Crypto Megan Podcast | Why Bitcoin is the Asymmetrical Bet of a Lifetime with Altcoin Daily

My name is Megan Nielsen, aka Crypto Megan, coming to you from our Hollywood studio here during VCon week. And I have a really special— 2 really special guests today, actually. I'm honored to have this interview today to get to know a little bit more behind the scenes in the lives of the infamous Altcoin Daily brothers. We've got Aaron and Austin Arnold on the channel today, and they're going from interviewers 2 interviewees, which is going to be a lot of fun, guys. It's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to get to know who's behind the channel, all about their life and the ever-evolving crypto scene and their experience and all of their incredible interviews as one of the top crypto YouTube channels in the world. So guys, thank you for being here today.

Yeah, Megan, great to be here. Like you said, I mean, we live in Los Angeles, but everybody's here for VCon. And yeah, I was just on this set doing a great interview with the Zebu team and now it's Now we are the interviewee, but yeah, happy to be here with you, Megan, or as I like to call you, the Pink Storm. Looking great.

Got the glitter today.

Yeah. Thank you for having me honored.

Yeah, no, it's great. I see you guys, we see each other around the world. We were just in Nashville together. You know, I've seen you guys, Austin Consensus where Zebu was, and we've had the pleasure of collaborating on several projects. And the reason why I wanted to have you on is because I believe you're one of the most credible people in the space and the way that you break down and synthesize and make it easy, it's like accessible and easy to understand for the audience. It's a very unique approach. So I kind of want to get down to the behind the scenes of how that evolved, how you fell upon that style. We'll start though back with what you used to do, because I understand that you're both actors and film producers, right?

Correct. So we went to college back in Ohio, majored in acting or studied acting and marketing, dropped that marketing down to a minor very last minute so we can get out of there in 4 years. But then all with the goal of moving to Los Angeles, starting the filmmaking, acting career. We did a bunch of bit parts on TV shows, guest stars, co-stars. We did a lot of commercials and also a, my favorite, a Lifetime movie, a twin thriller that's still out there. And then in the middle of it, got bit by the crypto bug and then started the empire.

Wow, that was a good summary. So you're good at making things easy and digestible.

That's right.

Aaron, love to hear from you.

Yeah, you know, you might have seen this guy on things like Tosh.0 and Secure, the HBO show. But yeah, we've done tons of things. We got hired together a lot for commercials, commercial stuff, because they consider being twins like a special skill, as if we're good at like tennis or something.

It's like just a narrowed pool of people.

Yeah, less—

It's a niche, right? Yeah.

Yeah, I got it.

Okay.

And yeah, that was our first passion. And eventually got into crypto. You know, the thing with the Hollywood industry, and we were, you know, had mild success, did tons of cool things. We're in the union. But the thing about Hollywood, there's tons of gatekeepers. And what I liked about YouTube and crypto, I mean, YouTube has problems, but one thing that's not a problem is you can post as much as you want. And in crypto, there are no gatekeepers. So, you know, we started leaning into that and, you know, You know, as that got more successful, that became our main thing. And, you know, that was— but that's kind of why we transitioned, because a lot of gatekeepers in Hollywood, as opposed to YouTube or crypto, no gatekeepers. So as much as you put in, you can get out.

Yeah, we've all heard that, you know, Hollywood has gatekeepers. It's hard to make it through. It's kind of a strange experience, right? Just being here in Hollywood, having been on those shows, it's gotta be an interesting scene to navigate for sure. Right. I mean, at what point did you discover crypto then? I guess I could put it like that. Or how did you come upon it?

My brother discovered crypto and he changed my life. So you take this.

Boom. Yeah.

So we, I mean, we first heard about crypto, uh, probably around like 2013, 2014. I think I saw like the Bitcoin pizza story on Reddit back then. We didn't do anything with it. Didn't know much about it. We first, I first really got into crypto in the 2017 run-up. Just as a retail participant. At that time, I was, I think I was 26 or 27 years old. And me and my ex-ex-girlfriend, we broke up. So all of a sudden I had a lot more free time. I was going through like a little bit of a quarter-life crisis. I was like, I need to be doing something else with my life, like something more.

Right.

And at first I thought maybe I can trade crypto and make some money that way. And eventually I discovered crypto YouTube throughout 2017. And I didn't realize it at the time because as I started diving more and more into it, we were getting towards the top of the, of the bull market in 2017. And I discovered crypto YouTube and I was like, wow, these guys are getting crazy views for, in my opinion, some of them subpar content. Now, there were a lot of good ones, actually. I mean, Ivan on Tech was around back then.

I love Ivan on Tech. Yeah, he's Swedish like my husband. Yeah.

Like all the ones that are still around today were good. But there were a lot of bad ones back then, in my opinion. I just thought, because they were getting crazy views because near the top of the market, I didn't realize it at that time, but I was like, I could do better content, in my opinion, than this. And, you know, just get as much views. And anyway, dove into starting the YouTube channel. I wanted to do it like January 1st or 2nd of 2018. I procrastinated for a month. It took me a month. To finally like—

a whole month, huh? I know a lot of people that don't ever get started.

So yeah, exactly.

It was like a monumental task to you or what? Like, what was the procrastination?

It was just, yeah, it was just hard. You, this is the, you know, people ask us all the time how to be successful on social media and get big on YouTube, and we freely give the advice, but most people suffer from analysis paralysis. They're perfectionists, and that is the enemy of a successful content creator. If you want to create a piece of art that's perfect, that's cool. that's not going to help you be successful on YouTube. So that was what I was going through in that month. I was like, oh, it's not like my, uh, taste didn't match my talent. And of course, you can go back to some of those early videos and see, you know, how much we've grown in the, in the producing and just our own, uh, knowledge as well. But, um, yeah, so started the channel January or February 2nd of 2018, and that's also kind of when we went full-time into crypto. And actually, I brought Austin on shortly after.

