Who is Responsible for Low Float, High FDV? | Roundup

Fast forward to 2 years from now, 2.5, 3 years from now. What are we going to be saying about this particular moment in time? Like, it was so obvious, right? We had an ETF. Like, why are you overthinking it, man? You had the most defining moment of the industry to legitimize this asset class. You have a president that is a presidential candidate that is talking about like crypto has become presidential now.

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Oh boy, are we live?

Here it goes. There it goes. We have failed you guys. We have not brought you a roundup in a while and Feeling a little nervous today.

I woke up super early. I'm in New York. I email Jan. I'm like, I'm ready to go. Like, I'm excited about this. He's like, can we delay for an hour? I'm like, God. Anyways, I'm nervous.

How's the New York trip?

That was great. Really, really productive.

What are you doing here?

Nothing, man. I just came to see you. Like, do I need another reason to be here?

Likely, likely.

No, I had to be in Mexico for, I'm the godfather of my best friend's son. And so I was here. I got invited to be at the Solana office yesterday to talk to the cohort of apps, like founders, startups that are there. I can talk about that. Really exciting. But it also, yeah, I've been caught up with Ben from ParaFi, Mike Dudas from Six Man Ventures. Bunch of teams that are here. We're obviously hosting the, the, you know, meetup today, Thursday. So yeah, I mean, New York's great. It's my favorite city in the world.

Nice. Why don't, why don't you live here if it's your favorite city?

Because I've lived here before. I've lived here for 6 years. So I like coming here for like a month or two at a time. Like I'm always here in the summer and then I come for the marathon. It's just, you know, I like where I live now. Yeah.

Yeah, fair.

Yeah, dude.

I mean, we get like 12 days a year that are like this week, I feel like, with the, you know, 72 sunny, and then it's just fucked. Yeah.

Look, if I were to ever come back, I would— or just move— it'd be New York for sure. Yeah, it feels like a second home to me.

I went to the Knicks game last night.

I was going to go, dude.

I went. Yeah.

What a game.

Are you— when do you leave town? We should go to Game 5 if they— if they— if the Pacers—

well, that's next Tuesday.

Yeah.

No, I leave. I think I leave Sunday. But they've been—

wow. I mean, it was popping. It was crazy, man. It was like, oh, they were down 10 and then they came back and Brunson got injured and they came back.

So yeah, it's cool. I mean, when was the last time the Knicks like were playing good?

Couldn't tell you. I'm more of a football and baseball fan. I don't follow basketball that closely, honestly. But like, I love— it's my favorite sport to go to in person. I just get fired up in person.

Mine is hockey and then basketball. Monaco has a good basketball team. But yeah, I bought like this shirt. Like there's this brand that I like, New York or Nowhere.

Monaco has a good basketball team? Yeah, yeah.

They were European champions. A lot, a lot of like the retired US players end up going to Monaco. But I bought this, this is a New York or Nowhere brand. They have the Knicks version. I bought a shirt.

They did a collab.

I was all fired up watching the game in my hotel room, put the shirt on.

Let's go. Yeah, they did it. That was a cool collab. There were so— my, actually my wife looked, I went to the game with my wife and she looked at me last night. She's like, I think New York or Nowhere is not cool anymore because there's all these like banker bros wearing New York or Nowhere. She's like, I think that brand is out.

Okay, I'm going to return it.

Yeah. So just a heads up, that's, that's the fashion insight from my advice from, from my wife.

What is it like sporty and rich is now like the thing. That's cool. That was cool like 6 months ago.

That's cool. That was cool at the US Open.

Now, that's right.

That's right.

I sympathize. It's like the attention span of crypto is like that of a fire, like a, you know, of a fruit fly.

Or nothing.

And like, I think the same is true for brands.

I was talking to Alex from Nansen last night, the founder of Nansen, and we both kind of were just like—

Nansen, for context, data intelligence company. They like mine, like, they'll like surface insights. If you want to understand who's the person and fund behind the wallet, they're pretty good at it.

Yeah. We were just talking about how like this, it's a very weird cycle right now. It's a very— so in the last couple of cycles, the— basically the firing gun was shot for the cycle. So in like all of 2017 was just like a ripper of a bull market. March 2020, COVID hits. Black Thursday happens and then prices, you know, obviously prices crash. And then I think from like that, from like a week after that, especially starting when like you could probably say the firing gun was like Paul Tudor Jones calling Bitcoin the fastest horse in the race. I think that was around May of 2020. It was just a ripper of a bull market for a year and a half. And this cycle felt very odd because the— there hasn't really been like a firing gun. I would say there's probably the Bitcoin ETF stuff in December and like leading into— in December, leading into the new year and then into January is like boom, bull markets back. And now there's this like consolidation, choppiness that I think is making some people like a little uncomfortable. But I'd be curious how you think about that because I can share how I feel about it from the operator's perspective. But like from someone who's seen many cycles from the investor's perspective.

Let's talk about it. Look, I'm I think there's this phenomenon where the mind plays, plays tricks on you. Looking back on the prior cycles, it, it looks like it was a ripper. In the moment, it doesn't feel like a ripper as much. Like, throughout 2021, 2020-2021 cycle, Paul Tudor Jones— I would have thought like Compound Liquidity Mining was more like also a very defining moment of the cycle where it like kickstarted DeFi summer. Then you had renaissance of NFTs because you had the wealth effect of, you know, Wi-Fi and all that stuff. But in the midst of during that moment, I'm trying to think like it, it wasn't like it never feels obvious. You're always on the edge. You always have PTSD. You're like COVID and, and then, you know, people now looking back will say, well, yeah, you know, there's a huge liquidity injection. People had time, they were in their homes. They— like, we fit this narrative as to why the cycle happened, and we look at the data and, you know, it all fits really nicely. But I— you still had drawdowns, at least 5 to 10 drawdowns of 10, 15, 20% of these assets. Uh, and in that moment a lot of people were questioning how long the cycle would last, how sustainable it was, how other things might impact it. And look, on the margin, this, I would agree with you, is a little choppy. It's a bit like have and have-nots. And you're also exhibiting— seeing that in traditional markets, right? You have the returns in the S&P have been concentrated in a set of the Magnificent Seven or whatever. Um, and everything else has been like muted. And so it's a very much a have and have-nots. The return disparity is also in crypto, you know, been pretty noticeable, right? ETH has, you know, oscillated in a very tight range, just hasn't done anything really. Bitcoin has certainly rallied because of the ETF, as you said, um, and then you've had Solana, right, which has, you know, been front and center and, and just the price action And, you know, ordinal activity and whatever. But I don't know, like, maybe the question is perhaps more interesting is fast forward to 2 years from now, 2 and a half, 3 years from now, what are we going to be saying about this particular moment in time? Like, it was so obvious, right? We had an ETF. Like, why are you overthinking it, man? You have the most defining moment of the industry to legitimize this asset class. You have a president that is a presidential candidate that is talking about like crypto has become presidential now. It is a— for like the ETF moment is a defining moment, perhaps the most impactful of this industry because it legitimizes the asset class. People can buy it through their retirement accounts. The type of buyer, you know, I mean, like that might be the thing that we look back and like, why, why the hell did I ever think that? I should have just bid gone play basketball and chilled because this is a secular trend. And like, don't try to play cute, man.

