Crypto Rundown: Institutions Still Building Crypto, Mr Beast Buys a Bank, Coinbase Super Bowl Ad Recap

Summary

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CRYPTO 101 — Crypto Rundown: Institutions Still Building Crypto, Mr Beast Buys a Bank, Coinbase Super Bowl Ad Recap

Date: February 11, 2026
Hosts: Bryce Paul & Brendan Viehman
Guest: Brian (Momentum Moneymakers, prediction markets specialist)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Crypto 101 delivers a market "rundown" during a period of bearish crypto sentiment, focusing on topics that reveal crypto’s resilience and growing mainstream integration. Bryce, Brendan, and guest Brian navigate price action, institutional moves, meme coin and NFT ecosystem updates, the growing prediction market surge, and cultural moments like the viral Coinbase Super Bowl ad and Mr. Beast’s foray into finance. The tone balances caution with long-term bullishness, highlighting opportunities even during downturns.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Market Outlook Amid Bearish Sentiment

[02:02–12:17]

• Price Action: Bitcoin remains in a “chop range” ($60,000–$72,000); few near-term catalysts for new highs, but long-term potential remains.
• Sentiment Shift: After euphoria at all-time highs, the sharp correction has brought "record fear", as reflected in the fear/greed index.
• Institutional & Macro Factors: AI trade and regulatory uncertainty are blamed for pulling liquidity away from crypto.
• Advice: Dollar cost averaging and hunting “deals” are encouraged over panic selling.
• Notable Quote:

  "This is the weakest bear market case I've ever seen. In the past, we had FTX blowing up and major catalysts. This one's just little things stacking up." (Brian, 12:17)

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2. Big Names Buying the Dip

[15:48–18:49]

• Gary Vee’s Take:
  [16:07]

  "I'm shocked we get another bite of the apple at this level. I never thought I would buy it under 70, so I'm grateful for that."

• Institutions Step In:
  [18:49]
  Charles Schwab representative explains the recent drop: momentum liquidations, retail selling, and cascading loan calls. But institutions like Schwab used the panic as a time to “get longer.”

  "For us, that's a great time to sell puts or get a little bit longer on behalf of our institutional clients." (Schwab, 17:23)

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3. Institutional Holdings & The Clarity Act

[21:29–22:29]

• Goldman Sachs Disclosure:
  [21:29]
  Goldman revealed $2.3B in crypto holdings (1.1B BTC, 1B ETH, 153M XRP, 108M SOL), showing that big banks are still accumulating despite market fear.
• Clarity Act Update:
  [22:10–22:29]
  The pivotal crypto regulatory bill now has ~56% odds of passing. Recent White House meetings are reported as productive, but no deal is reached yet.

  "The Clarity act is going to give a green light to a massive amount of liquidity that will unlock." (Brian, 21:29)

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4. Altcoin Buzz: Hyper Liquid's Breakout

[24:19–26:30]

• What is Hyper Liquid?
  Hyper Liquid is the leading decentralized perpetuals platform, exceeding Coinbase in trading volume ($2.6T in 2025 vs $1.4T for Coinbase).
• Key Features:
  • Revenue model: 97% buyback & burn.
  • Thrives on market volatility.
  • Not even available in the US, yet has huge international traction.

  "Hyper Liquid actually thrives when markets are volatile... their fundamentals are real, and their growth is coming from real usage." (Brian, 24:19)

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5. Tom Lee Faces the Music – Ethereum’s Future

[28:12–33:15]

• Tom Lee’s Perspective:
  [30:26]
  Emphasizes that Ethereum has endured multiple 60%+ drawdowns before, but always followed by V-shaped recoveries.

  "Ethereum is not in a death spiral because the utility is going up. The price, of course, has been awful...but network usage is up 80% in just the last six months." (Tom Lee, 30:26)

• Resilience Narrative:
  Despite criticism over failed bullish calls, Lee’s faith in institutional adoption and Ethereum’s fundamentals stays strong.

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6. Mr. Beast Buys a Bank — The Creator Economy Meets Finance

[34:37–40:34]

• Jimmy “Mr. Beast” Donaldson acquired financial services app "Stepped" via “Beast Industries”, with funding from Tom Lee’s Bit Mine (ETH treasury) and backing from investor Chamath Palihapitiya.
• Speculation around likely integration with Ethereum/blockchain and how Mr. Beast’s massive Gen Z audience will be onboarded into fintech and possibly crypto.

  "His audience is global, it's worldwide, and it's young... This feels like something is bubbling here for maybe a big announcement." (Bryce, 36:46)

• Super Bowl Ad Tie-In:
  Mr. Beast’s commercial partnership with Salesforce (The Vault) generated 70M visits; required action via email/Slack—showcasing how his digital influence can drive real engagement.

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7. NFT & Meme Coin Mania: Pudgy Penguins

[45:07–50:49]

• From Memes to Merchandise:
  Pudgy Penguins get featured on the Today Show, Valentine’s plushies sell out, brand collabs with NHL/Vegas Sphere, and a mobile game are highlighted.
• Business/Token Integration:
  Women in mainstream media and children alike are exposed to Pudgy, demonstrating the cultural reach.
• Credit Card Sneak Peek:
  A Pudgy Penguins Visa card is teased, possibly offering token or brand perks.

  "They have done more than like 80-90% of other altcoins out there. They've produced more, they've brought in more revenue, they signed big partnerships." (Brian, 49:18)

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8. Prediction Markets Super Cycle

[53:12–62:27]

• Super Bowl & Prediction Markets:
  Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket see huge volume—hundreds of millions wagered on halftime show details and celebrity appearances, outpacing traditional sports betting.
  • The “truth” feature: sometimes, insider knowledge guarantees a win.

  "Prediction market super cycle is for real, man... the best metric to see what's happening, who's really putting their money where their mouth is." (Brian, 54:45)

• Beyond Football:
  Olympics and political midterms are likely to supercharge prediction markets next.

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9. Coinbase Super Bowl Ad: Sentiment & Cultural Moment

[66:23–72:18]

• The Ad:
  Coinbase aired a karaoke-style Backstreet Boys spot; ending with the Coinbase logo. It provoked confusion and mockery on social media.
  • Normie reaction: widespread flipping off the TV, anger, and meme-ification.

  "It got people talking... you want to know how retail feels right now with the dip? That's how they feel. And you want to know what you should probably do is always fade retail." (Bryce & Brian, 69:04)

• Analysis:
  The ad is viewed by the hosts as a notable “sentiment indicator” — a potential local bottom when retail confidence is this low.