So hence he changed your life, right? But you were along for the ride. You were up for it. So you both had this mentality of, you know, entrepreneurship and wanting to get involved.

Austin, what did you think when I said, hey, crypto is pretty cool, you should get into it?

Well, when Aaron first told me, hey, I've started a crypto YouTube channel, he told the family and he's like, this video got 1,000 views.

No, it was 1,000 subscribers.

I did—

oh, 1,000.

I didn't tell anybody about the YouTube channel till I hit 1,000 subscribers.

Smart move.

Good concept. And then I only told my close family.

And then my first question was, how much did you pay for them? Because I thought it seemed unachievable. It seemed fake.

Yeah, 1,000 subscribers seemed unattainable.

Oh, this is really motivating to people watching, because you all start somewhere. We don't ever imagine that big YouTube channels started that small, but they all do.

And for the record, the answer was I didn't pay for them. We have never paid for subscribers.

Okay, noted. Noted. So you hit those 1,000 subscribers and then what?

And little did, little did we realize that the bear market had started. And while we were trying to cultivate an audience, people were angry, leaving the space in droves. 2018, 2019, 2020. The good thing though is we built that foundation in the bear market. So we had a lot of trust, a lot of experience into the bull. And now we've been through many cycles and just kept building.

That's very cool. Very cool. So you started at those 1,000, just kept climbing at what? Then you hit the bear market, which must, must have been tough. When you start—

I mean, started in the bear.

Yeah, right. It started essentially at the end of the bull, beginning of the bear. Right. And so was it tough getting through that bear market? Were you able to gain traction or was it kind of like a rough road for a while?

We were gaining traction. I feel like we were like hungry and probably a lot of people who were making great content in 2017 who already did really well in crypto, they probably took a little time off. So we like jumped at that opportunity to put out great content at the time. And I felt like Yeah, we were, you know, we weren't, it wasn't much at the time, but, you know, for where we were, I felt like we were like, things were really going good. Of course, it was like hard to get, I mean, your first 1,000 subscribers are the hardest. Then after that, once you hit your first 1,000, that second 1,000 becomes so much easier. Then it's hard to get 10,000. But after that, you know, the next 10,000 get that much easier. I kind of felt like everything started lining up once we got about like 25,000 subscribers or 35,000 subscribers. After that, it just felt so much easier. It's probably because we were into it. We were better at making content and talking about crypto. And also probably there was like the social element. People saw that, oh, like 20,000 people subscribe to them. They must be—

Yeah. You then hit this point where people think, oh, this must be important or it must be good because so many others, like that mass psychology, mass think thing. Yeah.

But so many people can't or don't make it to 10,000 subs or 20,000 subs. It is hard. I mean, that first year is hard because you're Your taste doesn't match your talent. You're putting in all this work for, you know, getting no compensation. A lot of times, like kids, like Dua Lipa on social media, they pop off. It's because they got nothing but time to sit at home and make content.

And they also don't overthink, right?

They also don't overthink. They're not afraid to put it out there and have their friends see it. But I would say, you know, just like going to the gym, if you lift that weight every day, you're going to get bigger and better. It's inevitable. It's the same kind of thing, even though you're not going to see the results that you think you deserve when you're starting out. If you just keep doing it and calibrating, eventually you're going to get bigger and better and succeed.

Cool. So that's essentially— how long did it take you to essentially reach those 20,000 or a big milestone, I would say?

It was certainly in the first year. I don't know, probably in the first 6 months. I don't know exactly. My goal was to get 100,000 subscribers in one year, and it took us like a year and a month or two.

And you failed.

Yeah, I guess I failed with that. But you're kept—

Gotta have your brother to keep you accountable.

I used to, in the early days, I used to, to myself, curse my brother silently. Like, why'd you have to name it Altcoin Daily? Why do we have to do a video every day? And it just, in the bear market, I didn't know what to talk about. But I would say a cool thing about working with a brother or a twin is like, you can definitely trust your brother. Meaning, even if I was working with like a best friend, I could trust him, but would he put in the same work ethic that I was gonna put in? Would that be that understanding? I know if Aaron says, you know, I'm making a video every other day, you get that other day, just like a workout buddy, it's gonna happen. We're gonna keep building.

Yeah, I was gonna ask about the daily part because, you know, I have my podcast and now I'm gonna be on DraperTV. This will be shared to DraperTV. And I did the daily stint just to see how it is, right? And it is a monumental task. I mean, just to try it out, right? And I learned a lot about YouTube doing so. And now, you know, we're going to have this show on a broader streaming platform, but it is really difficult. And so you guys do Monday to Friday, or do you also do Saturday, Sunday?

It's not called Altcoin Monday to Friday, it's called Altcoin Daily.

It's not Altcoin Daily Weekly, it's Altcoin Daily.

Yeah, it's every day.

So yeah, so everyone has something to look forward to every single day from you guys. You're doing a phenomenal job. Uh, so Aaron says, Austin, you got to jump on this crazy train with me. You go headfirst into it, and then What did you guys— so what was your initial experience? I guess what I wanna know is, what are some of the moments that most impacted you along this journey now that you've reached this point, having been doing this for so many years now?

So many, it's hard to—

Or some moments that jump out at you.

I think for me, especially in the early years, besides we would be commentators and offering perspective on different news articles or different experts talking about the field, and we'd comment on them, bring them to our audience. As we got going and as our audience grew, then a lot of notable people would come on our channel, and sometimes we'd make the news articles based on what the experts said. So for me, it was just really cool watching all these content creators that I really respected, maybe like an Ivan on Tech. When we first had him on the channel, we met him in San Francisco one time. I thought that was really cool. Uh, we had Pompliano on. I thought it was cool because we would always watch him. And then got Mark Cuban on the channel and filmmaker Spike Lee when he launched NFTs. It was just so cool.