Oh, the life of an investor sounds nice, don't it?

No, that's what I'm saying. But like, it doesn't sound— it's not easy, right? Because sitting on your hands and doing nothing, and I tweeted about this last week or like a couple days ago, is extremely hard. It doesn't get easier because you have the opportunity cost, you have the ability to invest in a number of things, different asset classes, you make more money, the aperture of the things you can invest in also goes up.

Like.

And so it's not easy to sit on your hands, right? Um, and I, I just think that— I put it differently. I've had— there was a podcast that we recorded, um, where I was visibly stressed about that morning, like selling a position in WIF, for instance. And we went through it and I didn't do anything. Um, and I was just on the flight here, I was thinking about Look, there have been specific moments over the last couple months where I've wanted to make drastic changes to the portfolio because of macro, because of crypto, because of price action. You know, when price does X, you kind of— but I'm just, I'm constantly now going back, what is the core thesis? My core thesis is cycle, and it's X. Solana is the most retail-friendly chain. It's the most advanced. Therefore, memes will do well. I'm doing other stuff, but on the margin, and I was talking to Ben about this, at ParaFi, we got one thing extremely right. We were early in DeFi. We owned it. Anytime there was a company that wanted to raise money in DeFi, they called us. We were top of the list. And we owned it and we went hard at it and we were early. We did many other things, but when you think about maybe in your portfolio too, and I'll stop talking, is I think if going back, you have to get one or two things very, very right in investing. And I'm not talking about time. It could be— but you know what I mean? What is the thing that you're going to get extremely right this cycle or in the next couple of years beyond what you're doing at Blockworks, right? From an investing standpoint. What is it? I have one that I, that I will— I continue to go back and doing it in size.

I mean, I would guess for you, I would guess for you, you're too— that you could get everything wrong this cycle, but your two things are meme coins and Solana, I would guess.

Yes. Well, specifically Solana. I am of the mind that Solana should— I don't see a compelling reason, and I haven't from teams or investors as to why Solana should not be at parity with Ethereum. That for me, and again, none of this is whatever advice or whatever, but that's my thesis. And I keep hammering it. I was yesterday at the Solana office. Every time I talk to a team, I'm like, what do you get building an XY network that you can't get on Solana? I'm monitoring Firedancer and their progress there. I'm monitoring the spam issue. I'm like, I'm very focused on that. I'm doing other investments, of course. I'm interested in other ecosystems, of course. It also feeds— I'm paying attention to Aptos. We just had them on the pod. I'm paying attention to like, why? Because it also influences and moan at it. These things influence my thesis in Solana. And I will invest there, I'll hedge part of it, but that's just the thing that I have the most conviction on. That's the thing that I'm most focused on. And it does take a lot of time. Not doing anything doesn't mean stop, just pencil down, go travel and do shit. No. Constantly like revisit the thesis. Like when the Solana spam issue happened, how many people did you talk and they're like, game over, like look at base, like shit works. You're like, I agree, let's give it a couple weeks to see how the devs come together. And like you had a Herculean effort from the Solana, Jito, and the rest of— and a bunch of other teams. And you're like, holy shit, like that's— I actually came more bullish out of that incident than than before, you know. So yeah, I don't know, like, what is the thing that you're trying to get right?

I mean, for me, it's just like extreme focus at Blockworks right now. Like I told you, I messaged you this week, you sent me a really good deal and I was just like, I'm going to pass on this. I need to— I'm basically stopping most angel investing. I'm not really trading around the portfolio at all. I'm just like, I'm 100% focused on Blockworks right now. I think, I don't know, I was talking to some couple of founders recently and they're, they're really chasing this restaking narrative. And I was— and they're not, they're not restaking companies at all. Like they have nothing to do with restaking. And they're like, yeah, like a lot of them are like, we think we're going to try to grab a piece of the restaking market. And like, I don't know, you've got EigenLayer launching and I don't know, I just like, don't like that strategy at all because I don't know if you bring up what you mentioned about ParaFi, it's like Parify probably lost a bunch of deals in gaming or they lost deals in NFTs.

I brought like Illuvium seed round to Parify and Ben was like, you know, game is not our thing.

And I, and I think, I think I remember you guys passed on Axie. I'm pretty sure too, but which like sucks. But also I understand the decision to pass on that because if you did it, if you did all of them, you're just a general, you're a generalist fund. And the way to build something when you're just kicking off is like I think you want to own one thing, and that's how I think about it at Blockworks is like there are— there's going to be a huge wave of retail that ends up coming into crypto in this cycle, probably, let's say, back half of this year, maybe more likely into 2025. We get the ETF narrative, whatever, second half of the cycle. We will not dominate that game like that is CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, Bankless. Like, like I will get like I will seed all of those retail people to them because like I want to own the crypto native audience. I want to own the information stack for crypto natives. Like that is what I'm, what I'm 100% locked into right now.

Yeah, I want to pick your brain because you recently acquired Nathaniel's podcast. Yeah, I've been on that podcast. He's been in the space for a while. Like, what was the thesis there? I'm just curious if you're willing to share.