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10. Final Market Thoughts & Farewell

[73:56–end]

• Bear Markets = Opportunity:
  Brian urges listeners:

  "It's going to be gross for a little while... Big opportunities. The majors might be going down, but there's still some opportunity in the space as well... Absolutely pay attention." (Brian, 73:58)

• The hosts reassert their commitment to the space, the show, and to providing retail investors with “massive crypto success” through education, community, and actionable analysis.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Bear Markets:

  "Bitcoin lets you get an opportunity again. Not saying we're throwing all our money in, but that's why you tune in to the rundown." (Brian, 12:17)

• On Ethereum Drawdowns:

  "Ethereum's not in a death spiral because utility is going up... Network usage is up 80%." (Tom Lee, 30:26)

• Industry Collaboration:

  "Mr. Beast, Tom Lee, and Chamath in one room... the roadmap isn't public yet, but something big is bubbling." (Bryce, 42:52)

• Super Bowl Ad Hype:

  "You want to know how retail feels? That's how they feel. Fade retail." (Bryce & Brian, 69:04)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment | |--------------|------------------------------------------------------| | 02:02–12:17 | Bearish sentiment & market outlook | | 15:48–18:49 | Gary Vee, Charles Schwab, institutional dip-buyers | | 21:29–22:29 | Goldman Sachs holdings & Clarity Act update | | 24:19–26:30 | Hyper Liquid altcoin success story | | 28:12–33:15 | Tom Lee "faces the music" on ETH drawdowns | | 34:37–40:34 | Mr. Beast acquires "Stepped"; Gen Z fintech & crypto | | 45:07–50:49 | Pudgy Penguins: mainstream and token update | | 53:12–62:27 | Prediction markets, Super Bowl, Olympics, midterms | | 66:23–72:18 | Coinbase Super Bowl ad; sentiment signal | | 73:56–end | Final thoughts: Bear market optimism |

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Summary Takeaways

• Crypto’s Institutional Steadfastness: Despite prices, institutional buying is steady, and infrastructure (regulatory and platform) is still building.
• Bear Market = Opportunity: Hosts and expert guests believe current environment is ripe for patient accumulation (“Jenny wealth”).
• Meme/Community Projects Endure: Pudgy Penguins and Hyper Liquid show that creativity and community are vital—and still thriving.
• Mainstream Moments Matter: Mr. Beast and Coinbase signal crypto bleeding into youth and popular culture.
• Prediction Markets Rise: As a new frontier for both speculation and crowd-sourced “truth.”
• Sentiment is Bottoming: Public despair and mainstream mockery (Coinbase ad reactions) are framed as classical “bottom signals.”

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For Listeners Who Missed It…

This was a packed episode, blending sobering market realities with optimism about innovation, mainstream adoption, and new narratives. Whether you’re hunting the next altcoin, interested in regulatory updates, love cultural crossovers, or just want to read the mood of the market—this rundown brings both sharp analysis and community vibes.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign, Everybody. Welcome back to the Crypto 101 podcast presented by Gemini, your bridge to the future of money. It is a rundown on a Wednesday and it is action packed. We've got a lot of bullish sentiment. The institutions are revealing their crypto holdings. You're going to want to see that. There's a Clarity act update. We actually have altcoin news. Some altcoins are buzzing. They're making some noise. We'll let you know about that. Kind of our main platter of discussion. There's a couple here, folks. I think we're going to go long. The. We got. We got a Mr. Beast update. We've got a Mr. Beast update. It's like a YouTube title. Mr. Beast. It's like let's Buy a bank would be the title of this YouTube video. Mr. Beast buys a bank. We talked about it a couple weeks ago and said, hey, Mr. Beast bit mine. Mr. Beast. Eth. Mr. Beast. Like, literally, again, if you're somebody that's not into YouTube, Mr. Beast is. Has a platform that you could say has maybe the most eyeballs on the planet. And he's kind of starting to diversify his portfolio, to say the least. So that's going to be a great conversation. I'm super excited about that. We have Brian with us, so, you know, we're going to be touching on some meme coins. We have a huge, pudgy penguins update that looks really fun. And then we're going to cover some super bowl stuff at the end that actually involved the crypto space, the prediction markets. Brian is with us. He was the first one on our team to literally call a prediction market super cycle. He could not have been more right. And then there was a little drama over the Coinbase ad. So I'd like to break that down as a creative director myself. It's going to be a super fun episode. We are live on YouTube. There's a ton of us in here. We've got Fitz. I know Grant's going to be showing up, maybe camo. If you're with us, let us know where you're coming in from. Give us a like. And if you're new in the bottom right, hit the subscribe. We really appreciate every. Appreciate everybody being here, but Brian, welcome. How are you feeling this Wednesday? And, you know, welcome back to the show.

[B]

Hey, man, thanks for having me. The light's still on. I love to say it, especially when we're seeing a little bit of a red market, but, you know, it's. It's gross out. There in the streets. And I get that for everybody because we're financially involved in crypto. You and I work in the crypto industry. So obviously if you even just. I enjoy talking crypto just on a social level and if I bring it up to anybody now, they kind of like roll their eyes to me. But I'm still, I'm still quite bullish, man. I get everyone's takes in and everyone's like kind of scratching their heads why the price is going down. We're going to dive into it and kind of try to make some sense. I think the team did a great job on Friday with that rundown breaking down exactly what's going on. But we're going to stay in this range for a while. This $60,000 to $72,000 Bitcoin. I'm having a hard time coming up with a lot of catalysts in the very near future to get us above that $80,000 mark and off to the race at all time highs. There's certainly paths. I think bitcoin and the major cryptos are all going over all time highs. But we might have to put our big boy pants on for a little bit and just, you know, dollar cost average in and just look for some really great opportunities, which there's still some awesome opportunities in the space. But. But I get it, a lot of people are, you know, a little uneasy because we got washed out a little bit. But things are going to be okay. I can assure everyone things are going to be okay.

[A]

We, yeah, we talked about it on Friday with the entire team. Was actually a great episode. If you didn't catch it, you know, if you want the entire analyst team, it's a great episode to go back and listen to. But yeah, me and you kind of brought up the sentiment indicator of like, hey, when it was all time highs, everybody's asking, should we, should I buy? And now we're kind of getting bullied and they're coming out of nowhere. And I think we're going to talk about this at the end of the show. But the Coinbase ad was a great sentiment indicator because there's all these clips of. It was like a karaoke thing. Everybody didn't know what the ad was. And then it shows Coinbase and everybody was flipping off the tv. We'll cover that at the end. But yeah, so some price action here. You see it up on the board. We covered it with Brendan in the charts. I'm gonna have Brendan back on Friday to look at the charts once again. But yeah, it's It's a lot of red out there. And I personally, we talked about this again in the show in more in depth, but I personally was the first one to bring up on the airwaves of this software thesis of hey, we got tied up in software. The software bears came out in full force. And it's the, it's, this AI trade is, this point nobody truly knows how much AI is going to disrupt our lives. So not just investing, but just our everyday lives. And I'm not smart enough to, to know the answer to that. And, and I think a lot of investors aren't smart enough either. And the software stocks has, have had amazing rises over the last, you know, three, four, five years and everybody's starting to ring the register and it's like, I'm not going to wait around to see if this software is going to get overtaken by AI. And then I think, I think bitcoin got tied up in that. I really do. And I think that thesis is being confirmed because now this week, again, outside of crypto, in the traditional markets, the, the brokerages are getting attacked. Robin Hood's getting attacked, Charles Schwab, Goldman Sachs. There's a lot of these brokerages that this week seem to be the target. It almost seems, Brian, like a systematic checklist of hey, what could be affected by AI and, and it's getting kind of a check by the markets to be like, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna gut check this, we're gonna gut check this. And so there, there is, it sucks when the, you know, the, the S and P and the Dow is making all time highs, but you got to really dive in and see, okay, well what stocks are leading that. And it's stocks like Coca Cola. It's, you know, because they have a dividend and it's just, you know, you know what Coca Cola is. But why is Coca Cola's, you know, you know, price to earnings ratio has been the same slight growth, but yet the stock's rocketing 20%. This money's trying to find a place to live and you see it in those kind of staples, dividends having a great year, oil, energy. So the money, the money is going elsewhere. And you can play the game of Monday morning quarterback and try and chase those or trade those, but I think our team, and again, we're not personal financial advisors, you know, we're just a couple of guys talking crypto here. But when, when you kind of see the money flow out of your space, going back to the last bear market, you know, that's where the opportunities are. And so you got to, you know, plan your trade and trade your plan as our fearless leader Bryce says. But I thought an interesting thing was the fear and greed index. I mean we are getting, we're getting low here. Coin market cap has a nine. I saw this tweet, it was, it was at a 5 recently which is the, it's, it's the highest fear, fear greed level in history. 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[B]