Gene Simmons.

Gene Simmons, rock star, that we had the audience and these guys wanted to tap into that. And we were just fans of these guys or girls and they would come on and we'd build that connection.

Yeah, they're with Gene, like all that stuff. Mark Cuban specifically. But with Gene Simmons, one time he did a CNBC interview or something and they were just asking him about crypto because it was 2021 and they asked— they had like an 8-minute segment with him. And Gene Simmons loves to share his knowledge and they basically cut him off to move on to the next segment. He's like, hey guys, come on, I have stuff to say on crypto. Why are you cutting me off? And then we hit him up and said, hey, we'll talk to you about crypto for as long as you want. So yeah, stuff like the different guests are really cool. Just like more like milestones that have kind of like jumped out to me over the years. Certainly, you know, hitting that 1,000 subscribers and, you know, telling my family about it when we hit like 35,000 subscribers. We're going to wait till 50,000. We finally told our friends about it when we were able to join the YouTube Partner Program, finally be able to be monetized, but all around just be a YouTube partner. That was, you know, a really cool event. The first time one of our videos really like just had more evergreen staying power. And while at the time, I'm just guessing, our videos got 8,000 views or 15,000 views, whatever it was, we had one video that got 50,000 views for whatever reason. I was like, what is it about this video? Why is it doing so well?

Yeah.

And yeah, so like different views metrics, different guests being able to, then get invited to different crypto events and conferences and speak.

So what was it about the video?

It had a really good title.

Title, thumbnail.

Yeah, the title and thumbnail were certainly very good. I think that was one of the main things that was good about it, because at the beginning you didn't really— it's such a trial and error. And now, obviously, I mean, ever since MrBeast started giving tons of interviews, people, I feel like, have a really keen eye on what works well on YouTube. Certainly everybody knows title and thumbnail are important, but There was a while where I feel like stuff like that wasn't necessarily common knowledge. And certainly even for anybody's specific niche and brand, you have to figure out what works best for your audience. So yeah, just like being able to learn that stuff was invaluable.

So you dive deep into this YouTube thing and what are you thinking about crypto at this point? Like, I know you were the one that kind of followed Aaron's lead initially, like, hey, we should get into crypto. What did you think about this whole world when you started out? I mean—

The cool thing about our channel is That, and we let our audience know this at the very beginning, that we don't come from a coding background. We don't even come from a traditional finance background.

Which at the time, that was all who did like content. Before 2021, when NFTs blew up, there was no women in crypto, hardly any. There was no culture besides libertarians, finance people, and coders. Coders.

And so one—

That sounds like crypto. Yep.

Yeah, exactly.

Like pirates.

And one of the reasons that we saw this need in the market, at least from our point of view, is Nobody's making content, breaking it down for the average person. Surely if cryptocurrency is for everybody and it's going to be here in 10, 20 years, we could figure it out and just started making a video every single day. So the cool thing about our channel is, you know, I would be trying to figure this stuff out back in 2017, '18. It was Bitcoin versus Bitcoin Cash versus like Litecoin. Transactions were a big— or payments was a big utility narrative. And so I would make videos, you know, what is best? It seems like Bitcoin's winning. Why do people care about Bcash or whatever it is? And we would just look at it from all angles and just go over the narrative. And so as I learned, you know, the audience sort of jumped on the journey with us.

That's very cool. Very cool. And I like what you said about, you know, being able to discover this just incredible personalities. I love to interview people and just learn about people, and it's an incredible networking opportunity. I don't know if you guys have experienced that, but that you get to know people deeper. Like, we had the Snoop Dogg family on. He brought his, like, Snoop's dad on with Cordell, and they were like talking about stuff and And it was just really cool to understand their background and their life or, you know, like artists, musicians, all these interesting guests. You get to meet so many interesting people and that really enriches your life and helps out with the content for sure.

There's no better way, whether it's a crypto podcast or whatever. There's no better way to connect with— I mean, there's some better ways, but there's no— there's such a great way to connect with people is to have your own podcast and have your own audience. Because otherwise, like, you can't just say, hey, Snoop Dogg, want to hang out for an hour? Probably not. But if you say, hey, want to come on my podcast and we'll talk about stuff that, you know, you like and that I like in crypto or whatever the thing is, then all of a sudden you can connect to those people.

Yeah. Yeah. And then you can do deeper collaborations. It's like people are still— this is still such a niche space, you know, with regard to the overall other areas like tech or, you know, booming industries. It's still very small relatively. Right. And you guys have managed to crack the code, so to speak. And what's so important for me and why I want to do this is I want people to feel like they can get involved and understand and it's accessible and, and they have a place to go for quality content. And that's why I wanted to have you guys on, because it's really important. to me to showcase people who are doing quality work in this environment. Right. Because there are a lot of, like you said, there's a lot of questionable things, and I want to have a platform where we can showcase that in a meaningful way. So I want to take a break for a minute from the YouTube and go to your personal lives.

Uh-oh.

So where are you guys? You're originally from the Midwest, was it?

That's right.

Yeah.

And then you moved to LA.

Ohio to LA.

Okay, and then you had the acting career. I mean, that's pretty cool. I have to go back and see some of your shows. Has that helped you with your YouTube, do you think? The whole acting versus putting together a narrative and saying it on camera?

