Tornado Cash's Victory, PumpFun Content Moderation, and Geopolitical BTC Demand | Roundup

One of the reasons why you decentralize and you want to launch governance so quickly is, and you know, you got to create a forum and you got to create a DAO and you got to create a governance token, is so that your hands are not on the smart contracts. Our friends who are founders of these protocols, you kind of just live with this fear that your smart contracts will one day be sanctioned.

And now, you know, most of the times people get into this very ideological but pointless discussion around censorship and, you know, free speech. And it's like, yeah, but what's the point of it? You know what I mean? Like, there's also a whole component of not doing harm, and there was clear motive and like harm attempt to do harm. And so yeah, you just step in.

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What's up everyone?

You know, like, should we have like a standard opening? Like, welcome back everyone.

This is the— that's what I do. And it's lame. That's the standard opening. It's like, hey everyone, welcome back to Empire.

If you're streaming, like, you know, if you're jumping from like, cause sometimes I listen to like multiple pods, like, um, and you know, if you're doing 2x speed and if you're not doing 2x speed, you should really look at yourself in the mirror and question everything about your existence.

We need some like MrBeast, like come out of the gate, wing in with something. We just, we like smack people with ads right at the beginning. That's like the worst intro you could start with.

Yeah. Yeah. We're no longer in a bear market, I have to say. And so I do appreciate we'd have like a lot of ads. We love our, you know, we like our sponsors. Thank you very much. We have a lot of ads. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Like, do you consider yourself like an entertainer?

No, that's not— I can never—

I met the Tony Robbins version of like the Italian version in New York the other day. He was running the marathon. I'm like, I'm like, I was— I'm like, I respect— but these people like get out. It's just honestly, my respect goes out to these. It's a skill that I don't think I have.

Oh, it's definitely a skill.

I mean, honestly, if you're listening to this, I really respect Because I could— we tell people I put you to sleep, you know, talking about crypto.

Oh yeah, I'm— I got a boring, like, nasally voice here. This is a struggle to get through.

Sometimes you eat on the pod. It's like we're doing everything wrong. But as I tell people, you know, as is the criticism with crypto, it is with the podcast. If you're still here listening, honestly, respect. Like, you know what I mean? Like, everyone says crypto is terrible UX, UI, it sucks, you know. I'm like, Yeah, but it's like, imagine like if all that goes away, like even with all the hurdles, we got to $2 trillion. Imagine what happens when the flow is smooth and buttery and no regulatory constraints. Like, what do you think this is going to go to?

Yeah.

So it's almost like the— yeah.

Anyway, I mean, we are— I think we're now the second biggest CryptoPod behind Bankless. I think we have— there's a—

so are we going to become the number one pod when Solana flips Ethereum, or how does that work?

I don't know, man. ETH is up 12% this week. Don't call it a comeback.

I'm going to get chewed out.

So we recorded with Avichal and Hasib this week and that episode drops Tuesday. Another classic. Those episodes with those guys are always great. And the whole time Santi's on, we're like kind of bantering about meme coins and stuff. And Santi drops and the conversation immediately moves to Ethereum.

And I was like, yeah, you know those guys. I mean, honestly, if you All of the episodes with Avicii and Hasib, I consider them as repeat guests. People love them, but we've done like 2 or 3 this year. They've changed their tune on Solana now.

Yeah, that was interesting.

You mean like if you go back to the episode, uh, you know, I love the guys, you know, and I understand, you know, they're great investors, I think. But both of them, I would, I would have considered like Hasib, like more like very ETH-centric, very kind of more critical in Solana. Avicii, not so much. And I even, debated with him on the Breakpoint stage. But, uh, both of them changed their tune. To be fair, like, uh, Hashi was like a little bit more of the Solana is like very much a meme coin chain, which I understand where he's coming from. I just—

yeah.

Um, what are we going to talk about this week?

Yeah, let's talk about, um, here are the ideas from this week. So first off, happy— I think we're releasing this on Friday per usual, so we will have had Thanksgiving in the States. So happy Thanksgiving to everybody. Hope you had a nice time. Happy Thanksgiving. Everything. So do you celebrate?

Absolutely. It's my favorite holiday.

You're a, you're a Mexican living in Europe and you celebrate Thanksgiving?

I mean, at this point people know where I live. I, I have a dinner every year out here.

I saw you post a screenshot of you, you running in Monaco. I was like, oh, all right, we're, we're going for it now.

I mean, yeah, if you're listening here and you're paying attention, yeah, yeah, there's no—

you're Mexican who lives in Monaco and you celebrate Thanksgiving. I, I, I respect the The dedication.

Yeah, I consider myself American, to be honest. Americanized, even though I don't have a US passport.

So do you celebrate with a bunch of Americans?

No, I export it. I'm like, you know, because I always tell people that what I love about Thanksgiving is that there's no, there's no, like, there's just a simple tradition of sitting down, giving thanks.

Yeah.

And of course you have to cook or bring something, and, but it's simple. It's like Christmas is like, yeah, Christmas is also nice, but the gift stuff also sometimes gets in the way of understanding, like, what do you like, what's the meaning and purpose. And Thanksgiving is just so simple. Um, the best tradition that I've, uh, so I've been invited to a bunch of Thanksgiving dinners when I used to live in the US. The best, best tradition that I, um, I've adopted as my own as well is, uh, you have to bring a can of cranberry jelly, which is like, you know, 2 bucks, or it's super cheap. And, uh, you have to open it and like you have to— the challenge is, can you get it all out in one?

