Takeaways from the SEC Roundtable and Privy Acquisition | Weekly Roundup

I feel like people think that tokenizing assets is like you're forcing a public asset onto a company that doesn't want it, but it's more like, like, I don't think all startups should have publicly traded equity because there's actually real value in like not having a publicly traded token too early on, in my opinion. But if someone wants it, you should just be able to IPO on-chain. And I think that's where this is headed. Super low barriers to entry, lower cost of capital. You just want more value flowing to those who deserve it. And that is not in the long run Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. I can promise you that.

This episode is brought to you by Geodnet, the world's largest decentralized RTK network, delivering real-time, centimeter-accurate positioning around the globe. You'll hear more about them later in the episode. Hey guys, Jason Yanowitz here. Just to let you know, we have Permissionless 4 coming up in June from the 24th to the 26th. At Industry City in Brooklyn. This is a conference for the developers and builders where we'll be focusing on the DeFi Renaissance, applications, token design, and much more. Click the link in the show notes to grab your ticket today and use code EMPIRE10 for 10% off. 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 the views of Blockworks. Our hosts, guests, and the Blockworks team may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.

Do you see this jacket? Well, first time for everything. I never wear a jacket.

Like 3 times a year.

Wait, you got married and you didn't wear a jacket? I'm concerned.

3 times a year.

Wedding.

Yeah. You honestly can't think of the other times I'd ever wear it. Yeah. I was at the Coinbase, Coinbase State of Crypto Summit earlier today. Really good.

I was actually talking to someone that was there and took a call from there.

Yeah, it's great. I tried finding an area to take a call, but, you know, I wanted to look professional for the podcast, give the people a good mic, keep the audio quality high, you know? So I ran back to the office.

Nice. Well, we appreciate that. I was late, so my bad. I actually have also started to wear jackets. I was on Proof of Stock. The conference in Paris.

Yeah, how was it?

I wore a jacket. It was very, very good. It was, uh, very curated, uh, very good speaker lineup. I'd never been to this conference, 3 years in the making, but it was fun. I was there for days, like, was talking about deep end panel. Um, it was very good. I liked it.

Nice, nice. Um, dude, listen to this lineup for the Coinbase event. So it kicks off with Jeremy Allaire and Brian Armstrong. Amazing first line of the event. The moderator, this woman, Lulu Chang, Meser mezervej, she runs Rostra. I know this woman, Lulu, goes, Brian, Jeremy, great to have you here. I can see that you both attend the same barbershop.

Savage. Savage.

So that was great. They had their head of M&A talking to Philippe, the founder of Coutu. Then David Plouffe, you know, who— big political advisor, ran big campaigns. I think he ran Obama's campaign. He joined as their advisor. And then there's— I'm, you know, we're recording this at noon. Apparently they have some big announcements in the afternoon. So they've got Tobi from Shopify coming. Yeah, the CEO of Deribit, Shane from Polymarket, and then they have Saquon Barkley. Do you know who that is?

Basketball player?

Tough. Nope. NFL.

Oh, okay. Anyways, I would— I know who he is.

People who live in your— don't live in the US have subpar knowledge of No, wait a minute, what are you talking about?

I had 8 interviews with like investment associate roles, and yes, this is a plug for Inversion. Um, and one of them was like, yeah, I went to University of Kansas. I'm like, is that a— you mean a Jayhawk?

So, wow, nice.

I, I know. And then I was like hanging out with like people from Louisiana. I'm like, Tigers, dude, I know my game. College football is when you test true knowledge, you know, because for me it's like, yeah, everyone knows NFL, but like college football On the other hand is another level. Mind you, BU never had a college football team, which is—

who is— all right, who is the LSU quarterback who got drafted and was a bust? He could throw the ball like 80 yards.

Was he also not, uh, uh, Heisman Trophy, which is a Heisman curse?

I actually don't know. I don't think— I don't know. No, he's not— he's stalling while he Googles.

Garrett—

it wasn't Garrett Newsmyer.

Oh no, no. Jamarcus Russell.

All right, let's talk crypto.

Let's talk.

By the way, by the way, on this point.

Oh my God. When you're doing it, you're Googling it.

Yeah, I did Google it. I'm guilty as charged. How do you interview people now? Like I'm trying to send people like a test, like a modeling, an LBO model test. I'm like, do I, how do I make them like where it's like, you just fake it, right? It has to be in person or you record it.

Do we have this with our engineering interviews? Yeah. Like you got it. I think our CTO on a final round— I actually don't know at this point, but I think our CTO joins the interviews with people and has them share their screen and just sits with them for like an hour and watches them do the engineering test. I don't know that for a fact, but I'm pretty sure that's what we're doing right now.

Well, we're here to talk about crypto, right? At some point.

Yeah, let's talk about— let's talk about the SEC, but in a fun way. So there was the crypto task force. So, okay, so these are the things on my mind for this week. So Stripe acquired Privy. Bill Gurley had some pretty interesting talks on just the IPO markets. And actually there's some interesting talks about like moving public markets on-chain. And I thought that was pretty interesting. Something happened in Singapore that I see nobody talking about, but it actually has a big impact on the exchanges out there. ETF updates, corporate treasury updates.

You mean Solana ETF updates?

Solana ETF. No, no, Solana ETF. I think, I think we'll see a Ripple ETF before people know it. And, you know, don't shoot the messenger here. But yeah, I think— anyways, let's talk about the SEC. So actually, on, on Monday, the SEC hosted the Crypto Task Force Roundtable and there were some amazing takeaways from Paul Atkins. Paul Atkins is the chairman of the SEC. He gave a great, great, great talk. And I want to share some quotes and some thoughts on it. But actually, pretty interestingly, so the group that went was the, was Richard Gabbert. Richard's the chief of staff for the Crypto Task Force. Obviously Chairman Atkins. And then we also had 3 commissioners, Pierce, Uyeda, and Crenshaw. But actually, I don't know if a lot of people saw this, but there were some industry representatives there. So you had Jill Gunter from Espresso, Michael Jordan from DBA, Rebecca Redig from Jito, Gabriel Shapiro, the lawyer, Peter from Coin Center, Eric Voorhees was there. Few other people. So did you see the— did you see Paul Atkins remarks?

No.

