Stablecoins & Prediction Markets, Nothing Else | Weekly Roundup

The markets become more efficient with more information, right? And if you want markets to be efficient, then you need more information. So the people with the most information willing to put money behind their view of the future because they have information is a good thing, right? It allows— it also, because it means something to you and I, we also are obtaining and we're looking at that information.

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Hey, how are you?

Good, good. We've had a little outfit switch. I feel like you're usually in the button-down.

I'm the Tradify guy typically. You're, you know, you're the entrepreneur, but it seems like you had some big meetings today.

So that's how it goes, you know. That's— I'm one of 4 people in New York City right now.

It's the last week of August. Like, the fact that we are both in the city right now is—

I took an Uber from Brooklyn to like Upper East Side this morning and it took about 28 minutes, which would usually take about an hour and a half in rush hour traffic.

So I'm betting the Upper East Side looked like that scene in 28 Days Later where he like walks out of the hospital and there's like nobody in the street.

Nobody. Yeah, nobody. So I'm— I think I'm the sucker. We're the suckers. What are we doing? Anyways, New York is great right now that we got the US Open. Two best times in New York: when the Knicks going on. So you going?

Also Christmas. Christmas is awesome in New York. I'm just gonna put that out there.

Third time. Third time. You going to the Open?

I'm not. So I'm leaving today actually. So I'm leaving New York. I'm going back to, uh, Ohio. Yes, I'm from Ohio. Uh, my parents were Ohio State alums, so I'm going back for, you know, opening weekend of college football. Ohio State versus Texas. You know, we won the national championship last year, so I've got to go support Let's go, let's go!

I knew, I knew I liked you for a reason, Rob. My, my parents are from Ohio as well. Cleveland though.

Well, you know, Dayton, Cleveland, it's only a 4-hour drive. It's okay.

Yeah. Um, any paddle?

Well, I mean, we played paddle this past weekend.

Rob and I lost. Rob and I had a tough L. We—

it was close. We like, we, we gave it our all. We had a really couple really close matches. We're gonna get better. Like, we're gonna keep playing.

It's tough. That was tough. Um, all right, I got a stat of the week before we kick this off. There, do you know there are now more ETFs than stocks in the world?

I did. I didn't know that. Listen, passive investing, like, passive investing has absolutely taken over.

Crazy.

Capital markets generally, right?

Um, all right, let's, let's talk about these stablecoin raises because you are probably, you see probably more. I feel like I see a lot of stablecoin raises and I'm not a professional investor, nor am I super deep into the stablecoin space. You probably see more I actually would argue you personally see more stablecoin pitches than any investor in the world, I would guess. And so I would like some fun. There are two stablecoin raises. We can start with the RAINN one. What was the other big one? M0 raised, raised what, $40 million, I think.

Yeah, $40 million. I think Polychain led. Ribbit was also part of it and maybe a couple of others.

Yeah. Okay. So let's start with RAINN. So this was from folks that I talked to. This was one of the hottest deals I think of the quarter or maybe even of the year. So RAIN raised $58 million Series B led by Sapphire Ventures to become the enterprise stablecoin record of platform. And I was reading a little bit from the founder. This guy Farouk said in the early days of RAIN, Charles and I would talk to our early customers, realize that for them, stablecoins were intellectually the same as money and they expected them to behave like money. And spend like money. Rain today is the heart of the stablecoin stack, a trusted partner for large global enterprises, fintechs, and public sector agencies, etc., etc. Talked about the fundraise. So as I read this, it feels like from an outsider, I don't know anything about Rain's business. They help people launch stablecoins. That's what it reads like to me. But other than that, I really know nothing about it. So before getting into the raise, tell me about Rain's— what is Rain?

Yeah, so that's not actually quite right. So I'll say two things. One is, you're absolutely right that stablecoins are all the rage right now. There's like a million people building in this space, and for good reason, right? After the Stripe Bridge acquisition, it became very clear that this mattered to large corporates. I think I said on a different podcast with you that I knew of 12 Fortune 100s that had an RFP out. To use stablecoins as part of their— mostly treasury management, but also cross-border payments. That is something that is just accelerating now with the passage of the Genius Act a couple of weeks ago. I appreciate you saying that I see more stablecoin raises than just about anyone. I think that might be right. Nick Carter and I were actually having this debate, who has done more stablecoin investing over the last 4 or 5 years, to which I think he has the record for the, like, more deals, and then we've just put more money to work. But it's a theme that we've been really excited about for a long period of time, and we've put a lot of money into work on a lot of great projects. But listen, on Rain specifically, you know, you're absolutely right. It was a deal that I think was quite exciting for a lot of investors. It's a theme that a lot of people wanted around, to be around. The thing that they actually do very simply today, their core product, is they issue cards that utilize the Visa network and authorization to spend stablecoins and crypto. What they do really, really uniquely— and it's both— they call it like a corporate card product and a B2B2C product. So if there are a number of exchanges that I don't know if all of them are public, so I won't say them yet, who are working with them to launch a card, You will get your, call it your Exchange X card, and that card will actually be issued and managed by Rain underneath. What is actually happening for Rain, which they do uniquely, which nobody else does, is they're actually, in most cases, not in every case, their own BIN sponsor, which means they replace the bank. You don't actually need a bank. What happens today is when you go to, let's say you're a Bridge-issued card, and Bridge requires you to put your stablecoins into a wallet. In that wallet, it then essentially locks those stablecoins. You can then swipe that card at a merchant or at some sort of e-commerce. Then they will take that locked tokens that you couldn't do anything with, and they will swap them into fiat through a bank, and then the bank will settle with Visa in fiat. There's still this interchange fee with the bank. What Rain does as their own BIN sponsor, so you don't need the bank. They actually are the ones who are taking along with their customers any interchange fee, and then they settle. They do two things, actually. One is they securitize that credit directly on-chain using DeFi. If anyone has ever done credit card receivables, they can do that immediately on-chain using DeFi. Then they can settle directly with Visa, in stablecoins and through the merchant acquirer, 365 days a year. This is a completely new paradigm, because you are getting rid of, or you at least can get rid of, the issuer bank. I tweeted, maybe it was last week, that, oh, issuer banks did not know what was coming. Just for everybody's knowledge, an issuer bank is a bank that issues a credit card. They're providing the credit and they're taking that interchange fee, often 2% plus. Grain allows you to get rid of or displace that bank. One of the things we saw last week, maybe you covered it, is that the Wyoming state government said that they are issuing their own stablecoin. They issued that stablecoin, or they're calling it a stable token for some regulatory reasons. You can get your tax refund in that stablecoin. which exists on the Avalanche blockchain, and then you can spend it using a Rain card, right? So that's the type of stuff that is happening here, which made it really exciting. So this round, to your point, had tons and tons— they had, you know, a double-digit term sheets. They had all of the traditional investors, some of the best fintech investors in the world trying to get in. We've— I've known the founders for a long period of time. We were super excited to be a part of it, wrote a large check in here alongside their, um, the lead Sapphire Ventures, which is a big Rob, let me, let me ask a question before getting too deep into the round.

