer really thinks, you know. They really don't want it. Most people really don't ever want to think about money or, or if they're really optimizing it in the the best way.

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Billion dollars, baby.

So I think this is something that happens in crypto a lot is like you might miss the first trade, but then it's like, what's the second order impact? And what happened here is We talked about Aster on the podcast. So Aster is kind of CZ's, uh, competitor and Binance's competitor to Hyperliquid. The second order impact of Aster ripping is that the Binance— is that BNB has started ripping and the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem has started ripping too. So if you look at the, uh, the 7-day on all these prices, uh, basically everything's down between 5 to 15%. BNB is up 16%. Um, I think I don't want to get this too wrong, but I think BSC flipped Solana. Um, let's see. Yeah, BSC flipped Solana in terms of 24-hour DEX volume. So, and active addresses actually. So yeah, I don't know, BSC having a moment. It's funny how quiet the timeline is about it because it's, you know, a lot of the users are in Asia, but I don't know if you guys pay attention to this at all or have any thoughts on it.

Yes, uh, I mean, yeah, the question is, Rob, how much, uh, how many projects are you seeing that are building on BNB? I mean, it's fairly quiet, but a lot of them have felt like have started by ex-BNB employ— like Binance employees. But like, out of 100 projects you guys are reviewing on a monthly basis, is there a meaningful uptick on people want to deploy on BNB?

No. Um, you know, and, and I, I'm thinking through the portfolio right now. My guess is there's, of the, you know, 200+ investments we've done, there's less than a handful who have been built on BNB, right? I think, um, listen, they've done— Binance has done such an incredible job, right? Like, you know, Binance and Tether are the two best businesses in all of crypto, right? They just completely dominated their competitors in so many ways. BNB, obviously a big part of that for, for Binance. You know, obviously originally the BNB token was just an exchange token, um, and then they, and then they launched the chain itself and they fostered a really, you know, kind of amazing ecosystem. Um, that ecosystem though has not necessarily built the most valuable applications, right? The chain itself has become really valuable, the ecosystem has become very valuable, the exchange is extremely valuable, but we haven't yet seen the applications become extremely valuable and be able to, I guess, permeate or proliferate outside of the Binance ecosystem, right? Um, Aster seemed to be kind of doing that and being one of the first ones. And I'm sure some people will tweet at me and, and see things that I missed, and I'm sorry that if I, if I have and, um, you think I'm talking about your, your protocol, but, um, you know It strikes me that everything that happens on BNB today is still downstream from the exchange itself, where, you know, obviously what's happening in Ethereum or Solana is, you know, more organic in nature, right? Which is why we don't see, I think, you know, an uptick of engineers and protocol, um, uh, builders, uh, building there.

Yeah, I think this is all just one big trade, which is people realizing that CZ is coming back. It's very clear something has changed. CZ is coming back and I think it's, you know, he is back, but like he's not like publicly back. Like I would guess in 2026, probably early in 2026, let's call it Q1, maybe Q2, like CZ is publicly back at the helm of Binance. And I think like if you, if you believe that, you also believe that CZ is one of the best operators in crypto. What's the best way to long that? You just kind of get long BNB. I think he'll take over Binance US again, right? Because they kind of spun off Binance US as a separate entity. I think that kind of gets reabsorbed into Binance, and Binance US probably becomes a real competitor in the US. And yeah, I think this is all just one big trade saying, oh wow, yeah, CZ's back. All right.

All right. Well, one of the things, obviously, Solana hate has been percolating and on the rise. I think people are just a bit frustrated that Solana is no longer like front and center. Any, anything there that you guys are seeing? I mean, on the timeline I have noticed just negative sentiment there. It's just sort of like number hasn't really gone up even though it has rallied.

Well, Mert pivoted to Zcash, so.

Oh yeah.