Oh, these are great. Okay, let me read these. So maybe I'll just read some highlights because it's pretty long. So there are 3— there are 3 quotes that stood out. First quote, Atkins said, I'm in favor of affording greater flexibility to market participants to self-custody crypto assets, especially where intermediation imposes unnecessary transaction costs restricts the ability to engage in staking or other on-chain activities. So that's like, that's amazing. Like, just like really, really, really talking about self-custody, which is crazy. Second was, said, I'm also excited about the use of on-chain software systems by issuers, by issuers to eliminate economic frictions, increase capital efficiency, enable new types of financial products, and enhance liquidity. And then the third said, another core feature of blockchain Blockchain technology is the ability for individuals to have self-custody. Again, self-custody coming up again. To have self-custody of crypto assets in a more personal digital wallet. The right to have a self— to the right to self-custody one's private property is a foundational American value that should not disappear when someone logs onto the internet. I'm in favor. And then this is actually the thing I said before. I'm in favor of affording greater flexibility, etc., etc., to self-custody crypto assets. This is, this is massive. We have a, we have Caitlin Long said it best. She said the SEC has officially begun reversing decades of attempts to eradicate bearer assets from the US financial system. This started in 1994 and then reached its peak under Biden and Warren with their war on cash. Said self-custody of private property is foundational. I've long referred to UCC Article 8.

As probably the—

this was the 1994 kind of when this started— said as probably the biggest theft of property rights in human history because it turned stocks into IOUs, i.e., credit instruments, instead of directly held investments, right? Property, not an IOU. Moving back towards direct ownership of securities reduces systematic risk and it allows the financial system to enter the internet age finally by allowing securities to become natively digital. So I know there's a long, like, reading some quotes and takeaway from— great takeaway from Caitlin Long there. But this is just a— I don't think in anyone's dream we could have dreamed up someone like Chairman Atkins running the SEC.

A total 180. I mean, like, you have an incredible 180. And so the question is, like, there was some rallying of DeFi tokens, I think, based on—

DeFi tokens went up 14% on the speech. Again, tokens went up 14%. Relatively, everything went up a little bit, but L2s, memes, gaming, L1s, AI, everything went up between like 2 to 6%. And DeFi ripped higher to 14%, went up 14%.

DeFi's absent, like Hyperliquid has been kind of like in a tough spot after DeFi summer. There's been some—

until recently, until recently.

I agree with you.

I think it's been catching a bit on the buy and burn narrative and fundamentals like Maker and Aave.

I think with on-chain credit too, like, yeah.

But like, pull up a, pull up a chart of like Aave, for instance, or Maker, and, and overlay that not on the dollar pair but on the ETH pair. And, and I think, I think I just want to make a point of like how, again, you, you could, you could say, oh, it's been a relief rally, but I'm just trying to say like, there's a— these tokens have been kind of left for dead and like Might this be DeFi Summer 2.0? But it sets the stage. I mean, it's a very big 180 change in policy. And I think, of course, we need— we— I wouldn't say policy, just stance. I think we need to see policymaking come into effect. But yeah, I mean, look at that. It has come down. It has come up quite a bit, right? I mean, it's almost like tripled since the bottom, like July. Right. Like, like FTX is probably where all this stuff like really went down. But yeah, it's still certainly not like, you know, peak DeFi mania levels.

No, no. But I mean, it's interesting. I feel like DeFi tokens, maybe not DeFi tokens, the credit tokens have actually entered the kind of consensus trade here. So if you talk about someone's consensus bets in their portfolio today, What do you have? You probably have Solana, hyper liquid. I would say 1 or 2 meme coins like a fart coin or something like that.

RWA, like an Ondo-ish?

I don't think so. I don't think that's a consensus trade. No, I think RWAs have entered— would probably be in the credit trade like something. So, okay, you've got Solana, hyper liquid. SUI is in the consensus trade right now too. Solana, hyper liquid, SUI. Something like Fart Coin and the— and then I think AI, something in AI someone would have, like whether it's World Coin or something else, like more degenerate AI tokens. And then the last bucket I think is these credit tokens like Maple, Aave, Euler, Morpho. Yeah, it's very interesting to see after they've been kind of beaten to death for a couple of years.

So yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a classic Howard Marks line, which is like the market swings, swing the market pendulum swings to extremes from euphoria to despair, and where the real kind of business fundamentals don't really go to those extremes. And so you got to catch it where the net said you either sell when it's at one extreme or buy when it's in the other. That's when you make the most amount of money.

Yeah, totally. Let's see, they— I would just say, like, I mean, the Paul Atkins talk, people should go read it. It's up. It's, you know, you can read it for free online. You can just Google like what, Crypto Task Force Roundtable, June 9th, SEC or something, and it'll come up. I would broadly say it can be summarized as a massive, massive, massive victory for DeFi and a massive victory for crypto in the US. And I think it will actually have a profound impact on— I think Caitlin Long nailed it. Like, this is the start of the pendulum swinging back to self-custody being a normalized thing. And if you rewind the clock, like, you know, a bit of a history nerd, like, you know, you rewind the clock 200 years, like, the US was founded on the right to have, you know, own your own property, right? And the right to sovereignty. And I think, like, if you look at what Atkins is talking about, these are like foundational principles to, yeah, really America. So I think, I think US DeFi is coming back in a big way. It's very cool to see. Did you listen to— ah, He also talked about disclosures, and I will say more on this this upcoming week. Blockworks has a very cool launch related to this. Do not miss. Do not miss an upcoming—

Wait a minute. Did you just take your jacket off? Like, how do I miss this? Also, I don't—

I took the jacket off. I hate the jackets. I hate the jackets.

Jesus.

Did you—

I only say that because what you're announcing to me feels like very— I have some insight into what you're doing. So I got to put the jacket back on. If you're going to announce serious stuff, man, I think you got to put the jacket on. But if you're not, you're not looking at There you go.

Hold on.

So, so you're gonna announce on Monday.

Should I flip the collar up? This is how you do it.

Yeah. That's like a, that's like a Neo, uh, kind of Matrix.

Yeah, this. Yeah, exactly. The launch is coming. Yeah. Anyways. Yeah.