Certainly, yeah. I think we've always been just generally interested in marketing, which was our minor in college, but it's more like what we've learned is more like— I feel like we learned much more just being out in the real life than what we learned in college. But the filmmaking, the acting, And you know the marketing—it's it's all helped. You know we had different variations of YouTube channels before Altcoin Daily took off. We used to have a you know Hollywood podcast where we interviewed different industry people in Hollywood. Yeah, that's interesting.

What's it called?

Surviving Hollywood Podcast. That's right. It's defunct now.

Surviving Hollywood. I like it.

Defunct. Our biggest guest was Mark Normand, the comedian. Okay. Those clips are still kind of evergreen getting. Good views, but I mean the point is we were always interested in the filmmaking has helped us a lot. The acting, filmmaking, being on camera obviously helped us a lot. The our different forays into YouTube before Altcoin Daily helped us a lot, and yeah, that's what I'd say.

Yeah, it helped. The succinct answer.

So what are some of your hot? You're here in LA. I love LA. I'm actually from like the Ventura area. But I started out with my podcast here at this studio. So like, what do you guys do for fun? You know, when it's not crypto and it's not events?

Not crypto.

Yeah, I know. It's a weird question, right? People ask me that. I'm like, well, we, we do.

I mean, we do work all the time. You know, you love what you do. You're always working, but obviously don't work all the time.

Movies. We love movies.

You know, me too. I love that. I love the VIP theaters.

You know? Yeah, yeah, we can lean back.

Definitely. I'm a VIP theater maxi. I don't want to do this.

I like that. Us too. In the States, man, that's all we do because we live in Europe, so we don't get that over there. We love it.

Yeah. So, I mean, obviously Los Angeles has a big, you know, movie crowd. And so we're always seeing, you know, movies with our friends, you know, just generally hanging out.

We used to love volleyball. It's been years since we actually played. But starting back, like when we were in college coming home from the summers, we used to play sand volleyball. 3 times a week, um, just with our friends at the sand court by the school, um, up until they turn the lights off at around 11 PM. We don't play as much anymore, but we love that. And then just hanging with friends.

Oh, that's fun. I love beach volleyball too. Yeah, we should play courts out here. We should have a match. We get Tina involved and, you know, girls versus girls versus guys. Okay. Yeah, we'll take you on, man.

Definitely. And then, you know, besides that, the normal stuff people do, like the OC Fair is going on right now. It's a big fair in the Southern California area. And, you know, meeting up with some friends at a rooftop bar or, you know, going— I love crypto meetups and conferences, obviously, but even just like a local crypto meetup is fun just to chat with people.

Yeah, it's kind of like, I don't know if this happens to you, but when I go to events or parties or things, I tend to get a little bit bored when I can't talk about crypto or when I can't be in my element. I'm like, man, I don't know, I got to go find my people. That's true. Does it happen to you? It happens to me sometimes.

Well, certainly before like 2021 when crypto really blew up in the mainstream. And like I said, it was after 2021 or, you know, after 2020, there was more than just libertarians, more than just, you know, tech people and coders and stuff. And before that, I used to mention I'm into crypto to, you know, a potential date, to a friend, just a random person. I knew I had seconds before people's eyes would glaze over.

Scare them all off.

Yeah. Now, at least when you mention crypto, people know about it and they can talk about it because there's different verticals people are interested in. But yeah, when I'm, you know, at a regular gathering, just hanging out with people who aren't in crypto, it's, you know, I wish, I wish they were more into it. Obviously, I, you know, that's what I'm passionate about. And, you know, they want to talk about whatever.

Yeah. I mean, it is, it is a thing. It's kind of like pre and post crypto entering your life, right? Like in the community you build and the things you get into once you get into this space is unreal. So going back then to the channel and all this amazing guests that you interviewed, I know you've interviewed recently Anthony Scaramucci.

Yeah.

As well. He was on my podcast not too long ago in New York. I think he's a really cool guy, really interesting. Just had his book out, 11 Days Stint in the White House. I forget what the exact title was, but—

Yeah.

What— so now you've interviewed so many industry leaders and experts day in and day out, and sometimes I get asked this too, and I'd like to know your opinion. Like, how has that shaped your view on the space? Like, where— like, what— I guess we'll narrow it down to current market conditions. What do you guys see happening this year after all of your talks, after everyone— I know you had a really cool panel Bitcoin Nashville. What do you think is in store? Let's start just short-term this year and the rest of this cycle.

Yeah, first of all, yes, Scaramucci's the man. That's cool you got to interview him. Yeah, consider him a friend. You know, we've interviewed him a couple different times, um, on our channel at Bitcoin Nashville. Uh, he does— as a judge on Killer Whales, which is a show that we are judges on and produce, like Shark Tank. Um, and you know, Scaramucci, he is crypto. There's some celebrities that come in that only come in for the, uh, for the bull markets. Um, so we're in a bull market right now, obviously. You know, we just— there's a lot of celebrities launching meme coins and stuff. We just interviewed, uh, Waka Flocka Flame, who has some 2010 bangers. And, you know, he has a meme coin called the video Confronting Waka Flocka Flame. And we talked—

this guy asked some of the hard questions. Yeah, but, uh, you know, did he?

Like what?

Like, uh, you know, it was around the time when Kendrick and, uh, Drake were having their feud, right? And, you know, he comes from the rap game. I'm a fan of rap. I was like, you know, some people say that, you know, you are more of a Drake to this industry than a Kendrick. You know, you're not like us coming in and, uh, you know, leeching off the industry rather than providing value. What do you say to those people? And he says, I am the industry. Um, but anyway, it was a pleasure to have him on. You know, like, he, uh, it was a pleasure to have him on. We'd love to have him back. Um, but you know, the point is we're in a period of time where celebrities are coming into crypto, launching the meme coins. Now in 2021, it was NFTs. What are my thoughts for, you know, the next 6 months or rest of year? I mean, first of all, anything can happen. If any of us could predict the future, we'd all be rich.

