Trump Keeps Delivering on Crypto Promises | Roundup
24 Jan 2025 · 66 min
Jason Yanowitz and Santi break down Trump's crypto moves: a digital-asset stockpile instead of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, Ross Ulbricht's pardon, and Cynthia Lummis chairing the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets. They also cover the Solana ETF, Ethereum Foundation turmoil, and why user onboarding remains crypto's biggest bottleneck.
Chapters
I tend to find that crypto, like, reacts like very much like on this news of like, like a little kid that didn't get 90, like 100% of what it wanted. It's like, hold on, wait a minute. Let's backtrack here. You have an order that says that they're considering a stockpile.
They've got, they've got the ice cream, they've got the hot fudge, they've got the whipped cream, they got the sprinkles, they got, they got everything in there and they're bitching that they didn't have a cherry on top.
Today's episode is sponsored by Geodnet. They're a leading DePIN protocol that's providing critical location and spatial intelligence services needed for AI-driven robots and drones. Discover how the network's native token, G-E-O-D, is powering the next wave of the robotics revolution by hitting the link in the description of today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Unichain, an upcoming Layer 2 that's purpose-built for the next generation of DeFi applications. With up to 95% lower fees than Ethereum and 250-millisecond block times coming soon after launch. Unichain is designing the future of cross-chain liquidity. Stay ahead of the launch by visiting unichain.org and giving Unichain a follow on X. Hey everyone, Jason here. There's a reason why Ledger is trusted to secure more than 20% of the world's crypto assets today. Check out their newest devices, the Ledger Stax and the Ledger Flex, featuring the world's first secure touchscreens. Take your security seriously. Hit the link in the show notes of today's episode to check out their latest devices. Trust me, you won't regret it.
And we are live. What's up, folks? Santi, how are the slopes?
Amazing. Just snowed. We can only go out half the day, but my God, you know, there's no friends on powder day. It was, it was good.
So you just have no clue what's happening in crypto right now?
I have no clue. I just come back to the real world. And, uh, we did, we did, to be fair, record like earlier today, and then we had to interrupt it. And Jano just informed me that things have changed as of this morning. So, um, you will be seeing the—
things have changed, things have changed. Yeah, things have changed, things have changed, my guy. Okay, all right. Yeah, we did, we actually recorded like a good 20-minute segment. Santi, I've made sure to wear like the same thing so that I know you are wearing the same I noticed, I did notice that.
I mean, someone, someone has commented before, is like, the guy wears the same fucking sweaters over and over.
I'm like, guys, this is a new one though. I like this one.
Thank you.
It's a good white. Yeah, it's a good logo. All right.
I haven't gotten the Blockworks merch.
We sent, I, we, we sent it to you.
I'm gonna go pick it up in New York in 2 weeks. All right.
Nice. All right.
It's my promise to you.
Nice. How are you gonna, uh, how much time do you think you'll spend in New York?
Yeah, like, uh, a week every month or so.
Nice.
Yeah. I miss you too much, man.
There you go. There you go. Our— the fun news for you, I haven't even told you this, we're built— we were almost done building this really sick in-person studio, a full podcast studio at our office. Yeah. And that back room where like the poker games, the bank sits back there, that is turning into a full studio with like 2 really nice video cameras, mics, we can do in-person recordings.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, yeah. All right.
What's going on in crypto?
Should we rerun the first 15 minutes of our segment and then do the— and then get into it here? I do. I do actually want to— I thought what we talked about last time was important. So it's been an insane week. Like, there's so much to talk about. We could do a full segment on most of these topics. Probably one of the crazier weeks I've seen in my several years in crypto, and I would guess yours too. So Ethereum Foundation stuff.
Is—
has been crazy, right? The big ETH maxis were dropping their DOT ETHs. We talked about this a little bit on the, on the Trump Coin recording, but it got crazier this week, right? Everyone's putting out proposals for how the Ethereum Foundation should improve. And a second Ethereum Foundation launched that. I think it was Lomosuk launched it.
Constantine from Lido.
Yeah, yeah.
Constantine validator.
Yeah. Launched it. Uh, Justin Sun is weighing in on how to improve it. Um, and then the— it kind of culminated in the launch of this thing called Etherealize, which we can talk about if we want, um, which is like this institutional BD arm of Ethereum. So that happened. Uh, the number of ETFs launching or actually getting filed grew drastically. Uh, Hester Peirce, uh, kind of crypto mom, took over this, uh, task force at the SEC. Circle made an acquisition of Hashnode. Um, Larry Fink Uh, and the Bank of America CEO had some bullish crypto takes. Uh, the founder of Vine and HQ Trivia launched Vinecoin. World Liberty is buying a bunch of crypto. iPhone apps, top 10, I think 7 of them are crypto apps. Um, a lot of progress on strategic Bitcoin reserve. Uh, Lummis. Trump made some announcements. Um, SAB121, I just saw this right before we hit record. It's like 7 o'clock on Thursday night. Just got repealed, I think. So banks can now custody crypto. But the thing I actually want to start with is— so anyways, are you caught up? There's your news of the week. You feel good?
Very much so. I'm looking at the interesting day. As you were saying all of that, I'm looking at prices and you would think that there would be more movement there. It's actually a lot of it is down.
So I actually did want to just highlight what I thought was one of the cooler things this week that I didn't just mention, which I will pull this up right now, which is Ross Ulbricht got, got freed. So Ross Ulbricht got pardoned. And for those who don't know who Ross is, so this is just a great picture of him hugging his— I think this is his wife, his, his mom and his dad and his sister. Just definitely pretty emotional pictures here. So Ross is also the founder of this thing called Silk Road, which I'm sure some people have used, most have heard of, and maybe some of you don't know, but just to like, just a reminder, like he launched this thing called Silk Road in 2011. At one point in time, it was responsible for 90% of all the Bitcoin transactions. Um, it was doing, uh, I think it was doing like $25 million a year in sales. They only accepted Bitcoin was the thing. So, uh, they had all these different things that they offered, right? And I'll, I'll, I'll share a picture of this. Um, so if you, if you see right here, uh, they had all these different things that you could buy on Silk Road. So you could buy, right. Computer equipment and all this kind of different stuff, books, apparel. But everybody knew the Silk Road for buying drugs. So because of that, people came after— people came after Ross, right? And the folks who came after Ross, unfortunately, was basically every government agency in the world came after Ross. And that kind of culminated in— I'll share this one more time, put it back up on the screen because it's a lovely picture— that culminated in them taking Ross's Bitcoin, right? He had 144,000 Bitcoin. He was one of the largest holders of Bitcoin in the whole network. But not only did they take the Bitcoin, he was sentenced to a 2x life sentence, 2 life sentences and 40 years, no parole, basically a death sentence. The US government auctioned off his Bitcoin. That was a big deal, went kind of mainstream. DEA agents stole 80,000 Bitcoin from Ross. They were like these really scummy DEA agents. Anyways, crazy story. Just very good feel-good story. And it was— it's the start of this. I think this episode should be titled President Trump Follows Through on His Crypto Things, that he's on his crypto actions, right? You've got repealing SAB 121, no CBDC, and pardoning Ross. So I don't know. I don't know if you have— you ever met Ross? I don't know. I just thought this was a fun feel-good story to start with.