Oh, like plop it down?

Like plop it down so that the, the, the, the entire thing comes out in one, one form.

Uh, so everyone does this?

No. So this, this was like a good friend of mine who— his dad is an incredibly— one of the OGs of private equity. Not Blackstone, but like sec close to that. And, but he started from nothing. And so classic American story. And because the real cranberry sauce is so expensive, they would have to buy the fake version. And I find that, and now that he's super, I think he's a billionaire or whatever, but now, now like he keeps that tradition because it's just a reminder of the roots. And I was like, This is really cool. Like, I want to bring it— like, that's cool.

Yeah, it kind of reminds me of, uh, there's— in— so one of the Jewish holidays is Passover, and you eat like bitter herbs and stuff like that to kind of remind you of, uh, like the hard times. I don't know, I kind of forget what it actually stands for, but I do those types of things. Do I do it? Yeah, I do it every year. I have, uh, Passover's like my— there's my big— or our family's big Jewish tradition. We have, uh, 45 Yanowitzes get together in Cleveland, Ohio every year. So that is— in April.

That's in April, right?

Yeah. If you want a sight to see, you can see 45 Yanowitzes in Cleveland, Ohio eating lots of ball soup together.

Are they all as tall? Oh, that's great. Are they all as tall as you?

Yeah, they're quite tall. I have a second— my— I think it's my dad's cousin. She's like 6'5". My grandma's pretty tall.

She is 6'4".

4. She's tall.

Yeah, my mom's like 6'1", but yeah, 6'5" is something else.

Your mom is 6'1"?

6, 6, 6. She's like—

how come you, you're— so you're only like 5'6" or 5'7"?

Listen, uh, no, I'm 6, I'm 6'1".

That's on your Hinge profile?

I don't have a Hinge profile.

It's the inflated, it's the inflated height.

Can we talk about something real crypto? We've been bantering here for 7 minutes, you know.

Okay.

All right. This is our cue to transition. Oh, God.

All right. All right. So here's what I want to talk about.

I wanted to get—

I wanted to get your take. Sorry. So Pumped Up Fun had the whole video debacle this week. We should talk about that. MicroStrategy. Basically nothing really changed with MicroStrategy, but Vinny Lingham came out and said that MicroStrategy will ultimately and eventually do more harm to Bitcoin than what FTX did. So You know, there's a lot of talk about MicroStrategy. There was a massive thing that like did not make the rounds too much on at least my feed on Twitter, which was Tornado Cash sanctions were ruled unlawful. That was a massive piece of news that I don't think people are talking about enough. I would say ETH and like BASE is— BASE is really ripping right now and like meme coins moved on to Ethereum. Yeah. And that's basically that's the general stuff.

Got more interested in move to Ethereum. They got more interested in Ethereum.

All right. All right. Before we jump in, I have one piece of— two pieces of housekeeping. One is we are hosting the Empire meetup on December 10th at the Blockworks office. It is together with a poker night that we're hosting. So if you're in the Empire channel, we will share some details very soon, but it's going to be December 10th at the Blockworks office. Knowing Santiago, there's a 50% chance he rugs us, but I will at least be there. So I— you will. Have me to hang out with.

Um, what's all the hate? It's all hate. Markets are up, it's almost Thanksgiving. I'm getting all this hate. What have I done wrong, ladies and gentlemen? You see how I get treated?

Uh, just—

Yano misses me too much. I'm no longer in New York, and this is actually—

just thought I had a couple of extra— I had a couple extra espressos this morning, so I'm feeling—

it's separation anxiety. I get it. So I'll be, I'll be back in New York soon, man.

Don't worry about about it. True. Um, all right, the other thing is we announced Permissionless tickets. So Permissionless is June in Brooklyn, gonna be a banger event. Um, and, uh, yeah, tickets are gonna be 200-yard rave type of stuff. We literally booked out like 6 warehouses. It's gonna be a—

when I think of Brooklyn warehouse, there's only one.

I don't know if you saw our launch video, but it's just like in a warehouse with like—

we played it here. Yeah, yeah, we did. Yeah. Yeah.

So anyways, tickets are $299. We're doing a presale where we're giving allocation to 350 people and it's $99 tickets. Once we hit 350 people, it's $299. I will say—

bonding curve and it's the permissionless—

by the time this episode comes out, we will probably be over that because Yeah, we're at 341 today, so we've got 9 left, ladies and gentlemen. So if there is a, you know, anyways, when you listen to this, I would go check the website. Maybe there'll still be $99 tickets available.

That's when again? April?

This is June 26th through 27th. 24th through 26th, I think. Yeah.

New York in the summer. I can get around that.