It shouldn't, it shouldn't catch people for surprise. I mean, we've been talking about this particular thing that you're trying to solve for, which honestly I feel incredibly excited about. I think it might be one of those things that, um, not to tease too much, but. Is very, very much needed. Like, I would rank top 3 things that are needed in the space to be— to continue on legitimization of the industry. And it's probably, as you overlay this, and fits so nicely in what are the key issues as regulators think about this industry. And I think this is like at the heart of it, at the absolute heart of it. And so I'm excited to see it. I've been, you know, we've been having a lot of conversations around this thing, and you guys just ship fast and you ship good.

So yeah, you mentioned to me, I mean, this was what, a couple months ago? You're like, I think someone needs to go do this.

And so we were at a Blockworks poker and I was just in New York because I was doing the inversion kind of round and stuff, and I was going around and stuff, and we talked about it. And here we are.

Here we are, 6 months later.

Very cool.

I'm, I'm not going, but— and we're recording this on Thursday afternoon, obviously you'll be listening on Friday or Saturday— but we are going into the SEC. On Friday to talk to them about this. So we're very, very excited about it. We think it can become the standard for the industry. We won't share more. You'll see it next week. Give us some love when you see it.

How quickly did they give you a meeting, by the way, out of curiosity?

Very quickly, because we're working with some of our mutual friends who's arguably the best lawyer in the industry, I'd say. And so she's helping us out.

Amazing.

Yeah.

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. Hey everyone, Jason Yanowitz here. Earlier in today's episode, you heard me mention the weekly CIO memo from Bitwise. 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/cio. Memo/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. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply.

Okay. Bill Gurley, phenomenal podcast episode on the state of venture on Invest Like the Best. So what Bill Gurley lays out is this idea that The public markets are broken, basically, and venture— and because of that, venture markets are broken. And there's this very interesting idea that he lays out, which is companies are— everyone knows this— the number of IPOs are year after year after year decreasing and companies are staying private later and later and later. So, you know, it's not out of the picture that we'll see a privately held trillion-dollar company, right? Stripe is closing in on that. SpaceX is closing in on that. I don't know their market caps today, but probably like 5 to 10x off from that. So not that far off from a privately held trillion-dollar company, which then begs the question— oh, sorry. And the other, the other element of this is when you get to be— the private market liquidity for secondaries is actually starting to become pretty robust. And companies like Stripe and SpaceX, like, I'm sure you get these deals all the time. People sending you like SpaceX deals, uh, Anduril, like, you know, I feel like every other day there's like Anduril secondary in my email, um, SpaceX, Stripe, things like that. So, and the companies are actually getting really comfortable with the secondary trading. So now if you've got these $100 billion companies where the secondary is becoming pretty liquid market, it's like, and it's not a pro— it's not a public market, but it's kind of, it's kind of like the pink sheets, right? It's kind of like It's kind of like a market where it's a slightly less efficient market than the public market. So what Bill Gurley says is, he says the only— he says there's a really interesting post by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce that argues that blockchain is actually the path to fix this broken IPO market. Right. And he said, if you tokenize the security, it's going to get interesting. I'm going to start watching this. So this is Bill Gurley, historically not a huge crypto bull, and I think kind of like, you know, actively doesn't really like crypto that much. And he's saying, look, you've got this massive problem, this might be the solution. And this is the big— it feels obvious that like you've got stablecoins right now. And then the two big trends that are coming, it's like the resurgence of DeFi and tokenization.

Yeah. Again, again, I think a lot of, a lot of what happens in crypto is people treat this as a science experiment and you attract a lot of brilliant product or developers and they have this like itch to build something transformational. And I get it. A lot of it is just reminding ourselves of like very core ideas of when you joined the space that are true. And it's like, we don't have to like build and reinvent stuff, but things that have already been built in crypto can apply to so much in the real world. That look, of course, if you want to build the next zero-to-one thing, go at it, right? Uh, prediction markets, for instance. But like, just, just take for an example, like, an AMM. What is crypto like really, really good at? Price discovery. AMMs are really good, a new type of mechanism to— like, crypto is good at liquidity for a tail end of assets and price discovery of, of those assets. More liquidity, more price discovery. And so markets eventually like surface that. And so to me, that feels like that's a core property here, that as you think about like the— these growing secondary markets, or like private markets in the traditional world, moving over crypto, you might be able to get— achieve better price discovery and liquidity on these things. And so it's, it's a thing, right? The second one is— and, and I felt this a lot when I was at ParaFi, like when we go talk to people, they're like, what are you guys? Are you like a hedge fund or you're a venture fund? And we're like, uh, we're kind of lit both, because like the path to liquidity is shorter, but it has venture type of returns and we're investing in early stage, but the tokens are liquid. And look, that has both pros and cons, right? Because if you're a startup and you have a token, it can be distracting. Um, price discovery also, to contradict what I just said, price discovery of these things can also be incredibly inefficient. Like, how do you value a startup? Like, there's, there's, there's benefits of not having a real-time price on a startup.

Well, not only that, the valuations are marked. You've got 10 different firms marking the valuations. You might have a venture firm that marks it at $1 billion. Another venture firm marks it at $500 million. Another venture firm marks it at $2 billion. If you're an LP, you're like, what's the mark? What's my mark? And yeah, I've got all these companies. I've got all the venture funds marking the exact same company at 3 different numbers.

So yeah, look, um, it means like, where—

oh, go, go, go, go.

No, no, go for it.

I was just gonna say where this obviously feels like it's headed is all assets get tokenized. You let one market trade the assets. You don't tokenize— I feel like people think that tokenizing assets is like you're forcing a public asset onto a company that doesn't want it, but it's more like, like, I don't think all startups should have publicly traded equity because there's actually real value in like not having a publicly traded token too early on, in my opinion. But if someone wants it, you should just be able to IPO on-chain. And I think that's where this is headed. Super low barriers to entry, lower cost of capital. I mean, we saw how much the bankers kind of flubbed some of the Circle IPO. There's obviously benefits to it, right? Went up 4x and that's great. But you just want more value flowing to those who deserve it. And that is not, in the long run, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. I can promise you that. Yeah. So we'll see.

I mean, I've been, I've been, I've even heard radical ideas of like, could you create tokens on specific departments within big organizations like Google, for example. Hey, could you take, could you create a token on like employees within like the Google Brain division?

I don't like that. I don't like that because it's like people do that in crypto today. You launch a second token. People have said people launch second tokens and I don't think that's healthy. It's like, imagine Amazon. Do you think Amazon should have launched a second stock?