There's, there's 3 elements of this. There's the personal element. There's the very like So the— I'll talk about the Breakdown specifically, like the Breakdown podcast and the asset, and then I'll zoom out into the broader Blockwork strategy and how I think about media. So the Breakdown is solving this issue where I don't think that there's a really good daily crypto podcast. If you look at all the best crypto podcasts, whether it's Blockwork shows like Empire, Lightspeed, 0xResearch, On the Margin, like 1000x. I'm going to get in trouble because I'm sure I'm forgetting some. Like, they are— 0xResearch— like, they're these— they're usually like twice a week. You've got an interview show and then you've got a roundup at the end of the week. Forward Guidance, same thing. Other— even other shows, Bankless, On the Brink. I don't know, other crypto— they all follow the same format. I really believe that there needs to be a daily crypto show. Where it's like you wake up, you're on the— you're on your 15-minute subway, you're commuting to work. It's just like, what are the two news stories that you need to know? Nathaniel's the only one who's been able to nail this. It's 6 days a week. He's done it for years. It's got kind of this like Lindy effect of podcasts where it's been around for a while and it has a— it really drastically increases the size of our podcast network. So it kind of does a couple of things for us because it's a massive show because it's been around for so long. It gives us more advertising capabilities so we can go to different advertisers. Some of the big players, um, some of the big players like the Krakens and Ledgers of the world, like, they have such big marketing spends that even if something like Bell Curve is really good content, like, they need to deploy big budgets. It's like being a billion-dollar fund versus a $10 million fund. Like, even if there's a good opportunity, you need to deploy in size. So the breakdown is kind of like gives us that inventory. The second thing is it gives us distribution for other shows. It's like an— it's like an— it opens the door to other channels at Blockworks. So it will be like this big daily podcast, and then we can drive into like Empire or Bell Curve or whatever. And then it gives us the ability to like create more talent at Blockworks. So we'll start— so Nathaniel is going to keep hosting it, but we could bring on a reporter, we could bring on Byron, the newsletter writer, we could— and you can start elevating different talent.

Yeah, theoretically, like Byron writes a newsletter daily. He could— there's no reason why he couldn't do it.

So this is the plan. So the, so the daily newsletter of Blockworks and the Breakdown will end up becoming the same brand. You're— yeah, that's exactly—

this is, this is the, the only newsletter I read daily.

Byron's fine.

Yeah, he's good.

Let's go. That's great.

He's great.

The Malivine of crypto, baby. Yeah, I think it's the best daily. Daily newsletter in crypto right now. So the Breakdown and the daily newsletter will become one and the same. Maybe the daily newsletter will end up becoming the Breakdown by Blockworks or something like the branding will end up being the same. Byron will start going on the show more. And that gets me to like the broader Blockworks strategy where if you look at media, media is, media is like media is dying as we like traditional media is dying and there's only two media types of media companies that are going to end up working. There's like a couple of the biggest players, like the New York Times. They'll actually end up working like their business model, even though people on crypto Twitter hate them. They're one of the most successful media companies in the world today. They've done an amazing job pivoting away from like display ads on their website into products. And then there's very traditional B2B— not traditional, but like B2B digital media companies. So this is how I think about Blockworks is not B2C, very B2B. I only care about like crypto professionals and crypto natives. The problem is once you scale big enough, you start creating more and more generalized content.

Yeah.

And then you sit in this messy middle of media and the messy middle kills you. Vox, Vice, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post. Like, you're not big enough to compete with social media. You're not small enough to have a niche audience. You're screwed. So what Blockworks is going to end up turning into is essentially a house of brands. And when you, when you see our podcasts like Lightspeed, 0xResearch, Bell Curve, like the long-term goal for these is like they're not just podcasts, they're brands that we're building. And you're going to have these like diehard communities and like cult, like we have like a cult following around Lightspeed. We have like, I don't know, we have like a kind of a cult following around Empire. When you go in person, you see these people, they like, they just love Empire. These will turn out—

How many people are showing up to the event today?

I mean, we've got like, we tweeted out one link one time, and we've got, I think we'll have like 200 registered. So that's like one link one time. And I don't know, probably got, could have gotten like over 1,000 if we really push this thing. So eventually, all of our podcasts will get newsletters, and then they'll all get in-person activations as well. So kind of giving away a little bit of the secret sauce here. But like, you'll have, let's say, a Lightspeed podcast, a Lightspeed newsletter, and then like a Lightspeed stage at the Permissionless conference. That's an example of what it could look like. So the daily newsletter of Blockworks was missing a podcast, and that's where the Breakdown slots in.

That's nice.

Yeah, we're excited. First, first acquisition.

Yeah. Um, should we pivot to— I mean, there's been a lot of new stuff. Uh, you— we can talk about the Emergence. Uh, there's been really interesting activity on SocialFi, you had Pump.fund, uh, uh, uh, Fantasy, uh, has just been interesting in its own way. We obviously can talk about Trump and the comments that he made yesterday at, um, at a dinner in Mar-a-Lago. Uh, I mean, we're— there's other stuff that we can comment on.

Let's do, let's do SocialFi stuff. So there's probably 3 apps to focus on here. There's like SocialFi/consumer. So this week, the context for this conversation is this week Fantasy. Two big things happened. I would say there's fantasy, which— are you an investor in fantasy? I think we're both investors. We're both investors in fantasy.

I love those guys. I mean, they're just electric.

Yeah.

You know, as a double-click here, I'll pause. Like yesterday I was talking to the founders, a cohort of founders in Solana, and I was like, I talk very specifically of things that I look for in a founder because it's a people business. You're investing in early stage. Their ability. And I ended up, I end up passing on founders that don't speak fast. And both the Pump.fund and the Fantasy guys, both of them speak at lightning speed. And I was like, okay, yes, sign me up. I'll invest on that basis.

Yeah. I mean, I met them at the Alliance DAO. I went and gave this talk to like the Alliance DAO cohort and met them and they're, yeah, they're electric. So Friend.tech launched their token and did their airdrop. Fantasy Top, which is like you can essentially gamble or bet. I don't know the right word to use here, but you can bet on your different, on different creators on crypto Twitter. They basically went, they basically went live and a bunch of people started like betting on different crypto Twitter influencers or people, whatever you want to call it. And then Pump.fun I think, did they launch their token and they launched like a chat and social feed to see what your friends are trading? I didn't follow Pumped Up Fun as closely, but anyways, a bunch of, a bunch of big stuff happened. I remember last summer when Friend.Tech was launching and I was talking a lot about it. You were like pretty anti Friend.Tech, I think is fair to say.

I never got—

Yeah, you never got on. I'd just be curious to get your take on like updated thoughts around SocialFi about a year later.