Yeah, it's going to be good. It's going to be good. Great. Okay, let's talk about Pumped Up Funds. So I was going to share my screen and show some of these videos, but I think we'll get banned from YouTube if we do. This, so I'm just going to talk them through. Yeah, I'm not going to actually share these, but basically Pump.fun launched video streaming to go along with some of the tokens. So you could launch a meme coin but also have like a video streaming on the side as well. And it got really nasty really quickly. So the first thing that happened was like 2 weeks ago or a week ago, there was a kid, probably 15 years old, who publicly was sharing a video of him rugging a coin. And it was like kind of funny, kind of sad, but also kind of funny. And then people pumped the token to like millions and it was like, whatever. But then what started happening in the past couple of days is some really, really messed up stuff. So one was a developer started shooting a gun every time his token got bought and it was like, okay, this could start to get like, that feels weird. This could start to get out of hand. The next one was a developer threatened to kill a fish. With a gun live on a stream. So he had like glasses and bandana and stuff and like basically just a goldfish with a gun pointed at the goldfish. He's like, basically, if you don't buy my token, I'm going to kill this goldfish. So that was like, okay, that, that feels gnarly. Then you had this kid sitting on a toilet where he starts shaving his like hair and his eyebrows and he's like, it's just going to get worse and worse. I'm not leaving this toilet until we hit $50 million market cap. Then we had a guy who locked himself in a box and started treating himself like a pet, like asking for food and stuff like that. And then, and then it got even worse. Then it started to get really out of hand. You had a young guy streamed himself burning an Israel flag and doing the Nazi salute. It was like, oh, and then, and then that's when people realize like, okay, this is about to get like, they got to make a call on this. And then you had someone— I think someone actually killed a chicken live on a stream. And then you had people threatening to, like, kill their family if their coin didn't hit this market cap. And so basically, like, the worst of humanity came out really, really quickly. And yeah, yeah. So, so basically there's a debate.

Should they pull it back very quickly? They, they disabled the feature because—

yeah. So, so it took, I think, a day or two. Pumped Up Fund killed the livestream. Yeah. But if I— Yeah, go ahead.

I was gonna say like, like social media platforms had to have dealt with this before. Like it's not new. They just had to really scale up the internal team around censorship and like curation and particularly like mitigating this.

Right.

And I just think that's one of those things where I'm— would I be surprised if livestream comes back at some point? No. I just think it requires a very hands-on, uh, like internal processes, curation team, just bodies looking at this stuff and approving it. Like YouTube has, like, you know what I mean? Like, it's not, not new. It's just, yeah, when you see it, we want open, open forums and discussion. And but this is the, the part that I'm, I'm very much like, yeah, this should be censored.

So let me try to summarize, I think, what your belief might be. Or actually, I'll turn this into a question. Should you— so blockchains are these like open permissionless infrastructure. Do teams have an obligation to centralize the front end to moderate? Well, front ends are already inherently centralized, right? Do you have a— do you have an obligation to moderate content? That crosses the line.

Obligation. Yes. Yes. Yeah, very much so. Yeah. This, this— yeah, I don't— yeah. Do you think otherwise?

No, no, I do. I do. But I saw a lot of takes this week that was like, you know, they should keep it open, keep it permissionless. And I'm a strong believer that basically the— yeah, I think Jason Yanowitz had the best take on this, which is like blockchains are open permissionless infrastructure. Centralized front ends are privatized distribution channels. Not allowing them to censor is actually the censoring, like the community not allowing them to censor is actually the censoring. And that front ends do have an obligation to moderate content, especially when it— I mean, if it deals with killing people, that the—

my From a very high level, my decision-making and how I think about these things is, is it causing good or harm to society? And I think there are very like binary things. Some things are grayish, but like it's sort of the golden rule in my mind. It's like if you want to do harm to yourself, I, I understand that. But if you're going to do harm to others, and you can debate all day long what that means, but I think it's like you, when you see it, you know it, then that's when you clamp down. Like, I have no problem what you believe in, what you do privately, but when that starts having an impact on other people, then that's when, that's when you step in, whether you're a government, a company. And I think it's very clear, like, it just became unequivocally one of those things where, yeah, this, this is this is getting out of hand and you step in. And if people, by the way, people disagree, whoever disagrees, they can do their own thing. And, you know, like, there's places of the web that, you know, you go to and you kind of see this type of stuff.

Yeah.

Uh, but if you have, like, the distribution piece that you mentioned is so important because one other, like, you have kind of a responsibility to censor.

Yeah.

And take a stand. Like, you know, most of the times people get into this very ideological but pointless discussion around censorship and, you know, free speech. And it's like, yeah, but what's the point of it? You know what I mean? Like, there's also a whole component of not doing harm, and there was clear motive and like harm attempt to do harm. And so yeah, you just step in.

Yeah. Yeah.

Which, which is like interesting when you come— like, we should talk about Tornado, right? Because this is somewhat tied into the same kind of— Well, let me get—

let me get your last— before we go into Tornado, I want to pull up one of Mike's tweets. Mike said, So basically something about the top in meme coins. Hold on. He said WIF retraced. This was on Monday. WIF retraced its entire pump after the Robinhood listing. Doge barely moved after Elon tweeted about it. Pumped.fund looks like they're in pretty serious trouble. Memes look vulnerable here. What are you— what do you think about that?

Yeah, I got asked this question by other people, other fund managers. I don't think memes are going to go away. Like, temporarily, are we going to cool off a bit? Maybe. But the— I would take the opposite of that. I don't think they're going to go away. I think they're going to continue to be important elements of this industry from an onboarding perspective. We had a discussion with Avicii and Hasib yesterday about it too. It's impossible for me to say what memes are going to do in a week as a category or a month, or— but as a whole, I don't think that— I will, I will continue to believe that they're going to be an important part of this industry, and I don't think that interest is going to go away purely because, uh, just it's not just a meme phenomenon, it's also in the stock market. Like, the average holding is down people want to— like the whole Wall Street phenomenon, it's all related to that.