No, absolutely. I mean, it's, um, it's amazing to see. Uh, obviously, uh, what is also really good was Trump's tweet, um, of acknowledging the support that he'd received from, from the community. And, um, you know, making a comment around the same, um, you know, hostility that he received was the same that, you know, the same sort of treatment that Ross got. And I don't know, it was just really good to see, obviously. Trump continues to execute on, on his promises, and that's very encouraging.
Yeah.
All right.
Getting into the news outside of Ross. So this was big, right? Senator Lummis, who has kind of been the— I think she's the one who proposed the— this thing called the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve that has become kind of the talk of the town right now. When we were recording, I think there was 30% odds on Polymarket that an SBR happened. I was saying I think it's more like 70%, 80%, and we had to rerecord this thing because Well, since then, Trump has come out with an executive order, which we'll talk about in a second. But Lummis, very important— importantly, Lummis became— is now chairing— it got announced that she is chairing the Senate subbanking committee, the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets. She, like I said, pushed for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. She was also very helpful in pushing regulatory clarity with kind of thoughtful legislation. Instead of just like regulation by enforcement. And she was also very influential, I would say, in exposing Operation Chokepoint 2.0. So very important appointment here of Lummis. The reason it's important, and I think we'll just, you know, we don't have to bury the lead here. Let's pull up— let's pull up Trump's— this Trump tweet. Okay. This is the White House strengthening American leadership in digital financial technology. So Trump signed this executive order. Everybody right out of the gate thought it was a strategic Bitcoin reserve, right? This was the strategic Bitcoin reserve. This is it. We got it. Things start pumping. Everyone's going crazy. It turns out it is, um, it is not the strategic Bitcoin reserve. It is— the language that they used is, uh, is a stockpile. So I think we can probably— here. So the working group shall evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national Digital asset stockpile. Have you seen this yet, or were you on the slopes? No, you're on the slopes. So basically, they announced this executive order, um, national digital asset stockpile, and proposed criteria for establishing such a stockpile potentially derived from crypto lawfully seized by the federal government. All right, what is important about this? It's important that it says the word stockpile and doesn't say the words reserve. And it's also important that it says the word cryptocurrencies, doesn't say the word Bitcoin. And it's also important that it's assets that are seized, not assets they're buying, right? So those are my 3 takes. So in my mind, what this basically says is the US government's sitting on a bunch of Bitcoin. They're not going to sell it. And not only Bitcoin, I think it's basically Bitcoin, ETH, bunch of stablecoins like Tether and USDC, and some BNB, I'm pretty sure. Um, they're not actually— this is not the strategic Bitcoin reserve, unfortunately.
Uh, do you think that's like— I mean, obviously the odds in Polymarket are down, like, 19— are down from 37 to 19. The market resolves in April. Um, is it— are the odds down because of the interpretation of that? Um, because I think the, the specifics of the market itself were such that, um, I believe it excluded seize, uh, Bitcoin or currencies. It had to be a purchase. Here, I'm trying to pull it up.
Um, yeah, so, will Trump create— so I think we— are you talking about this one? Will Trump create a Bitcoin reserve in the first 100 days? Okay, so my—
that the US government confiscating Bitcoin does not count as holding Bitcoin reserves. So for that reason, I think the odds are down. I mean, this would be like zero, right?
Yeah. So my take on this is that I, I still strongly believe we're getting a strategic Bitcoin reserve. I really still strong— I know the odds are down to 19% on Polymarket, but the key thing here is in the first 100 days. So I think the reason I was bringing up Lummis, Lummis is super important to this because I think this is about as far as Trump is going to go with this executive order. I don't think we're going to get a Trump executive order to launch a strategic Bitcoin reserve, but I do think we'll still get a strategic Bitcoin reserve. How that will get pushed through, is through the reconciliation bill. So I think what will happen, the reconciliation bill is kind of this like— I don't know the right word to put it, but where to put it. It's kind of like this Christmas bill. It's like a Christmas tree where everyone's got their own— I'm Jewish. This analogy is going to break down quickly. What are the things you hang on Christmas trees? Dude, I mean, you got to know this.
I'm also partly Jewish.
You're partly Jewish.
Yeah.
Wow, my guy. Welcome to the tribe.
Shalom.
Shalom. What?
No, no, no, no, no.
Okay. Okay, Santi.
We got— I mean, dude, I don't know what people put on Christmas trees.
Like stockings? No. What are—
um, no, stockings are on the fireplace. No, they're, they're like little—
I don't know, the things, you know. Oh my God.
Why does this even matter?
It's part of the— it's part of my story. It's part of my story. The analogy is not going to make sense.
We're not going to edit this. Joseph, we will not edit this.
Okay. Everyone knows except for you to have a family, except for you and me, what we're talking about. Everyone else knows what we're talking about. So anyways, the reconciliation bill is this Christmas tree bill where everyone kind of pushes through their own little thing. It's like, fuck, see, the story doesn't work without it. Anyways, reconciliation bill, I think we'll get the strategic Bitcoin reserve. They need all of that. So Lummis is tweeting things out like, hey, reach across the aisle. Get that, you know, be friends with the Dems because I think all the Republicans will probably vote for the reconciliation bill. They still need— they need every Republican. They probably need some Democrats to vote for this thing, too. I haven't done the actual— I don't really— I really don't know too much about the reconciliation bill. But from what I've heard from several folks, that's how this thing's going to get through. Now, there was a pretty interesting tweet from Pierre Rochard, who you don't hear much from these days. But he tweeted out, um, here, do you know, do you, uh, do you know what I'm talking about? Here we go. Listen, um, this is about Ripple. So Pierre tweeted out, the biggest obstacle for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is not the Fed, the Treasury, the banks, or Elizabeth Warren. It is Ripple XRP. They're aggressively lobbying against the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve by throwing around millions at politicians desperately trying to derail it. So this is a very over-the-top kind of attack at Ripple, I would say. There is— Brad actually, Brad Garlinghouse actually commented on it. There is a little bit of truth and it's— there's, there's falsities and there's truth to this. So the— it's not true that Ripple is lobbying against the SBR and trying to basically— Ripple would benefit from the SBR. But they, what I have heard behind the scenes is that they are strongly lobbying to make this a strategic crypto reserve and not a Bitcoin reserve. So let's start to maybe, right. Cause obviously they want Ripple included in this thing. They don't want it to just be Bitcoin. So if you start to, the reason I'm bringing this up, you start to piece together some of these things. So, right. Let's go back to this. So they said a digital asset stockpile, not a Bitcoin stockpile.