Yeah.

That being said, and, you know, I've obviously drank the Kool-Aid on Bitcoin and crypto, I'm bullish. Call me crazy, I'm bullish. I think, uh, you know, we have elections coming up, we have, uh, very likely rate cuts coming up. There's so much building going on in the industry. I think Bitcoin eventually breaks over all-time highs this year. I think Bitcoin hitting $100,000 this cycle, to me, I think that it's very likely. Everybody said that last cycle. People might be afraid to give bullish predictions this cycle. I think it's going to happen. I think it's pretty obvious to say Bitcoin's going to hit $100,000 sometime in the next year. I think maybe even in 2024. And then after that happens, then all bets are off. Then everybody's going to be speculating. Do we go to $110K, $120K, $200K? You're going to get Going to get those huge predictions and we'll see how far the bull market goes into 2025. I think we range for a while in 2024, but ultimately grind up. That's what I think.

Yep.

I think well said. One of the cool things about like bringing on the Scaramuccis or the people we interview is the one thing that we don't have as much of is years alive or perspective on markets that we just weren't a part of, you know, back in the day. So it's cool to hear Mark Cuban talk about the dot-com bubble. or Raoul Pal gave his macro analysis, or Anthony Scaramucci talk about how politics usually, or elections usually affect markets.

Right.

So my, like, some people think this time is different. I think this time is exactly the same. I think that essentially it's going to be chop solidation into the election. Nobody really knows if now is a good time to buy or sell. People are confused, but eventually they have to start cutting rates. Uh, or else they're going to break the economy. I think then it's going to be a risk asset bonanza as people finally feel, you know, aren't saving as much. They put that cash into more risk assets. And I think that 20— I think this time is not different in the sense it's the 4-year cycle.

Right.

And 2025 has always been the year. It's always been the year for Bitcoin. And, um, that usually leads because of the supply constriction we just saw in April.

To those blow-off tops. Right. Yeah. And it's programmed in basically due to this mechanism, the halving and the greater liquidity cycles.

And here's the thing, Megan, I dream of right now, it's still the market still follows Bitcoin, Bitcoin and Ethereum. And it's largely, you know, what's going to happen in the next couple of years, largely dependent on what the Fed does, you know, in the short term and midterm. I dream of a day when, you know, people are coming into crypto. And people are involved in different ecosystems that doesn't depend on if the Fed is tightening or loosening. You know, one great crypto game can bring in a million people and they're going to be in that ecosystem because they love the game and not because the Fed cut rates or whatever, or, you know, just because they're saving in Bitcoin, which is still cool. But, you know, this industry is really turning into many different verticals and different industries. And I dream of a day where people are using crypto and not even— they don't even know they're using crypto. They're just playing a great game or they're just, you know, deepening it up.

Yeah.

Chatting with people from another country, maybe using Zebu Tech. Who knows?

Yeah, I know you guys actually just referenced that and like, do you— do their clients know that they're using crypto and or that they're using these rails? And I mean, they had to because that was in the conversation, but otherwise it would be seamless as if it was just their day-to-day transaction. They just learn how to do it. And for them it's not like, oh, I'm using blockchain. It's just part of the the underlying system, right? I completely agree with you guys' views. I think, yeah, it's up to election time, maybe going to be a little bit choppy. But I do see this. I just watched Raoul Pal's analysis about the Japanese stock market and what happens next. And needless to say, it's the explosive part of the cycle as we've all anticipated. And yeah, I don't believe this time is different either. I've been buying on this massive dip now down to $49,000, I think it was. Yeah, I'm forever like accumulator. I just love this space. So I would agree with you guys. What is your favorite trend, having seen all the different things that have come out of these cycles? Like, what is the thing you're most excited about that's kind of like upcoming, or your favorite trend of this cycle?

To me, I think the biggest trends we have right now is artificial intelligence, gaming, decentralized physical infrastructure, DePIN, and RWAs, bringing real-world assets, financial assets on-chain. So to me, those are the options. You could also say, store of value or a hedge against this endless money printing, that would be Bitcoin. So all those, I think, are still very much in play this cycle. Bitcoin's always been in play. To me, the 2 that make sense are artificial intelligence, in the sense, if nothing else, keep us from repeating the same mistakes that we made with big tech for Web2. So all this power doesn't congregate into these players that then can control us, that have all the data today. and can keep that control, I think blockchain and cryptocurrency can help distribute that.

Absolutely.

AI makes a lot of sense to me. And, um, gaming, like my brother was saying, that's, that's an easy product-market fit. Like, these gamers who spend hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, um, in in-game assets today that they don't even own, it's a no-brainer that once the perfect game comes where it is a good product-market fit and they don't even know they're using cryptocurrency, um, that's, that's a no-brainer. I think gaming's it.

Oh yeah, yeah. And the casual game thing that's happening now, that's also interesting because I might not necessarily be like a AAA game player, although I love a good GTA, you know. I love like, you know, a good session in Grand Theft Auto. I don't know about you guys, but, um, I, I love to get on Candy Crush, like disconnect my mind. It's like the only thing that disconnects my mind, right? So those casual games I think are interesting too on Telegram.

Those are my favorite games personally, just on my phone. Not Ton specifically, but Ton's doing them.

Right, the casual games.

The casual games. That's— I don't have time to play the, the story MMORPG games, but the casual games, it's—

Yeah. So you said RWA AI gaming. Can you give us some of, you know, the, the projects you're most excited about or some that are on your radar?

Um, hell yeah. Let me think.

I know there are a lot of them.