It's—

and so, uh, temporarily, maybe. Yeah, like WIF is— WIF peaked, uh, you know, at $4.80. It's down to $3. These things have a lot of volatility. Like, you should expect 50% vol any given day for any meme coin. It's just that that's the nature of the beast. But to make, uh, overly— like, to make— to really change your thesis and like extrapolate based on intraday, like, short-term vol, I think is pretty noisy. And so it just, um, it's not how I think, you know what I mean? Like, you zoom out and you say memes are just still super important and people like them, and I don't think that goes away. I think that's more of a generational thing. It's not like Yeah. Yeah. Do you disagree with that or do you—

No, no, I think memes continue. I think memes continue. I mean, it's not like— by the way, it's not like memes died this week. They just— the meme attention— memes are like the finest, most focused thing of how to reflect where attention is in the industry. And maybe, maybe one day in society, but, you know, at least for now in the industry. And you can see, you know, the price of SOL and BTC were flat on the week. The price of ETH was up 12%. Where's the, where's the attention right now? It's on the ETH meme coins. It's not like meme coin side. It's like— and also Blonde versus Brunette. I mean, I didn't pay attention to this at all, but like, it was on my timeline. Blonde versus Brunette. Like, it seems like the meme coin attention just got sucked out of the blue. You know, quotes around this, the blue chip meme coins for the week.

And what I find interesting here is that there are certain contingent people within the Ethereum community that were so critical of memes now are embracing them because they are now coming to Ethereum. And so, uh, it's, uh, quite just quite interesting, right? It's like, I hate it if it happens elsewhere, but if it's going to benefit me, I love it. And that type of, um, I guess, uh, double standards in this industry are just, uh Yeah, pay attention to that. I certainly do. It's just really funny how all this works.

Let's talk, let's talk Tornado Cash. So this week, massive win in the courts. So massive, massive win. I'm calling this the news of the week that didn't— and it definitely didn't get enough attention. So the Fifth Circuit held this week that the US Treasury sanctions— so obviously the US Treasury had sanctioned Tornado Cash. The Fifth Circuit held that the US Treasury sanctions against Tornado Cash's smart contracts are unlawful. The TL;DR is immutable smart contracts just beat the Treasury Department in court. The one of the quotes here was, we hold that Tornado Cash's immutable smart contracts, the lines of privacy-enabling software code, are not the property of a foreign national or entity. Meaning that A, they cannot be blocked under IEPA, and B, OFAC overstepped its congressionally defined authority. So I thought Paul Grewal had a good take on this. Coinbase was deeply involved in this case. I think Coinbase might have funded this case or was really involved. I'm not entirely sure. But yeah, Paul's summary is these smart contracts must now be removed from the sanctions list and U.S. persons will once again be allowed to use this privacy-protecting protocol. But another— put another way, the government's overreach will not stand. No one wants criminals to use crypto protocols, but blocking open-source technology entirely because a small portion of users are bad actors is not what Congress authorized. These sanctions stretch Treasury's authority beyond recognition, and the Fifth Circuit agreed. In particular, the court ruled that while Treasury has the power to take action against property, right? So that was one of the— I think that was the big thing here is are these smart contracts the property? Who are they the property of? So the Treasury, while the Treasury has the power to take action against property, the open source immutable smart contracts at the core of Tornado Cash can't be owned by anyone. So they're not property subject to sanctions. So if you're looking for some implications of this, one, Tornado Cash is legal again. I think that is an implication of this. Two, there's a lot of talk about like Since, you know, some of the block producers and MEV boost relays are, you know, do some form of censorship right now of transactions. I would guess this means they're going to stop censoring transactions. And very importantly, for founders and protocol teams, smart contracts with no admin key or rights are not capable of being owned. And smart contracts can't be censored, sanctioned by the US Treasury. So this is this is obviously just a huge win for Tornado Cash. I also just feel the need to say a huge shout out to Preston Van Loon and yeah, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe Van Loon, Tyler Almeida, Alex Fischer, Kevin Vitale, Nate Welch, the whole Coinbase team. Yeah, yeah. Paul Grewal, like just— I mean, so those were some of the folks I mentioned were the plaintiffs and just, yeah, the Van Loon brothers and like just a big shout out to all them for having the courage to fight the US Treasury here. Yeah, I don't think people understand kind of what goes into that and the time and mental energy. So yeah, big—

yeah, huge win. Yeah, it definitely is. And I would agree with you. It's what happens now with the— some of the developers in Tornado that some are based in Europe, and I think there's a separate proceeding case happening in the Netherlands, I believe.

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, I'd be really— that's the next— that's a question in my mind. It's like, what, what will happen to, um, these individuals?

They're like Roman Storm, Roman and Alexi. Alexi. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that, that is the next thing that needs to happen is Roman and Alexi need to get freed.

Yeah. Speaking of, Ross, um, will be— my understanding is freed, uh, in the next 100 days.

Was this an official thing? I believe so.

Um, I've seen him tweet about it. Um, he's obviously tweeting directly. Oh, he tweeted? Yeah, yeah, you're Trump. But like, hey, uh, please, my pardon, but yes, that was a tweet.

So Ross tweeted, I'm starting to get used to the reality that I could be home.

I could. Yeah, I don't know if it's true, but I think he— it feels like it's— it may happen, but I guess you're right. I don't think it's confirmed.