I mean, I think you nailed it with the tech and the AI sector issues. That's certainly drawn some liquidity and some attention away from the markets and this whole software trade. We have residual effects from 1010. We got geopolitical issues, we got some regulatory stalls with the Clarity act and market structure bill, volatility in traditional assets. And then we had the new Fed chair. Those are, that's kind of mapping out why, why we're, why we're taking a dip and why we're what you would call a bear market right now or you know, in a very heavy correction place. Let me tell you this much though. This is the weakest bear market case I've ever seen. You know, the past bear markets with like FTX blowing up and just if you go down the line there was some major catalysts there. I think that's why this one's so confusing because we just got a like a bunch of like little things that pushed us into the bear market. But that doesn't change it that we are in correction phase that we've dropped to in this into the 60s when we were all time high of $126,000. And shout out to Epicenter LLC in the chat right now calling. I love shopping for fire sales. Me and that guy should get a cup of coffee or a beer sometime. Because this is when I thrive, man. I've talked about this in the past. I'm just. I just don't get shaken out of my position that easily unless there's, like, a real reason. And there's a bunch of little reasons and a bunch of connect the dots, but still, things feel fundamentally really strong and okay to me. But the prices don't look so good. So whenever that happens, it screams opportunity to me. And that's not me saying, like, go blow all your dry powder at the range right now. Because we could get some other negative news out there. We could have an issue with Iran. There could be some news out there, geopolitical issues or big news or market manipulation, which. I have the tin foil over here. I'm not gonna bust it out. But, you know, I've gone down the tinfoil cap a couple times where I think this could be a little bit of a setup. But that's another time, another place. That's probably when we're having beers and I could really spout off. But my. My thesis, for the reason that I love crypto and love everything about crypto and blockchain and where we're going is stayed strong, stayed the same. Bitcoin's on sale. Some of our favorite crypto assets are on sale. And I'm excited for the future, but we're gonna weather a storm. Everyone, like, put your snow boots on. You know, put the park on. Because it could be. It could be cold and dark for a few more weeks, a couple more months. We could chop around 60 to 72 range. But that's. That's okay. Like, I get it. I get people feeling uncomfortable about it, but that is okay. That's why we're in crypto for this, volatility for this. This isn't like, any advice to anybody in the chat or watching, but I told some good friends that aren't huge into crypto, they didn't have as many. Like, they weren't, like, running in the past bull runs. And they texted me over the weekend, like, is this. Is this the time to, like, start buying some crypto? Or what's your thoughts on crypto? And I literally go, it's Jenny, wealth, opportunity. You're welcome. Bitcoin lets you in again. It lets you get an opportunity again. Not to say like, we're leveraging longs or throwing all our money into it right now, but there's some opportunity. That's why you have to tune into the rundown. So that's why you have to follow TiVo on the boys. Because I feel like we got a good beat on this, but it's gonna be ugly for a little while. But we thrive here.

[A]

Two things. One, I have a video of. Again, just. This is just off the top of my head. I saw a video of Gary Vee talking about pump to get another chance at these levels. Let's listen to Gary.

[B]

I don't know, bitcoin. Can we talk about this right now?

[C]

I'm buying.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I didn't think I was gonna get another at that. Like that.

[B]

This. Can I tell you that last time when it. Like I said, let me pick up another. And I didn't. Y.

[A]

We thinking about, like, little.

[B]

I'm buying. Yeah, but by the way. By the way, everyone who's listening, not financial advice. I've worked 40 years to be able to afford to take the risk.

[A]

I don't see it as that much of a risk anymore.

[B]

I think the world will only get more tech oriented, not less. I think that the cynicism against, you know, governments and dollars will continue to grow. I'm shocked we get another bite of the apple at this level. I never thought I would buy it under 70, so I'm grateful for that.

[A]

So I'm buying a little something.

[B]

But by the way, could it go to Ford? It could, it could.

[A]

And yeah, like, Gary basically sounds like you put him on the rundown. He's even got the disclaimers down to a T. He's not a financial advisor. But again, this is. This is what we're hearing from people. You know, again, more. More of an NFT guy, if anything. Huge with V friends. I know Joe is into that, but that. That's just. This is what we're hearing. And it's not just, you know, influencers in the space and KOLs. The institutions are. Are talking too. I pulled a clip here. We can listen. Next is Charles Schwab kind of, you know, talking about the downturn here. So let's. Let's take a look at that. And we can react on the back.

[D]

End, move on to other shiny objects. AI, gold, silver, all sorts of different ways to try to catch momentum. And that inventory buying just has not come back from retail speculation. And so you've seen a plummet in price and just perpetual selling of these assets. Specifically over the last 24 hours, what we saw is just momentum liquidations and a total blowout in the price of bitcoin. From our view, we saw implied volatility reach over 90 yesterday. We saw funding rates go deeply negative, and we saw almost all the long positions get liquidated. So we think at least in terms of a local bottom, we've touched it. And for us that's a great time to sell puts or get a little bit longer on behalf of our institutional clients. And that's exactly what we did. I would say also the last pressure is we're one of the largest bitcoin backed lenders in the world and there's a lot of these bitcoin backed loans. And what happens is when the price of bitcoin goes down, they clients need to send in more bitcoin. For us institutional clients, our clients have tens of thousands of bitcoin. They can meet the margin calls. But there's another retail layer to these loans that often do get liquidated. So you can get this cascading set of loan liquidations which requires more bitcoin selling. And there was probably a degree of that for some lenders yesterday, but I would say all in all, it's been a healthy recovery today.

[A]

So that was from last week. I actually do agree with that because I was getting just as kind of the journalist aspect of this job was I was getting really excited about all the different lending. You know, taking loans off your bitcoin was kind of getting more mainstream and there were a lot more options for it than even, you know, say a year ago. And so I think that, you know, 100, 120 mark, people are getting a little excited, like, oh, well, it's not, you know, it's not going to go down to 60, 70 again. So I could, you know, they're trying to do the math in their head, like, all right, it could go back to 100, but like, if I take a loan out, the 80 to 100 range is the buffer. And I think, you know, again, the retail side of it, like he said, probably getting caught up in that. And another thing just kind of, you laid out a great kind of, hey, you know, be ready to, to, you know, last, over the next couple of weeks. On the last show we did the duck analogy. That was a fun one. Where's your warm water? But I do want to say credit to the pod. And that's why we have our technical analysis guru, Brendan is, I got to be honest, like, Brendan, over the last six weeks has been coming on and doing the charts and if anybody tells you they know exactly where it's going to go, they're lying to you. But Brendan, on the charts for the last six, six weeks plus has just been like, hey, I, I don't like these levels here. I'm feeling like this could be a level of support that might not hold. And again, he didn't guarantee anything up or down, but he was definitely leaning towards the downward trend. So I do want to give him his flowers and we'll have him back on again on Friday to see where we are now. But I think that's the important part is like, hey, the news flow. Like I'm about to bring up this next thing. The news flow is still positive and the price action isn't there. And we've been in this for a while now and it gets tiring. But I do think that we have an awesome community, awesome YouTube, awesome podcast community, and then awesome, obviously, Crypt Nation community. So, you know, if this is something that you believe in, you know, you are, you are in the right place. And we appreciate everybody tuning in, but it's not, it's not just us and Gary Vee that, that are excited about it. I mean, Goldman Sachs just disclosed their holdings, $2.3 billion worth of crypto on their balance sheet. And so I'll bring this up. It's kind of picking, you know, you could say Goldman Sachs picking some winners here. We got 1 billion of 1.1 billion of Bitcoin, 1 billion ETH, 153 million XRP and 108 million of soul. So these, these positions are growing over the last couple years. Again, I think the Clarity act is a green light for all institutions. Institutions. But I do think it's just interesting timing of kind of during the turmoil of this of, you know, one of the big five financial institutions in, in the United States and around the world is publishing this information now. I just thought it was interesting.