I think the ones that we talk about the most on the channel and the ones I know we're invested in. Um, just for, uh, AI, uh, early investors in LimeWire token. I don't even—

Oh yeah, I saw them at New York, in, um, NFT New York, because I was advising for POG. I still am an advisor for POG. Oh yeah. And I love POGs. You know, we all played with POGs.

Another nostalgia play, just like LimeWire.

Yeah, exactly. When I saw LimeWire, I was like, you, you two get together, like, let's do an interview. You're, you're like the comeback. LimeWire was like 2000s, but still, '90s, 2000s, that nostalgia. I think it's going to be a huge driver of, you know, other generations into this. So LimeWire, I love that play.

And before they— LimeWire, back in the day, they were stealing rights from artists because the music would just get shared for whoever. Now they're keeping the rights for artists with blockchain, uh, to help make sure the artists maintain ownership and also using AI to help create the music and the artwork. So to me, the nostalgia play, brand recognition, plus they're actually helping. Yes. That makes sense. Love it. I would say Bittensor is a blue chip.

Oh yeah, we actually interviewed those guys in Paris. They were at Proof of Talk. They live in— some of the team lives in Barcelona where we live in Spain. So I really like what they're doing as well. But that's not a usual response. Like, not a lot of people talk about that when I ask. So I think that's very cool. Oh yeah, I feel like— digging up those gems, you know, that aren't the typical, you know, things that we see talked about all the time.

What's your favorite AI, Megan?

Oh, I mean, I have a lot on my list. One of the guys that I've been talking to is from Humans. I don't know if you guys have seen that one, humans.ai. It's the HEART token. But God, so many. Actually, this is like, not many people think of it that way, but Theta is my number one AI infrastructure token. I am so bullish on Theta. I've had that since, it was like one of my first investments.

Is Theta more AI than Near?

You know, I can't speak to the Near community, but what I do know is they have 14 patents. They've been building hugely in the background. I talk to the team quite often, and they built that NFT marketplace. And the AI portion is like the new portions of the edge cloud.

Mm-hmm.

And that's gonna power a lot of the AI infrastructure and also decentralized streaming. So for Hollywood, everything is run on one central content node. And so they're trying to disperse that into many so we don't have one single failure point. I mean, there's a lot of interesting things. Not many people think that's super sexy, right? This isn't sexy stuff, but to me it is because it's like the infrastructure picks and shovels play. So totally.

And then, you know, the one, you know, narrative that we haven't talked about, or we kind of mentioned it, is the meme coins. I mean, meme coins are hot this cycle. They're very shiny in a bull market, but I don't know if you want to be holding in a bear market. And, you know, it's not even, you know, worth mentioning meme coins I like now because who knows what the good ones are going to be in the future.

But give us some juice.

Well, I mean, certainly the Matt Fury meme coins have been hot this cycle. Yeah. The guy who created the Pepe cartoon. And then obviously like Brett on BaseChain is— I love Brett.

I don't know why that Can you send that one to me? Because I think Base is the next meta as well. I think that people are overlooking Base quite a bit in that it's the ability— I mean, how many users does Coinbase have on their platform? And they're going to be funneling a lot of these people to Base. Exactly. So I'm just— I know Propy, you guys did an interview with on the channel. I've been collaborating with them, and they've achieved an incredible network effect partially due to being on Base, right? Like being one of the only bigger builders on Base.

And I feel this is the play because to me, I know I'm never going to pick the exact altcoin that hits. I pick the exact right one and I, you know, cash out and make a billion dollars. My strategy is always get a nice basket of 4 to 6, understand that 2 of them might fail or not do well, 2 of them might have a middling thing, and then 1 to 2 will be those ones that hit a home run. So it's like, what— even though when I do invest in memes, you know, Uh, it's just have a couple understanding taking on huge risk or RWAs or DePIN, whatever it is. Um, so I just want to diversify, diversify.

Yeah, we got to give that a shout out there. You got to diversify because yeah, some of them could go to zero and the others could hit, hit big. And that's the nature of crypto, right? Like, and the other ones are like your stable, your blue chip portfolio, so to speak. So RWA, of course, you know, we just did the interview with Zebu. It's one of my— I think this is the year of RWA. I think that, you know, like showing the outside world that we can actually use this tech, like Cathie Wood said in a Spaces we did recently, the tech is ready. Now it's like, how do we implement that and show them that this technology actually makes their world better? Because up until now, it's been a lot of, you know, just siloed to our world, right? So I think that's super cool. And the Zebu use case with the telecom operators and handling settlements, Propy, that's property rights on chain. I don't know if you guys have any other RWAs on your radar.

I mean, obviously, I think Ondo is a big one. We talk about them all the time. We don't— aren't invested or anything, but I feel like they're a blue chip in the space. They're in BlackRock's Buildl, associated with their Buildl fund, right? So obviously BlackRock likes them. That's, that's huge.

That's a good sign.

That's a good sign for price.

Yeah, exactly.

BlackRock was the enemy until they started buying crypto. Now they're our friend.

That's true. You know, he said absolutely no one has been interested when he's It was 2017. None of our clients have any interest. And then suddenly everybody was interested. Well, they built the rails, right? And now they can take the money in.

And they were interested once they can make money.

Exactly. Yeah. So they didn't have those rails built to take that money in back then. So it was not of their interest. And nowadays, but you know, they're friends now for now because, right.