They're gonna buy a basket of currencies. And, you know, then you have to wonder, is it gonna map to what World Liberty is buying? And, and, or are they gonna be US-based coins? Um, and, you know, well, one has to wonder, David Sachs was, you know, an LP in Multicoin. And, you know, does that have any weighting into how the basket is composed? I gotta believe that Yes. And while we are recording, prices are down. So yeah, make, make whatever it is that you want to make out of it.
Right.
The market is acting quite irrational here. I think overly— I don't know, I tend to find that crypto like reacts like very much like on this news of like, like a little kid that didn't get 90, like 100% of what it wanted. It's like, hold on, wait a minute, let's backtrack here. You have an order that says that they're considering a stockpile. Two weeks ago, we were thinking about like the market panicking and we recorded that great episode with what is it, the Asset Reality Guys.
Yeah.
Talking about seizure and forfeiture and the market was puking because everyone was so worried that, you know, the government was going to sell the Bitcoin. Now you have an order here, executive order says they're not going to sell it. So the market should be equally reacting positively to that. Yet it's not because they didn't get exactly what they want.
That is so well said, Sante. It is like, it is like you're—
You want to make money in crypto? Just focus.
You just gave the kid an ice cream sundae, right? You gave the kid an ice cream sundae. They've got, they've got the ice cream, they've got the hot fudge, they've got the whipped cream, they got the sprinkles, they got, they got everything in there. And they're bitching that they didn't have a cherry on top.
You bitch all you want.
You know what I'm doing on-chain? Like, for me, it's like this is the temporary moments of irrationality that this market is just like. It's difficult to understand. And everyone might say, wait a minute, dude, it's been priced in. Like, everyone thought that it was going to happen. And, you know, there was a huge rally before, you know, from November until now. Bitcoin's still roughly at $100,000. Ethereum's at $33K. It's basically a stablecoin. Solana's gone up a bit because obviously everything that's transpired. I mean, it just crossed— was it $200 billion of volume? Like, it's bananas. And Trump deployed a meme coin there. But like, the market's just like really this like very finicky, temperamental kid. And it has been for a while. But like, it's just important to like zoom out. If you were to ask anyone in crypto if— how would they respond to everything that's happened over the last 10 days, they would have been like, I would like mortgage my house, sell a kidney and go gig along. Like, none of this is financial advice, but that's what most people would say.
And that's true.
And yet now you're seeing this like noise in the market, um, and you know, people are overly analytical, quote unquote, around, you know, Trump shouldn't have launched meme coin, and you know, it's not the right thing to do, and you know, uh, all these little things. So it's just a reminder that zoom out, focus on the overall trend And there's a lot of signal in things that also are really overlooked during these chaotic times, right? Like SAB, what is it, 121 being repealed, right?
Yeah.
121. Yeah.
I mean, I mean, there's massive, massive, right?
Larry Fink tweeted, and I'm quoting this from Walter Bloomberg, is BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says, I want the SEC to rapidly approve the tokenization of bonds and stocks. Like, I mean, like, you now have, by the way, over the last couple days, Solana reached volumes that are not that far away from what the Nasdaq does. And you saw the entire Solana dev community come together and what I think was pretty much a flawless processing of this massive spike in interest and usage, you had top to bottom, like just from wallets like Moonshot, Phantom to Jito, like everything was just very positive. And yet, you know, the market's really noisy. But yeah, you're going to play this video.
Yeah. I mean, I don't even know if I can— I don't have the technical prowess to play the video while we're on the podcast, but there's a 3-minute clip from, from Davos weekend or week, whatever you want to call it. And the I feel like honestly people at this point go to Davos to have this classic interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin in the snow. Like, you don't go to Davos for anything else other than this interview.
It was kind of dead, really.
Davos is dead. But anyways, Larry Fink said, I want the SEC to rapidly approve the tokenization of bonds and stocks.
Also, by the way, can we, can we also acknowledge the order, the executive order that you just brought up? There is, and I am seeing a tweet from Stani, shout out to Stani. You should maybe come back on. Section 1, Purposes and Policies, Clause I, it references something that is— well, I will quote. There we go. Protecting and promoting the ability of individual citizens and private sector entities to access and use for lawful purposes open public blockchain networks without persecution, including the ability to develop and deploy software that, you know, think about Tornado and all these, you know, like deploying software to participate in minting and validating, to transact with other persons without unlawful censorship, and to maintain self-custody of digital assets.
Stupidly, but American DeFi, like you could, you could—
I mean, forget about American DeFi. I mean, it's just like, I mean, like this is incredibly powerful. Like, go, go listen to all the regulatory episodes with Jake and Rebecca. I don't know how else to put it, folks. Yeah, the, the, um, I'm gonna use like the hands, you know, like, I don't know how else to put it. The— but yeah, I mean, like, uh, I don't— also this, you also have to juxtapose, like, pull up Mike Dudas's tweets because—
no, also this, Commissioner Peirce. We've loved this person. She's been the only pro—
not to mention she's now at the SEC.
The only pro-Commissioner, SEC Commissioner we've had for years. She really gets crypto more than everyone else. She's now leading the SEC's new crypto task force. Like, it does— it doesn't get better than this, folks.
Listen. Yeah, but there's, um, got to juxtapose that. Can we also talk about— I mean, what did Dudas do?
You want me to pull up Dudas's thing?
He's just been documenting his experience with Coinbase and then like contrasting it with Kraken, um, it's just— and we should like pull up a balanced take. And there's also like a response from like Mert, there is a— this— because we're used to working at Coinbase. And then, and then like Brian Armstrong comes out, you know, you're talking about Coinbase not supporting Solana. It's just been like a bit underwhelming. Not only that, but it's like that plus also like the new policies that went into effect around sending money on-chain, that like this traveling rule kind of thing.
I didn't see this. I didn't see—
Yeah, there's been a lot of, you know, Coinbase has gotten it on the chin recently across a number of fronts.
But I tell you, can I tell you my take on this, though? This is every bull market. They take it on the chin and then in the bear markets, people love Coinbase. But bear, bear markets, we advocated here.
I'm like, I think for a while and still Coinbase doesn't get enough credibility for the entire amount of support they've done top to bottom. You know how much bullish I am on it. But it's worth noting that like people haven't had like the experience that you're used to having with Solana, like supporting Solana. And I don't want to read too much into it, but it's just a fact, right? I mean, for a while, like you can't send USDC on Solana through Coinbase Prime. Like for—
yeah, I would guess Brian tweeted, I would guess that gets fixed. I think this will— I think this is a You got to believe that.
Like, how much money are they leaving on the table?
I mean, I don't know. They've got base. Like, I would guess there's— I think they'll fix this. I think this is a non-issue.