[B]

Yeah, it's a, it's a great call out and I don't know, maybe, maybe I'm just so crazy, but I, I feel like there's definitely clear skies ahead. The Clarity act is going to be an interesting piece to this puzzle here because like you said, that's going to give green light to a massive amount of liquidity that will unlock. But there's some uncertainty there, I think. I think the Clarity act was like in an 80% chance of approval like end of last year and now it's, you know, probably flipping right around 40, 50%, which I still think gets done. But there's a lot of reasons for this volatility.

[A]

Yeah. I'm going to pull up Clarity act because that's our next topic. Clarity act right now, 56% pretty stagnant.

[B]

Yeah. A little up since Friday. I think we were at a 50. 50. I just thought that was interesting that it was a coin flip.

[A]

Yeah, it was 66 last week, but there was a meeting. So there was a meeting yesterday at the White House. Productive was the, this was a closed door. There were bank reps, there were crypto reps basically kind of obviously going over the back and forth from the disagreements that were from a couple, I guess that's almost a month now. Closed door meeting. It was productive. No deal. Reach. So that's an update on the Clarity Act. Obviously there's gonna be a lot more meetings at that and we'll keep you tuned in as we get, get the updates going. But we got, got a little chat. We got people all over. We got London in the house. Arizona, California. We got what? Denver, we got Tampa. Unbelievable. Shout out to everybody in the chat and again give us a thumbs up and if you're new, subscribe on the bottom right, hit our logo. We appreciate everybody being here. This is, this has been. And again, credit credit to us. Another, another credit to us and especially inside the community. We're going to talk about Hyper Liquid now and Hyper Liquid is something that, you know, the team likes and I think it's, it's something that has been written about in our newsletters, it's something that has been talked about in the VIP coaching calls for months now and it's, it's been one of the best performing assets during this downturn and, and that's the type of stuff that you get in the private community. So if you're interested in getting the access to that stuff and getting, you know, better breakdowns and more kind of access to the team. The link below, there's a, there's a, I think a dollar trial for Go Nation VIP to get access to the newsletter and the coaching calls to go down and check that out. But let's, let's pull up Hyper Liquid again. A project that I know you're, you're pumped about and this, this was shocking. I mean the trading volume is, is surpassing Coinbase, which is fascinating. So what I'm going to hand this off to you because I know you're a big Hyper Liquid guy.

[B]

Yeah, I like Hyper Liquid. It's, it's super interesting because it, it's the leading decentralized perps platform, but they're also building so much their own chain. There's a lot going on there. But this information's super interesting. They did what, 2.6 trillion in volume in 2025 compared to Coinbase's 1.4 trillion. Now this is an apples to apples. I want to clarify that for everyone. So spot comparison compared to perps. Perps gets a little bit inflated by leverage but the takeaway is still the same that user adoption in on chain liquidity Hyper Liquids built is extremely legit. So their fundamentals are real, their growth is coming from real usage, from real people and for under whatever it is like 30 bucks or so, it feels like one of the best performing altcoins out there. They have a very interesting business model. They use their revenue, I believe it's 97% to buy, 97% of their revenue to buy back and burn the token. So they've really innovated in the space and Hyper Liquids platform isn't even available to the United States unless you utilize a VPN I believe. So a lot of this volume is coming from all over the world and a good comparison to it's probably binance where it could go. So there's a lot of growth here in hyperliquid. But when we see these like really down bad days Hyper Liquid actually thrives because they're collecting fees off people shorting. When we see these huge days people are, they're collecting fees off of people longing. So Hyper Liquid is an extremely interesting product and I, I love, I love to see that they're doing, they're doing well. The price did have if anybody looks at the chart we were like 40s and 50s a couple months ago and then we had a pretty big sell off. That sell off there was a lot of token unlocks that happened. So a lot of people taking profits, a lot of people involved. And personally it's a token that we've been talking with in our community. I know the Crypt Nation guys have been talking about it so everyone's really aligned on where Hyper Liquid could go. But to just see and I know this isn't apples to apples but to just see the trading volumes numbers here has to kind of open people's eyes to the product.

[A]

Yeah, again I just, I get my research from Crypt Nation and Momentum Money Makers and you guys have been on top of this now for, for months with a lot of in depth knowledge about it. So it's been exciting to see it perform especially in the down market. So again if you're interested, kind of like, like Brian said his community was, was in on it as well. That's Momentum Moneymakers. Since we have Brian on we are doing a $1 trial. Check it out in the description as well kind of kind of moving on here. I think we Got to, we just, we got to give at least some props to our guy, Tom Lee, friend of the show. He, he had to face the music. And so we, we do this. We are a, you know, equal opportunity podcast. We give takes. Some of them we crush, obviously, and some of them we miss. It's just kind of like everybody, right? And Tom Lee had to officially face the music with this last drawdown. We, we cover him just like we cover the space. He's one of the faces of the space. We were bringing his calls and they were very, very bullish. And even going into the new year, he was, you know, calling for these crazy price targets. And then obviously the rug got pulled on the, on the, the price levels at the beginning of the year here and, and he had to go on and face some tough questions. This is about, this is about three minutes. So did I take notes on this? No, we'll play, we probably won't play the whole three minutes, but it's a pretty, it's a hard hitting interview from Scott Wapter. So you got to give credit to him for asking the tough questions and Tom Lee to face the music. So let's, let's give it a listen here and then we can react on the other side. See what's taking place in crypto we're.

[C]

Talking that tracks Ethereum prices.

[A]

Arc place.

[C]

Hi, Scott. Thanks for having me. You know, Bit Mine is designed to be a vehicle that tracks Ethereum prices, but on the upswing because we're getting, we're adding Ethereum will outperform. So Ethereum takes raw down. Bitmine is going to be in this drawdown stock. Bit Mine has no leverage. It has roughly 4.3 million Ethereum that earns 3% annually. And we have 600 million cash earning about 4% in money markets. So the company is making about a million dollars a day. So there is no risk, no need for the company to actually raise money because it's debt free and actually generates about 360 million a year in net income. I think crypto sentiment is rock bottom because it has been a terrible drawdown. I mean, just the past 10 days, Ethereum's down 40% and that's triggered, I think, a lot of concerns about whether crypto is even viable. But you know, all of those statements that I just heard and the, from just a minute ago, I heard the same thing in November 2022 after FTX. And that's the reality that crypto is sort of characterized by hyper volatility and big drawdowns. I Mean, just in the last eight years, Ethereum's had seven drawdowns of 60 or more. The good news is seven of seven of those were all V shaped recoveries. So we had a waterfall decline. If cryptos bottoming now, which it kind of looks like it is, especially given MicroStrategy's 25% move. The recoveries are V shaped, so we recover as quickly as we've fallen.

[A]

Just want to follow up on that. Where you suggest there's no risk to the company is that assumption that Ethereum has stopped going down, that this is a bottom. If there is what some have predicted to be a coming quote unquote death spiral for certain cryptocurrencies. If the situation with Ethereum gets worse, what happens here?