I actually, I follow some of it, but not all of it. There's, I feel like there's so many people who have tried doing this over the years and they like, even, even Bridge, right? Like Bridge, I think Bridge has the ability to issue, gives other people the ability to issue stablecoin-linked Visa cards via API.

Yeah. So they have a card product. That's right.

Right. They have a card product. You've seen so many of these over the years. Crypto.com has cards. Gemini has a card. Binance has a card. Is this— Rain gives those people the ability to launch their own cards, right?

So Rain's customers— when Binance issues a card, or Kraken issues a card, or all these guys, they have a card issuer underneath them in a program.

Who's the card issuer today?

So it'd be Rain, right?

Or who do they usually use? Or is it Rain?

So it could be Rain, right? There could be— there's one other— there's a couple other people who are doing like stablecoin card issuance, um, that are smaller, like, uh, Monovate in, um, in Europe. There's a Reap in Asia, a couple other people doing that. Or like what is happening in the bridge product. So you bring that up specifically. Lead Bank, so it is actually a bank, is the card issuer. And so when the Lead Bank product happens, or when the bridge product works, when you swipe that card, they actually swap the stablecoin into fiat and send the fiat back to Lead Bank. So Lead Bank, if anybody doesn't know, is a big, call it like fintech bank. I think Ribbit backed them. They're a regulated bank in the US. I think—

Banking as a service, right?

Yeah, but they also are— they take corporate bank accounts, like that type of stuff. They're a big fintech infrastructure bank. Most of these products— actually, the product that Coinbase launched, I guess it was maybe a month ago or so, that's an Amex-issued card. Same thing. Amex is a bank, and they also have a network, but they're also a bank. These are all cards that are issued by banks, so they still take that interchange fee, And then they— what they do is they just swap your stablecoin into fiat and settle the normal rails. Rain is doing something completely novel and new, which is they're displacing those banks for these cards. And so it's actually— I think if you don't spend time in the card space, you don't realize why this is so different. But it's different because they can do everything from the credit to the securitization to the settlement entirely on-chain in a way that does not happen with any of these other bank products. And so that's why we're really excited. One of the fastest-growing businesses in all of crypto right now. I think between the time we took it to investment committee and last month, and that was only— there was only a couple months lag there, the business doubled in size, right? Like, that's how quickly they're growing. So we're—

and they're— so who, who are their biggest— who are their big customers? People who— their customer is someone who wants to launch a stablecoin-backed card, and, and then everything, everything happens on chain. So these would be exchanges, or this is just—

so it's also like web— it's also like Web2 guys, right? So Nuvve which is called a large PSP, is also one of their big customers. And they— Nuvei, they help Nuvei through Onchain Rails do certain types of products in emerging markets, right? And so they are essentially like— can operate a little bit as a network as well because of the fact that they do this entire thing on-chain. So they have customers on the, on the Web2 side like Nuvei, which is a big PSP. They're, you know, talking to a bunch of the others, they're talking to a bunch of banks. And then they have customers like Avalanche is a big customer. They issue EtherFi's card. People have used EtherFi. They've got, um, two big exchanges that I think are not public yet that, um, I can't talk about because of that, that are coming online pretty soon. So it is some crypto-native people like we talked about, but it is also Web2.

So what made this round so hot? Because what, what, what I heard behind the scenes is that there's— this was like one of the most sought-after. They had many different leads. How many leads did they have? I don't know how much you can share, but like, how— I guess how hot was it?

It was double-digit term sheets.

Double-digit term sheets. Okay. So it's very, very rare that you see double-digit term sheets for a company. What did the founders do? Obviously the numbers had to be there and the product has to be good, but like, tell me the mechanics of the raise that made this such a successful raise.

So I think what we have seen, I think broadly in the market is that there's just a flight to quality right now. And so the really, really good companies, the really, really good protocols, everyone's kind of around them, and there are just a lot of people who understand, uh, that this is the thing that they need to lean into. And then there's kind of like the long tail. So if you go and you talk to— I think Alex Thorn has been tweeting about this a bunch, and, um, I think, uh, there was a, there's a Block article that I was quoted in last week about this. Like, venture capital and crypto is actually— it's still pretty small, and it hasn't gotten nearly to the heights of what we saw in '21 and '22. But what I have found is that the the really good companies and protocols, those rounds are just as competitive as ever, right? It's just everybody understands now that what happened in '21 and '22 where like it was all rising tides will lift all boats and, you know, any sort of like fork of a protocol could make you money. Now people are really going for those, those, or understanding that there is going to be this dispersion between the winners and the losers, more like traditional venture capital essentially. And so, so that's a big part of it. But listen, they're also just incredible founders. They're They're well networked.

Why do you say that? Because actually I went to their LinkedIn and the LinkedIn's are not the stereotypical, like I was looking at, um, what's his name? Farouk, I think it is. Yep. Um, I'm, I've actually never met these guys. I'd love to meet them. We could do an episode with them, but, um, but like Farouk, let me pull up his LinkedIn. So Farouk, it's like, yeah, it's like, uh, you know, project finance officer for several years or many years at a bank. I don't know, Marshall, Marshall Fellow, which is great, but like, I mean, it's not, it's not like they're seasoned veterans here.

No, I mean, so they're not multiple-time entrepreneurs and, and, you know, maybe you see that in the fact that, you know, they launched this business in '21 and they've really found escape velocity, you know, call it over the last year. Right. And so, you know, it did take them a while, but that's normal, right?

Yeah. This is the natural flow, by the way, I think that you see with a lot of people as you come in at the peak or top, like, you know, Blockworks started December of 2017. I think we top ticked the market by 4 days. They launched November '21. So they top ticked the market by within weeks. I think actually the top was November of '21. So, and then you just build through a bear, which does obviously make you much better. But was this the original idea that they had or did they pivot?

So they were always a card business, but the original idea was call it, you know, corporate cards for DAOs. So this was at the time when everyone thought that we would have a lot of DAOs. That product was maybe more of like a— call it a Gnosis competitor at some point, where it was, OK, we'll have a wallet, and then we'll have a card so you can spend it. And so you have Gnosis Pay. They really started to understand that the real opportunity here was reinventing the way capital flows and money flows entirely on-chain. Now they have this, call it B2B2C product, which allows them to serve basically everyone alongside, call it a corporate product. You say that they're not, call it, the typical background of a Silicon Valley insider, but being the treasurer of the North American Development Bank means that he understands capital flows as well as anybody. In fact, there's a— I don't know if you know the business Braille, but the founder of that business, Ben Milne, is like a multi-time— If you looked at his LinkedIn, he's like a multi-time fintech and payments founder. When I talked to Ben, he said, "Listen, Farouk is probably the single most knowledgeable person I know in payments." Now, Farouk will also say that about Ben, but it tells you there's a lot of respect here for people because for these people, because they know how capital moves. And that's what we really have to understand when it comes to payments.