Yeah, I had this great discussion with, uh, a few folks yesterday, including Ben and Mike, uh, um, about it. Um, I'm not dismissive of the category. I think there's nuance to it. Friend tech is extremely close to— it's like, it's like you saw with the airdrop, you had big name accounts dumping like small airdrop amounts. You're like, one, maybe you're not as— you're LARPing as like generational crypto wealth, but like you're dumping $12,000 airdrop on— it's like, what are you doing, man? Like, you know what I mean? Like, it actually is— I would argue that the benefit of doing that, it's like, it doesn't— if you're that wealthy, it doesn't compete in your wealth, then why are you doing it? Because it's hurting your reputation. It's very confusing to see actually these big Twitter accounts do that. And it goes back to my initial skepticism with something like Frenetic is There is this component where sometimes you do things without expecting anything in return, financial return. And I appreciate crypto as an area where we're trying to financialize everything, see what sticks. This is an area where I feel extremely strong about we shouldn't be doing it. I don't want to understand if you're buying my token and then selling it. It just taints— it creates a very weird, awkward relationship. You would argue, well, what's the difference between fantasy? This is these cards, right? You— I have a card that represents like the World Cup, right? You're collecting these cards.

And I would argue that, and I would argue as someone who's been very pro-meme coins of just like, let the market do what the market's going to do.

Yeah, true. Although it just feels really— it feels very direct and personal with Freneta. It doesn't feel as direct, personal a step removed from fantasy. It's fun. And maybe it's just this idea that there's like this image and the card. I think it's the trading card that makes it very related. Like just, and I don't know how to explain it other than it feels less in your face. I think that if someone sells my card and is trading it, then I'm like, yeah, that's fun. If someone's like dumping my key, I'm like, yo man, what's up? Like, are we friends? What's going on?

Like, yeah, I do appreciate that. Or I know what you're saying. I mean, one is very purely just like it feels like a game. Fantasy feels like a game. Friend— I think the other thing with Friend.Tech is which I'm still on Friend.Tech and stuff and still like sometimes occasionally there, but like you, you basically then have to put out for your, for your key holders by— because there's this chat feature. So there's because there's utility baked into buying the key.

Great point.

You know, then it makes it like I don't want to put out for you guys. No, no, no, I don't want to. So I've got—

you basically, you've gotten yourself into a situation where all of a sudden you're like created another job for yourself. And to be fair, you—

my DMs after this, I'll send you a screenshot. It is probably at this point 50, maybe, maybe 75, maybe 100 DMs of people being like, Why didn't you tweet this weekend? I bought your fantasy card. So yeah, yeah, I mean, you're like, I bought your fantasy card, why didn't you tweet this weekend?

Um, yeah, I didn't repeat, I was like, I was like this, like, dude, I'm like, I took the weekend off of Twitter, I'm sorry.

Like, I didn't respond to that.

I was at my buddy's baptism in, in, uh, Mexico, and in the weekend, over the weekend, I was like, I wake up and I'm like, what have I done wrong? I don't have DMs open, but People are like, this guy's not tweeting, it sucks. I'm like, and I pinged the fantasy guys, Travis. I said, yo man, did I do something wrong here? No, I just, Tom Schmidt apparently has like this rubric of like best practices for fantasy influenza or whatever. I don't know. I don't know, uh, it just feels different. It's more fun.

So let's talk about maybe—

well, on this point though, yeah, what is the last thing I want to say is it's interesting also in the sense that they're in 3 different ecosystems, right? You have Fantasy on Blast, you have FriendTech on, on, on Base, and you have a Pump.fund on Solana, right? Yep. And that in and of itself, I think, will be a really interesting experiment as how things unfold.

Here's the big takeaway I think to have there is this is the first time in history we've seen these breakout consumer apps have this— I think it might have been Chow who was talking about this— have this big impact on the chain that they're built on. Right. So if you think about BASE, BASE was nothing until Friend.Tech brought a ton of— it wasn't Farcaster that brought all those users to BASE in the early days. It was Friend.Tech. Then Blast, like Blast was just a bunch of like crazy speculative stuff until fantasy, like now fantasy is probably the biggest driver of users to Blast, I would assume. And then Solana, Solana is already very like diverse ecosystem, but Pump.fun, you could, you could argue made a pretty big impact here in the last couple of months as well. So I think you're going to start to see these chains, like, you remember in the last cycle, chains were really fighting to get like Starbucks and Nike, and you had some of these like ridiculous, like $10 million deals to get those people on. Those people realize doesn't— those don't make a difference. Obviously, people realize those don't make any sort of impact. No shit. But there's going to be like all-out fights, I think, to get these world-class developers and founders to come build on your chain because that's where the impact matters.

Yeah, yeah. It'll be really interesting.

Okay, here's, here's— I got the data. Shout out Ali Zak, who is at Pantera. It's been 1 week since the launch of Fantasy. In that time, the platform's onboarded 33,500 new addresses, seen over 8,500 ETH in trading volume. For reference, during Friendtex's first week, onboarded 27,000 new addresses. So, so Fantasies already added 33,500 new addresses. And then I saw some folks in the Slack, Blockworks Slack channel were commenting about the fees that were generated in the last 7 days. Fantasies generated over $9 million in fees. Friendtex generated $5 million in fees and Pumped Up Funds over $3 million in fees. So these are, these are real dollars for startups.

Quite a lot actually. Yeah, uh, we'll see if we can run rate those figures into, you know, for the rest of the year. But, uh, because, you know, for Antec, uh, I'm curious to get your thoughts as someone who was on it early, you know, with the airdrop and everything, uh, and V2 and the team. Um, it's had sort of its ups and downs, but like out of all three, like, or like, which one are you most bullish on? Which one, you know, updated thoughts on friend tech? Like you said, you kind of are— sounds like the frequency of you using it is slightly lower. And maybe throw in Forecaster into that equation too. I appreciate it's like a bit more generalized, but like you're also— I think you're one of the most active in the category. So yeah, maybe throw in—

yeah, okay. So let me, let me maybe explain to you how I view— so there's like friend tech, fantasy, Farcaster, uh, our head of marketing was asking me about like Lens yesterday. There's— I bucket those in two different categories. So there's like friend tech and fantasy. Those are a lot of the users there, people who view crypto as like just this speculative asset that's like a thing to gamble on. And my take on why those are taking off right now— so if you, if you think about it, friend tech took off during like peak, peak of the bear market. It was, I think, like summer 2023. We were just like super choppy, like things were slowly starting to come back. And I don't think it's any sort of surprise that Fantasy launched during this like weird choppy consolidation period. I think like the friend texts and Fantasies are going to do really well when like people just need to get their, get their inner gambler out basically. Then there's this other group of people who really like this. It's more the like Andreessen cohort of like You know, we have these, like, these Web2 monopolies and we're breaking down those barriers. And that's where, like, you need to build these censorship-resistant protocols that enable you to, like, control your own data and build a competitor to Twitter. That's the bucket where I see, like, Farcaster and Lens and things like that. The group number 2 oftentimes views group number 1 as negative to the industry. And group number 1 says that group number 2 doesn't like— misses the forest for the trees. And like, it's all just speculation all the way down. But both of them, I think, are— those are very negative takes on the other group. And it's— I think that they're both doing great things for the industry and like both very value-add. I just think they're like two very different groups, actually.