[C]

Well, yeah, I mean it's, it's a fair question. I think we can look at metrics. For instance, if you look at the number of active addresses on ethereum, it's up 117% versus a year ago. In fact, in just the last three months that's actually gone up parabolically. As you know, coming out of Davos. What was the big story around what Wall street plans to do? It's tokenization, which is moving a lot of their financial infrastructure onto the blockchain. Scott, that's not going to change just because crypto prices have fallen. But what is the blockchain that is evident, you know, listed named by whether it's UBS Standard, Charter or Fidelity where they're tokenizing products? It's on Ethereum. So Ethereum is not in a death spiral because the utility is going up. The price of course has been awful. Unfortunately, you know, crypto prices are volatile. It's not like earnings estimates change for Ethereum. In fact, network usage is up 80% in just the last six months. But it does mean prices move a lot. I mean it's sort of a feature of crypto itself.

[A]

Tom Lee, friend of the show, sticking to his guns, bringing some stats there. Ethereum usage at all time Fidelity, which is my next slide here. Just kind of saying they put out a note here. Ethereum medium of exchange and store of value. I'll pull this up if anybody's interested in reading it from Fidelity Digital Assets. Basically the, the number one thing that I thought is he, you know, his convictions there. It's, it's not changing obviously in that short of a time. And he admitted to the price action being awful. The one thing that I really am interested in on his dad for bit mine compared to strategy is the no debt. So he started, you know, they continue to buy ETH, they continue to stake ETH, and then, you know, they're making off their staking $1 million a day, which, you know, we don't have their balance sheet of operations of how many people and payroll and what it costs to run that business. My guess is that's not enough necessarily to run the bit mine business. And we have another topic of, you know, them investing in moose shots that we're going to move to next. But credit to him to facing the music. I think it's something that to be said when, you know, you, you call out all these crazy price targets, Brian, and they, it goes completely the other way. A lot of people in this space, especially on crypto Twitter, go and hide. We're not, you know, we're a podcast that continues to put out more and more content no matter what the market and credits Tom Lee for showing up. But anything to take away there from Tom's face the music.

[B]

No, I mean it's great to see him face the music, which he should. You know, he had some big price targets and for good reason and some good thesis behind it. It didn't work out. But it doesn't mean that we're not going to hit those price targets in the future. I mean, just think about this. We have, we have BlackRock using Ethereum, rails for tokenized treasury liquidities. We have Fidelity that's launching an Ethereum based stablecoin, whatever it's called, the Fidelity Digital dollar. These are major, major companies out there utilizing Ethereum. So if we took a dip in the price, it doesn't mean that they're not still moving forward with this. So it's, it's a blip on the radar. Nobody loves when the market's down. It's always, it's always tough whenever there's volatility in the moment, but it's not going anywhere. Crypto is not going to zero, I can promise you that. There's a lot of reasons to be extremely bullish. So this is, this is one of those times when price doesn't match up to the fundamentals. But that's why I call it the weakest bear market in history. And I think Tom Lee nailed it as well when he said there's V shaped recoveries. I don't think that's going to happen next week or the following week. But when we start to see recovery, I think it's going to happen very fast and very hard. Pretty much as fast as we came down. I think we're Getting V shape up and V shape up really quickly.

[A]

Yeah. And it can be narrative driven as well. Like kind of how we covered on the software side of it, you get caught into a narrative and that's how it is. And then once that narrative flips, there's people that step in with big amounts of money and it can get away from you pretty fast. But sticking onto the Ethereum trade train a little bit, going over to Mr. Beast, friend of the show, of course, Mr. Beast buying a financial. Jimmy buying a financial services app. And I gotta say, I have to say we do, we have given ourselves a lot of flowers recently. But we talked about this not that long ago. We Talked about this Mr. Beast partnering with Bit Mine and I went on a huge rant and I was like, I think this is unbelievably bullish. And I just, you know, coming from the content creator side and being in the YouTube world and understanding his audience again, this guy gets more views in like, I think a month than the super bowl gets a year. So his, his audience is global, it's worldwide and it's young. And they went and acquired this financial services app stepped. And again, I don't know exactly how he's going to integrate it with Beast Industries, what he's going to do. I mean, this guy has everything from a chocolate bar to a YouTube channel to now a financial services app. And, and again, the most. And then I'll zoom out here and obviously none other than Tom Lee quote tweeting it and giving you all the reasons why this is exciting. And if you didn't catch that episode is Bit Mine. Tom Lee's Ethereum treasury invested into Beast Industries via this, this investment. Tom Lee, you know, our. Well, Bit Mine owns a piece of step now. And when all this news broke, I, I can't. The number one thing that shocked me was Chamath from the all in podcast chimed in and just started talking about it like, oh yeah, I'm invested in Beast Industries and Jimmy's killing it and I'm so glad to be a part of it. I'm like, I, I live, me and you both live on the Internet, basically, especially in crypto Twitter or business Twitter.

[B]

Whatever you want to call it.

[A]

I never knew that he was involved in it and all of a sudden it's all over the timeline and he's talking like he's been invested in a chairman and helping Jimmy grow his business for years. And so you know Chamath, big crypto guy as well, early. And I just, I think this is I think this is pretty big. This is one of my new favorite narratives is Jimmy, aka Mr. Beast, getting involved in finance apps, taking investment from Chamath, taking investment from Bit mine, Ethereum, Treasury. Like this. This feels like something is bubbling here for maybe. Maybe a big announcement. I don't know. What do you think, Brian?

[B]

I think you nailed it, man. I mean, they're just like the tweet says, they're building a financial app focused for Gen Z. And what's Gen Z love? Digital dollars. They're not exactly signing partnerships with Chase bank and Mellon bank or anything along those lines in the traditional banking system. So he's up to something. And with Tom Lee in his background, it's probably something big for Ethereum. But I remember this. It's just a few weeks ago, it was on our sheet and we both were like, what's Mr. Beast doing in the crypto world? Is he creating a bank? What was his super bowl commercial too? Didn't it have something to do?

[A]

I was going to bring that up next. Was it Salesforce or ServiceNow?

[B]

I think it was Salesforce. I think it was Salesforce, but he's heavily. He's heavily involved banking. Yeah. There is something going on here and we're gonna look back on this in a few months and be like, oh, man.

[A]

Like that.

[B]

That was obvious. So I'm excited to see how it all shakes out.

[A]

Yeah, there was some. There was some stat I saw is they were giving away a million dollars. The Vault. This is just a quick AI Google. But I saw this tweet of how, like, successful the super bowl commercial was of getting people to take action. That was the key. Let's just read this AI overview real quick, Mr. B. Super bowl commercial partnership with Salesforce was titled. The Vault was a massive success, generating over 70 million visits and causing traffic spikes that temporarily crashed the email verification system. Because to solve the puzzle, to get the $1 million, you had to sign up and get into some type of Slack bot, which is Slack is owned by Salesforce, to find the hidden clues. So people had to download and sign up for this and get an email verification. And they crashed the email verification system because of obviously the million dollars to take action. But they knew. They knew this and they were ready because not only was it the, you know, 60 seconds on TV, it was the lead up to it. It was Mr. Beast talking about it. He made content, videos, tweets, talking about the relationship with Salesforce, talking about pitching the idea. He told again, what is he so good at doing? It's entertaining and it's telling a story and it's getting people to take action. Whether it's watching or the first thing he gets people to do is interest. He gets them to click, he gets them to watch. Now he sells them candy bars, then he sells them like Lunchables and now he's, you know, he's, he's, he's building the next bank apparently for Beast Industries. I, I am very excited about this storyline. I, I think it's a fun, fresh, you know, gen, like generational storyline in the sense that okay, the institutions are coming. That's the old money. This is the, I don't even say new money with Mr. Beast, but just the new age of entertainment, the new age of finance pairing up with this new age of entertainment is, is something that, you know, kind of obviously with my content background gets me super jacked up.