Yeah, yeah. Is this a— this is a winner-take-most game?

I think so, yeah. And that's why you kind of lean into the leader, right? And so there's— you see this a lot, right, where there could be a bunch of different companies that maybe do really well. You see it in the exchange business. But in the winner-take-most businesses, you kind of lean in to want to get a big allocation in the best companies.

Yeah, I'm reading the announcement. You guys are listed right after the lead. Where did that go? Which I'm getting. So, okay, right here. So funding $58 million Series B led by Sapphire with— usually the person who comes right there puts in— didn't get the lead but put in the second most amount of money. This is Big check for you guys, it seems like.

Yeah, I mean, a big round, big check for us. We were, yeah, we leaned in really hard, put a good amount of money to work for us.

How did they choose a lead, Rob? Was it just whoever gave them the most money? Like, why didn't they pick you guys as the lead?

Well, that's a good question. We should ask, we should get Farouk and Charles on here and ask them why they didn't make us the lead. You know, listen, we would have loved to be the lead as part of it as well, or a co-lead. I think that there was round dynamics that made sense, but We got a big allocation, a big check-in, and we're really excited to be backing them either way. And Sapphire is a big fund, and it's a fund that also can scale with Rain over time. Series B is kind of the latest that we participate at our size. We have $500 million funds. We try not to put more than, call it, 10%. Actually, our LPA does not allow us to put more than 10% of the fund in any one position, and we actually typically do not even get very near there. And so in the Sapphire case, they're great investors. They've invested in a bunch of awesome fintech companies. I think they were investors in Square, so they really know payments, and they're a fund that can put hundreds of millions of dollars more money into Rain over time if they need to.

Who is Endeavor Catalyst? I actually don't know them, and I saw— let's start talking about the other raise. Which is M0, and I was just reading the M0 release, and Endeavor Catalyst comes up here as well. I actually don't know them. I pulled up their site again. Yeah, is it— so is this, is this a big Web2 funder?

So, so, uh, do you know Endeavor? So Endeavor—

yeah, I know Endeavor very well. Like, this is CA— this is Endeavor, the agency's fund, correct? That's exactly— ah, okay, okay.

Yeah, so it's their fund.

Um, they're, they're just all in on stablecoins, and so they just did both of these.

Yeah. So they've been looking at the space, looking at stablecoins. They understand a lot of what happens in markets, I think, before others, because they have just so much talent around the space. And they have so much talent around them, and so many technologists, and entrepreneurs, and all of the people that they represent. And so I think they're pretty early. To most themes. And so they understand stablecoins, they're really excited about it. And yeah, they put money in both here.

Got it. Oh, I'm thinking of the wrong Endeavor. I realized I was thinking of Endeavor, like, um, what is it? Ari Emanuel.

Uh, yeah, the sports and entertainment, um, agency. So this is their fund.

Oh, this is their fund. Okay. Yep. Got it. No, this looks like a different font. Look at this. Peter Kellner. Ah, all right. Maybe, maybe I'm wrong. I actually don't know. I'll figure it out after the episode.

We can follow up on it.

Yeah. Okay. MZero, tell me about, tell me about MZero. So I saw Meta— I've known that. So I've known the MZero founders, Luca, for a while. He started actually with an amazing newsletter, which I think is a Advice to many people is to build a brand there. But yeah, big in the MakerDAO ecosystem, launched probably the best stablecoin newsletter at the time, and then founded mZero. They made big headlines the other day. So MetaMask, when they issued their card, they did it with mZero. Tell me about this space.

Yeah, so mZero— and by the way, you're totally right, Dirt Roads, which Luca used to write, was like Awesome.

Drugs.

Yeah, it was really good. Um, and Luke is great. So M0 is sort of a, you know, stablecoin, like white-labeled, uh, stablecoin issuance platform. So I think, I think their biggest stablecoin that they've issued right now is Nobles, um, where they're on the back end. So they provide a lot of the infrastructure for, um, if you want to issue a white-labeled stablecoin you can use, you know, mZero there. There's a couple of other people who do this. Agora, which is one of our portfolio companies. Paxos is kind of the OG doing this. Actually, Ben Milne at Braille, I talked about before, is someone you can do this with. So there's a theme right now that a lot of people want stablecoin exposure, and a lot of companies want to build their own stablecoins because they see it as a way to increase, you know, their revenue pie, and they see it as a way to really grow their business, and very simply. And so some of these infrastructure providers like mZero are saying, hey, listen, we can be the way where we can provide kind of, you know, in a simple box, everything you need to issue your own stablecoin. Well, we can help manage the collateral. We can help manage the APIs, the on-ramp, off-ramps. And then you can issue your stablecoin on top of us. So Noble is their biggest. mZero tends to be very crypto-native in their approach. relative to some of the others I talked about who are a little bit more, you know, call it like centralized or they're more focused on like—

Is it fair to say M0 helps you launch a stablecoin, Rain helps you launch a card?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's right.

So, oh, I mean, I made— uh, that was a mistake. It's not— they're not powering the MetaMask card, right? They're better power—

yeah, they're the stablecoin.

Yeah, I see. Okay, okay, nice. That's great. Um, you think we see a lot more of these or is this kind of the Are these the— is this the, I don't know, culmination of a bunch of behind-the-scenes raising from the stablecoin providers?

It's not done. What I would say is the amount of raises that we've seen for sort of the same things— so call it like a new bridge, a bridge-type competitor who is like doing orchestration, or a company that is, you know, call it, you know, doing stablecoin issuance as a service or doing, you know, stablecoin cards— like That theme is still seeing a lot of new entrants right now. We're going to still continue to see a lot of people invest in those themes, but I do think there's a little bit of fatigue from a lot of the investors because a lot of them do seem really undifferentiated, right? And so we've seen a bit of a dip happening. The MZero and Rain were probably at the tail end of kind of like the fever. You saw Agora with their $50 million raise, MZero40. Raised about $60 million. There's been, I think, a rumor that's been out there, but hasn't been confirmed that a business called ZeroHash was raising $100 million. There's a couple of these things happening out in the market. Those were really a, call it, Q2 conversation, and where there was a lot of fervor around this right before the Genius Act got launched. But I can tell you right now, there's definitely some fatigue. Now, I do also see that the level of entrepreneur investing— or sorry, building in stablecoins is increasing every day. We're starting to see some deals, and we're looking at one now where the founders are actually probably the most well-referenced founders we've ever met, because they came out of some of the largest payment companies in the world and executive roles at those payment companies, and they just know how money flows. We haven't seen that level of entrepreneur before, to your point about looking at some of these people's background. There are people who came in and they really learned this from the ground up and first principles, but we're now starting to see many of the most successful people outside of stablecoins come in and build in stablecoins as well. I think we'll see this dip in the market, and then we're going to see new novel, awesome entrepreneurs, and an acceleration into maybe the end of the year or next year.