Yeah. Yeah. And actually, before we move on to other things, there's there's this recurring discussion that is percolating in front and center, polarizing in crypto right now, that I'd like to just address quickly, which is this idea of high FDV, low float coins, and why people are interested in meme coins. And to your point, I was reminded of that because of what you just said, which is there's a camp of people that are very critical and dismissive of meme coins, and there's others that are complaining as the reaction of the community is, well, we're tired and fed up with these protocols that launch at high FTVs, low flow, it's like down only. And I just think I've seen the most— crypto Twitter has terrible takes always, but like in this particular area, it is— you constantly see people that try to come out ahead with specific narratives that are just factually incorrect. I'll give you an example. Someone says, oh, you know, it's the fault of VCs. I'm like, no, it's not. It's a fault of teams that come out with a high valuation. I'm like, wait a minute, do you understand market dynamics? It's not like the team sets the price. The market sets the price for the token, idiot. Oh yeah, but market makers. I'm like, you think the team controls like what the token does? It's like, it's actually really challenging. Like, you of course need to have market makers in the mix. Like, obviously, like, this is— look at traditional markets.

Whose fault are you saying that it is for the low float, high FDV stuff? And what are your thoughts around it?

It's It's just a thing of the market. It's like you can't— two examples, Solana and Ethereum. Ethereum did an ICO at a time where it benefited because there was no precedent. You just got away with it, so to speak, on the regular. You couldn't do that in today's environment. After Ethereum did the ICO and after you had the wave of ICOs, your lawyer would scream at you. Right? And so unfortunately, projects like Solana and then every, every other project right now has to raise from venture funds and do it in a way where it's like equity with a token warrant. And that's kind of the best model that lawyers have kind of agreed on given the current regulatory environment. In a perfect world, probably, yeah, do an ICO, right? Allow people in the community to invest distribute— that would allow a greater distribution of tokens. But at the same time, investors, VCs, and teams don't own much of the tokens, right? And they carve out a big part to the community to decentralize in large part, but also to compensate people for participating in the network, for taking smart contract risk, for— because, you know, that's a core principle of crypto, which is you make your participants owners in the work in a more equitable manner. Fine, I get it. But it's like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place here, and in large part it's because of regulatory ambiguity. And if we can update accredited investor rules, then maybe hopefully we can get to a place where you can bring in the community and participants earlier, and then therefore have a token that is more distributed out of the gate and the float is higher. But it's kind of like you can't control that. And so I would just caution people, when you hear these people talk about it's a VC's fault, it's like, no, man, VCs take a lot of risk early stage. That's, that's the nature of the game. There always will be a place for VCs. Now, can community members become VCs? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. But you know, it's challenging. Um, So yeah, I don't know. Every cycle there's always this idea of like VCs are evil and whatnot. I'm like, as someone who is an investor, I'm like, fuck off. We take a lot of risk. Not everyone is created equal. But, you know, people— a lot of times the influencers that are commenting on this are guys that are butthurt because they didn't get allocation in deals. And that's the reality of things.

And you've got it. You've got the wrong brand for yourself. You can't call yourself a VC. It's got to be institutional angel. That's the—

I'm an— by the way, no one's ever— I'm an institutional angel. I don't write your $25K checks. No, I'm like a fund, but I'm an angel too.

That's a better brand for you, Santi. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, like, I've seen it all over the timeline. You're seeing this. This is why we hate FTV coins. I'm like, I get it.

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Go check them out. Go stake your Solana with Marinade today. Everyone, Jason Yanowitz here. I know you've been hearing a lot about the intersection of crypto and AI, and that's why I'm really excited to share our newest partner and sponsor at Empire, SKALE, a high-performance modular blockchain that's revolutionizing gaming and AI. With zero fees and instant finality, SKALE's unique architecture allows for massive scalability and has already saved users over $6 billion in gas fees. The 5 main takeaways that you need to know for SKALE: 1, zero gas fees. 2, SKALE has instant finality and lack of MEV. 3, the zero gas zero fee model of SKALE is really important for blockchain gaming adoption as gamers don't have to pay transaction costs or have the SKL token. 4, SKALE is multi-chain. This design allows for nodes to be combined to create chains and for individual subnodes to actually be removed and relocated, which creates greater security and collusion resistance. And 5, SKALE has become a really good fit for AI dApps because they're fast, automated, zero fee transactions. Big thank you to SKALE for sponsoring Empire. We're excited to partner with you guys. Bridge over to SKALE if you're listening to this at scale.space/eco. Follow the journey along with SKALE on X @skale_network. That's @skale_network. Big thanks again to SKALE for sponsoring Empire. Yeah, I mean, there's another half that's calling out the operators for launching at these high FDV, low flow tokens. My— there's a— there's a couple of things going on. There's an overbear— there's the SEC. The SEC let's— like, the SEC is basically restricting the ability for startups to raise capital and distribute tokens. The whole reason that there's like— I saw a bunch of people commenting this week about like the points meta, so stupid, like points, points, points. Points are forced on— points are being forced on operators and founders because the SEC is tell— is it— if, if you are a company and you give tokens to someone in exchange for dollars, you are fucked. There is no way around it. You are screwed. So what you have to do is go points, points, points, airdrop based on these points. Like points give—

and then I work at that point is sufficiently decentralized in some capacity and you know, you further—