The thing that Duda, as if you guys are viewing it, he mentions that he can't send— he screenshots this— he can't send crypto. To the self-hosted wallets, right? It's basically what's happening. I wonder if you go back to what just— we just referenced in the executive order, you know, that's— I would interpret it as something that would allow now to continue to do it.
Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully.
Probably like the right to self-custody.
Yeah. By the way, here's what Brian said. We have the Solana backlog triaged and transactions should generate quickly. If your transaction got canceled, you can retry. Apologies for the trouble. It's clear we need to step up our game on Solana, scale the infra, and provide native support for common use cases like DEX meme coin trading. Our goal is to provide tier 1 support for Solana with the same level of support as Bitcoin, ETH, and Base, which also saw delays recently due to large surges. Okay, let me, let me take away from Coinbase for a second because you're a big guy. I know you're an angel in a lot of kind of the OG DeFi players. DeFi has not gotten too much attention.
Since I left ParaFi.
Since you left ParaFi in the last couple of years. What do you think the impact of all this is on DeFi as a sector? What are you eating? You were eating the exact same thing last time.
It's a collagen iced coffee thing, folks. I'm getting older. My birthday was recently. My birthday. For everyone wondering what my zodiac sign is, it's Aquarius.
Wow.
You already— but you already knew that by now. By the way, have you seen that? Have you seen that meme where it's like they're dating. It's like Love Island, and, and, and the girl is like, so what do you do for a living? The guy says, I'm an astrophysicist. And she's like, okay, I'm a Gemini.
For fuck's sake.
Okay, anyways, uh, I'm getting older.
Wow, Aquarius and Pisces, special connection it appears.
Are you a Pisces?
Let's go. Yeah, Aquarius, forward thinking and optimistic. There we go.
Are we really turning into a, um, Do you remember—
do you remember Marin? The last cycle? I was literally just thinking we almost launched a podcast with Marin. That show would have ripped.
Yeah. Well, there's an interesting thing. Evolution of that.
Geodnet is a first of its kind DePIN protocol that's revolutionizing satellite navigation services. They're actively generating on-chain revenue that's growing 500% year over year by providing precision location services that are 100 times more accurate than standard GPS. On Empire, we always talk about finding how crypto can power completely new business models, and they're a perfect example of this. They're already trusted by over 30 enterprise customers across industries, including automotive, agriculture, construction, and even robotics. The network is powered by its native token, G-E-O-D, and easily mined with their satellite miner. By setting up a base station, you can get involved with this groundbreaking Web3 ecosystem. Learn more by heading over to geodnet.com or just by hitting the link in the description of today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Unichain, an upcoming Layer 2 solution that's changing DeFi forever. It's built with a vision to be the home for cross-chain liquidity and DeFi innovation. As part of the Optimism Superchain, Unichain brings you up to 95% cheaper transactions than Ethereum's base layer, as well as near-instant finality with 250-millisecond block times coming shortly after mainnet launch. To make things even better, seamless cross-chain transactions. If you're a developer, this means you can build DeFi applications that truly push the envelope of what's possible on-chain. Visit unichain.org or follow Unichain on X to stay updated on the launch, upcoming features, and getting started on building your dream applications. Earlier in today's episode, I mentioned Ledger's latest products, the Stax and Flex, and I wanted to take a few seconds to tell you more about them. These wallets feature the world's first secure touchscreens, which don't just simplify your digital transactions but also keep them extremely safe. These wallets are virtually impenetrable to online attacks because they store your private key in a secure offline chip. You can manage more than 5,500 tokens and install up to 100 apps. Choose the most trusted name in hardware wallets and take control of your digital security today at ledger.com, or hit the link in the description of today's episode to check out their latest wallets.
What happens to DeFi? I mean, there's Trump is basically— I mean, American DeFi is back on the table.
I mean, World Liberty is buying like AAVE and a bunch of DeFi coins, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Um, here's my take. Uh, I want to zoom out. I had a tweet about this the other day. The biggest problem crypto has is just a go-to-market problem. Obviously, DeFi is incredible infrastructure that's there. But like, I just had another portfolio company that closed shop. And for the same reason that 9 out of 10 have closed shop, which is we built something and users didn't show up. And a lot of them did like, you know, it's good tech. It's just, I just think that like DeFi, there's only like very limited people on DeFi, like on-chain, you know, super active farming strategies and whatever. We need to grow the number of users, daily active users by like 10x this cycle. Like we don't have 10 years, we have like 4 years to really figure this out. And I think in my conversations with everyone in the, like as many people in the industry, they're like, well, we're trying to convince businesses, but they don't really care. And you're like, okay, fine, regulations clearing up, maybe they do now. Well, like, DeFi should always be invisible. The best tech is invisible. I think that's like the end state for crypto, where you're supporting a lot of uses, use cases, and services, and they're just powered by decentralized infrastructure, decentralized open protocols. But I think we're just at a point where we need to— like, how do we expand the pie? And like, we're, we're still facing resistance from businesses. That's like a slow— maybe you can weigh in here, but like, when you go and pitch to normal businesses about like, you know, advertising or what or whatever, or selling the research stuff. Maybe there's some uptick, but it's still like it takes a lot of time to convince people to use this thing. So I don't know. I just think that like the bullish case for DeFi is it's incredible infrastructure. It's very battle-tested. It is amazing to offer yield opportunities like Blur, like fintech. You're already seeing Nubank, you're seeing Robinhood. There's like all the breadcrumbs are there, you know, it's going to work. I mean, it's working. The real thing that we— the opportunity and the challenge is like, how do we like bring more and more users on-chain? No one likes to think about their bank account or recursively leveraging USDC across all these different protocols. But, but, you know, DeFi and other crypto protocols are not really going to break out, including Deepin, unless we grow the user base like by an order of magnitude. And, uh, you know, you know how I feel about that. But that's, that's the biggest problem we have. It's a go-to-market problem. It's not tech, it's not composability, none of that. It's like, get users on-chain and lead with a stablecoin. Everyone in the world wants to tokenize dollar. But we're not growing that meaningfully.
What is the— I feel like, are you— so I understand the problem. What is the solution in your mind?
You know what the solution is.
Like, I mean, here's— I'll give you one solution. I'll give you the stats on one solution, which is— I know not what you're getting at, actually, but, uh, here's some stats. 50% of Trump/Melania holders had never bought a Solana altcoin before. Altcoin meaning just not a stablecoin or not SOL. 47% 77% of buyers created their wallets the same day they purchased the token. Obviously, that's not all new users, right? Like, I'm guessing you— like, I created a new wallet to buy. And then 83% of holders own less than $1,000 of Solana assets. So one way to onboard people is to give them an opportunity to make money. The other way is—
yeah, man, but that's always been the case. And like, there's only so many people, and it's very self-referential and reflexive.