Like, I don't—

look at AWS.

Companies do this all the time. They spin out certain divisions and unlock value.

Like, yeah, you should let them, you should let them figure out how to do it.

Like, that's what I'm saying. Like, I'm not saying they should have spun out like the AWS, like the cloud division, but if they had, they probably would have gotten a better multiple. Now, what does that do to the— and then so if you can create an economic relationship between like, like if you airdrop, if you airdrop part of the supply to the Amazon shareholders. That's typically what happens in a carve, like a spinout. Yeah.

And that's, it's funny, we, there's an episode we already recorded with Felipe from Theia who did this great thing about tokens are broken. You weren't on it, but it was Louis from L1 Digital, Dan Smith, and Felipe from Theia, and talking about why tokens are broken. And he talks about exactly what you're saying, Santi, which is you kind of carve it out, you give some of the supply, like you give some of the Amazon stock supply to AWS, and they're actually legal rights that say that you legally have to do that. Yeah. Protect the shareholders. In tokens, there are no legal rights to do that. So if I'm—

that's true. Well, you can embed it if you're a lead investor, like you can very much dictate those terms.

You could, but most people don't do it right now. So there's actually no legal rights. And so that's— there's all these barriers to entry.

Anyways, listen, a lot of this can be solved by standardizing. This is a classic example of like things in crypto that we're trying to reinvent. We just need to borrow certain core primitives from finance that governance rights and token rights and whatever. I think that's like a, going to be very essential. So anyways, where are we going with this? I think Bill Gurley's point is a really good one though. Like, I've seen it, like most people don't want to invest in the next private equity fund or the next venture fund because it's taking longer, right? Companies are staying private longer. And if you're an LP, like you or a pension fund, you clearly have like obligations to your own constituent base, and that duration is like 10 years. And if, if after 10 years you haven't gotten your money back and DPI is not there, then the asset class is in a pretty tough spot. I think I've seen most, most new funds are trying to like address this point because this is the biggest pushback from LPs. And so, um, of course, like, you can't be a crypto fund going around saying like, oh, invest in crypto because faster path to liquidity. It's still important to like justify like what you're actually investing in, like quality assets. I think that's still going to be the far most important thing. But, um, but yeah, again, like, um, the counter to Bill's point is like, these secondary markets are kind of very liquid, right? Or if you want to get liquidity for employees or investors, like you can do a tender, like companies do this all the time. Like it's, uh, so like this, this idea of like not getting liquidity because of, you know, you're not a publicly traded company. That's kind of not true entirely. Companies find ways to like raise money quickly in the private markets. Um, and also like clean up the cap table if you need to, like, there's these, like, there's massive secondaries that are happening.

Like, I think that's kind of actually what Bill is saying is like, he shares this one story of a founder who was talking to a bank, the bank priced the, um, price the IPO. And the founder said, why would I ever do that? I could go in one day tomorrow, go raise $1 billion at a 20% premium than what you just quoted my IPO. So I think Bill is just saying, look, we need— we should try to put transparent markets and more efficient markets around these things. Because the way that these things do sell is like, look, like you get an email in your inbox, like, I've got, you know, $1 million of SpaceX that I'm willing to offload, uh, taking a broker fee of 6%. It's like, it's, it's definitely a a less efficient market.

Yeah.

So the last thing on this note is it reminds me of this thing that Vance from Framework— there's a tweet from Vance like a very long time ago about how crypto is like becoming the only investable category, which is obviously a hyperbolic thing to say. But if you lay it out, I'm going to botch what Vance said, but like it was something along the lines of, look, fintech is largely consolidating right now. Consumer has no organic VC scale. Hits with sustainable growth in the last decade. Enterprise SaaS has revenue multiples that are compressing somewhere around like 6, 7x right now. Revenue multiples, not like that, you know, not good for the, for the massive VCs that invested at 20, 30, 40, 50 times revenue. A ton of competition. Obviously, AI is going to completely upend the SaaS model. Defense, is like really hot right now, obviously led by Anduril, who just raised at a $30 billion valuation, but like very unclear what the outcomes and the multiples are there. And then AI has kind of become the last refuge of the large gigafunds. It's very tough to say that like anything is more interesting than investing in crypto right now unless you are a massive, massive, massive gigafund who needs to deploy like $1 billion. Yeah, go throw it into, you know, you know, Perplexity or Anthropic or something like that, or Anduril. But yeah, for especially when you see these crypto acquisitions, which let's talk about the Privy one right now. But yeah, all these acquisitions, it's, I think the venture market for crypto is about to come ripping back.

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I don't have necessarily any other insights on this other than Well, I guess the thing I will comment on, which is what I'm going to say, is there is— you take the long view that there's going to be this whole vintage of companies that private equity, particularly large private equity funds, have bought, or even venture investors have bought in a different state of the world where rates were super low, particularly in a private equity context. If you were like a large private equity fund and bought a business for like, I don't know, $10 billion or more, you were most of your underwriting was like in a low or record low interest rate environment and you didn't kind of factor in higher rates and staying longer. And so like financial engineering is kind of gone, right? In a higher interest rate environment, the amount of operational efficiencies that you can squeeze out of a business of that size, or, you know, you could argue some funds like Vista are better than others, but most of them kind of didn't really underwrite that in their plan. To Vance's point, like AI might be the saving grace of all these businesses. But, um, you know what we're doing at Inversion. But like, I think that's my view, which is I get excited because the amount of companies that are going to be up for sale over the next 5, 10 years of people that have said, hey, listen, I got to return investor— I got to return money back to investors, I'm willing to let go of this asset for 60, 70, 80 cents on the dollar. Like, that to me— and I was just talking to a guy who left SoftBank to do this, which is capture that value too. And I think that's going to be— that to me feels like a strategy that I get excited about because I think there's going to be forced sellers, and you always want to buy when there's a forced seller.

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. Hey everyone, Jason Yanowitz here. Earlier in today's episode, you heard me mention the weekly CIO memo from Bitwise. 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. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk. Terms and conditions apply.

Let's talk about the Privy acquisition.

Yeah, that's good.