Well, yeah, half of Solana. I don't know. I actually don't think it's like hate for Solana. I just think it's Solana has their first real competition, had their first real competition several months ago with Hyperliquid. And I see Hyperliquid as being actually competitive to Solana. I don't see— I kind of agree with Rob, like, no, this is maybe I'm just biased, but like, I don't really know many good builders building in the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem. And I think a lot of the money that's being moved around on Binance Smart Chain and on Aster is just kind of wash trading. I do think I know a lot of really good builders building on Hyperliquid right now though. And a lot of people, so I think this is kind of just a continuation of like, um, so yeah, people just being like, hey, Solana's got some real competition now. That's what it seems like to me. But to me, it's not, it's not Binance. It's, it's, it's actually Hyperliquid.

I, I don't know, like to the point around, um, you know, the, there being some negativity on the timeline, uh, I think this goes back to like a lot of the conversations we've had around like the timeline itself seems entirely like people are happy or unhappy based on token prices. They're not unhappy or unhappy based on like what's happening in the ecosystem, who's building what, like anything else. They're unhappy or they're happy based on token prices. I was, I was talking to a founder in Singapore last week who had just launched a token recently. And it was saying like, listen, like we, we We built this protocol, this business that has created a bunch of value, you know, is worth billions of dollars today. We're trying to reinvent the way financial markets work. And yet, like, the token traded up and then traded down. And like, my entire timeline is just people, like, swearing at me and telling me how terrible I am. And like, how awful everything I've done has ever been, right? And it's like, all I'm literally trying to do is build a great product for them. And I think the, the incentive mechanism, when one, like, half of these people are anonymous, uh, and two, like, you have early-stage, you know, businesses that have these tokens that people speculate on with most of the time without doing a single, you know, lick of diligence, um, is such that, like, people— and the people also get engagement when they're negative. Like, there is always more negative engagement than there is positive engagement. So the incentive mechanism is just to be negative. Right? Like everybody. And so I find that, um, I don't know, maybe I'm getting old. There's like the boomer in me, but like I find Twitter to be like such a hard place these days because it is just, yeah, it is just so many anonymous people like bitching over absolutely nothing about all the time. And like, I try to curate my feed and yet that is like still permeating so much of, of what I see. And it's because people just, they, I don't know, they, they, they, they're like just glued to their screens on like what happens on a token price every 2 hours, every 3 hours, every 5 hours, right? Versus like thinking about like, you know, what are, what are we actually building here? What are we doing here? What are we inventing? Right. So I've said this, I think I maybe beat a dead horse on a bunch of these podcasts, but, um, I think Solana is going to do great. Right. And I think The timeline is like nothing more than like a way for me to, you know, kind of kill brain cells and feel bad about the state of the world.

Vocal minority, it's a thing. Yeah, but like, it's almost like, uh, you know, the real conversations are not happening on crypto Twitter. It's at the board levels. And, you know, people out the NYSE, like that, you know, those guys are looking at Polymarket in a more disconnected, dispassionate way and saying, God, gosh, there's like 16 million people visiting the site. Elections are coming, we can do markets on a capture retail audience and like pump on the streaming. Robbie kind of betrayed us earlier today, but like, you know, maybe you can share some of your experience there. But it's, it's like, I, I think crypto has always been— the merits of this technology have been entirely predicated on the token asset prices, whereas like the technology is just like— you can just— something like Bitcoin is entirely reliant on the price, right? Because it's a commodity, right? It's like, it's, it's a digital gold. So like, it's like gold, right? If it goes up, then it lends more credibility, more social consensus. As a digital store of value. But everything else, you know, price certainly should track and be a derivative of utility. But like, there's real utility in stablecoins, there's real utility in like settling that in these blockchains and asset ledgers. Like, crypto asset prices are incredibly like sensitive, and so you have to kind of be dispassionate from the prices and saying, God, yeah, like, it's, uh, this technology is real, people are going to adopt it, every business is going to transition their flow to stablecoins because just Makes sense. Like, you know, it doesn't matter if Solana is going up or down, like, people are going to use it.

I mean, yeah. What do you guys think about privacy coins? Uh, about Zcash ripping?

Good to see it, I guess. Rob, you guys were investors in, uh, Tornado.

Maybe I can give a little con— so I was in, uh, I was in Dubai and, uh, the talk of the town was Zcash.

And we were there at that. But you remember that party we were at?