So you really— so you think I mean, I had this prediction at the beginning of the year: crypto-native companies will start buying traditional businesses. I'm guessing that's what you're getting into.
Yeah, that's what I'm going to do.
Yeah. Like, I mean, not to do an update on Inversion or—
Yeah, sure. I mean, it's— I've— I guess where to start. I'm actively looking at one asset that has— if I buy it, it has— it will make me the largest protocol by number of users. Like, there's only 30 to 60 million active users. This business has more than 20 million users. That's one business, single shot. Now, how many of them are going to use stablecoins and how many of them I'm going to convert? I don't know. I think a lot. It's a business that is based in Latin America. It's, it's that user base. Doesn't know it yet, but will love stablecoins. And I think the comp here is like Nubank, which I think is like a company that people should pay attention to. They started as a fintech in Brazil, Brazilian demographics, like super young, you know, relatively young user base, like digitally savvy. They got a ton of success and then they launched their own mobile service as an MVNO. An MVNO means it's a mobile carrier without like physical infrastructure. And now they're offering USDC and the stats are, are crazy. I mean, it's, it's getting all this uptake they have. So Nubank's like a really good case study here of, of how more and more companies might start leveraging and getting their user base in crypto because it helps them retain that user base, it helps them capture more wallet share, and monetize that user base, right? If you're a new bank, you all of a sudden, you know, are probably retaining that user base far more than the competitor because you're offering them the ability to hold dollars and, you know, capture yield. And that's super compelling, right? And I think if you're a fintech or a neobank and you're— you best believe that Revolut and all the other neobanks are paying attention to what Nubank is doing. So anyways, all this to say is like, I think there's like really encouraging signs of like traditional businesses, you know, paying attention to stablecoins. But I think it's still going to take naturally time. There is— so what I'm looking to do is I'm looking at— I think that the lines between mobile and fintech are blurring. People should go listen to the episode with Jombo, which is kind of running this playbook of like getting a lot of phones in the hands of people in Africa and then like activating them on-chain. I think they've sold over 700,000 mobile devices. They're selling them at a pretty attractive price point. And then they really are not interested in making money in the hardware. They're making money on other services, right? And the software, which is that playbook. So not to give too much details, I'm like, I'm very much focused. Um, it, uh, it will, uh, I want to run it as Berkshire Hathaway kind of is my mental model, which is I never want to sell these businesses actually. And so it's not, not like a private equity fund, it's more of like a, a Berkshire construct. Um, but yeah, like my goal, I want to become, and I want to onboard, um, more than 100 million users. Like, that's like, and I want to become the largest fintech and mobile carrier in Latin America.
All right, godspeed, sir.
Yeah, that's like the long update.
If you— if our listeners want to invest, are you taking small checks or are you just doing— are you raising? Are you— or we can punt this to another conversation too, but I'm curious.
I can't solicit, but I think there are— look, I'm paying a lot of attention to Echo and what's happening there.
Wow. Wow. Let's go. You heard it here first. Big raise on Echo.
Look, I mean, it's— there's a great— pull up Kobe's tweet recently. I think there was a note by JPMorgan that like I don't know if it's— I don't want to say, but Kobe had a good tweet about JP Morgan, like, alluding to, like, the investing landscape in crypto changing because of— yeah, there we go.
Wow. Did they actually?
That is— I don't know that. Yeah. JP Morgan. The quote of Kobe's like, what? JP Morgan predicts crypto VC funding will fall short. But I think he mentions something.
No way. Oh, here it is. Uh, you know how much this pains me to share the blocks page? Kill me, son.
Kill me. I'm sorry, sir. Yeah, there we go. There we go. There we go. According to the quote unquote, another—
oh wait, what are you doing?
Another factor that could impact the growth of crypto VC funding this year is a rise of community-driven fundraising platforms like Echo. Uh, crypto projects increasingly avoid large token sales to VCs due to concerns over control and regulatory risks. The analyst warned that this shift could make it harder for traditional VCs to secure deals with promising startups.
That's amazing.
That's amazing.
That's amazing.
Shout out to Kobe. I mean, Amazing track. I mean, MegaETH, you have all these different projects now launching there. Really great to see. Um, yeah, so honestly, like, obviously I'm paying attention on my, my— yeah, yeah, that's all I'll say.
There you go. Let's talk Ethereum Foundation. So specifically, I'm curious, I mean, I think people know the Ethereum Foundation drama, which is people are really mad at the Ethereum Foundation for sucking and they wanted to get better and the.ETH people.
Well, let's put some context right there. They're spending like $108 million a year.
Yeah, we just thought we talked about it a little bit on the, on the Trump roundup, so we don't need to spend too much time on it. Basically, TL;DR, people are really mad at Ethereum Foundation because ETH has turned into a stablecoin and Ethereum Foundation spending like over $100 million a year, you know, annually. And people are like, what the hell are you doing? And so everyone's really mad at it. I don't know if this was timed or what the deal was, but this thing called Etherealize launched on the 22nd, which is Wednesday. So introducing Etherealize, an institutional marketing and product arm for the Ethereum ecosystem. Our goal: to accelerate adoption by bringing institutions to Ethereum, the digital economy of tomorrow. All roads flow through ETH. We'll show the world why. So actually, just to skim this, Etherealize is a hub for content, They built this dashboard out. Looks pretty good. ETH needs more apps. ETH is— Ethereum is working with Wall Street to make that happen. Is this—
is this Constantine thing?
No, Constantine is the new— is the new foundation. This is actually run by this guy. Actually, I'm not going to show my DMs. Yeah, it's run by this guy Vivek, who's here. Let me go to a different page and find my DMs. This guy, Vivek Ramann, he is an ex-Wall Street high-yield credit trader. He's at Morgan Stanley, UBS, Nomura, Yale. I've been chatting with him a little bit today. Seems like a really sharp guy, actually. And never talked to him, but yeah, yeah, I, I like it. This is, this is my quick take. First off, anything that we can do for anything that Ethereum can do to change the narrative around it, a new foundation, a BD and marketing arm. I'm for it. They just got— wait, wait a minute.
Is this another ConsenSys? Like, where's ConsenSys in all this?
Okay, so that was the, that was the meme. That was kind of the meme is, is, hey guys, we already— is we already had this. It was called ConsenSys. They spent hundreds of millions. We had— they literally— I think ConsenSys right now manages the JPMorgan blockchain. Yeah, that— what it was, Quorum. I think that moved the fork of— yeah, the fork. Well, this is what I said. I mean, I think I tweeted this about a year ago. I was like, the only thing Ethereum has going for it right now is that they are the chain that institutions are really comfortable with because it's got liquidity. Yes and no, right?
Yes and no. Because like now increasingly, like BlackRock's like exploring other chains. But I hear you.