Also to me, for that reason, much more, I think like Bitcoin today around high 50s, low 60 thousands. Compared to when Bitcoin was approaching $69,000, you know, all-time highs back in 2021. To me, Bitcoin is like completely or almost completely de-risked compared to when it was at the same price in 2021 because those on-ramps are much more available for traditional money. Regulatory-wise, we're in a completely different place with Bitcoin specifically. It is regulated. BlackRock, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, they're all offering it to their clients. So the spot Bitcoin ETFs, the bad actors, bad exchanges are out of the space, whether it's Binance being taken over by the US government or FTX collapsed. Like, the majority of the trading volume now does flow, at least over 50%, through American exchanges. Um, and just the plumbing and infrastructure is there. So even though we're at the same price, uh, that we were at the top of the market in 2021, to me, the risk is a whole lot less.

Yeah, actually, you reminded me of the name of your panel that you did at Bitcoin Nashville. It was, is this an asymmetrical opportunity still? I had that in my notes. And yeah, so Is it?

Yeah, that was the panel.

That was his panel.

Yeah, that was my panel with Scaramucci.

So what would be your takeaway? I mean, do you think that right now would be— because somebody asked me, hey, it's $50,000, it's way too expensive, I'm not going to buy Bitcoin. I'm evidently buying here. But like for the average person who has no exposure whatsoever, like is it de-risked right now? Like is it a good time to buy in?

You know, I've drank the Kool-Aid. I say yes, obviously. You know, I think I can back it up. It's an asymmetrical opportunity in that asymmetrical means a high probability of upside in the future with a lower probability of risk. And I think that's what Bitcoin is for all the reasons mentioned. When I did that panel on the main stage of Bitcoin Nashville with Scaramucci, Dan Morehead of Pantera, and Gary Cardone, the overwhelming answer was yes. And I just don't see how you couldn't think of it that way because like the question is, is Bitcoin going away? It's not. Are there different metrics, whether it is, you know, number of holders, uh, regulatory, uh, you know, different things that are just, uh, you know, continuing to get bigger and better? Uh, the only thing is, you know, that Bitcoin needs to, to, you know, appreciate in value, I think, is time. And most people cannot, uh, you know, hold for, you know, most, most people will sell at the tops, um, or sell at the bottoms and buy at the tops and, uh, not really realize that, you know, oh, BlackRock's not getting into Bitcoin because they're trying to make a bunch of money this year. They're trying to— they're getting into Bitcoin because they want to make a bunch of money over the next decade, in the next couple decades.

Right.

And Bitcoin's going to, to, to be here for that. And the thing is, you know, Bitcoin's only like 13 years old, 14 years old. kind of a similar spot to where it was in the '90s. Now, if you would've asked— or the internet in the '90s.

Right.

Now, if you would've asked people in 1995, 1996, do you think that the internet is going to be a part of your lives in every aspect forever? Most people in 1995 probably wouldn't have thought like that. Now, cut to 10 years later in 2005, I think most people would say like, oh yeah, we're always gonna have the internet, Everybody's going to be a part of it forever. And I think we're kind of at a similar transformation, transformational time with Bitcoin, where most people don't realize it's going to be here. And probably in several years from now, it's going to be obvious to people, and most people are going to be using crypto without knowing it and owning Bitcoin, hopefully.

That was fantastically summarized. I mean, in the short, it is a good time to buy relatively if you're in this for the long term, right? I mean, people can wait. Years in the stock market, but they want to get rich tomorrow in crypto. And that seems to be one of the biggest issues, right? But just holding for the long term, I think nobody's lost money in Bitcoin over a 4-year period or something like that.

Although if you have USD cash in your bank account, that's guaranteed to lose value at the end of every year.

That is true. I actually saw something yesterday that said every 30 days it's losing 1%. I don't know, like, so 12% a year.

I don't know.

It just was like a crazy stat. And it came from— I don't know where it came from, but Just having that in your mind, like inflation, what you could buy like 4 years ago versus what you could buy now. And it's just wild. It's wild how that money is depreciating rapidly. And those, you don't get those kind of gains anywhere else in any other market. And you, I think Michael Saylor said that if you've been in the stock market the past 2 years, you've essentially just been treading water. You're not making any gains. You're not outpacing inflation.

Well, it is a travesty that the strongest dollar in the world, the US dollar gets deflated to the extent it does and all fiat currencies get devalued. And, you know, most people, regular people, don't— a lot of them don't have significant assets or investments, and they're saving in US dollars. And unfortunately, they're not able to get ahead because of the way that the dollar loses purchasing power. Back in the day, you could get, you know, a full meal at McDonald's for a few bucks, less than $5. Now it takes, you know, $10 to $12 or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, it's really crazy to see. Clearly, you guys have interviewed some of the most brilliant minds in the space. Coming from you, I mean, coming from all of the industry's most credible leaders, it's a relatively good time to buy today. It was yesterday, it will be tomorrow. I mean, this is a long game and it's been really cool. What I will ask you as we close this up now is, I asked Anthony the same thing and Tim Draper, who was on the show recently, where do you see this? Like, what's the endgame for this? Do you see like Tim, for example, he has this vision of it all being like a Bitcoin-centric world where we pay for things in Bitcoin eventually and it's a more stable price and it's a Bitcoin economy. Anthony Scaramucci had said he's more on the part of, oh, it'll be similar market cap to gold. We won't eclipse all of that. It won't take over. What are your guys' opinions on how it's going to be maybe next 10 years?

It's a big question. I mean, first of all, to get to the long term, you have to survive the short term. I think the best thing for anybody to do in the short term is to watch channels like ours and yours as often as they can and get through this bull market in the best way possible. Like in the far future, where can this go? You know, I think it's going to be a similar thing to, you know, the internet just making so many different industries, uh, more— in the crypto's case, um, more open, more accessible to all, uh, more self-custody rights to people, hopefully giving power back to the people, or maybe back to businesses, whoever's using it, and, uh, really a better mousetrap than what we have now. The internet revolutionized things, obviously. You know, crypto tokenizes everything on the internet rails. And I just think we're going to see the digital age really come into its own as, you know, the world gets tokenized and people start using crypto.