Yeah, it was like a Zcash party. It was like Zuko and, and, uh, you know, Naval is just out here. Like, I, I basically feel like there's like a coordinated—

Naval got an airdrop, uh, you know, a couple basis points, the Zcash supply. Let's put it that way.

Yeah. Um, but anyways, nicely done Naval on the—

what was the catalyst? Like, you know, Zcash basically went for anyone that's been under a rock, uh, you know, Zcash went for like $30 to like $150 plus. Like in a matter of days.

It's up from— it's up from 50 to 191. Yeah, it's up 300% in a month. I don't know. I does feel like privacy could— privacy is like— I think privacy will start, start to have a narrative here. Like you got the Zcash re-rating, you've got Canton. Canton goes live, by the way. I don't know if you guys have been following Canton and I don't know if, Rob, if you guys are investors or Santi, if you, if you have a take here. Yeah. And the OTC markets, the Canton token is— I think their TGE is soon, but the token has gone from like $0.05 to $0.18 or $0.19 in the OTC markets in like a month. So and then they've got their TGE soon.

So I believe there's a single market maker on those OTC transactions.

Damn right. I mean, there's only like one place to get it right now.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. Is it, is it a super efficient market? I don't know, but numbers going up. Fair.

I'm just going to start flashing token prices to you and then you tell me if that's fair.

Point taken. I get it. I'm just trying to build a narrative out of this thing. Out of, out of privacy. Yeah.

One, all right guys, like, like Polymarket's been like, did that right in terms of valuation, but like it's been cooking for years, like 2021, 2022, and all of a sudden it's sort of all the rage. What is the next breakout consumer app? Like, what's the next Polymarket? Or what is the next company that you are seeing and saying, yeah, this company's going to crush because the founder's great? Or, you know, it's not still in the narrative, but you think over the next like 6, 12 months it's going to be like, yeah, like I told you so kind of thing.

I don't know what it is, but I know where to look, which is I'm looking at like, I would, I, a good weekend activity for someone listening to this, and honestly I should do this, I'm just a little busy right now, but, um, would be going to Alliance DAO's portfolio or, or Six Man. I think Dudas has done a great job too, going to the Six Man portfolio or to the Alliance portfolio and just playing with all those apps. And the good thing about crypto is that so many apps are still so bad that there's a few that end up being really good. Like I saw Dudas tweeting about, um, like football.fun.

Right.

And apparently it's, apparently it's a great game. I don't know. But like you spend 30 seconds with that, with a game, you can usually tell if it's good.

I don't know.

Yeah.

What do you think?

Uh, do you have an, do you have an answer?

Otmi?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Inversion.

Okay.

Well, okay.

I think when you did, you asked about like a, a consumer app.

I was gonna, I was gonna ask Rob about Monad, but Monad, obviously Monad Card.

Monad's not a consumer App though.

No, no, maybe something in the Monad ecosystem.

Oh, oh, oh.

You guys were investors. I'm an investor too, but I'm just curious, like, you know, that's coming. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah.

I think, I think I'm on a, um, on all prefaces were just that, like, I am, I don't really spend a lot of my time thinking about like direct to consumer unless there's like a financial aspect to it. So like, you know, DeFi or like something like a Polymarket. Um, you know, I get asked a lot by my LPs, like, you know, what have you done consumer? And my answer is always Polymarket. Right? Even though at its core, Polymarket is an exchange, right? But I think it is like an inherently social application. Um, so when it comes to like other social applications, like, you know, my answer would— to you would be something DeFi related, which I think is not what you're looking for. Um, I think like on Monad, um, you know, super excited to— for them to launch, you know, long time coming. We've been backers since the early days, you know, just incredible team around that. Um, I think it's trading at— what is it trading at today? $13 billion, uh, in the market, uh, perps. Yeah, in the pre-market. Listen, I think in Monad, um, you know, if you talk to the team there, there's a lot that they're trying to build in that ecosystem. And there is, you know, Fantasy Top is a, um, is a portfolio company of ours, and they launch on the Monad testnet, and they're thinking about Monad, I think, for, for, for, um, you know, mainnet. Um, there are other things like that that are launching there, but the main focus there has really been you know, financial markets. It's been payments. It's been, um, they, they acquired a thing called Portal and made this guy, uh, Raj Parekh, the, um, the head of like stablecoins and payments there. He's like probably the single best stablecoin and payments guy at a blockchain, um, uh, and isn't very, very talented and worked at Visa before. You know, I think they're focused on that a lot. They're focused on DeFi a lot. Um, and in fact, I think the only other application that we are investors in is one called Purple, which should be you know, kind of the canonical perp decks on, uh, on Monad. Um, and that's where we've been focused when we've looked at companies on, on Monad. And so, um, I think that'll be the main focus, you know, early on. And I think that they will do an incredible job at it. Like, clearly the infrastructure is meant, uh, for, uh, better financial markets.