They're exploring chains on Ethereum anyways. This is what I think. This is what I've been saying. I don't think Ethereum should explore, should lean into like money. We are money and like we're the most decentralized.
Like, I don't think anyone gives a shit about that.
I don't. I just don't. Ethereum is for institutions. That narrative has always made sense to me and I thought they should have capitalized on this narrative a long time ago. I don't think it's too late. I think it's okay.
So yeah, what do you think happens? Like, I think like if you're, if you're in the room, right, and you're this guy, what's his name, Vivek, I can almost imagine Vivek going into these institutions saying, listen guys, we're the most legitimate. We are by market cap, and we are the only other crypto project has an ETF. That's like probably what he's going to lead with, right? And he's going to spit out a bunch of metrics, which is fine, but like he's probably going to say, look, we're the only ETF. There's a reason for that. My question to you is, in a world where we have more ETFs, you just alluded to the fact that there's like increasingly like the surge in ETF filings. Say we have more— the probability of a Solana ETF just spiked because David Sachs is, you know, there. What do you think happens to this whole narrative around Ethereum is for institutions?
By the way, Solana ETF approved in 2025, 89%. Oh, interesting.
Everyone thought I was an idiot when I said that. Obviously I didn't have insight into like, obviously surprised of like Dave, you know, Sachs appointment, whatever. But like, remember, like a year ago I was like, Solana's going to have an ETF. And I was like, there's no futures, all this crap, you know, like all these folks. I'm like, okay, fine, sure. And, you know, I know, I know, more likely than not, we're going to have an ETF, not only of Solana, we're going to have an ETF of probably Ripple and other Dogecoin and all this stuff.
Okay, so what do I think he says? I don't know what he says, but here's what I do know. You've got, you've got Saigar, right? Saigar is building Abstract. I think Abstract is one of the coolest, coolest L2s on Ethereum right now. Really consumer-focused, whatever. They've got the pudgy penguins connection. And he's like, look, you know, by the way, do I— what? You should follow them. I do follow him.
Now, you know, you don't follow Abstract. Hit that follow button.
Why would I? I don't follow the chain. Oh, I follow the people behind the chain. Snap. I'm getting no airdrop confirmed. No airdrop. Definitely not. Denied. Denied from that one. Canceled. Basically, I think Ethereum is okay. So I remember, remember the Cosmos episode we did like 3 years ago? The first ever—
Kusaki and Jack and— Yeah, with Jack Insek.
Yeah, I think that was probably 3 years ago now, maybe 2 years ago. Probably not. I think probably 3. And they were like, look, you don't need a BD team, a protocol, an L1, an L2 doesn't need a BD team. The tech just needs to be good enough.
And by the way, on that point, go to Kusaki's profile right now. Okay.
Please. I'm scared of what I'm going to find.
But please. No, this— oh, there we go. He said, here's the thing, change of tune. Obviously I'm tooting my horn here, but he referenced my tweet. He says, go-to-market is the hardest part of crypto. For some reason I keep doing them, the mistake that I alluded to. And it was just interesting. This is interesting because he, you know, 2 years ago was saying we don't need a BD team, and he's coming to the realization again that like you actually do. Like you need to have an army of people evangelizing this stuff. It's really hard. Oh yeah, okay.
So, uh, Yeah. Okay. So, so Cosmos on that episode, they're saying you don't need a, you don't need a BD team or sales team. You don't need people to handle the inbound because the tech and the docs should be good enough. You don't need to handle the outbound because word of mouth is good enough. Bullshit. That is a whole— I thought from day one that was a horrible strategy. And that's what I think this guy Vivek and Etherealize can maybe help with, even if you only improve it 10%. And the reason I like that is because of Sygar's tweet, which is insane to me. No one from the Ethereum Foundation has ever reached out to me or anyone on Abstract. For context, that would be like someone like most institutions buy like, I don't know, 3, 5 seats to Blockworks Research. That would be like someone coming along buying like 300 seats. Like JPMorgan signs up for Blockworks Research, they buy 300 seats and no one from Blockworks ever says, oh, that's crazy. Hey guys, you want to do onboarding? Can we help you? Do you want to train?
They are like— Kane had this similar tweet, like he was like, like we haven't— DeFi is like dead in the Ethereum Foundation's roadmap. Like there's no funding there, there's no interest. It's like all pie in the sky, you know, use cases. Vitalik actually in his recent tweet alluded to the fact that they're going to give DeFi more love and it's like, we hear you guys. It's interesting, like galvanization and like change of tune. I think Vitalik's on war mode again, I guess. But, but here's the other thing, like in my journey of like evaluating a lot of tech as I think about like launching a chain from Version. Like, I've talked to a lot of teams in crypto, and I will say, like, I'm of the mind, like, we talked about this in the episode, like, you have to run, like, like, product should be centralized, like decision-making, like the teams that run that, like Solana, Avalanche, like they're more agile. There's like one organization you go to, you can get a grant, you can talk to them. The support that you can get is, you know, really strong. And that's because, like, it's just, it's just one organization. In Ethereum, you have just more factions, right? It's, it's just very— you have the Ethereum Foundation, you have ConsenSys, you have, like, all these different units, like the L2s, right? And, and, like, the fragmentation is something that, you know, Ethereum's just farther along as a protocol that this happens, right? And so you're left wondering What is it? What are all the other large L1s going to go in this similar direction and face a similar problem, which is you have more clients, right? You have Firedancer now. You like, you have like what's going to happen to Solana? Is it, is it going to retain its like centralization of product and as an entity you can go to, right, to get support? If you're like PayPal and want to launch a stablecoin on Solana, you go to the foundation, you go to Solana Labs like there's support there. You know, I mean, like, I think that's like super important when people like— I hope that like the, the clarity on our regulation allows us to like not like push decentralization for the sake of decentralization, to like just for that, like for reasons that to protect yourself. And you could like, you could obviously like have security and decentralization in other parameters, but like, I still think that the product decision should be quite centralized because it, like, we're still very early in crypto and you never want to be in a position like where, you know, you can't— to get stuff past Ethereum, like, it's just quite challenging, right? And so the ability to move fast, the ability to pivot, to adjust to market conditions, to, you know, for institutions, it matters, right? Like, if, if you're a, a, a JP Morgan or whatever, Who's, who's, who at BlackRock, Robbie or whoever is at the helm there, who do they talk to in the, in, in the Ethereum ecosystem? I bet it's like far easier for them to go talk to someone in Solana, like, you know, I mean, like, or Avalanche, like they have like very dedicated, very buttoned up BD teams. Yeah.
So anyways, that's why I think Ethereum— I don't know if it works or not. That's why I think Ethereum— like, you go talk to Ethereumize.
And does Vivek have any weight?
I think they— I mean, if the Ethereum Foundation was smart, they would give this guy weight. Yeah, but yeah, good luck. Yeah. All right. Pivot. Actually, last question on this. ETH, has it bottomed as an asset sentiment? I would— I feel confident saying sentiment for ETH has bottomed. Has ETH ETH as the price bottomed?