So Stripe acquired Privy. Big congratulations to the Privy team. Privy is a provider of wallets. So they basically— if somebody wants to launch— actually, let's go to the website of Privy and see what it looks like. Wallet infrastructure for every user. Privy makes it easy to build on crypto rails, securely spin up wallets. Sign transactions, and integrate on-chain infrastructure all through one simple API. So their two main competitors are probably Dynamic.xyz and Turnkey. So if somebody wants to go launch wallets for users, Privy has become one of the easiest ways to do it. So, I mean, the big news is that Stripe acquired them. I'm going to read a couple of highlights from the blog post. It says, Privy will continue to operate as an independent product, but you can expect us to serve you better, faster, etc., etc. We built Privy to abstract away complexity. There's a user number in here somewhere I'm trying to find. Today, Privy powers over 75 million accounts across 1,000 different teams. So it's pretty impressive. They have 1,000 different teams using Privy, 75 million accounts, billions in transactions. And it's very interesting. So obviously this comes on the heels of Stripe acquiring Bridge for that obviously massive acquisition that you could say kicked off crypto M&A season. This is— I thought our friend Rob, who was on the show the other day, said it best. He said, I'll say it once, I'll say it again. It's clear that Stripe and all stablecoin companies are trying to become networks and that the whole payment model is collapsing onto itself. I said there was a Patrick Collison quote that he pointed to. He says money has to reside somewhere and Privy builds the world's best programmable programmable vaults alongside our other stablecoin work. We're looking to— we're looking forward to enabling a new generation of global internet-native financial services. And then actually, John Collison had a great tweet too. He said crypto wallets are going to play an increasingly important role in the growth of the internet economy. So, yeah, amazing to see. Just, I mean, Stripe is just moving crazy fast too. They clearly have a deep conviction on stablecoins. And they are just ripping forward to integrate and try to own the entire stablecoin stack.

Yeah, I mean, the—

it's— it's—

I mean, we said— I mean, I think the Bridge acquisition was just opening the floodgates and it was the Instagram moment. What Instagram did for Facebook, Bridge did it for Stripe and then the rest of TradFi. It's like now you're wondering if you're a Stripe—

you did have a nice call on that. I remember everyone was saying this is too much money. Oh my God, too much money, too much money, too much money.

Cheapest acquisition to reinvent the business of Stripe. I mean, it's and defend their valuation, right? I think now the question is what else gets acquired? BVNK, I mean, Visa obviously invested there. Like, there's gonna be a scramble of companies that, uh, you know, TradFi is gonna want to buy, right? Um, and so again, not every— the, the— I'll give credit to Stripe. It's a founder-led organization, and the speed by which they can move, the agility and the aggressiveness is bar none. And so I think, um, they've really, they've really moved at an incredible pace. Um, Robinhood I would characterize too, right? Um, I think, um, I've seen some like, um, interesting commentary on this acquisition. I mean, I think most people in crypto are like really excited. There's this guy that continues to be like really skeptical and, uh, about crypto. I don't know if you've seen him or not, Jack, uh, Zhang. Um, he's the founder of Air Wallets.

Oh, he's scrub, scrub. Yeah.

Yeah, you give him no time. Okay, well, we should not give him more time. But he was like very salty on this acquisition and I was like, okay, I always like make a note of like whenever—

hey, let's read it. All right, Jack's saying I will give this man time.

All right, you do 2 minutes.

But like, I got my thing. Jack's saying, he said, people think Stripe bought Privy because of the technology, but they are wrong. What no one knows is Stripe— I'll pull this up. What no one knows is Stripe bought it because of risk management. At Stripe's current scale, it's so hard to build a crypto product by going through their internal regulatory compliance corporate structure. That's why they failed to build anything meaningful in their own crypto team the last 4 years. It's a lot easier to buy startup and run the crypto product as a separate legal structure to ring-fence the regulatory risk. I actually don't completely disagree with that. Actually, what I do disagree with is his— he had this thing the other day, which was this, which was the horrible take. He said investors keep asking me about stablecoin and how that can reduce FX fees. If you send money from USD to euros and the receiving end still requires to receive euros in their bank, I can't see any way stablecoin can reduce fees. Off-ramping from stablecoin to recipient currency are far more expensive than the FX interbank market. This misses the forest for the trees, my friend.

Yep. Yeah, I do think like calling out— yeah, okay, that was really good. I actually have been speaking with Simon a lot. I think that particular blog post is something that everyone that is excited about stablecoins should read because Simon actually is one of the probably top 5 people that understand fintech. But, and, and his point there is like, again, as the title suggests, stablecoins aren't cheap, they're better. And, and I think that's a point that you should look at, which is, um, where a lot of people are not correct is by saying, look, stablecoins are going to totally reinvent everything. Like, okay, yeah, they're room temperature semiconductors, but for what? And, and I think it's sort of like It's a great blog post. I'm not going to like rehash everything he has to say. People will link it in the show notes for real this time. Um, and, and I think like a lot of where people miss it, I'll just kind of allude to this, is like, um, you don't have a full appreciation of the stack. You're still going to have to interact at some point and pay a fee, right, if you're working with stablecoins. On and off ramp are where most of the friction is. So like Jack's not entirely wrong. The question is, are people off ramping? Because in my conversations with Bridge, for instance, a lot of what they're highlighting is consumer behavior is changing.

Exactly. People don't off-ramp.

You don't want to get out of ramping anymore. Like, if you're like a Western Union, you still have to go and like deposit the cash or whatever, or send it through a bank to on-ramp to stablecoin. But once the money is there, for the first time, like, people— if you sent money through Western Union, you had to off-ramp. There wasn't an option to keep it in digital wallet, as far as I understand. And now That is changing. And I think that's kind of the point that a lot of people just miss, which is, yes, if you went through the entire flow, you would still pay fees. It's not to say that fees goes to zero. It's like the changing consumer behavior, business behavior around stablecoins is powerful.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. I agree with that. I had a few other takeaways. One is that— and I shared them here— I said one is that For anyone who has met Henry and their team, they are relentless with product. I think Omar, Omar from Chaos, had a good, good tweet about this. Omar tweeted, I had long heard that Privy was one of the best in the space.

Months ago, Chaos needed a wallet solution.