Yeah, Bitcoin Magazine tweeted, Ross will be free in less than 60 days.

Okay, yeah, there we go. That— yeah, yeah, very cool.

Um, anyways, just massive win in the courts. I feel like crypto just keeps winning. Um, Saigar had a good tweet, uh, Saigar from Abstraction. He said, I don't think people understand how big of a ruling this is. The court is saying that that smart contracts are not subject to sanctions since they're not owned by anyone. The US legal system is finally acknowledging that decentralized protocols are a new type of infrastructure in the world. Right. So the other reason this is important outside of Tornado Cash is if you ever talk to a crypto founder about— oh, they think about this a lot— running a protocol, like, you know, one of the reasons why you decentralize and you want to launch governance so quickly is, and you know, you got to create a forum and you got to create a DAO and you got to create a governance token. Is so that your hands are not on the smart contracts. And so that the smart—

so the smart—

what they do is the smart contracts move into the DAO, basically. And it was kind of this protective shield. And oftentimes, it's like a BVI or Cayman entity. And now, like, you know, folks will probably keep doing that. But now you don't have to be so— I mean, many of, I think, our friends who are founders of these protocols, you kind of just live with this fear that your smart contracts will one day be sanctioned.

And now I think, yeah, now this has always been the Prometheus myth, you know, if you bring fire to humans and how they use it is, um, can be for good or for bad. Uh, Alfred Nobel, uh, dynamite, you know, the internet, like technology can be used in different ways. Um, but I don't think that the creators of the technology this is what it goes to the heart of it is, it's technology that enables interesting use cases. Privacy is essential and the right to privacy is. And so, yeah, it's a big ruling and it's very encouraging, I think, for founders because this had come up time and time again for developers. It's like, what does that mean for us? We're trying to go, we're trying to build something that we think is going to have a very positive impact, but you can never in these systems, right, if they're permissionless and you're open infrastructure, then, you know, the, the, the— I guess the analogy would be like, are you gonna go after the people that invented the internet because there's a small subset of the, you know, because the internet allowed for, you know, some sort of like criminal activity? And it's like, well, no, focus, go after the criminals, right? Um, but open infrastructure, you know, it's like you build a road and if people like you know, are driving cars or you invented the car and people like are drunk driving, does— are you gonna go after the car manufacturers or the people that like built the highway? Just feels like an overreach, right? Yeah. Focus on the drunk driver.

I'm sorry, I just got distracted. Someone just sent me a Jason Calcanis, uh, tweet that he posted. Did you see this?

I, I saw you finally blocked Mert after many ratios. Oh my God.

This is Jason posting. Oh God, guy just keeps taking L's. Said, listen to me, crypto dipshit. I'm one of the top 4 greatest angel investors of all time. Hashtag Mount Rushmore level. Don't you dare compare your white paper scams to the humanity-changing startups I back. Our failures are hard-fought and led by gladiators, not incompetent grifters. Oh man, that is a good copypasta. Mount Rushmore level.

Every time someone asks me like, hey, you describe yourself, I'm like, I'm at the Mount Rushmore level.

Oh man, that's where I aspire to be. Mount Rushmore.

God give me the confidence to have that, that, yeah. I want to get to that level of confidence, you know, telling people I'm at the Mount Rushmore level of crypto investing.

God give me the confidence. Oh my God, that's good.

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So what else happened this week? So BASE is, BASE is ripping. So, oh man, we have some interesting data on this actually. Let's see if I can pull this up. Let's see if we can pull up BASE, BASE on-chain activity. If you guys want to see the actual data, you can go to optimism.blockworksresearch.com. All right. So this is some of the weekly— these are weekly metrics for BASE. So you can see the transaction count is now up to Just past 50 million transactions per day. You can look at the sector that is happening. It's a lot of— it has a lot of bots trading meme coins, it looks like.

Mm-hmm. What's that? Co-op transaction fees. Yeah. What's going on? Yeah.

BASE did something back in Q1 that brought transaction fees down. 4844. Yeah, but, uh, oh God, I'm gonna— I'm out of my element here. Well, there's, there's 4844 obviously, but I think Base did something else to optimize transactions. Nonetheless, the transaction fees, like, yeah, TVL passed $3 billion for the first time.

Uh, oh, but by the way, uh, on Base, I think, uh, we covered it in when Coinbase released their earnings a couple of weeks ago. They talked about aggregate activity going up, but fees coming down because of this change. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, this is pretty good data.

Love me some good data.

Love me some good data. Transactions sent per day. Is there anything interesting in here? Huh? Okay. Anyways, just curious.

Are you carrying value per wallet or like the aggregate value per transaction? Average, average value per transaction.

Yeah, that's a good thing to have. I don't see it on here.

Go up the average transaction fee. Go, go, go. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You know, what is interesting though is we keep talking a lot about like comparing Ethereum, Solana, and the activity there. And, you know, but what is also I find kind of a little bit overlooked is Ripple is at $1.44. It's up 27% on the week. Cardano is up 20%. Avalanche is up 23%. Um, like Stellar is up 100%. These are the top 50. 2017 tokens are booming. Yeah, yeah, Polkadot's up 40%. Yeah. Uh, like I don't, I don't see nearly enough interest or activity just like talking about that. But these are like, when we talk about meme coins, like the, the meme coin of the week that goes up from moon to dust or, or dust to moon kind of thing. But the aggregate flows into the dinosaur coins of like 20s, pre— like 2017 era. Like there's a lot, there's a lot of money pumping into these, like a lot of chains that we don't even talk about. And it's pretty remarkable and it makes you think about, you know, the brand and the lasting brand that these things have. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, Cardano's up 20%. Cardano's at $35 billion market cap. That's a, it's a lot of flows into Cardano. Yeah. Yeah, man.