Good stuff. What else is going on this week? S&P launched a crypto index, uh, Denari.

Was that powered by Denari? Do you guys invest in that, Rob?

We're not investors. Uh, big fan of Gabe, obviously has been, you know, really successful in a bunch of different, you know, parts of his life. Um, I think where, uh, you know, what Gabe is doing is like a really slow burn and, but he's going after a really humongous market, right? And I think we're, we've talked to him a bunch of times and every time I come away being like, man, I love his vision and where he's going. But, um, you know, we've, we've, we've always, I think, struggled with maybe the slow burn aspect of it all, which, you know, maybe I'll look back in 5 years and be like, man, I'm, I'm an idiot. But that's why we haven't invested today. It doesn't mean we won't. And I continue to talk to Gabe all the time, and we have a good relationship. Um, but we've, uh, that's been a little bit of the, the back and forth there. But listen, I— the broader theme of tokenization, bringing equities on-chain, needing to be in some sort of standard that allows for like Robinhood to talk to somebody else, but you don't necessarily need, you know, the DTCC. You don't need an actual clearinghouse. Um, I buy into like fully. I think the question for me is just like, who actually is that intermediary, or who actually is that infrastructure provider? Um, and I think that's very like unsure still.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, um, cool.

To bring up the more boring stuff before we go to content of the week, uh, anything going on the regulatory front? It's been fairly muted. I mean, government shutdown maybe has impacted that to some extent. Like, two things that I, when I thought about, saw the government shutdown, like regulation and then also IPOs. Is there anything coming up in the horizon, like Q4, that, that is important?

I mean, IPOs would be the BitGo IPO, would be.

Yeah, but it should, it's like, it's delayed now. Like, if there's government shutdown, that impacts like registration.

Yeah, government shutdown slows down the SEC, though I think the SEC got categorized as, um, essential workers, I think. Um, but I, I do think it slows things down.

Yeah, it's definitely slowing things down. We're seeing it, um, across, uh, like a bunch of the people we're, we're close with. Um, I think parts of the SEC are open and essential workers, but not all parts of it. Um, I don't know about listing specifically, so I, I'll defer to you.

Um, we were told that, um, the Senate Banking Committee is, is really trying to move the crypto market structure bill through, even if that means holding like a markup mid-shutdown. Uh, Casey at our team had a good piece on this.

Um, yeah, it seems to be the, um, you know, I'm hearing that the last couple of days. I think, I think I'm still somewhat dubious that it gets done. Um, but, uh, hopeful.

So yeah, new, new spot crypto ETFs can't be approved, right, until the shutdown ends? Or I guess they can, but they just probably won't. It's probably not a high priority.

Yeah, I'm not sure about the ETF specifically. There are some, depending on the registration statement, uh, there is, you know, potentially if the SEC doesn't respond at all, you actually automatically go live. And so there's a few things I'm like, I'm hearing this in the DApp market right now. There's a few of the dApps that are specifically saying like, if they don't hear from the SEC by like, you know, the end of the month or November, they'll just probably take the point of view that they should be, you know, going, uh, effective. Um, I guess his ETFs work the same but somebody's gonna listen to this and be like no you're wrong probably um but that's what I would expect yeah content of the week baby let's get into it what do you got Santi?

No no no no no I'm never first—no! —I don't man i've been reading just...