Diogo intros at Saturday at 2:30 AM. Henry responds 1 minute later, 2:30— or Diogo intros at 2:33 AM. Henry responds 1 minute later, 2:34 AM. It's the small things that make the difference. Congrats. And this is what I have heard from everybody who's ever worked with Privy or with Henry or anyone on their team, is that they are just relentless with go-to-market and product. And, uh, uh, we, you know, we have this now, which is, it's a new motion for us, which is like, you've got people on the front line, salespeople, like customer support and account management and all that kind of stuff. You're talking to customers and then product and engineers, and it's actually, you got to kind of close that gap between the customer feedback and engineering. And it sounds— for anyone who hasn't built before, it's like, oh yeah, duh, just get the engineers talking to the salespeople or something like that. It's actually a pretty tough thing to do. And I think Henry's an amazing CEO because he's been able to do that so relentlessly.

Yeah, I mean, most companies, it's shocking. Simple things like that that make common sense, like be close to your customers and iterate fast. And I was just having this discussion with this great, great guy that actually leads product at one of the larger banks that is focused has a crypto arm. And, um, I think the, the point there was like, people in crypto, again, like, are very ideological, lead from ideology, and treat it as a science experiment. It's like an academic project, which is, let's build something and they will come, and let's build, let's build like a perfect solution. Which is, you know, in a, in a, in a vacuum, yeah, if you could design it, great. And in doing so, they sort of lose track of the customer and what they're building for, and, and ultimately like getting product-market fit, uh, and they're so like, I like, they're geniuses and they're so like adamant about building something that it never gets off the ground. Then they run outta money and they fail. And I think like there's other organizations that are just like incrementally building faster, faster, faster, and they're super in touch with their customers. And not just like, I think Privy fits in that category nicely. Stripe fits in that category. Palantir, which has got a huge run-up, they literally have engineers follow like you know, boots on the ground, like quite literally deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq to understand the end customer and go understand, go spend time with them. Let me ask you a question. Out of 10 startups, how many of them— say, pick any 10 startups in your portfolio— how many of them do they actually do this? Like surveys, users?

Like, none. It's crazy. So the— I think there's this common trope that founders are like, should be the product people or should be like the, you know, very, the, you know, the gigabrain developer, the gigabrain engineer, and they should be the product people. But the problem that a lot of the founders, I think, that you and I have invested in is they get so focused on the product and actually the engineering that they actually never talk to the customers. And it's, yeah, it's probably one of the biggest recommendations I make to people is like, go buy your customers lunch, take them out, sit down with them for an hour, have them tell you everything that they use your product for and what they, what they like and what they don't like.

Totally.

Yeah.

On this point, can I make a comment? I don't know if you want to say more about Privy.

I have two other thoughts on Privy. One is for anyone building in crypto, Privy launched in mid-2021 and actually I found Henry's original blog, original LinkedIn post where he announced Privy.

He said, I'm so excited to share My work with the amazing Asta Lee.

We're announcing our beta today. Privy builds APIs so developers can handle user data privately in Web3. So it actually— so it launched at ECC. It was actually a, it was actually a privacy protocol, which I, which I didn't originally realize. And Privy didn't actually take off, if you remember this. So Privy was created in like mid to late 2021. They only had their big break with the FriendTech integration, which was in August of 2023. So if you think about that, that's 2 years of just grinding and they launched the privacy solution. Nothing happened for 2 years. Summer of '23, they get the break. Wallets, boom, pivot. Privy becomes a wallet infrastructure company. And I think sometimes, you know, we saw this with Blockworks, like sometimes you just got to slog through the slow, low adoption until you hit it. And once you hit it, pivot every single ounce of energy you have into whatever just found product market fit and go all in on that. And I think Privy did a great job of that.

The way— that's an excellent point, which is so many companies, most of the best companies, their initial conception of an idea did not end up being what made them super successful. And I think, like, again, it's like this constant iteration. Constant, constant, like you just gotta like stay long enough in the game to be lucky. But a lot of that in this case is just staying super close to the market, to customers. And luck here is like persistence of like staying close to where the action is. And you could have pointed to certain discrete changes in the market, whether it's regulatory. In this case, like it was probably account abstraction, combination of things that led to the wallet propagation and like, and like they were just there faster, moving faster than other teams. And then you get the big customer like Frontech, and then boom, boom, and then you win, and then you capture the market. And I think it's just like, there's a quote that I really like, which is, you're under no obligation to be the same person that you were 5 minutes ago. And I think it applies to startups in general, which is like, at the end of the day, you're here to be successful and capture a market. You don't have to stay like, you know, what your initial pitch was, is likely not gonna be what the end state looks like. Like you guys were an event company. You're not an event company. Like you, you are an event company, but that's, that's almost like gonna be secondary as I see it to what all the other stuff that you're building data and what you're announcing on Monday and like you're doubling down, but you had to start with a, with a wedge, which was events. Cuz that's what at that time in the industry, people wanted to go and interact and it was like a meetups and they're still important, but you can, you can use that and you don't stop there, right?

That's right, 100%. So congrats to the Curvy team.

Yeah, congrats. Really good stuff. We've been looking at them because they're just— that it's a great—

they're great. Congrats to Sequoia for selling another one of your wallets to Stripe. Yeah.

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There's a— I was recording a podcast with Amir, one of the founders of Helium, we do this Deep In Roundup with Jason Yanowitz from, uh, the founder of, um, Daylight, uh, Manesh, uh, from EV3, and Connor from Proof of Coverage, I think. Um, and, and Amir came on and he said a great, great line which really stuck with me, and I'm going to read it. He says, first-time founders focus on the product, second-time founders focus on distribution.

Justin, Justin Kan. Tweeted that. Is that, uh, that's a, that's a Justin Khan, uh, Twitch, Twitch.

I just borrowed it from someone else, but anyway.

Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, of course.

Yeah, it's, it's, I, I don't know what you would say to that.

Spot on. 100%. 100, 100, 100%.

And how you define distribution, I get, for me it's like, you know, community ecosystem, but just like, again, I, I just came to that conclusion when I was like, yeah, distribution is all that matters. Like getting your product in the hands of people and Either you build it or you buy it or you latch onto it through a partnership, but it's super important, right?

Because great products can be ruined by poor distribution.

Yes.

If you have great distribution, you can, if you know how to talk to the customers, you can find a great product to build.