Wait, let me stick on this base. I actually think an under, I don't know if your feed is all Solana things these days. I'm giving you shit, but, uh, a lot of it is. But I do want to call out, like, I think Dan Romero, like, Farcaster actually has done some very interesting stuff in the last week or two with a combination of like these meme coins and the AI coins. And so now if you're on Farcaster, I actually haven't used this yet, but If you're on Farcaster, you can mention this thing called Clanker and you can tell it what you want to launch. You type in the ticker, the name, and the image, and it basically launches a token for you. So I think this is— I think this is emerging as like the Pump.fun of Ethereum. And so, yeah, I don't know. I want to give credit where credit is due. Yeah. Here, here's Clanker. Here's Pump.fun. So Clanker just passed $100 million.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Ethereum community embracing Pump.fund equivalent.

You're giving it too much shit.

Yes, I am. Of course I am. Because I didn't have a problem with it. Like, I, at some point I reversed my ideology around meme coins because, you know, before I was like, here we are trying to reinvent the financial rails of the world and we have a meme coin that is worth more than the aggregate value of DeFi protocols. But then, like, I changed my tune, said, look, it's important. Like, you know, it's an important component of crypto. I think it's a net positive. It's onboarding people. It, uh, capturing the imagination of a generation clearly has interest. It's capturing attention. It's a way to show people that may otherwise not be interested. It's a funnel. But we had a lot of people in the Ethereum community saying, oh, it's all wrong, and Solana is a shitcoin, you know, shitcoin, because it's all memes. And now, you know, once money flows into the Ethereum, like this is what I fundamentally just ideologically don't agree with. It's like, it's a double standard. Like I hate it if it doesn't happen in my chain, but as soon as it happens in my chain, yeah, of course, great, you know? And so like a lot of what made Ethereum great, it was a capital formation machine. Everyone made a lot of money in ICOs. And as soon as other people start making money, other chains, it's like you hate on it. And you'd sort of like, I'm above that. I've graduated that. Level, it's like, again, never forget your roots. Always remember where you came from. And it's like, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, I, I, I'm very much against rugging, very much, obviously. Like, I have a, you know, and do I wish that more interest were being like hardcore tech people that are doing really cool stuff? Absolutely. Is our meme coin sucking away energy from that? I don't know. I think You know, it's, it's, uh, it's just the way the world works. And if you just have to try harder, you know what I mean? Like if you're building something really cool and you're not getting attention, that's your problem. That's not the market's problem. You know what I mean? Like you have to get, like, you have to appreciate distribution and you have to play that game. Like you have to get people's attention and if you're not getting it, that's your problem. That's not anyone else's problem. Like I realize that, I appreciate that in my business and what I do. Like if people don't care about what I'm doing, it's my problem, not their problem. And there are obviously certain issues that Ethereum has. There's some really cool stuff there, as there are issues that Solana has. But like, I see a lot of people in the Solana ecosystem saying, you know, even within Solana, you could argue projects like in DePIN that are really interesting are not getting enough attention because meme coins are getting more attention. Again, it's the, it's the project's problem, not the meme. It's not a meme coin problem. The meme coin's just You know, it's like when someone rubs you the wrong way, you're walking on the street, you meet someone and someone rubs you the wrong way, it's just the mirror into something that you don't like about your personality. I find— and this is why you fight a lot with your parents, right? Who do you fight the most? Maybe your spouse, but like for me it's like my mom because we're so alike and there's just certain parts that I don't like about it and it's— it just— it It makes me— it makes it very visible about a part of me that I feel vulnerable or don't like, or just— and so it's just, um, I'm projecting that onto her. It's not her problem. And I've stopped trying to change my mom. It's like, no, why am I triggered about something that another person does? It's not the other person's problem, it's my problem. And it's either tapping into triggering a vulnerability and insecurity of mine, and So anyways, I don't want to make this a psychology podcast, but you know what I mean? Like, as a founder, I don't think a lot of other investors have said, oh, you know, it's very discouraging for founders that want to build something really enduring that, you know, you have meme coins really sucking all the energy. I'm like, nah, man, the best founders I've met don't think like that. They're like, this is good for the space. I'm going to convert that user and I'm going to see him and I'm going to make sure that they understand what I'm building is valuable. Yeah. Like, the best founders think like that. Yeah. The not so best are like, oh, you know, they're going to blame it on someone else why they didn't get enough traction. I'm like, that's your problem, man.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting chat with Avichal and Hasib yesterday. That made me think slightly differently about memes. It was, you know, I think of who was it? I think it was Hasib's take was like, look, you guys all wanted GameFi. You know, we all invest a bunch in GameFi. You wanted games on chain and you got games. This is gamified. These are, these are just games. And it made me think of two conversations I've had this week. One is with a sales guy at Blockworks where he's like, he's like, I don't go to the casino to make money. I go to the casino to have fun. Like, I go with my friends to have fun. And maybe there's like, maybe I'll lose a little money, but I'm having a ton of fun. It's entertainment value. He's like, this is the most fun I've had all year. I'm in the trenches on Pumped Up Fun. I'm looking at the different images. I'm seeing the social circles, like, and he's like, and it's slightly higher EV than casinos. Like, he's like, lottery tickets. I'm actually making a lot of money doing this. And then, actually, Mike, I'm going to blow up Mike's spot. Mike texted me this morning. He's like, he's like, Telegram is lit. So much fun right now. I get the memes. I'm in a group that captions memes. Yeah, I mean, like, he's just like, I'm having a lot of fun doing this. And And, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's a really interesting, uh, sorry, I like sort of the Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett. There's a really interesting, I think there's an essay where it's either Charlie or Warren Buffett that talks about why they don't like gaming, uh, like games as a category. And, and they sort of talk about like, what is the productive value contribution to society And as much as I agree with a lot of their frameworks and their way of thinking, this is where I disagree with the most, probably, because it all goes back to like, I understand if you don't want to invest in it, but I appreciate it. You know, it's— and how— who are you to say that, that if some— if people are having fun and finding utility on it, then I think that's, again, that's, you know, that's good. And, um, but to have a very rigid moral stance around something that people find and are having fun, uh, and calling that a non-productive sector or contribution to society, I think misses the whole point. Like, life is really short and, you know, people are lonely. And if you're finding fun in these communities and you understand the game, then yeah, like Do I condone it? Do I— I don't know, like, you know, as long as no harm is being done and the rules of the game are transparent, people know what they're getting into, then yeah, go for it, right? You know what I mean? Like, I'm not asking you to invest in it. I'm just asking you to like not be like super like rigid about it, right? Like people playing an Xbox or people playing video games, do you find that a positive or negative contribution to society or neutral? Positive. What is it? Positive, right? Yeah, you know, because if a lot of people may have been depressed or lonely and they start playing Call of Duty and they find friends online, and, and I think that's positive. Oh wait, but like, friends shouldn't be made online, you should make them in real life. I'm like, who are you to say that? You mean like We go back to these fundamental things. If people find value, appreciate that. Don't— I don't know, like, you may not like Call of Duty, but if people like it, then I don't know, don't like call it the worst thing that—