[B]

Yeah, he just knows, he just knows how to get clicks, man. The psychology behind it and the entertainment value. Everybody from my 5 year old knows who Mr. Beast is to my mother. So I'm, I think this is going a little bit under the radar honestly as well. We don't hear a ton of buzz around it in the space probably because everyone just wants to tell us what the bitcoin is down. But there's some big things out there going on under the covers that I think at the right time is going to be just an aha moment when it all gets released.

[A]

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[B]

That's Asana.

[A]

Visit [e-mail] that's asana.com yeah. And when we first talked about it, this obviously, man, I'm telling you this. I would love to be in the room with Mr. Beast. I mean, I can only hope. I hope this wasn't done over the phone. I really hope. There was like a boardroom meeting and it's like Mr. Beast, Chamath and Tom Lee all sitting down. Like, what a room. What a room to be in just this, you know, this Bit Mine investment happened and everybody freaked out. Like, the timeline was. I mean, I think it was like, it was polarizing. It was like people either got it right away, but a lot of people didn't. They're like, tom Lee's taking all this money and he's just, he's investing in a YouTuber, a child. And it's like, what? They just don't know who this guy is and what he does. And then for like, I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't think Bit Mine makes the investment into these industries without the roadmap of this deal kind of being talked about and already underway. So, so we kind of saw the first deal of bit mine and Mr. Beast and we're jumping to conclusions of like, okay, well, Jimmy's talked about maybe wanting to get into finance. Will he do it? But I don't think, I don't think Bit Mine, you know, they had privy to the information, like, all right, we're going to sign up for this, you're going to go buy that. And then there's a roadmap that I don't think is completely public yet. And then what, dude? I don't know. Mr. Beast buys ETH. Mr. Beast downloads a wallet. Like, what kind of videos are we looking for in the future? Just, even, even just, you know, does Mr. Beast go to consensus and sit on a panel with Tom Lee? Like, I think there's so many things that could happen here that could be really, really fun for the space and a whole new exposure to the, to the younger audience, which I think is, is needed in a way.

[B]

Yeah, really, really well said. It's just an exciting time and this is why we need to pay attention to these things because the clues are out there. And he's, he's a. Mr. Beast is a, a crypto fan. I've heard of him talk about it quite a bit in the past. So, you know, he's going to try to integrate in some form or fashion and he know, he knows the right buttons to push and just exciting stuff all around.

[A]

Yeah. To close it out. I see here in our, you know, the social media team for crypto 101. Always on point and never miss. I can't believe they're not following friend of the show, Mr. Beast. So we'll give them a follow there to close out the segment and, and we're going to move on. We're going to move on to the. This is, this is right up your alley. Alley. A little bit of Pudgy Penguin news. Pudgy Penguin, you guys have been spot on from the beginning. A lot of highs, a lot of lows, a lot of ups, a lot of downs, but a super fun project to learn about. And you guys were super, super early to the NFTs, super early to the coin, which I know rocketed, you know, at one point it was like, what, 4 or 500% from when you guys gave it out. And so before we go into the, the news around Pudgy Penguin, if you're interested in those type of calls and getting first alerts from Brian and Joe from Momentum Moneymakers, check the description below. I put a $1 trial there so you could take a look inside the Momentum Moneymakers community for just a dollar to get early access to calls. Like when they gave Pudgy Penguin back in the day before it rocketed for 400%. But Pudgy Penguin making moves. The first one I saw is a Valentine's Day. I don't know, we could play the sound, I guess, but it's, it's on the Today show and define like [e-mail] and then moving into.

[C]

Okay, this is very fun.

[A]

I had no idea how viral Pudgy Penguins was online.

[B]

What Pudgy Penguins. Okay, so this couple, Pax and Polly.

[A]

Has been the uber popular Internet born.

[B]

They have toys, they have collectibles.

[A]

Pudgy Penguin on the Today show with 55 year old woman selling Pudgy Penguin bouquets. We talked about how over Christmas I was buying the book for my two year old nephew. I mean that's a wide range and obviously the memes and the impressions that this, I mean, say, say a lack of a better word, this business is getting, is. Is generational. So are you excited for, for the Valentine's Day Pudgy bouquet, Brian? And, and what are you hearing from the. The penguin? The igloo?

[B]

Yeah, I mean I would get myself. I might buy myself a Valentine's bouquet. I could get it for the wife, but hold out. Keep it in the bag.

[A]

I'm sorry. Sold out, Brian.

[B]

Sold out, sold out.

[A]

Gotta go to New York City. Sold out, sold out. Right when they went live. Sold out. You can go. I think, I think they might have already happened. They're having like a New York City event where you go buy one in person, online. Sold out.

[B]

Well, I got feet in the street in New York. I've bought crazier things. So, you know, I might, you might have to see. You might see one in the background next few days. But the Pudgy Penguins team, the price is down because everything's down right now. You know, the market's not responding the way we want. But they continue to produce. I mean, just over the holidays we had like collaborations with the NHL and the Winter Classic. They were on the Vegas sphere. They got the book. They have one of the most fun mobile games. If you're not playing. Not Panga Clash, the Pudgy Penguin game. You can download the Apple Store. My kids play it all the time. Super smooth, super fun. They're selling these plushies. They're a real business with a cryptocurrency backing that make real money and have very unique mechanics. They're integrated with the abstract blockchain. There's just so much I could spend a whole podcast. Why? I think this is one of the most interesting in attractive meme coins out there. I get it. The price is down. Everything's kind of down. But again, it looks like there's some big opportunity because I don't think Luca and the team are sweating the price of bitcoin and Ethereum right now. They're just continuing to produce and meet their roadmap and exceed expectations. Honestly, it feels like on these sheets every week we have something new that they're Building and they're doing.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, it continues on with this week as well. And a little credit card sneak peek here. No details around it other than it seems to be a Pudgy Penguins Visa card. You know, who knows? Does that include points? Are you going to be getting your points back in Pengu tokens? I don't know. Or is it just a card? And you know, obviously, along with the viral meme, any, any thoughts, any thoughts of, of what they might be doing to tie it into the community?

[B]

Brian, that, that would be great. Like I have a Gemini card and I, I rotate through different cryptos. I want to get rewards on it. For some reason, Visa and Pudgy Penguins had some sort of penguin reward. Sign me up. I'm all over it. I wouldn't put it past Luka. If anybody has ever been curious about the story around Pudgy Penguins and Luka and how he's built this brand. It's one of the best stories in all of crypto. And I've said this a million times, I get it. Pudgy Penguins, you can look at it as a meme coin, but as a meme coin or a brand coin, as I want to talk about, they have done more than like 80, 90% of other altcoins out there. They've produced more, they've brought in more revenue, they signed big partnerships. This is just the way things are going to change and you can see how captivating content is. We just got done talking about Mr. Beast and how he shut down Salesforce's website and people were rushing to get the million dollars and do the clues. We like gamification, we like fun. That's exactly what Pudgy Penguins is. So I'm a big believer. I have, I have a holding of penguin in a continue to dollar cost average in on down days because I see the path for this to go parabolic. But it's not going to go anywhere until, you know, the rest of the market just shapes up, it starts to recover, which will happen. So. But it's still. They're just producing. They're not packing it up. They're absolutely making it happen.