Why should it be worth— what is it worth, $400 billion?
I don't know.
It's like $400 billion. Yeah.
Actually, here's a better question. What do you think SOL/ETH ends at?
It's at $30, $36. What is it? SOL is—
what is it?
So 0.07. Can we go? Yeah. I like to think of it as a percentage of market cap. Yeah. Well, there you go. Yeah, it's 0.02, 0.03, give or take. Do you hit 0.1 this cycle? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I mean, obviously I was very aggressive in my prediction. A year, a year ago that SOL would flip ETH. You know, it's flipped on a number of metrics, capital efficiency, activity, users, like, anyways, what's the market cap ratio? It's, I think, a third, give or take, like it hovers between 33 and 36%, give or take, on fully diluted basis. Explain to me why it's not like closer to 50, 60, 70%.
Yeah. Yeah.
Again, just to tie the circle around why are these networks worth what they are? I don't know, man. Like a lot of 99% of this valuation of every single network is based on like some terminal value, like pie in the sky settlement layer of the internet. The problem is we don't have 10 years to get there. Like I, I, I don't know why, but like I feel a sense of urgency to grow into that valuation. Yeah. And, and prices go up and people forget and 'Oh, it's all relative valuation. Everything's comped to Bitcoin.' I'm like, 'Okay, but that's not a good enough answer.' I think this is why centralized organizations from a BD standpoint are important. But also, I do think that from my vantage point, I see some projects more laser-focused on growing the pie and onboarding more users. I think that's the primary metric, not TVL. Anything else other than how do we get— if you reference the 16C report that kind of gets into like a 30 to 60 million like active users, I want that number to grow 10x in the next 4 years. And ideally in use cases that are more deep and focused because the retention of that user is higher. You know what I mean? Like if they're using Helium, they're there, they're using stablecoins. They're not just here to buy the Trump meme coin. It is an important onboarding mechanism, speculation, for sure. Is it ever going to go away? No, you don't. You don't want it to. It's important. But I do think that that percentage should go down over time. Otherwise we would have done something wrong. Crypto. But the tech is ready, I think. Yeah. Like we have an excess of block space right now. Yeah. Way more block space. That wasn't the case like 4 years ago, man.
Yeah. All right. Next topic. Okay. Pivot to— 10 minutes left. We're on the clock now. We're on the clock. Yeah. All right. We got 1 hour on the dot.
On the dot.
On the dot. It's bull market time. Vine.
Vine. Yeah. Good, good, good. Vine. Vine.
Pivot. All right. Russ. Russ is the founder of Vine. He's also the founder of HQ Trivia. Vine. If you don't know Vine, you missed the glory days of the internet.
So I won't—
schizophrenic scrolling.
I won't explain it to you. It's, uh, it had TikTok before, uh, TikTok had— before it had the algo. It was TikTok without a good algorithm. Um, okay, Vine. Uh, founder of Vine launched a, uh, launched a meme coin, and, uh, this thing freaking ripped. It pumped to 330— 500. It ticked $500 million on the chart. It is now down to $1.61. Vine was never worth more than like what? Vine sold for— here's your tech trivia of the day— $30 million, I want to say.
$36 million?
Somewhere between $30 and $50 million in roughly 2012 or 2013, I would guess. But by the way, back then, $30 million, $40 million is a good amount. But here's— so this guy sells his company for $30 million. He's got a meme coin worth $500 million. Not a question about valuations. It's more a question about— so I saw this thing, I tweeted about it when I was at, I don't know, $25 million being like some pithy tweet about, you know, the attention economy. And for the self-deprecating, self-deprecating, love to see it. I was like, this is such a lame tweet. Attention economy where the token is the thing to value. I was like, God, I'm such a scrub.
While you're tweeting, You should have been buying.
But yeah, I also, I also bought this because I— but here's what I want to get to. So I bought it because I was like, all right, this thing's stupid, but everybody else is going to buy this thing. And I was like, okay, that is the moment where I start saying, okay, that's kind of stage 4 behavior right there. And I think what you're seeing now is like the Trump coin kind of basically gave the stamp of approval for anyone to launch a token. You are— remember Remember last cycle, everybody at the end was launching an NFT, freaking Starbucks, everyone, you know, celebrities. Justin Bieber was tweeting about it. Yeah, everybody. Gary Vaynerchuk had like 75 different collections of these things. Like anybody with attention on the internet was launching NFTs. It's going to be the same thing now. Anybody with attention on the internet is going to start launching meme coins. And the sad thing is, or the fun part for a little bit, is everyone's going to buy them. These things are actually going to work. They're going to rip. These things are going to go up. And this is— it's basically— remember, like a year ago, all the celebs were launching meme coins. They were, they were right. They were just too early in the cycle, though. That's going to happen again. The difference is they're not going to go down 99%. They're going to go up. They're going to go up. These things are going to—
I mean, I think, okay, we should have a meme coin panel and discussion because the half-life on most meme coins, I will continue to believe, is very short.
Short-lived. Yeah. I mean, you're seeing it now. I guess the counterargument here is this thing—
it's all $160 million.
I mean, this thing pumped to $500 million. It's down to $160. What's circulating? If you get enough, if you get enough of these things going up and then down really quickly, people are going to stop buying them, I guess, is the argument.
But, um, wait, can you go to the supply? Like, what's FTV? $155. Market cap. Oh, so it's like fully launched.
It's fully, it's fully launched. Yeah.
Wow, how much did he take himself?
I am too much of a DEX screener scrub to see. How do I see this?
What's the insider, um, percentage?
There should be somewhere in there. Oh yeah, holders.
Go to—
how do you see it?
So the biggest holder is like 5%. Yeah, so the top 10 holders account for like 1, 2, like 20%.
Yeah, roughly. No, more than that. 5, 10, 12, 14, 17, 25%. Yeah, yeah, 20, 20, 20, 22%. Yeah, it's not terrible. Yeah. Anyways, moral of the story is, well, I guess he could have—
I guess he could have used 100 wallets, you know. I know it's like a ton of supply.
Yeah, I'm surprised he doesn't own more than supply, honestly. But anyways, I think this is the— this is— I'm not saying we're near the end of the cycle, but I think this is a glimpse of what late-stage cycles look like, where these things happen. And remember CMS's hot ball of money from the last cycle? You're just kind of chasing the hot ball of money. Like, in the beginning of a cycle, like stage 1 and 2 and even into 3, like, the hot ball of money, like, is kind of like a warm ball of money. Like, it just moves from thing to thing. Like, you've got, like, you had, like, a month to trade hyper liquid. You're like a month too long. That thing, you're like a month to like long fart coin. These two now it's like boom, day, day, day, day. Hot ball money is just flying around the industry and everyone's going to make a bunch of money. But this is a glimpse of how this thing tops.