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So we're large investors in PolyMarket and have been for, for a while now.

Um, oh yeah, this was the Tom tweet about, uh, You should bring that one up.

Yeah, but so we've been large investors in Polymarket for, you know, call before prediction markets were hot, although not as early as many others. We helped co-lead that round they did with Founders Fund back in— it was like late '23, early '24. So, you know, still the business was doing well. We kind of saw this acceleration of people being interested in prediction markets. There was a, um, when Sam Altman got fired, uh, they, if you know, and then, you know, he came back on a Monday, got fired on a Friday, came back on a Monday. Like that whole weekend, my like group chats were just like completely blowing up about what was happening with Sam. And then there were people were talking about Polymarket like, oh, we should put money on this at Polymarket. And that was actually at the time, I think their most active weekend ever on Polymarket. Now, considering what's happened from their volumes over the last 18, 20 months, it's funny to look at how small that was relatively. But that got us really excited again about thinking that maybe it was the right time that this type of product could do really, really well and would really enter, call it, the mainstream again. And then everyone knows what happened last year. They were better at predicting the election than anybody else was. Everybody was quoted in— Basically, every single major news organization, you know, they— Shane and we have been getting calls from governments and regulators and companies that just want to work with them because they're so excited about what's happening. Now they're doing over $1 billion a month, by far away the largest prediction market out there, Kalshi being the second biggest, and just continuing to crush. And so we're really excited about them. To your point, there's a bunch of new people seeing the success over what happened over the last year and a half with Polymarket who are building new things. I mean, Kaushik was obviously there already, having built a decently sized business before that. And so we're going to start seeing a lot of people put money behind that, because at the end of the day— and I do this too, so I don't mean this in maybe the way it sounds, because we have done Polymarket early— but venture capitalists are often trend chasers. Right? And we do this too. We see something be successful, and so we want to go get exposure to it. And so, you know, we're seeing the success of these businesses result in a lot of new people wanting to build there, and a lot of new people, a lot of new investors wanting to get exposure to that category.

Yeah. Yeah. Have you done any of the new prediction markets?

We haven't. We're so in deep with Polymarket, it wouldn't make any sense. And we try really hard not to do competitors. We try really hard to put large checks, lead rounds, take governance positions when appropriate, get a lot of ownership, and continue to increase our ownership over time in the things that we think are the category winners instead of saying doing like multiples in the same category.

Yeah. What do you— do you look at any of the new prediction markets just to learn? So like here, we'll look at these guys who just raised a group called the Clear Income. I mean, there's about 20 prediction markets that are raising right now. I think I forget who's announced and who hasn't announced. I'm not going to share my screen and show anything else, but There's a lot of other, a lot of other prediction market companies out there right now, and it's pretty easy to find them if you just go on Twitter and look up like, you know, prediction markets list or something. But I can share these guys because they just announced they just raised $15 million from Union Square Ventures. I think, I think Variant has been doing a decent number of these, these new ones. I think Coinbase Ventures has been doing a decent number of them. But yeah, this, this team was pretty good. I've heard from ex-PolyMarket people that these were Very good team out of Polymarket. I think a few of them were ex-Calshi as well. What do you think, like, when you see something like this, I guess, what do you think? What do you think? And then what do you think the Polymarket team, like, do they— I don't know. I think that the, the whack on Polymarket is that maybe, like, they haven't innovated recently. They haven't, you know, done new things. The settlement should be AI-driven. You should have, like, you know, perps integrated. I guess you can't do really perps with prediction markets that well, but, like, Yeah, what do you think when you see something like this?

Yeah, listen, the competition is the name of the game. To your point, Tony, who used to be at Polymarket, you know, and we interacted with him there being backers, he's great. So like, yeah, you know, excited for him. You know, I think the time and again, the kind of things that people have said about Polymarket have not resulted in them not continuing to grow. Right? And so, you know, they raised that round that everybody knows about, but I can tell you they're just continuing to grow. There's continuing to be a lot of excitement. They announced that they're coming back to the US with a DCO/DCM acquisition, which will be a big win for them. And so I think competition is good. I think, you know, event contracts and prediction markets will probably follow a similar path that things like fantasy sports has followed. It might follow a similar path to what has happened in exchanges. So what does that mean? It means there'll be a few winners. It's definitely not a winner-take-all market, right? Polymarket's the leader right now, but there will be other good outcomes in this category. And so I totally get it. And that's exciting. And to your point, Coinbase, they're also an investor in Polymarket, right? And they believe in this category, and they want exposure to a bunch of things, and they're a strategic investor. I think if you're not a lead investor and you're a relatively small investor, which I think some of the other guys you called out are, you might just want a portfolio approach. We have found that for us, that's not the way we get the returns that we've been able to get and what excites us. We try to get, call it, a lot of exposure to the things that we are wanting to be a part of. And by the way, you brought up about Don Jr. I think Don Jr. also just invested in— Yeah, OK. I was going to say, explain this one to me.

So this was back from January, Don Jr. Joins Kalshi as an advisor. And then the headline this week was Polymarket receives strategic investment from 1789, welcomes Don Jr.'s advisor. So is Don Jr. just playing both hands here?

So I don't know what the situation is. I can't speculate. I will tell you that obviously, when that first announcement came out about Kalshi, Polymarket wasn't in the US. Now it is. They've reentered with their DCO-DCM acquisition. And so I'm sure that's a big part of the story here.

Yeah, DCM acquisition is big, right? Because I mean, I think that people don't realize how sought after these DCMs are. They acquired— was it— did this business do anything? QCEX? I mean, they paid $112 million. I don't know if they did anything except they had a DCM, which is very, very, very sought after, right? So I actually put together a list of DCMs. Um, and there's really only— there's a very small amount of DCMs. It's like, I mean, designated, there's like 19 or 20 of them. And some of— there's overlap on some of these where it's like CBOE and ErisX, where, you know, CBOE obviously bought ErisX. And then there's several of these that are pending, but really not that many of these licenses out there. So for people who want to get into the prediction markets game and do it legally in the US, It's going to be a lot tougher, I think, than people realize.