yeah, it's like, like obviously this points thing is dumb, but like I don't know, I mean, I don't think it is some ways. Well, I think, uh, I— here's, here's what I think. It's dumb. Tokens used to be about incentivizing early users, right? The thought was like, and I really did believe this was like the early users of Uber. This is like the common example, like the early users of Uber should get, should benefit in the same way. And like Uniswap, right? Like, who did Uniswap give their tokens to? Like, it was the early users of Uniswap. Like, it was the liquidity providers. Risk, you know, and, and that, and that was awesome. And like, okay, so step one of tokens was like, well, first off, it was about raising capital with these tokens, but then like moving beyond that, it was about incentivizing early users. Then it became a customer acquisition game. It was like, we don't need to incentivize these early users. Let's use tokens to acquire new users. And now what we've moved to is stage three, where they're now an investor acquisition game. So we've gone from using tokens to incentivize early users to customer acquisition game to investor acquisition game. And it's causing these— like, there's a lot of reasons. There's a lot of reasons for it. But like, there's the overbearing regulator with the SEC. There's a lack of new entrants in retail people. Like, we can look at some— Coinbase had earnings. Like, there's some really interesting data around retail people we could pull up, or lack of retail people, I guess I should say. But then there's this overabundance of VC capital. Um, and it is leading to— there— it's, it's no one's fault. It's no one's fault. It's not the operator's fault.

At the end of the day, have agency. No one's forcing you to buy Worldcoin at $100 billion. FTV is not a meme.

Yeah, yeah, I'm not saying that.

Look at the stats. No, no, I understand that. Look at the stats and make a decision for you. That's also— I mean, that's the last thing I'll say at this point, you know. Yeah, it is a challenge, you know. I In a perfect world, absolutely. Let's bring in— let's actually, instead of airdropping 50% of people that just, you know, uh, for the sake of it— no, allow them to invest. Because I think a lot of them may want to invest. So put skin in the game, have a lockup for a year. Yeah, you know, and so I'm all for that. It's just it requires, uh, you know, new updated accredited investor laws and whatever. When we get there Well, you know, I don't think anyone disagrees with the idea that we should update those rules, not just in but outside as well. Um, then the other thing, uh, I wrote a piece now on AI, and I've been talking about like a lot of deep end projects, which has like led me to this realization, which is tied to this. I've heard a term that I want to share in the podcast because it's so nice. I think it's called participatory networks. And I think it was the founder of GeoNet who referred to that in industry conferences. And I think the way I've started to explain crypto, like in New York, I've had meetings with people outside of crypto. I'm like, listen, look at networks. Networks are extremely capital-intensive to this cold start problem, right? In order to bootstrap supply, incentivize demand, think of Uber, right? So, so capital intensive. And I think the key takeaway is crypto is creating a new type of mechanism to bootstrap networks in a very capital-efficient way, whether it's Bitcoin or Deepin. And for the simple reason that the cost may be the same, but you're offloading that cost away from the company protocol into the participant, meaning the do-it-yourself enthusiast that is expending their own resource— time, compute, hardware— and so the company doesn't have to spend that CapEx, hundreds of millions of dollars, to do it themselves. And I think that if, like, I think when I've started to explain that to people, they understand networks and the capital intensity of it, and you're like, well, yeah, of course these networks are going to actually be able to get off the ground and compete against traditional networks that are very monopoly-like in a credible way. And it sounds dumb and obvious, but like, yeah, when you give participants a greater incentive because they're earning part of the ownership in the network, then it's gonna work. It should work. It should displant or displace an incumbent that is not sharing that wealth equitably. So anyways, a ramble, but I wanted to share that because it's something that I've started. Yeah.

Did you look at the Coinbase earnings? I did.

I did.

All right. Um, retail Q4 2021, $177 billion in trade volume. Retail Q1 2024, $56 billion. So for retail, we're only at 31.6% of all-time highs. So where we're at today for the retail trading on Coinbase is 31.6% of what the retail high was for Coinbase in the, in the last cycle. Institutional, we're at 69% of the all-time high, right? We're at $256 billion today versus $371 billion in Q4 2021. Really interesting data points. So institutional, we're 70% back. Retail, we're 30% back. And that is exactly in line with what it feels like today. I would say like that quantifies exactly what it feels like on crypto Twitter today. I just, I don't know. I really, it was really interesting seeing that data.

Yeah, a lot of, a lot of the market participants were focusing on like when Coinbase reports earnings, they focus on the like level last month. To run rate, right? Because to your point, like, this quarter has been a bit iffy, right, in the sense of like, you know, markets have cooled down a bit. And so you're trying to like run rate earnings guidance into the, you know, into the rest of the year, like you're looking at the last month. Um, but yeah, I mean, the volume in Q1 was like pretty strong, then it's come down a bit. Um, yeah, I wonder what it—

just also their net income is fucking insane. Look, did you like— let me just read these numbers for you guys. Revenue, $1.6 billion. So revenue is $1.6 billion. Net income is $1.2 billion. So revenue was up 70%. Net income was up 330% quarter over quarter. Adjusted EBITDA, $1 billion. OpEx, less than $1 billion, $0.9 billion. Cash, they're sitting on $7 billion of cash. USDC on the platform doubled. Quarter over quarter, and number of base developers is up 8x quarter over quarter.

Like, say that again. Revenue and net income.

$3 billion revenue was $1.6 billion. Yeah, net income was $1.2 billion.

That's crazy. Yeah, I mean, run that forward. Like, what's stopping Coinbase from becoming top 3 financial institutions in the US, in the world?

There was a chart that went around Twitter this week, and I heard it on the My First Million podcast, which is like a big tech podcast. And they were talking about how— everyone was talking about how Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange are these like amazing, amazing, amazing businesses. And there was no mention of Coinbase anywhere. I was like, guys, like, just wake up to the next biggest exchange.

Yeah, I mean, it's sort of wild. Obviously, we saw the Stripe announcement on accepting USDC. They're expanding internationally. You know, obviously we've been talking about Coinbase in the pod very publicly and vocally. I have a position in Coinbase, of course. And, um, yeah, it's, it's really impressive what they've done. Um, the market share growth of USDC is also quite interesting. I know we're going to have Justin Sun later on in a couple weeks. Like, you're really talking about, like, um, I think how you think about USDC's continued dominance and growth um, in payments and maybe with Stripe kind of becoming more involved in the fold. But yeah, it's been pretty impressive, um, and, and I think the, the market— again, this is a name where the market just doesn't understand all the nuance and components of their business model. Uh, I remember last year and, you know, they were so focused on, oh, you know, fees are just going to come down on, you know, retail trading fees, like that's spread is going to come down and they're just sort of missed a lot. Just, yeah, the things, right?