[A]

Yeah, they haven't, I mean they haven't stopped. It's every single week they're announcing something that's like, it's not, it's not even like basic, low level hanging fruit. It's like big announcements, big partnerships and again, it's fun and the community's fun and so it's kind of like just crypto in general. It's like, hey, when stuff goes up, the memes are great. When stuff goes down, the memes are great. And you're just kind of in it together. And so it kind of has that toxic, just lore of being a part of a community. And, and I think, you know, nothing, you know, in crypto represents that more than pudgy penguin, especially with their, the, just the virality of what they've, what they've created. Let's talk Super Bowl. Let's talk Super Bowl. All right, Guest, hold on. Before we talk super bowl, we did actually have a great question and we can do more questions at the end if anybody has one. But St. John asked a good question. He just said, hey, what about Jim Cramer's assertion that the US Government added to the strategic bitcoin reserve? I saw this clip on cnbc. Normally it's something I would put in and bring up. I just, I, the way I'm, I don't think Jim Kramer, sometimes he goes off the rails a little bit and just says things like he's, you know, he's on live TV so many hours a day and like, I don't, he, I personally don't think he has any inside information. I think it was almost said in jest, if that makes sense. They were going to a commercial break. They were talking about how crypto is falling. And I think he just kind of threw that out there as like a little jest, almost like a joke. Let me just summarize this. If Jim Cramer is the only one saying it, I don't think it's true because he's not getting any calls from the Trump administration giving him the inside scoop, if that makes sense. Any thoughts on that, Brian Scott?

[B]

Percent didn't get his Jim Craver Kramer's approval before they fired off bitcoin into the reserve. That would, that would be great. I think there's gonna probably be some other, some other hurdles to get over in, in some tell signs if we're adding to the bitcoin reserve, which I think will happen eventually. But I didn't see this, I didn't see this being chatted about too much. But Jim Cramer's kind of the anti signal, you know, so I, I, whenever I hear Jim Cramer, I always like to do the opposite of whatever good, good old Jimmy's doing.

[A]

Yeah, super producer here can always pull whatever up. So I guess since we're talking about.

[C]

I don't, do you think that the.

[A]

President is going to fill the bitcoin reserve? I don't know that will.

[C]

Well, that's what I heard, I heard it's 60.

[A]

He's going to fill the bitcoin reserve. You better cover. So yeah, he just kind of threw that in there. They were the, the longer clip. They're you know, jousting back and forth about it and I think it was said in jest but not something that necessarily can't happen. It's something that we have talked about on the show and these would be great levels to do it. So I see how he kind of reached for that. But yeah, I think that would be something that if they're doing it, they'd be doing it quietly and then announce it. So something we'll keep tabs on. But I, I don't, yeah, anything inside scoop, administration wise, they're, they're not calling Jim Cramer. Trust me, trust me on that one. That, that's one I can, I can put a TiVo guarantee on that one. But let's, let's, let's move on to the Super Bowl. Yeah, it's still crypto based Prediction markets. The volume on the prediction market. Shout out to Brian McNutt on the program with us today in front of your face, the first person I ever heard to call for a prediction market super cycle and that's no doubt what we're in. But the, the prediction markets just crushing handle which is total amount, you know, wagered, if you want to call it a wager over the weekend for the super bowl outpacing some of the, you know, the DraftKings and the Fanduels of the world. So what's your takeaway here, Mr. Mr. Super Cycle.

[B]

Prediction market super cycle is for real, man. I, I think, I think it's, it's coming harder and faster than I expected to put it that way. I, I think we were talking about this before the show and we were talking about like the two big players out here are Kalshi and Polymarket. You can see opinion on the Binance chain but everything else is kind of like lagging behind. I do believe that these will consolidate inform some of the bigger prediction markets out there. And we were talking about insider trading in the truth mechanism and how that's all been brought up in the past. And here's an example. I think the two biggest wagers during the super bowl and correct me Chad if I'm wrong, but I'm almost 99% sure was the first song by Bad Bunny and who the guest was going to be at the halftime show. This is like both good and bad because those markets were moving pretty steadily throughout but it was the most money wagered, hundreds of millions of dollars on those two things. Now there has to be some sort of insider trading TiVo on those. I mean, you're telling me that there wasn't a janitor watching the rehearsal or somebody didn't know that Lady Gaga was coming and had like some sort of like, part in the halftime show? Or there was even markets on, on Polymark and Koshy, like, will Ben Affleck be at the Super Bowl? Like, if you're somewhat friendly with Ben Affleck, you could theoretically call him up, be like, hey, man, you go to the super bowl, and he's like, no, I won't be there and put a wager in. So, so that, that's kind of the good and bad thing about prediction markets is the, it's truth. I mean, what Brian Armstrong said, it's is the closest form of truth as we have. As long as you understand that there's going to be some people out there with certain, certain, certain wagers here. You know, not all wagers, but certain wagers. There's some that don't have outcomes we don't know, but certain wagers, like who's going to be the guest of the halftime show? There's going to be people that know and there's going to be people that wager on that. As long as you know, you don't have insider information, you, you're probably straight up gambling or you have an educated guess of a gamble, and that's okay. People do that all the time. But you have to understand there's some people with some insider information out there and you could get farmed slightly, but it's not stopping people from flocking to these prediction markets, which I believe this prediction market super cycle is going to continue to grow. I know Vlad at Robinhood has called it a prediction market super cycle. I think he released their numbers recently. Crypto is a little bit down, but their prediction market stats were out of this world. And you and I talked about before the show about Kalshee, and I was like, a big reason Kalshi is absolutely popping off is you can go to your Robinhood app and it just pops up like predictions, like wagers, whatever you want to do. So and the other unique thing about it, even if you don't like wagering or gambling or you don't have interest in any of that, and that's great as well, it's still one of the best metrics to like, see what's happening. Like, you, you, you can actually see Spikes of. Once that Clarity act gets signed, probably a couple hours before the Clarity act signs, we're going to see a huge move on the actual yes, no for the Clarity act on prediction markets way before it's even announced. So it's one of the best places to source news, in my opinion. What are your thoughts on this whole prediction market cycle we've been seeing?

[A]

Well, I think we saw it with Kevin Warsh for the Fed decision. He was, you know, in no man's land at, you know, 7, 8, 10%, and then he shoots up to the favorite, you know, basically overnight. So, yeah, and I, I think for people having insider information, I think that's, I think what Brian Armstrong said that, right. It was like, it's a, it's a, it's not a bug. It's actually a feature of, of knowing the truth. It's, you know, we've all been through different, you know, realizations or the last, you know, whatever, you know, 10 years, decade of understanding. Like, hey, sometimes the news flow isn't, you know, maybe as like, face value, truthful or. I think the polling was the biggest thing that got me. It was. And we've talked about, like, the Michigan, you know, Michigan University inflation, you know, survey or something, and it's like, oh, actually, like, it was ridiculous. It was like, oh, we're all gonna die tomorrow. Like, inflation's out of control and like, you know, a year, two years later, it's not. That's not the case.

[B]

Case.