Yeah. Just so your readers understand, or our listeners understand, a DCM is a designated contract market. It's basically like a CFTC license that allows you to offer a certain type of future in the US, essentially. A certain type of event contract, which is what they do here. You're right that these aren't— they don't grow on trees. They require a certain level of sophistication in operating these markets. The QCX guys, they had some volume, I believe, not a ton. They just hadn't been able to really make it work. And there's some others on here, too, who don't have a ton of volume. But it was a big win for the Polymarket guys to be able to acquire it and come back and serve in a regulated way US customers. And so I know they're extremely excited about that opportunity.

Yeah, yeah. I think some of the big acquisitions you'll see the rest of this year, maybe into early next, are just acquiring DCMs and acquiring licenses.

Yeah, that'll keep happening. But listen, with, with what happened with Genius and what, you know, people think will happen with the passing of like Clarity, there's a lot of excitement about offering, you know, regulated, you know, crypto and crypto products in the US. And there's a lot of people who are going to be focused on that, getting the right licenses. I mean, we can talk about it now, or we talk about it later. But the CFTC coming out with that FBOT announcement today around allowing the Foreign Board of Trade offshore exchanges to offer crypto products to, call it, Americans, that's a big deal, again, right? So what is happening here is that—

Explain that, Rob. I saw the announcement. I read the headline tweets. Tell me, tell me why this is a big deal.

Yeah, so the CFTC, um, has recently been not allowing for the offshore exchanges and offshore, like, you know, products to be sold, uh, in crypto, to be sold to or be traded by U.S. customers. Uh, the CFTC had previously had a, uh, basically a precedent of using this FBOT registration framework. So the Foreign Board of Trade is FBOT. That is not easy, but I would say is well-versed, and people understand it, and they know how to go and do this registration framework to offer products to, call it, US customers. The previous version of the CFTC, and under the last administration, had stopped allowing that to happen. They had gone away from historical precedent, and they had not— and they had stopped, essentially, those foreign exchanges from offering product to the US, derivatives specifically. That is now changing. They said that today. Caroline Pham came out and put out this— and the CFTC put out this release. And again, that's, along with what we just talked about, a big idea, or it's a big deal in terms of continuing to bring regulated crypto markets to US customers, which is all that we've ever wanted as an industry.

Yeah, uh, there are a few problems that I think people duly note out with prediction markets that I want to get your take on. Again, I know you've probably thought more about stablecoins than, than prediction markets, but, um, yeah, curious if you have a take as well. So, so one of them is that they only surface, uh, truths, right? People say prediction markets are faster than the truth than anyone else, right? The, the counter to that that people would say is they only surface the truth because of insider trading. Um, how do you, how do you think of that?

I mean, that's definitely not true, right?

Like if there, if there is insider trading, like certainly you could surface the truth through insider trading in the traditional term of secure, like, uh, if these things become markets and not, not insider trading in the traditional term of you've got a public stock or something and you know what the earnings are going to be, but I'd say very insider knowledge. Um, and is that a good or a bad thing, basically? Or, or here, I can phrase it differently. The more important a market, a prediction market becomes, the more vulnerable it becomes to manipulation. And I think the very obvious case that you could point to was like 2024 election, probably.

Um, so I mean, I would say sort of the opposite, right? Though the markets become more efficient with more information, right? And if you want markets to be efficient, then you need more information. So the people with the most information willing to put money behind their view of the future because they have information is a good thing, right? It allows— it also, because it means something to you and I, we also are obtaining and we're looking at that information, right? And as you see on Polymarket, it's not always true. I mean, all of these things, right, they're options contracts. It's not always true that, you know, the Polymarket says something that's 70% likely to happen. It doesn't always happen that way, right? Because what does 70% likely mean? It means that, you know, 30% of the of the time, it will not happen. And so there's an expectation that if you allow people and you create a market where people will put money to work, that that is an incentive mechanism that makes markets more efficient relative to things like polling, where people have an incentive sometimes to lie. If you're an economic incentive, maybe you don't have an incentive to lie. Anymore. And so it's a better way of surfacing the truth because you are creating an incentive for people to bring the information that they have and to express a view with that information. So that's a good thing, not a bad thing, right? As long as it's done in a way that's regulated and it's done in a way that, you know, you obviously don't want things like assassination contracts, which we've talked about and things like that. And Polymarket and Cauchy and these guys don't, don't allow those things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think one area that I'm watching really closely is, uh, actually sports betting. So, uh, the I forget if it was the Big Beautiful Bill or another bill changed the taxes of sports betting to make it— I think it's that I'm going to botch this in some way. But Matt Levine's written some great pieces on this. So you used to have— it was like 100% could be— 100% of something could be written off. And now it's only 90% of something could be written off in sports betting. I'm not a big sports gambler. So I'm not—

losses. Yeah.

Yeah. If you're lost. Okay, so maybe— okay, so it's 100% of your losses maybe could be written off, and now it's 90% of your losses can be written off, which means that even the best— which means it's really no longer profitable for, like, let's say sports gambling used to be profitable for 20% of people, used to make money, 80% of people lost money. Now it's profitable for like 1% of people. So you would imagine that if, if that tax bill— maybe it already went through, I'm not even sure— if that continues happening, you would actually see sports betting move into, uh, event contracts on places like Kalshi, Polymarket, these new platforms, and away from the FanDuel and DraftKings of the world?

So I think you're already seeing it. I'm trying to find the, um, data, and I, I'm struggling.

We have it on our platform. Here, let me pull it up.

So I gotta get better at Blockworks.

So, um, so if you go into prediction markets on the platform, you can look at Um, so if you go look by category, I think it's volume, volume by market tag.

Yeah, so sports is already their second biggest, uh, market, correct?

Yeah, yeah.

And so, you know, you see sports there, and then, uh, is the other one— is that crypto or elections have been the biggest in July?

Yeah, politics, um, sports. Nothing in science, nothing in pop culture. Crypto is actually bigger than sports right now. Yeah.

So, so what we've seen is, and if you look at, call it like, you know, back when the election happened, it's crypto than sports.

It's like crypto and sports are actually bigger than politics right now.

Yeah. But, you know, so politics and elections have obviously been bigger during the election period, but, um, sports has actually been a big part of the growth of Polymarket. And you're seeing this in Kalshi too, actually. Um, sports, more and more of the volume, uh, in sports is coming to, to these guys because People— it depends on, one, it depends on how and where you're betting. There is obviously this thing around taxes. But there's a lot of excitement around using these platforms for sports. And so we are seeing that as a big growth engine. And so macroeconomic, culture, crypto, election, politics, but also not just US politics. We've seen a big uptick on Polymarket and things like foreign elections as well. All of those things are growing. And, you know, I expect that sports will be a bigger and bigger part of the story over time, to be honest.