Yeah. Use your cut. And this, I think this is a core primitive of Web3 that we haven't really latched onto as much, which is Somehow like crypto is really good at getting attention from the community, or I guess you could argue maybe just a bunch of people want an airdrop. And is that the community? We can disagree on that, but people are screaming at you what they want. And I think that's like really good organizations, I think capture that feedback and use it to inform product development. Um, and I just think crypto has a lot of that first piece, but not the second, which is the products haven't really translated into great products necessarily. Um, I think a lot of that's broken in an era that is going to be long gone, which is like the users that are in crypto today are just expecting an airdrop and, you know, it's not really the core user base. And I think some of the best companies that are like really hitting strides are just companies that actually go outside of the, you know, micro beta tester user base of crypto and really go to the real world and like start building solutions for that. Um, and so 100%.

Yeah. All right. Two smaller things before we wrap. One is nobody's talking about what's happening in Singapore. So let me just—

Annabelle that had a great tweet about it.

Yes. And yeah, it was Annabelle. So Annabelle, I'll pull this up. And I did not do a ton of research. So we'll do this in real time. But Annabelle tweeted, Annabelle from Altius, Annabelle Huang from Altius. Yeah, tweeted, noticed major panic in Singapore crypto group chats this week, yet not many in New York seem to have heard about the new digital token service providers regime in Singapore and its potential global impact. Quick TL;DR: MAS had done a few rounds of consultation before the May 30th announcement, but most Singapore crypto natives were caught off guard. The rules seemed aimed at unregulated CEXs, market makers, OTC desks incorporated in Singapore and their staff physically based in Singapore. but the DTSP scope felt vague, especially for founders and developers. 2. MAS walked it back a bit on June 6th, clarifying utility governance tokens are out of scope, but it's still unclear how DEXs and DeFi fit in. And 3. Perception damage is done. Singapore's reputation as a crypto-friendly hub has taken a hit. Might see talent shift to Dubai, the US, or maybe Hong Kong. So I went and Googled just Singapore crypto and let me read the headlines. Singapore's regulatory crackdown forces crypto exchange to plan an exit. Singapore tapped the brakes on crypto. Who could, who could race ahead? Singapore order leads unlicensed crypto exchanges to weigh exit. Top global crypto exchanges rethink Singapore presence as MAS tightens rules. Singapore imposes June 30th deadline for crypto firms to halt overseas digital token services until licensed. So yeah, this is a big, this is a big shift. And I mean, Singapore was like, if you think about when Gensler cracked down on crypto, where did people go? Singapore and Dubai, mostly, right? You know, Token2049 Singapore, one of the biggest events the industry has probably ever seen last year. We'll see. I think this is, I think this is going to change things. And even for Blockworks, right, we have Digital Asset Summit in New York and London. We've been thinking about what an international event could look like. Do we do it in somewhere like Hong Kong or Abu Dhabi or Dubai or Singapore? And yeah, Singapore is probably off the table now. So big impact on the global—

what do you think? Like, uh, a lot of what we talk about is like the US is really kind of like sets the tone for the rest of the world. It's interesting because Singapore was, was very like a haven in a time where like you have, uh, pretty like adversarial regulatory apparatus in the US. And then now it's sort of flipped, right? You would've expected Singapore and other countries to like now like follow the lead of the US, which is you have David Sachs, you have like the SEC, you have Atkins, like you have, and it just feels like kind of out of nowhere. And maybe this is a long time coming, right? A lot of times like these things are years in the making, but I'm curious, like, if anyone in the community or you have any insight into like what is the motivation behind it at a time where like most other countries like being pro crypto? Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah. So it's the Monetary Authority of Singapore, right? Which is like the central bank or it's— I think it's both the central bank and financial regulatory authority of Singapore. I don't fully understand how it works, but I think it's both of those. They oversee everything, right? Insurance, banking, securities, money. So they came down and said this. I don't really know. But something, something to pay attention to that I didn't think people were paying attention to.

Mind you, a lot of exchanges are based there now. So we'll see where they relocate. Yeah. Yeah.

I talked to one of the biggest exchanges this— to last week. He's the one who put this on my radar. I hadn't even heard of it. And he's like, look, we're all, we're all kind of panicking. Because individual employees could get in trouble. Too. So like we might need to move employees.

So yeah, you got to kind of go to Dubai most likely.

And then yeah, by the way, I'm not super in touch with this, so I'm sure I'm getting some things wrong. So but people should just— to flag, people should look into that. All right. Last news story of the week is Blockworks had a big scoop this week, which is that the SEC is now asking Solana ETF issuers to submit amended S-1 forms within the next week, which obviously sets the ETFs on a path to approval, probably this summer, maybe by end of summer or something like that. So pretty big, pretty big news. Big scoop. Shout out to Jack and Catherine at Blockworks for this one. I had a tweet that got some people angry. I said I met with a top 5 bank the other day. So this was interesting. They refer— I don't know if you've heard this before— the top 4 They refer to tokens as the top 4 and then everything else. They say BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP are the top 4, and then there's everything else. We don't really care about everything else. I said it looks like we'll get the Solana ETF in the next few months. My guess is the next ETF after SOL will be XRP. And yeah, I think someone commented a good comment. I forget where it is, but Oh, Litecoin. Oh, that's funny. Litecoin commented on it. Yeah, it's either— I think it'll be the next— shoot, the next ETF after Solana will probably be, I would guess, 60, 65%, 70% chance it's XRP, 30% chance Litecoin. No, no way.

No, not Litecoin. Who's going to push it?

It's like weirdly a commodity, so you can do it. It's identical to Bitcoin, essentially. Is there any Litecoin public public token.

What is it?

What do you call it? Corporate treasuries? No, there probably will be though. Anyways, not, not really Litecoin. It's going to be XRP. I just like— money's on XRP. Also, there are 4 markets that the CME supports. It's Bitcoin, ETH, SOL, and XRP. Bitcoin, ETH, SOL, XRP.

So yeah, yeah, I just got to show my Litecoin people some love. He's just farming engagement, ladies and gentlemen.

No, no, I do. Isn't there something with XRP, with Litecoin, where it's like it is a— because it's just a fork of Bitcoin is a commodity, so it gets early approval on things. Am I an idiot?

You actually might not be wrong. It's a good take.