Yeah. How do you size a position of like two things you're very convicted on, Solana and Coinbase?

I buy as much as I can.

Like, how do you— let's say you had $100. Let's say you had $100. Like, yeah, and I know, I know how convicted you've been on both of those for a long time. Like, how do you allocate dollars into those two things? And like, how do you actually— how do you actually put on that trade? Because there's obviously— you could just buy Coinbase spot and Solana spot, but like, there's different ways to play it. Like, how do you think about that?

Coinbase was different because obviously it allows you to do different things with derivatives and whatnot in a more efficient manner, um, with options and whatnot. But Coinbase is a multi— it's a different strategy for me because that part of my portfolio outside of crypto is like relatively smaller, but I want to capture yield for the reason that I always want to have cash. So my strategy is I want to, I want to capture a lot of yield outside of crypto to then take on way more— insulate my lifestyle and take on way more risk. So if I'm creating a lot of cash flow that is not correlated to crypto, I will have the capital to invest in times where no one has the capital or you have dips. And you have cash. And so with Coinbase, I did these like Phoenix notes or reverse protocol converts where, you know, I was, you know, clipping a very high coupon. I'm talking like 30-40%. And basically all I— all that had to happen, like when Coinbase hit $30, my bet was like, there's a pretty decent margin of safety here. Have we bottomed? Reasonably speaking, can it go down another 20%? Maybe another 40%. God, like, it just feels like a stretch. Feels like it was oversold. And the reason why I felt it was oversold is because the coupon that was being paid— because someone on the other side was probably short and whatever, and like, they were giving me like a 45% coupon that, like, on an annual basis. So basically my bet was Coinbase will not go down more than 30% at that level, $30. Uh, if it goes above the strike price, which is the spot I get called, but I get called in 6 months. So I'm basically earning 20% in 6 months, right? And you can talk— you can change the, the callability date. Like, you could be called like every quarter, right? Basically, if spot goes above the strike, you get called, but you get paid the coupon, whatever it was, right? If you were— it was a quarter, it was 6 months, 9 months. In a best-case scenario, you don't get called for the year. Coinbase doesn't go down more than 20% but doesn't go up at the issue price, so you get paid 40% on the position. And I'm not trying to get cute on the portfolio that I have outside of crypto, right, because I have a ton of exposure to it. But I do want— I'm interested in earning a yield higher than Treasuries. I'm taking more risk, but I understand the name. So I've done that. I've staggered it throughout the year when Coinbase is at 30, 40, 50— basically every time it got called, I would you know, recycle, recycle, you know. And the coupon is very compelling, right? I mean, you could earn 5% on Treasuries, or you can earn, you know, 20, 30, 40% on Coinbase. Um, and it's a name— in the worst case where I don't get called and say Coinbase goes below 30%, I get settled in shares. I'm fine owning Coinbase down 30%, but in the meantime, I earned that coupon, right? So in the worst case scenario, right— or not worst case, like Coinbase goes down below 30%, I'm happy to own it at that level, or I might even have the shares to settle it. Uh, and so for me, it was, uh, it was just a way to express a view on Coinbase where I didn't want to get overly cute on going like just uncomfortably, right? But I was very— I could do that in size and earn 40% in size is pretty awesome, I think. And that cash with that coupon, I use it to reinvest into higher beta stuff. I'd go and buy SOL spot or memes or whatever, right? Uh, but it's just the, the coupon, the, the yield component, the cash flowing component is always something that I've learned over multiple cycles. You always want to insulate your lifestyle and have cash flow that allows you to not only cover living expenses but give you the ability to invest in really high beta risky stuff, i.e., startups with duration risk, with execution risk. And that for me has just been— I have a traditional portfolio that I optimize for cash flow that I then funnel everything into SOL with stuff like that, right? Um, and with SOL, I mean, it's, it's actually an interesting exercise. Obviously you can buy it spot. There's the FTX, uh, kind of estate, um, sales that were really compelling and interesting. Um, again, they have higher duration, right, because the lockup is, you know, multiple years out. Um, if you're earning and if you have in your life cash flow component, then you don't worry too much about duration, right? You're like, I'm happy to be patient, uh, I'm happy to hold. So like, it's a different thing. So the SOL math was like, the FTX estate math was very interesting because the thing that, it doesn't apply just to SOL, but let's put it, I'm going to use SOL as an example. Say SOL is sitting at $100 and you could buy it for a 30% discount or whatever, say 50% discount. And you're unlocking 50% of the position in a year. So basically all you have to believe is absent staking rewards, let's not add complexity, is all you have to believe is if you're getting it at a 50% discount and you're unlocking half of the position, all you need to believe is that SOL doesn't go— stays at that level, right? So it stays at $100. And you're like, the question that I asked myself was, well, in what version of this world, if SOL doesn't hold $100, say it goes down to $70, what does the rest of crypto look like? Okay, you could apply that to Bitcoin too. But, uh, for something like SOL, I do wonder, like, what is the meme coins on SOL? What does, um, Ethereum do? And for me, it was, uh, my thesis of that, like, that's sometimes, like, looking at it from that perspective for me was useful to size that position in particular. Like, well If so, it doesn't hold this level. We have a bigger problem on our hands, folks. Yeah, but I'm comfortable owning it for multiple years. Like, in a scenario where really shit hits the fan, I want to be owning stuff that I'm comfortable holding for 10 years.

And I—

the last thing, like, I was talking about, about this, it's like, I— this cycle, different from others, I've gone extreme left, extreme right. There is things that I can't change. I've had positions in networks that— in startups that, you know, I'm I'm comfortable holding. But in the liquid part, I'm shifting more towards liquid this part of the cycle. I'm shifting more towards just concentrated extreme left, extreme right. We had the— I'll credit Joe McCann, shout out to him. In November, we had him on the pod, and people should go listen to that part. We talked about Bonk, and the question that I asked him, you remember, it's like, all right, we're all here, so it's gonna be— you're a SOUL bull, I get it. Gun to your head, do you own SOUL or do you own Bonk? You can pick one. And he said Bonk. And I agree with that. I kind of— again, I'll say this, I'll preface this, like, none of this is— just don't do this, right? Like, just— but I'm— I agree with that. Um, the— because— and so my thesis for Bonk was different. Like, I, I obviously, like, rallied— like, I, I bought Bonk. Then I— then understood that a lot of the contributors were unlocking their BONK and it's been down only, it's been challenged, right? WIF doesn't struggle with that. And so for me, I was lucky to have discovered WIF early on. And I think WIF is like, again, the thesis that you need to get very, very right is for me, my core thesis is SOL is a retail chain, memes will do well. Problem with memes is it's like shooting, it's a power law. It's like most memes will go to zero. Most people will— it's like, it's tough to bet on these things. I just think if you look at, if you look at the strength and down days in the market, just the WIF is just like sort of like stronger than—

it's crazy. It's crazy how resilient it is.