I, by the way, I got that metric wrong. I was looking at the volumes. I think open interest is probably a better metric than volumes for prediction.

They're both good metrics. They just mean different things.

Yeah.

And so like open interest is obviously, you know, the amount of people that—

look at this open— look, this is actually an amazing stat on Polymarket. I think everyone said the OI would tank following the election. And you can actually see here, OI is actually almost as high as it was during the election.

Yeah. I mean, this is, you're looking at quarter right now.

And so they obviously, if you look up, I mean, they had one extreme quarter right here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Leading up to the election in October. But yeah, I mean, the, the thesis for us when we did the investment, was that a lot of people passed on that round because they said, listen, like, OK, well, they do well during election years, and then it craters. And in some sense, you did kind of see this in '21, where Polymarket grew not to the heights they are now, but did really well during the election year. And then they lost about, call it, 70% of their open interest in volume into the following year. But it was also a different time from a macro perspective. It was a different time in crypto. Frankly, I think the market just wasn't ready for this type of product. It is different today. This is also a really social platform. I don't know if you see it, Jano, but when something big happens, my chats all hit up with like, "Oh, check out this Polymarket," and we're talking about whether or not what we think about it. That happens on all of my platforms, but I don't know if it happens to you too.

Yeah, same thing. Same thing. On the prediction markets, my mental model for this is that in 2017, it feels like 2017 for prediction markets right now. Like in 2017, you had a few exchanges, right? You had like, I don't know, OKEx and Coinbase and Gemini and like Poloniex, which Circle bought, and a few others. but that was at the start of 2017. Kraken, Bitstamp, let's call it like 10 of them, maybe. By the end of 2017, you had about 100 of them. And I don't— I'm not saying it's going to be that big, but by the end— by the end of 2017, you had so— like all of the— all of the new players came onto the scene, including, by the way, Binance, right?

And Bybit.

And Bybit. And most of those didn't work out. Some of them ended up being big winners, and some of the existing old players like the Coinbases and Krakens ended up being, you know, 100 times bigger than they were back then, or 15 or 20 times bigger. And some of them ended up not doing super well, like, like the Geminis of the world, right? Gemini— it used to be Gemini versus Coinbase. Now it's definitely not Gemini versus Coinbase. So, um, yeah, that's kind of—

Binance and Bybit are the two biggest exchanges in the world now. right? Yeah, they came out of that era.

Exactly. So, all right, we're gonna take a quick ad break. I'm not sure if it'll be quick, might be a long ad break, but thanks for listening. We'll be back. I want to talk about, Rob, are dApps priced in, uh, when we get back. So ad break, we'll see you back. This episode is brought to you by Geodnet, the world's largest decentralized RTK network, delivering real-time, centimeter-accurate positioning around the globe, powering technologies that enable precise navigation for drones, autonomous vehicles, first responders, farmers, and robotics. Geodnet shows that blockchain can be a truly transformative force by delivering real-time centimeter-level accuracy. Geodnet enhances emergency response, boosts construction precision, and enables advanced navigation for drones and surveyors far beyond the limits of standard GPS. To find out more, click the link in the show notes or follow them on X. In an industry as hectic, fast, and complex as ours, it's incredibly hard to get an easy, no-nonsense stream of what's actually moving crypto. The memo comes from Matt Hogan, Bitwise's Chief Investment Officer. He's been on the show before, and he has this amazing ability to take the most complex topics and break them down with clarity. Trust me on this one, the Bitwise Weekly CIO Memo is really worth the 5 minutes of your time. Check it out at bitwiseinvestments.com/ciomemo/empire, or just hit the link in the description of today's episode to get started. Carefully consider the extreme risks associated with crypto before investing. Mantle is pioneering the blockchain for banking, a bold new category combining traditional finance with the power of Web3. With UR, the world's first on-chain money app, users can manage fiat and crypto side by side using a Swiss IBAN account in euro, US dollar, Swiss franc, and RMB, all posted to the blockchain. Backed by the Mantle Network, UR is the access layer that unlocks a purpose-built vertical platform for on-chain payments, trading, and asset protocols, including ME/TH, MI4, and functions FBTC. All economic activity within UR will be captured by Mantle Network to further drive value to MNT token holders. Follow Mantle on X @mantle_official for more. Corporate and protocol treasuries face a major challenge today. Cash and traditional instruments are losing ground to inflation. A new industry report from Liquid Collective and Eigencloud lays out the next evolution of the digital asset treasury, moving beyond just passively holding Bitcoin Bitcoin to actively making digital assets like ETH and SOL productive through liquid staking and restaking. For CFOs, DAPs, and corporate treasurers, the path to integrating liquid staking and restaking should be risk-managed and aligned with long-term strategic goals. The Productive Treasury Report outlines practical adoption and a forward-looking vision for the role of the modern treasury as a strategic enabler of new technology. Read the Productive Treasury Report today by following the link in today's show notes. I wanted to take a moment to tell you about Citria, the ZK rollup expanding Bitcoin's utility without sacrificing its security. Using ZK technology, Citria enables Bitcoin to function as a fully programmable financial platform. Citria is optimistically verified by Bitcoin, offering the most secure and native way to extend Bitcoin's utility. Scalability to DeFi. With Catria, developers can build scalable payment systems, tap into Bitcoin's liquidity with financial applications, and build privacy systems. Catria is currently on testnet and approaching mainnet. To follow their progress, click the link in the show notes or follow them on X @Catria_XYZ. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply.

That wasn't so bad.

Not so bad. Only 17 of them. Um, all right, next question. This is from, uh, let's talk about dats. Um, and we'll, we'll keep the dats tight because I know everyone's added out, but, uh, there was a good question from the Empire Channel from— who asked this one? It was Jomie. Jomie. Jomie. Shout out Jomie. Is, uh, he said, is, is sold— is the sold DAT gonna pump or not, or did we already see it pre-pump? And I, I think I'd probably rephrase this question a little bit to just say, like, are the DATs priced in, basically? Um, and I want to hear how you think about this.

Yeah, um, listen, we're not traders, and so, you know, I'll— I don't think about it maybe in the, in the same way. I will say, so we've seen a lot of news about the DATs this week. I think it was MultiCoin and Galaxy. Yeah, Jumping Galaxy. They're doing a, um, uh, they're gonna do a, I think they said a billion dollar Solana dApp. Yeah. Um, I think we also, Pantera and maybe somebody else was doing 400 or 500 million bucks. So we've seen news around, you know, some other dApps kind of coming out to market. Obviously, you know, famously, I think there was one, the Asymmetric Guys, that ended up not working. But there's absolutely capital coming into the space. Now, it sounds like it's in the, call it, a few billion dollars, maybe, is what we're seeing for across all the ones. I think there's another announced one that was run by the guys from Jambo. And so, again, so we're talking about a few billion dollars. Well, what has Solana done over the last week? It's up 17%. It's, I think, the number one performing asset over the last week of any real size. I think only Cronos. Which kind of surprisingly announced a DAT, also pumped this week. But like, other than that, Solana was up by far the most.