don't call it rat poison, you know. I don't know, man.

Anyways, we digress.

Anyways, Brazil said, uh, Brazil is announced— Brazil announced that they are buying, creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Now, really, a bill to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve has introduced— been introduced in Brazil. Right. Very like this. This is the story. This is the story of the year that is going— it feels like it's an annoying story because it's just like the crazy Bitcoiners doing all caps like central banks are buying your Bitcoin. But like, this is actually the most interesting story is all these central banks I mean, all these central banks are actually about to start creating strategic Bitcoin reserves. I don't think people understand this yet. And like, that is my— basically what I think is going to happen over the next couple of months is I think, I think Trump— I'm curious to get your take on this, Santi, which is the Trump did— Trump is pulled forward growth. Trump pulled forward the growth in the cycle. So we, you know, we ripped through the '80s and like a day. We went from like $80K to $88K in a day. Trump pulled forward a lot of the growth. So in the same way that Bitcoin ETFs pulled forward the growth in the beginning of the year, you know, we ripped from like, what, $30K or $40K to like $75K in like 2 or 3 months. I think Trump just did that. And I would, I would guess that we, I would guess that we consolidate or chop around here for the next couple of months because we just ripped higher for, for like in a very short amount of time because of Trump. But the thing that could change that, the thing that could change that and just get this to be what Avicii talked about on the podcast of this ridiculous parabolic cycle is the US announcing a Bitcoin strategic reserve. And I think there's a much higher likelihood that happens than people are accounting for right now.

I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. It's— I don't— I, I sort of have the mind that there hasn't been a better setup. For crypto ever, and the biggest blocker has been regulatory, geopolitical, and it's, uh, 180. You have governments that have gone from being, uh, very anti-crypto to now holding it on their balance sheet. Uh, yeah, that's, that's a big change. And you overlay that with how slow institutions certainly move and how they do calendar re-underwriting and planning. A lot of it might happen in Q4 and Q1. So from a flows perspective, my thesis is you're going to continue to see flows. Now it might cool down in December, you know, it's holidays, yada yada yada. December's always historically been a strong month for crypto, I think. But nonetheless, like Q1 setup is, I feel really strongly about, just because it takes time for these institutions to adapt and to re-underwrite and to allocate. It's not like one day they saw Trump win and all these rulings and they're certainly reaching out to every single crypto fund again with appetite. And so that's— but that takes time to show up in the order books. Yeah. Again, it's, uh, a lot of crypto OGs or people that have been around the cycle's choppiness, you grow cynical. It's like, yeah, no, you gotta remove that and see it for what it is. And we'll see how much of that flows through. But the— I'm paying attention obviously to whoever Trump, um, like this crypto, um, committee, crypto czar, crypto czar in the committee. Like, I don't— I haven't seen who's gonna rule, like, who's gonna oversee that. But there have been certain candidates in there. But that's super encouraging. Yeah, crypto's finally just, uh, in the innovation bucket, not the, like, uh, enemy of the state bucket.

Yeah. Um, content of the week. Let's wrap. Thanksgiving time, baby. What is it? Actually, I guess when people are— it's gonna be Friday when people listen, but That's okay. Hope you guys have had a nice Thanksgiving.