You see this like Santi wants to show me up afterwards he wants to be last he's like Gotta let Rob do his like fiction and then I'm gonna come in with something like really highbrow.

Not really, man. Yeah, it does.

I mean, I, did you guys see the billion dollar raise for BasePower? You guys see Michael Dell's kid?

Oh yeah. Yeah. I saw that, dude.

Good for him. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, I was reading, Rob, you appreciate this. I'm trying to level up as a leader. I'm reading Bill Walsh's The Score Takes Care of Itself. It's pretty good, man. Some great, great stories about her.

Good book, huh? Good, good book. I read it. Yeah, by the— yeah, Niners. And yeah, yeah, good. It's a good one.

Yeah, I haven't read them.

Yeah.

What are you reading, Rob, or what are you watching?

Uh, this week I've been watching, uh, Task. So it's, um, HBO show. Uh, it's kind of about—

you watch all these shows, Rob? Just like classic 9-to-5-er.

You know me, like, you know, 5 o'clock, I'm completely off the clock. You know, I'm just watching TV. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob's a 9-to-5 guy, you know. Not really.

I've been— I actually, like, I watched the episode last night at like 11. I mean, normally I sleep by 11, but I've had a little bit of insomnia since I got back from Singapore. And so I've been doing like the late night TV. Um, but I, uh, yeah, Task, it's like a HBO show, the creators of another HBO show called Mare of Easttown, which was good. Um, set in Philly, I think. And it's basically like, um, you know, a biker gang that also happens to deal like fentanyl in the local area. Uh, they're like houses that they keep the fentanyl at and that they, um, and that they sell it out of, keep getting essentially like robbed by what they, you know, the FBI and like a task force thinks is like a, a maybe a rival biker gang. Um, and it's got, um, it's got some good actors in it. Um, it's got— oh gosh, I'm blanking on his, his name right now, but, um, what's it called? Task Force? It's called Task, T-A-S-K, because they puts together a task force. So like Mark Ruffalo.

Yeah, yeah, someone else. Yeah. Yeah, someone told me about this this week. They said it was good.

Yeah, it's got Mark Ruffalo, it's got Tom Pelfrey. Like, it's a, it's a good show. It's like, you know, as far as those types of shows go.

I have such a lame answer to this. I, I, that was a way better answer than I have. I, I listened to an ungodly long podcast with, uh, uh, Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, on Lex Fridman. This episode is 4 hours and 40 minutes long. I could have listened to a fricking audiobook. I'm in too deep. I got sunk cost fallacy. I'm 4 hours in, so I have to finish it.

Are you the kind of person that like has to finish it just for OCD reasons?

Well, I was wondering if they would talk about the TON, about TON blockchain. And I was like, wow, I'm 4 hours in. They haven't mentioned it once. That's a signal that it's pretty bearish TON. Like he hasn't mentioned it once in 4 hours. They just started talking about it. So now I've got to get through this portion.

Speaking of, I think I might have mentioned it, the Cheeky Pint. There's some good episodes there. I was listening to the Mark Andreessen. I listen to the Andreessen. He has— I clipped it. Hour. It's an hour and a half pod, almost 2-hour pod. Minute 1 hour, 1 hour 24. Go jump to the crypto section and they talk about like Stripe's perspective and then obviously, a16z's perspective. Pretty fascinating stuff. What both— I think it's Patrick that talks about their evolution.

And Charlie. And Charlie Song has too. Yeah, exactly.

It's just a really fascinating— and they make really good analogies in the fiber compared to the AI infrastructure deployment, comparisons to that.

They also talk about how crypto became a philosophical thing and how a lot of VCs were not willing to get past that. Which is alpha.

Yeah, totally. And I think it's still true. Like, I guess maybe out of, out of the premier kind of like traditional VCs, there's like a lot which still haven't made a single crypto investment. Yeah, right. Yeah, totally.

So, all right, folks, thanks for listening. We got either the Kalshi founder going live on Monday, or there will be a big acquisition announcement and trying to get them to come on the show. And that'll go live a day late on Tuesday morning to time up with the acquisition announcement. So either one of those. Appreciate you guys listening. We will See you next week. Awesome. Thanks, guys.