Surprisingly?

Yeah, well, maybe everyone's gonna announce that, so you, you tell me. Um, you know, on a week where like Bitcoin was like basically flat, like Ethereum was like 6% relative to their 17%, and I kind of pumped before. And, and that 17% is like approximately $17 billion worth of value for Solana. If you really think about that, $17 billion worth of value at maybe front-running what is a few billion dollars worth of buying pressure, that implies to you that maybe it was priced in. Now, there can be a bunch of other variables there. There's also been— also, what you may not have priced in, which is— and I think it happened in ETH, was when Tom Lee came out and did his original raise for Bitmain, Like he raised $250 million. It wasn't a lot of money, but then he hit the ATM, or the at-the-market offering, and he quickly, in like 3 weeks, took that from a $250 million vehicle to a $2 billion vehicle. And so it is possible that through, call it, size and expertise and capital markets behavior, that that few billion dollars that I mentioned ends up being much bigger. Is it possible that it ends up being 10 times bigger? I don't know. You know, listen, there's also just like macroeconomic variables and other things. So, uh, that said, like, I think my rule of thumb generally is when everybody starts talking about a thing, it is pretty quickly, you know, priced in, at least on large assets.

Yeah. Let's talk about the macro factors. So, um, going into— so there's probably— I mean, this is consensus— there's probably two things that drive the markets right now. It's interest rates and AI. Um, And we're all basically running on this big AI hype boom, I'd say, and the vision of lower interest rates. And that is causing what feels like a lot of exuberance in the market. I'm not saying overexuberance, but a lot of exuberance. You're starting to see two interesting— there's two interesting things happened this week. One is Nvidia started to slow their guidance. I think they beat— I didn't read it too closely, but they beat earnings but started to slow future guidance. Or forward guidance. And that's combined with ChatGPT-5 being a miss from a couple of— or missing their— whatever you want to call it.

That's a hot take. It was a miss.

Yeah, it was a miss. I mean, they missed the expectations. It was an amazing product, but they missed expectations. So you've got AI starting to maybe show cracks and slowing. On the other hand, you have Trump yanking the Fed—

the—

I forget her name— the New York the New York Fed chair, which is the first time I think in 111 years since the start of the Fed that that has ever happened, which is—

Lisa Cook.

Yeah, thank you. Look, I'm not on— we're not— this isn't Forward Guidance podcast here, and I'm not the macro connoisseur that Felix is. But I mean, it's basically like, all right, yank the person who's against lowering interest rates so that you can lower interest rates. And get this market ripping into the midterms in '26. But again, I'm not the macro connoisseur that someone like Felix is. But yeah, I mean, how do you think of— we've probably talked too much on the podcast recently about like, are we at the top cycle?

Yeah.

But like, yeah, how do you think about these two factors?

Yeah, interestingly for the market, you know, I listen to the podcast that I missed last week and that you guys did with Roe. And, and you guys were, you know, right before like Jackson Hole meeting, uh, that where, where Powell came out and was like very dovish. And I was actually in Jackson Hole, and the reason I missed it— and you saw the market respond really, really aggressively on Friday after Powell came out and was basically just way more dovish than anyone expected. But he said something else there that was really interesting, which was essentially Hey, listen, we are considering that maybe target inflation of 2% won't be the same, it won't be exactly what we're focused on over time, and we may change the way we focus on target inflation, or there might be higher target inflation. The market reacted really aggressively because it seemed like, okay, well, we're going to get rate cuts. Then the market was really, really red on Sunday and on Monday. And I don't know, I've been a little bit too busy the last day to understand what's happening today. But we've seen the market react, I think, or retrace most of that. So Bitcoin, which I said was flat on the week, it pumped on Friday and then retraced basically all of its gain. And I think what's happening is the market wants looser monetary policy. They want lower rates. But it also is concerned about what this means for future growth expectations. And, you know, what there's— is there a new normal in this economy that is potentially, you know, if it's not propped up by AI, to your point, are there cracks, right? And I think that's what we're seeing people digest right now. It's also the last week of August, by the way, and so volumes are really terrible. But I do think that there— it's a bit of a mixed bag from a macroeconomic standpoint. And so we're still in the market just kind of figure that out. Right now.

Yeah. What's your prediction?

I don't know, I'm not the professional here, but I will tell you, I, um, if you ask me to put, you know, a bet on a Polymarket, that whether or not Bitcoin would be higher, you know, a year from now, um, it would— I think that, you know, I'd put a lot of money on the yes side.

So, um, but maybe a lot of money on the yes side that Bitcoin would be higher in August of '26 than it is Correct. Okay.

Yeah. How much higher? You know, I, I don't know.

I disagree with, uh, Chris saying looks to me like the last big test before the final set of the cycle.

I think Chris is saying it's, it's gonna go up, right? Like, Chris is agreeing.

Yeah, but I think he's saying this is like— I mean, I don't think he says it goes up for a year. I think he's saying this is—

listen, you've had a lot of people say this on the podcast. I think I've said this on the podcast, uh, this like religious like, you know, 4-year cycle. I know, yeah, 4-year cycle stuff. It's just like crazy. Like, I— like, it just, it defies like any logic, and it defies any sort of like understanding of how like sophisticated markets work. And as crypto has gotten more sophisticated, as it's gotten, you know, better and broader distribution, like, there, there's no reason for that whatsoever. And so I just think you would probably agree with Big Sean, baby.

It's not too late to invest in crypto. Do it tonight if you can. I think it's going to go up.

It is never too late to invest in Bitcoin.

You see this video?

Not financial advice, but it is, uh, never too late. No, listen, I, I, um, I had, I had lunch with some guys from, from Goldman, uh, who do some of the like macroeconomic forecasting, uh, call it 2 weeks ago or so. Actually, very interestingly, Trump called out Jan Hatzius, who is the chief economist there, right after in a tweet. I had lunch with these guys, and they were basically saying, listen, as tariffs have moved through the economy, and they continue to see them move through the economy, and I think there are still inflation concerns related to, as we've seen, move through PPI and CPI in the last month, As those tariffs have moved through, we're concerned, maybe neutral on the way the rest of this year works, but we are really, really constructive on next year. And so from a lot of the really smartest people in the market on the macro side, they expect a really, really positive 2026.

I have a top signal, not a crypto top signal, but just a market top signal.

Is that it?