Any content of the week?

What's my favorite Thanksgiving meal?

Stuffing for sure. Stuffing. Stuffing. Is it, does it taste better the first day or like the next day? Like the Friday when people are gonna be like—

Later with gravy. Oh yeah. Gravy. Do you watch football? Yeah. And play some, play some football.

Who's your, who's your football? Is it the Giants?

I'm a Patriots fan. Unfortunately they suck this year. Were you a Patriots fan because of Brady? No, I was born in Boston. I was born in Boston. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My family would have not liked me if I was not a— like, my, you know, my whole family's like Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots.

Yeah, yeah, no, I went to school in Boston and I'm only a Celtics fan.

Good. I mean, last 20 years, good, good folks to root for.

I went to a Patriots game and it was like the, the golden era of the Brady, and it was, it was okay. It's just, I just, yeah, no one likes a team when they win too much, you know?

No, I know. Yeah, I mean, it was really fun because we were the underdogs and then we started winning and then people hated the Sox. Um, but a really good show is, uh, it's called The Comeback on Netflix. It's about the Red Sox team. Um, oh, it starts in like 2003 ALCS, Aaron Boone hits this walk-off. Anyways, baseball people will know. And then 2004 they play the Yankees again. Goes into, it's more about the people, like the rivalry the buttoned-up Yankees versus this like team of misfits. It's good. It's good. Like feel-good comeback story. But actually the content recommendation I have is, is Marc Andreessen on Joe Rogan, which I have not actually listened to yet. But I think from seeing a bunch of clips, I think this will be one of those podcasts. Holy shit. It's a 3-hour podcast. Okay, well, I think from what, from what friends have said and like what I'm seeing on Twitter, like this is one of the, you know how there's like every couple months like a podcast episode that like everyone kind of rallies around and it's kind of almost sometimes becomes a turning point for things. I have a feeling this becomes one of those episodes. Nice.

Yeah, that's great. Very good. Well, um, good pod.

You're cooking. Yeah. Or you're just dumping the— you're just plopping it on the table.

Well, I thought you were gonna say you're gonna fry the turkey.

I called my brother yesterday. What are you doing for Thanksgiving? He's like, fried, deep fried. He's like, what do you think? I was like, deep fry. He's like, of course. And my brother lives in Hawaii. And he's just got this little— basically lives in the jungle. He's like, I got a big vat and I'm deep frying this thing. But first, He's like, I'm— what's it called when you baste the turkey? Or you brine? He's like, I'm brining the turkey. I was like, oh nice. What, a little salt, a little sugar? He's like, Arizona Iced Tea. He's like, I watched a guy in Louisiana on YouTube. He had gallons of Arizona Iced Tea. He's like, I'm brining my turkey in Arizona Iced Tea. 16-pound turkey. I was like, Jordan, that is disgusting.

I'mma brine my turkey with Arizona sweet tea.

God damn, only my brother, man. I love America.

Uh, yeah, well, uh, I'm not gonna do turkey. I'm gonna probably just, uh, you know, eat Italian food or something. Nonetheless, of course I can cook. Yes, what are you talking about? My mom taught me to cook.

I haven't cooked in a while. You will cook for me and my wife. Is that what you're about to say? 100%.

Some ceviche, like, you know. Okay. I used to— I mean, when you live by— yeah, I live by myself for like 15+ years now, you know. Like, you get tired of Seamless back in the day, or like just ordering food, restaurant food. Yeah, I get tired of it. I go to supermarket. I love the supermarket. It's the best thing. It was one of the best things, one of the simple pleasures that I like going to the supermarket. Market. My mom would always take me. It's kind of nice. And I know it teaches you a lot about the economy too. And that's a perfect way to end it because we're getting into boring topics.

I want one more piece of content recommendation, which is Russell Napier. This guy Russell Napier has basically crushed his economic calls of like the system. He's been one of those big macro guys on Twitter and stuff. And there's a new piece he wrote in American Affairs. Called America, China, and the Death of the International Monetary Non-System. And we will link it and it's a good read.

I'd recommend people read it. So Foreign Affairs or American Affairs?

American Affairs. Which I used to read the Foreign Affairs, which is like— well, I think, I think Foreign Affairs is owned by— no, I think American Affairs is owned by Foreign Affairs, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes sense.

Foreign Affairs is great.

I used to, I used to want to be a diplomat back in the day. I would read Foreign Affairs like religiously, highlight it and all this. Yeah.

I will be negotiating big deals. Yeah. I will be the guy. All right. Good, good.

Yep.

All right, a lot of, uh, a lot of degenerate— we're rambling in this episode. I hope you guys had a good Thanksgiving.

Yeah, no, happy Thanksgiving, man. I'm thankful for everyone that listens to Empire. I'm thankful for having the opportunity to sit in this chair. It's been a lot of fun. It will continue to be fun. We're going to be here for a while. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you very much, everyone. I appreciate you guys. See you in New York next week.

See you in New York the week after.

The week after. Alrighty. All right. Cheers, everyone. Thanks, everyone. Take care. Hey, everyone.

Thanks for watching today's episode. Just wanted to quickly thank today's title sponsor, SKALE. SKALE really is one of the best chain experiences out there today, and I've used so many different chains. There's a reason they are gaining so much adoption in both gaming and AI use cases. Hit the link in the show notes to explore the SKALE ecosystem.