It's like a very left curve take. But anyways, what else you got? Come to Permissionless. Our data team just launched a Hyperliquid dashboard, big Unichain dashboard, and actually our first— we are pushing beyond on-chain data now. So we launched the fundraising dashboard about 3 weeks ago. We just launched a centralized exchange dashboard. So we've got all the big exchanges: Kraken, Coinbase, Binance, etc., Crypto.com. We also this week added Binance US, Gate, Bullish, Bitstamp, and Bitvavo. We're working on HTX, which is formerly Huobi, LMAX, and Upbit data. So go check out the centralized exchange dashboard. Hyperliquid dashboard launched this week as well. So, and go buy your permissionless ticket. We are How many days? Uh, 10 days.

10, 12, 11. No, it's a 24th to 26th. I know this because I'm planning my trip. Let's go!

I think I'll be there. I think it'll be— it's gonna come down to the wire, but I think it'll be a sellout. Let's see. Oh, let me check the tickies today. Yeah, tickets are ripping.

How could I end this podcast without not telling you how badly I'm gonna beat you at this bet that we have. Suzanne Danheim has 1.689.

What is the bet? We didn't bet on this. I'm, I'm pumping Suzanne too.

Lord, don't let me hold you back. Please do. She's tweeting good alpha. Uh, she's like, at some point I might have to stop tweeting like immersion.

You didn't grow that much this week.

I know, I know. What's going on, Susie? You gotta, you gotta pump up those numbers. Uh, who's—

why is she out here retweeting some— do more. What is this? He's actually very good.

He understands like, um, that's our intern right there. We have a bunch of interns.

Mateo, you— how many interns you got?

I think we got, uh, 8 interns now. Let's go.

You did the intern strategy. That's right. Why would I— on his cover image?

Uh, yeah, I know. Uh, why, why would I—

look how blurry this thing is. Oh yeah, Matteo, come on, man.

Uh, why would I hire BCG, McKinsey, or Bain to do desktop research and charge me a million dollars for like a company that I want to acquire where I can have an intern like survey 1,000 people per week?

Who's going to serve us more? No, it's true.

Like, I mean, I'm like, I, I tell my interns, if you send me anything that's like ChatGPT or Perplexity that I can find there, you've done something terribly wrong. And like, no, I want like, go do— what is something that in a world of AI, what is something that you can differentiate if it doesn't exist online? There's stuff that you can still do to differentiate, you know what I mean? I think. Yeah. So any content this week? There's like the ocean, the blue, the OceanGate documentary came out. I haven't seen it.

I didn't, I haven't, I don't know. I actually don't know what that is. Yeah. The Bill Gurley podcast on Invest Like the Best is amazing. I'd go listen to that.

I actually took your recommendation and I'm 3/4 of the way on the Steve Ballmer Acquired. So good, right?

Yeah, it's so good. I love his energy. He's got like this big gregarious laugh. He's like, oh, he's great. You know what I mean?

Like sometimes—

Have you got to the part where he's talking about the stadium? What's their stadium? The Staples Center?

I forget, but he's—

Have you got to that part? It's at the very end. No, you probably haven't got there yet. Oh my God. Like the level of like, energy he put into the stadium is so cool to hear. Developers, developers, developers. They talk about the story of developers.

Yeah, yeah, I love that part. I mean, how many times have you seen that video? It's just amazing. Honestly, sometimes it's so simple, but hiring high-energy people is so, so important. Yeah, I've started to pay attention to that a lot. Like, if you don't have high energy, like, you're—

wait, you'll appreciate this. We just hired someone and we were between two candidates. One was like super great resume, older, more experienced, like 10 out of 10 resume. The other one was like pretty crypto native and just like high agency energy, real pretty young, inexperienced, but like, and so we obviously went with the younger, high agency, high energy.

Because if you, if you do 1% better, and I think that requires a lot of energy and agency at the end of the year, the compounding of that is, is like you almost think the better that person maybe was like 10, 20% like the gap, but like over, over a course of 1 or 2 years in the job, that guy's like like, totally.

Yeah, that's, that's definitely one of the reasons I would point to this. So I was at the Coinbase alumni event last night and it was all like Coinbase alumni there and, you know, kind of snuck into that event and it was great. And Brian Armstrong came and gave a talk to the old Coinbase alumni. It's like a bunch of people. There's now 100, over 100 funded crypto companies that have come out of Coinbase. Anyways, he said this thing, he said, look, when your company starts to get bigger, they have like 4 or 5,000 employees now. You start to hire lower beta people. So if you're at the very beginning, you're hiring these like high beta people, aka riskier people, essentially bigger upside, but bigger downside, they could like totally flop. When you get bigger as a company, you just want to hire the Google product manager, you want to hire the account, you know, the Yelp salesperson, the Facebook engineer, it's the easier thing to do. And he said, make sure when you scale, you hire the higher beta employee. So anyways, we hired the higher beta employee and he said, he said, I now have 3 things: God, my family, and Blockworks.

Let's go! He's gonna tattoo Blockworks. God, I was like, let's go!

I'm hyped.

You're gonna go to war with that guy.

Yeah, like my guy, we made the right hire.

All right. Yeah, seriously. I was like interviewing this person today and I was like, I was like, goddamn it, this guy's making me jump out of my seat. And I was like, how is it that this guy's getting me more fired up about my company?

I was like, oh damn, it was good. It's epic.

So hiring great people is like one of the most rewarding things. I know it is by far the most rewarding thing of—

by far. Yeah. All right, folks, thanks for listening. Um, we have a really good episode on Monday dropping with, um, uh, Shelang, who was CEO of Ledger Prime, sold it to FTX, went through that chaos, and then co-founded a company called Arbelos with Josh Lim, who ran— I think it was derivatives at Genesis, was at Galaxy, and they co-founded Arbelos. Arbelos just sold to FalconX. They're like the two smartest people in the world to talk crypto options and crypto derivatives. So we talk about everything from like the state of the Deribit acquisition to just state of options. Derivatives, what they're buying in their personal portfolios, thoughts on Hyperliquid. It's a really good episode.

So that drops Monday. Are they buying Litecoin or what's the alpha leak? No Litecoin.

No Litecoin mentioned. All right, guys, thanks so much for listening.

Have a great weekend. We'll be here next week.

And yeah, excited to be in New York in a few weeks. Go buy your promotional tickets. Empire 10, baby.