No, no, I'll do you one better. Elizabeth Holmes, baby. Elizabeth Holmes had not tweeted since December of 2015, saying congrats to Serena Williams on Sports Illustrated Person of the Year. And then we got—

Iron Sisters.

And then we got a nice Muhammad Ali quote saying, I've never pushed myself harder mentally, physically, or spiritually in my life. Muhammad Ali's, I don't start counting the sit-ups until they hurt, has become a metaphor for every hour. So we got a decade later, back in the ring.

Listen, well, you know, we saw Chamath launch us back, all right? So now we need Elizabeth Holmes to launch a new company.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Rob, anything else you want to cover?

No, I think that— I think that's, you know, listen, for last week of August, like, that was a lot, and there's still a lot going on, and I'm excited for what, you know, September and October looks like.

Yeah, I agree. Content of the week.

Was an opening weekend for college football. That's a good part.

You're a big Ohio State guy. I didn't know that.

I'm a big Ohio State guy. Yeah, I went to, uh, go blue. Oh no, oh no, we might have to— it's a good thing we didn't, you know, make this arrangement official yet, so we might have to break up here.

That's cool. So you're all right, so you're going out to the game. That's good. That's good.

Yeah.

Do you, um, you go with a bunch of college buddies or?

Yeah, go, go. So I didn't go there. I went to, um, uh, a school called Washington University in St. Louis, uh, for, for undergrad.

But I, um, I went to WashU, like I say, I went to Emory, which is cause I grew up on the West Coast where nobody knew what Emory was. And then you come to New York and everyone knows what Emory was. I'm like, all right, I don't have to say it.

Yeah.

I went to a school in Atlanta called, yeah.

I'm still scarred by it. I think I was, I was looking at, um, not to digress too much, but I was looking at like, um, uh, Penn and like WashU. And my grandma was like, oh, like Penn State, like, you know, great school, but why wouldn't you go to Ohio State? You know? Um, WashU, like, why are you going all the way to Washington State? Why don't you go to Seattle? Yeah. Like, um, that was, that was the family. So, um, you know, still, it's still been beaten into me, you know, whatever, 15 years later.

So content rec is watch some college football on Saturday.

That's it. Yeah, there is also— and I'm gonna get the name of this, um, correct, so I gotta, I gotta pull it up— but, um, I've been reading, uh, this book, um, I'm gonna get this name right, called Wine in War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure. So I don't know if you know this about me, I know, but like, I'm a big red wine guy, and there's a bunch of— call it interviews, Rob.

I thought you were more of a tequila shots guy after hanging out with you, but, uh, no, no, no, that's just you and Santi, and you guys pulled me into your, into what you guys are doing.

So, um, but I actually, I actually really like this book because it's, it's, you know, talking about a little bit like the history of World War II and, um, through, and the occupation through the lens of like what was happening in the wineries in France. Um, and so I thought it was actually just super interesting.

It feels like a stretch, no?

No, it's actually really interesting.

All right.

I like it. If you like it and, you know, learn some interesting stuff about how some of the wineries would just give like bottles of champagne to like the French troops to like make them feel better. Right. And I was like, you know, like it makes sense.

Yeah. I have two recommendations. One is it's a— I actually haven't listened to this podcast yet, but it's with the Interactive— it's about Interactive Brokers. It's by— if anyone likes the podcast Invest Like the Best, by, uh, with, with Patrick O'Shaughnessy. His business Colossus has another, uh, podcast called Business Breakdowns. They did a big breakdown on Interactive Brokers. Um, Interactive Brokers is amazing story. It's this like Hungarian founder named, uh, Thomas Peterfly, Peterfly, Peterfy, I think it is. He still owns 70% of the business. They're a $110 billion business. They He's like 20— I think he's like top 20 richest people in the world now, $70 or $80 billion. And he's just a stud. Taught himself how to code, bought a seat on the American Stock Exchange in the late '70s, just started a discount broker, went public in '07, market cap like $10 billion. It's up 10x since then. Net sales of $5 billion, pretax margins of 70%, like just a beautiful business.

So What do we do with our lives, Jana?

Launch a discount broker, baby. Well, I have another one, which is people should really go read that book Replay that I recommended last week or the week before. I think it's now my book of the year. I will share a Reddit summary of this book that I thought did it better than I could ever do it. It said, I just read Replay by Ken Grimwood. Such a fantastic book. Mind-blowing. An absolute gem that knocked my ass out. This is the science fiction I love, the kind that upon finishing, you can't move a muscle while you sit paralyzed thinking about what you've just read. Saying this book was thought-provoking would be an understatement, and I would go so far as to say it's life-changing.

Did you write this?

No, this is WoodenCollar6650, but I will say I— my takeaway is not far off from that. So anyways, I'd really recommend it. If people like sci-fi, I'd really recommend this book, Replay.

I like sci-fi. I'm gonna read it. And you— and also, you need to— you need to—

I watched your show. Which one? You're, uh, the Danish—

oh, you did? You made fun of it too. You're like, you know, I know, I know.

Then I watched the trailer and I was like, oh, this looks pretty good. I'm on episode 5. It's fantastic.

It's awesome, right?

Yeah. What's it called again? It's called, uh, um, We Are Family or Your Family.

Uh, yeah, I'm, I'm blanking out now because I—

but, um Danish Netflix series, Family.

I watch it all the time.

Family is like ours. Basically Denmark decides to shut down before climate change, like, because climate change is getting too bad and it's going to flood. And they only have so much money in the, in like the central bank, I guess. And so they want to use the money to get people out. And it's a very— Rob already described it, but my take is it's a very interesting look at like the social dynamics that unfold as bad stuff happens and the country shuts down. Like real estate goes to zero. Okay. So like everyone's wealth is in real estate. And then do you try to sell the house and kind of like insider trade on that? If you have that information before, it's a very good show.

So yeah, go watch it. And I'm, I'm glad I converted you. So, you know, after you gave me a—

you got me.

You guys have been giving me a little bit of crap. Like I'm bringing the, the, you know, the content recommendations down. Right. And I'm just providing, you know, fun.

Thanks for listening. We, um, the Arjun episode, the co-CEO of Kraken, I made a mistake. It's coming out this Monday because we had Hester Peirce this past week. Hopefully you guys enjoyed that episode. We've got Kraken talking about the 10-year vision for Kraken. Um, goes kind of behind the scenes of like the acquisitions they've made, uh, stocks on chain, bunch of interesting stuff. Arjun's a great guy. He, he also co-founded a firm called Tribe Capital. He was very early or helped build up a lot of Yahoo back in the day. I think worked with Chamath maybe at Social Capital, if I remember that correctly. So really bright guy. Yeah, thoroughly enjoyed that. Thanks for listening, folks. Go watch the US Open. Or if you are like Rob, go watch some college football. See you on Monday.

Go Bucks!