It's crazy. Like, SOL is down, it's crazy. Yeah, WIF goes down 15, but then it rebounds. The strength in the name is like, it's crazy right now.

So what— so, Santi, you have a, you have a $100 meme coin position. What How is it all in WIF? Is it WIF and Bonk? Is it WIF, Bonk?

All my Bonk sold. All my Bonk when I realized like a lot of contributors were vesting and selling and I was like, I want to be part of this. It's just WIF is the pure expression. It's, you know, it is what it is, right?

My $100 coin position, $100 in WIF, and you're just sitting with, uh, like, well, it's appreciated a lot.

Dollars invested is a question you're asking. Like, how did I—

I'm actually not asking about dollars invested, I'm asking about—

oh, I see, I, uh, because I, I put in way more in SOL than I did in WIF. Let's just be clear.

Let's take your position, like, snapshot of today, meme coin position. What, just meme coins? Is it all in WIF, or is it like WIF and Boden?

Is it Uh, 90, 97% of it is WIF. Yeah, I just, I, I'm comfortable. I, I just, I've bought other stuff.

Um, who runs WIF? Who's behind WIF?

No idea. I have no idea.

Isn't that crazy?

Rather not know.

Yeah. Um, but my taste has the smart— who, like, who has the keys to WIF? Who has the smart—

I don't know. No one. Yeah. So, and you don't—

and you don't care about that?

No, I don't care about it. I just think it's a cute dog, um, with a hat. And the, the, um, the anchors that I have are, okay, SOL I think can do a 5 to 6x, then WIF has higher beta to that. It will be extremely volatile, it would be hard to own, like you're gonna get punched in the face, you're gonna have stomach-wrenching volatility days. But the reality is like hold the line. Like, I'm holding the line. I haven't sold WIF. Um, I haven't sold SOL. I'm selling other stuff, um, to fund private deals or whatever. Um, but, uh, there's like clear comps in the market. I think everything's kind of relative, Val. Like, for instance, you look at, um, SHIB. SHIB trades at like 20 $18 billion, $27 billion? No, it's like $18 billion, I believe. Let's look. Those are the comps for me. Like, I think, uh, obviously Doge is king of memes, but, um, SHIB I think offers an interesting comp as a sort of a where I think things can go. Like, SHIB is trading at $22 billion fully diluted, $13 billion market cap. Circulating. Uh, so 60% of the tokens are in circulation, and you know, it's down 70% from its peak. Assuming things stay the same, I just think that to me would be an interesting kind of anchor for something like WIF. If it's the most dominant meme in Solana, hypothetically, and Solana continues to do what I think we'll do, then WIF should do well. and it should probably converge on something like SHIB. And WIF is sitting at, you know, 2 billion, 3 billion, depends on the day. Yeah, 2.8 billion. So, you know, it's a 10x. I think SOL is a 6, WIF is a 10, maybe 20x in extreme scenario. So yeah, I appreciate like the relative component of like of my portfolio might go up dramatically. Uh, and so at that point, that might be a reason why I might take, you know, I might rebalance it, right? If WIF becomes like 90% of the position, like, you know, it can't, you know, it's like, no, like, no matter how much—

I don't know if you're comfortable sharing this, what percent of the portfolio is WIF right now?

Uh, it's high, single digits. High single digits, high single digits.

The better question is what percentage of the WIF network is Santiago?

Next question.

No, good pod, man. This is good. I don't know if you have anything else. Um, I'm pumped for that.

Yeah, I'm really pumped for the Empire. You know, this is, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's really nice to— I usually don't like conferences, but I, I think after going through DAZN and then Token2049 The idea that now, like, we can meet these people that are listening to the pod, um, is really cool. So, uh, yeah, it's exciting. I'm really excited to go out tonight, and hopefully everyone listening here, uh, lives in New York or close by, can, can stop by and say hi.

We got a little treat. Um, so the Multicoin guys invested in this company called Baxus. They're a, um— oh yeah, yeah, they're doing, um, they're like a whiskey platform, basically. Like, I think digitizing a bunch of like— so the whiskey market's crazy. I actually know this because my old manager, this guy Cooper from the company I worked at—

are we going to be serving Pompey von Winkle?

Well, von Winkle, yeah, you know the game. I don't drink, but yeah, yeah. So I— he used to buy whiskey and actually was bourbon. He's from Kentucky, used to buy bourbon on these like Facebook Marketplaces, and it was these like crazy auctions that all happened on Facebook Marketplaces, and there was you'd send your money and just like hope that someone sent you a bottle of bourbon.

Sounds like Mt. Gox.

A month later. Yeah, literally. And I think I really haven't looked into Bax as much to that much, but like the founder after they raised, they raised from Solana.

I think I spoke with them.

Solana Ventures, Multicoin, a bunch of folks, $5 million. And the founder is going to bring some whiskey in. So shout out to— I honestly don't even know his name, but his name is Whiskey Titan on Twitter.

What you're saying is don't come to meet us, come for the whiskey. You know, it's like college is like there's free pizza and you just show up because you're a broke college student. That's free whiskey. So yeah, whiskey.

Awesome, dude.

It's, uh, been a while. I was excited, nervous after, you know, felt like, uh, you know, we hadn't done this in a while, so it was good. And, um, yeah, thanks everyone for listening, and hopefully we'll, we'll see you back here, regular scheduling, uh, next week.

All right, everyone, be well.

Take care. All right.

You heard about Sei a couple of times. Just want to give them one last shout out. Big thanks to Sei for sponsoring this episode of Empire. There are a ton of reasons to build on Sei. If you want to get in touch with them, you can reach out to me. I'll put you in touch directly with the team. You can also get in touch with them on Twitter @SeiNetwork. You can follow the journey @SeiNetwork. They are currently live. They've got Sei V2 on public devnet today. Mainnet goes live later in Q2. Really excited to have Say sponsoring and partnering with us on this episode of Empire.