That was very well said. Beautiful. Yep. Yeah. I mean, that's a beautiful vision of the future.

Bitcoin to the moon.

Yeah. Bitcoin to the moon, baby. It's all freedom for everybody, right? It's like a massive paradigm shift. We're at an inflection point. A very important part of this cycle. And Arthur Hayes said that like adoption seems really gradual until in hindsight it's explosive. So we feel like it's slow and it's— but all of a sudden, boom, you know. So we've got to be ready for that, right?

Hell yeah. I personally feel like the world will get tokenized. I think Bitcoin will be a major currency alongside the other major currencies of the world, you know, the US dollar, the pound, whatever that is. I don't think they're going away in the next 10 years, but I think Bitcoin will have their place as this currency that's used by everybody. I think that, um, whether it's, you know, telecommunications or finance or whatever it is, things are moving on-chain. It's just like easier to transact. Um, and I think that, um, like the people that are here today, it seems like you're late to the game, but the people that are here today, in 5, 10 years, they'll be like, oh my God, You were in crypto in 2024. Yeah, you were early.

That's true. That's true. Bitcoin will be cheap then. Yeah. Bitcoin one day will have been cheap at $50,000. Extremely cheap. Right. That's the thought anyway.

Let's all go buy $100 worth after this podcast and in 20 years we'll come back.

Reconvene. Yeah, reconvene and we'll see where we're at. Yeah, I like that idea. I'll take you up on that. Okay.

And, you know, as we're ending things, Megan, I just want to say thank you for having us on your podcast. And I encourage anybody from the Altcoin Daily audience to Subscribe to Megan and stay in tune with the work that she puts out because she's putting out great work.

Thank you, guys. I really appreciate that. I really appreciate you taking the time. Evidently, the entire— on behalf of the entire crypto world, we're so excited that you decided one fine day to start this channel. As we get this daily, you know, news and amazing content helping us digest everything that's happening, you guys have truly done an exceptional job. So as we close this, what could be one piece of advice that you would give for people who want to start a YouTube Or who want to get into the game? You know, you guys have been so successful in what you've done. What would you say?

You love talking about this.

Yeah, there's so much to say. Now, unfortunately, somebody who doesn't have a YouTube or social media today, I, you know, I can give them the strategy, but what they're worried about is, well, how do I make the banner for the YouTube? How do I actually start the channel? So you need to like be putting out videos and then we can talk strategy. But I mean, the thing is, have influences. You wouldn't start a band without first having influences. So watch a lot of different content to the niche and also other just content you like and figure out what you like about that, what you don't like about that. Have many different levels of influences. So obviously there's the MrBeasts, the one that just seems so like out there, I'm never going to get to his production level. That can be an influence. Also hopefully like a middle one, maybe 50,000 or 100,000 subs. And then also people on your level, whether it's probably like 1,000 subs to start or people putting out work that most people don't see. Have all those influences, figure out what you like and don't like. For YouTube and most social media, the video content, the title and thumbnail are the most important. The beginning of the video is the most important. You need to grab their attention. You are in the game of retaining eyeballs. Now, unfortunately, most people will click away after 3 minutes, if not 30 seconds. So you have like—

Wow, the attention economy, man.

Yeah, so you have limited time to grab their attention and then hopefully you keep their attention You know, teasing out the content. I mean, great content trumps all. I'm trying to give practical, doable strategies, but obviously great content trumps all.

We're assuming the content's good, and then these are the things you can do on top.

Right, so we're assuming you've made it to the point where your content is good and you need to optimize and figure out how to grow from there, right?

Yeah, I mean, there's so much stuff we can go into. I don't wanna— we can start a whole new podcast.

You guys could start a whole masterclass on this, but I think you've already given some incredible gems. And last but not least, what's next for you guys? All right, what's next for Altcoin Daily?

We'll be doing a keynote at Rare Evo in Vegas, the Cardano-centric conference. Psyched about that. We'll see many people at one of the biggest conferences of the East, Token 2049 in Singapore.

See you there then. We'll be there with the Zebu team.

Hell yeah. Yeah. Season 2 of Killer Whales is coming out on Apple TV and Amazon Prime. Should be by the end of the year, beginning of next year. Season 2 is bigger and better. Amazing.

Did you catch season 1?

I got to tune in. I've caught a few episodes, but I need to tune in because I saw you A Scaramucci. Yeah, the Mooch. And I saw you guys did some trailer recently with a lot of people here in LA. It looked incredible. Congratulations on that, by the way. It's not easy to create a show like that. So I'm looking forward to who comes out of it too, that you guys find some gems or some incredible—

One of our biggest gems was a company called WalletGuard who won, one of the winners on season 1, and they just got acquired by MetaMask. No way. And ConsenSys. ConsenSys.

That's huge. Yeah. So that's huge. You guys are really influencing the space, not only with your channel, but now finding those gems. to bring to the forefront. That's incredible.

And credit to Hello Labs. We're producers on the show and judges, but it is their baby. Hello Labs does a great job, you know, as creators of that show.

Fantastic. But they couldn't be in better hands with you guys. So again, I just want to thank you guys for coming here in Hollywood, in LA, where all the magic happens, right? And we hope to see you somewhere soon around the world.

Definitely, Megan. Can't wait to see you somewhere around the world and you in the audience. If we— if I see you in real life, please, you know, come up to me and say hi. Yeah, I would love to chat.

Absolutely. And if you don't already, follow Altcoin Daily, subscribe to their channel. It is one of the best in the whole crypto economy. I mean, I absolutely love your channel. I'm tuning in daily. Guys, thanks again, and we'll catch up soon.

Thank you.

Thank you.