Well, not everyone, but yeah, true. Not everyone can always make a bunch of money. Like, that's just not how markets work. But yeah, I don't know. I think we're all—
thank you, Mr. Markets. Thank you. No, no, I mean, obviously, I don't know, these things are more PvP than normal. Actually, in the last cycle, I will say the last cycle, didn't it feel like everybody was making money? Yeah, but what, why, why is that?
It just, it's a sense you feel it, but it's not really the case. I mean, a lot of people lost a ton of money on NFTs that were just really hard to get out of.
No, I know, but when everything was going up last cycle, I'm actually curious. I want to get your take on this. Last cycle, when everything was going up, it felt like everybody was making a lot of money. Now it's— everything's going up. Oh, actually, the difference is not everything's going up. It's all concentration. There's a big dispersion. Yeah. It's a mean Bitcoin and SOL. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
I guess that's your answer. Also, I would argue that who is making money now is more the TikTok folks. They're really glued and, you know, focused here. It's also the Solana ecosystem more as a whole.
I mean, I see things like— I'm only allowed to say this because he tweeted about it publicly, but frickin', you know, I see this tweet and I'm like, you know, Joseph, our podcast producer, tweeted, just made $2 million on Trump Coin. And I'm like, That is, that is a, you know, love you, Joseph. Thanks for editing this podcast. But, you know, that's a, that's a toppy, it's a toppy thing right there.
Yeah, I sold my Tron coin when I saw that. I love you, Joseph. Um, but yeah, I sold it then and there. I think it was like, Joseph's about to edit this podcast so poorly. He's gonna screw up. He's gonna change your voice. He's gonna— Yeah, Joseph, uh, much love. But yeah, I know it's, it's, again, you have, I think you and I were coming at it the same way, which is we share two different things, two conflicting, perhaps, ideas. It's more of a timing thing. It's like the setup for crypto has never been better. But at the same time, this type of phenomenon in meme coin land feels very euphoric.
It also feels very PvP and very like not value.
Yeah, uh, yeah, so pay attention to that, right? And, and I think anytime it feels like it's too easy to make money, just, uh, remember it's not you. You're not that smart. I probabilistically, like, once you make a 10x in, in, in a day, then, you know, the probability of you making a 10x on that is very, very low. And so, said differently, if you make, if you make 10x like in 3 days and you keep doing that over and over and over, you will become the best investor in the history of the world. And I guarantee you it's not going to be you. You. Like, with a 99.9% probability, it's not going to be you. So just take the win. But, you know, moments like this, just— if you can change your life, change your life. You know, $2 million is a lot of money. Like, if you can take that, great. But, you know, just, just remember, like, it's not— it's not normal for things— like, there's gravity to things. The markets just do their thing, right? And when an asset goes parabolic, like like even for some, even for the presidential meme coin, there is gravity. Markets are always going to do their thing. Like, things can't keep going up. Just be mindful of that. And anytime you think it's too easy to make money, just, just check yourself. It's not, it's not, it's not the case.
Check yourself before you, before you— what's, what's Dude, check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Oh, okay, man, this is how you know I'm too old. Make me feel old. This is a great way to end the podcast.
That's a good way to end.
I just embarrassed myself. We're 59 minutes and 30 seconds.
Anything else as we round it up? No, last take here is, uh, there's the— I screenshotted this iPhone apps thing, is like the top 10 apps, and I thought the It was less interesting to me that these crypto apps are on the App Store. It was more— that was the moment actually taking that screenshot was when I realized, oh, fintech is not a real thing. There is no such thing as fintech. There's only tradfi, which runs on tradfi rails, and crypto, which runs on crypto rails. And eventually all of— I'm putting quotes around this word— fintech will move on to crypto rails or they'll get stuck on tradfi rails. There's only two sets of rails. There's not Fintech was just a nice UI wrapper on tradfi rails. And I thought about that. I'd heard it and internalized it, but it never really clicked for me.
Crypto is more of a social— think of like social apps like Fantom and Moonshot. They're social, very much social with money, which makes it like— it's like going to Vegas.
Did you invest in Moonshot?
No, man, I was kidding myself. Like, I was kicking myself. Like, I got intro to them by the shit guys at Alliance. Crushed it. Uh, but at the time, I think the round was kind of closed and stuff like that. But, you know, they've just executed.
What is— like, why is Moonshot— why, why are they crushing it from a discovery standpoint?
I mean, it's just a great app. Just, you can just buy— they're also— yeah, it's like the surfacing insights. It's like, uh, it's like, uh, I, I haven't really used it much, but it's just really easy to discover assets. And I think they're tapping into the whole pump fun kind of, you know, apparatus. And so, yeah, interesting.
Santi, good chat.
Thank you, sir. Uh, any books, uh, things, or should you just be glued to the screen and paying attention to the news? I think that's fairly—
I just finished, um, what's his— not Josh Kushner, Jared Kushner's book. Oh, good. Self-aggrandizing but also interesting stories about, um, the first term. I wanted to listen. I know very little about the Middle East, actually, like a big hole in my knowledge. So I just wanted to learn about the Middle East. And he— I mean, he led a lot of like the Abraham Accords and a lot of the Middle East dealings. And now he runs a big fund where they've raised from, you know, all those guys. And so I just wanted to learn some of those stories. I thought it was a— it was a good— I listened to it on Audible. I thought it was a solid Audible. Nothing to write home about, but like a— but good stories. Yeah, his episode on Invest Like the Best was— oh yeah, was, was actually, was really good. I would listen to that episode of Invest Like the Best.
Nice. That's awesome. What are you— nothing really. I don't think— I've just been one speed, thinking about one thing. No, I'm serious. I got very much founder mode, I guess. Wow. Yeah, I know, I know. No one— I never thought I'd say that.
All right, folks, good chat. Good chat. Good hanging with all of you. Yeah. If you're not in the Empire Telegram, go hang in the Empire Telegram. Don't know how to tell you to find it, unfortunately, but I think it might be a if you know, you know type of thing. I literally don't know how to point you to it. Wink. Yeah. Anyways, good seeing you, everyone.
It was so nice chatting. See you next week.
Bye. Hey, everyone. Just wanted to give a quick thanks to today's title sponsor, GeoNet. By setting up a base station, you can get involved involved with this groundbreaking Web3 ecosystem. Learn more by heading over to geodnet.com or just by hitting the link in the description of today's episode.
More from Jason
AI Feels Like Crypto In 2017, Circle Raises $222M and Anthropic Cracks Down On SPVs
How KelpDAO's $290M Exploit Nearly Killed DeFi | Stani Kulechov & Mike Silagadze
Solana vs Hyperliquid, Why Ethereum Is Overvalued & Crypto In 2026 | Logan Jastremski