[A]

And then, you know, the polling around, you know, obviously the political stuff was a little off as well, so it's an interesting place to go to see, you know, who's really putting their money where their mouth is. And again, for super bowl stuff, yeah, there's, there's always going to be people that know, you know, if you were, if you were a Bush for, for Bad Bunny, if you're one of the people that dressed up as a Bush, you know, you had rehearsals, and my guess is during the rehearsal, you know, you're going through the list and you're learning what's going on. And there's always people that know it would be nice to be one of those people for sure. And, and I hope maybe one day I can be in that because it'd be nice to have that edge. But, yeah, I think you gotta understand, you gotta understand where and what it's coming from. And it's, it's even still not a guarantee. I think the, the super bowl example with Ben Affleck, I think it was, God I can't remember who it was. Was it Matt? No. Mark, maybe Mark Wahlberg, some famous person. There's, there's something going viral on, on like the, in, in the Internet. It was like, you know, somebody's daughter goes to Clemson and was dating somebody and like told him like, oh yeah, my dad's going to the Super Bowl. And this whole frat like took, took the action, apparently won like a fair amount of money on it. I think it was Wahlberg, don't quote me. But like that, you know, like again, there's going to be people that have wins and, and for like, I looked at the odds for who was going to be the guest on the super bowl, and Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin were already at like 82%. And I didn't wager. I was like. And it was 82. I think it was like 80, 85% and everybody else was at like 9%. And so I, I looked at that and I'm trained and in the markets enough now. I didn't gamble on, I was like, I bet Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin are going to be in the Super Bowl. And sure enough, there they were. So, you know, it is, it is a cool place to go and find that information. I, I like, I like the prediction markets. We talked about this pre show. Surprised how fast they grew. Obviously football, especially in states where gambling, FanDuel and DraftKings aren't yet there's a huge boost of handle for that. And I think just football in general is the most gambled on sport. So now that football's over, I think that comes down a little bit. And then you're going to get people like that think they have edges that don't that are probably going to get wiped out. So I think you'll see it come back in a little bit. And one thing, I as a big Robin Hood guy over the years gave it out at $8 and like 50 cents on this one crypto 101 podcast before it went to $130 a share for people that forget. I'm not, I like that they have it. I'm not a huge fan of it being on the front page of my brokerage, like, hey, you have your life savings here and you're trying to figure out your risk reward. And, and you know, what's my long term, what's my short term, my stocks? And then like, hey, Patriots money line, you know, plus 250, jump in, big guy. And I'm like, I, you know, a little cat cash and the money market Fund might jump in there. I think. I think you really want to separate that, because I do look at it as gambling. Unless Mark Wahlberg's daughter calls me and tells me that her dad's going to be at the super bowl, then maybe we have a little bit of an edge. But other than that, it does, it does feel like gambling to me. Any final thoughts?

[B]

Yeah. I mean, it's. It's straight up gambling. If you don't have an inside edge, it's straight up gambling. But I would jump on board. I thought about that as well. With the super bowl being over and now, like, football, and it's because I was like, the super cycle is coming. But we do have some very interesting catalysts for prediction markets upcoming. We're in the heart of the Olympics right now, and I'm dying to know what these prediction markets are doing with the Olympics, because it feels like the Olympics are getting some. Have you seen that quad God? The quad guy?

[A]

He's unbelievable. He's unbelievable, dude.

[B]

I was watching old, old routines of his on YouTube last night. I'm like, this guy, like, how did we not know about him? Feels like the Olympics are just getting more, like, talked about this year. But I bet prediction markets are probably eating it up. And then when those shut down, we're going to be in the heart of the midterms. This guy. What? I mean, look at his fit. Like Vader. I mean, they, like, had to outlaw that move or something. I heard, like, you weren't allowed to do the flip in competition, but they let it in the Olympics, and the quad God comes out and does it. Like, I watched him last night, and they were like, his, his show is so technically more difficult than everybody else. It's like, even if he falls, he would still win.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm like, this.

[A]

This guy is unbelievable. Yeah. We need to get some action on. On the quad God here. Fun fact. Fun fact for the listeners. When I was in college, I was a Zamboni driver, so I was a Zamboni driver at the ice rink at the University of Delaware. Go, Hens. And we had a huge, huge figure skating program. That's where. So Johnny Weir, who hosts, he's the color guy of the Olympics, he trained at Delaware. So I used to Zamboni the ice for Johnny Weir back in the day. So I got to, you know, hey, yeah, I don't.

[B]

I.

[A]

We don't talk. We don't talk figure skating much on the show. But again, just like my one class of political science, you could say I am A figure skating expert because I zambonied for Johnny Weir. Well, the holidays have come and gone once again. But if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift. Well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year.

[B]

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[B]

See terms you kept the ice cut for. It was clean and cut for, for good old Johnny. For you. You know exactly how. Hey, we spent some time together at some sort of simulator, shooting some balls and pucks and I was like, tebow might be the most athletic guy I've ever met because I knew you were gonna be good at like hitting the golf ball, throw the football and you pick up the, the old twig and just start firing the biscuit. Left corner, right corner. You're like, look at the five hole. I'm like, did you play hockey? You're like, yeah. I was like, okay, okay, so you're, you're, you're pretty much an expert if you ask me.

[A]

Yeah, and, and the, yeah, just silky mitts and you know, Samboni driver, all that stuff. But you know, the people, the people are entertained. I thought we might lose some people there. We're still have, we're still at the high water mark of the live. So I think they were entertained by that story. One final thing for all the crypto juggernauts out there, we're going to talk about the Coinbase commercial for the Super Bowl. So only one crypto commercial this year. Unlike the that one year, the bull market where there was all the Tom Brady's and the Steph Curry's and the Larry Davids and it was just crypto. Crypto, crypto. Only one from Coinbase this year and it drew a divided crypto Twitter. Did you see the commercial, Brian?

[B]

I, I, I did see, I did see the commercial and I was like humming along to that backstreet. I was vibing with that backstreet voice song, like, right, my wheelhouse. And I was like in and out of it because I was like messing around with something on my phone. And then I was looking down when the Coinbase logo came up at the Top, you know, where like you're going to show the video. And then the people at the house I was at, they weren't doing what the video is going to do, but they were like, wait, that's a Coinbase commercial. Blah, blah, blah. My wife looks at me, she's like, did you know this? I was like, yeah, Brian Armstrong just hit me up. And he was like, hey B, we're running the Backstreet Boys karaoke commercial. Had a good chuckle. But it was, it, it did what it was supposed to do. It got people talking.

[A]

It got people talking. So I'm, I'm somebody who, you know, I've made, you know, music videos and commercials and so I, I get excited about just the creative direction of ads and I was somebody who, and I, and I love big fans of Coinbase, obviously friends of the show. Truly. We've had number of people from different Coinbase on the show and they've had so many viral thought provoking ads in the past that went viral on crypto Twitter. The one that comes to mind was the, the one with the house where they were like, oh, you bought this house? They compared like buying a house to the value of bitcoin. And it was so thought provoking and it got everybody talking in such a unique way and maybe, maybe. And again, I, so I love that stuff. Just the creative, the writing. There's a writing there, there's an execution there of the visual storytelling to bring you to that thought provoking moment. I like that stuff and I think that their creative department has crushed it. Doing that, that again for people that didn't see it, it was basically just your screen, your TV screen turned into karaoke and you started singing the Backstreet Boys. And then every. So the thought is everybody's singing the song and then at the end it just goes Coinbase. And, and here, here was this. So here was the reaction of a lot of people, a lot of what we'll call normies, not friends of the show at all, reacting. I saw a lot of videos like this. So let's see how the normal person reacted. Yeah, Just had to, you know, for the music, had to cut that off a little bit. But yeah, I mean, Coinbase comes on, That's our exit liquidity.

[B]

You, you want to know how retail feels right now with the dip. That's how they feel. And you want to know what you should probably do is always fade retail.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's how re. That was a great sentiment. We've, we've put commercials I think there was a Solana commercial at one point that was so bad that went online that Brendan and I put like a chart, it was like a Solana bottom. Like we put the Solana commercial. I'm gonna put the Coinbase chart on Bitcoin on Friday. When I get Brandon, I'm gonna get his take on it and we're gonna add the Coinbase super bowl commercial to it. Because if, if anything, that's a, that's a bad, bad sentiment for retail. And there's more. There's a lot of clips like that. And so the people that like the commercial said, hey, it got everybody engaged. And then you shoved Coinbase in their face and they saw it and they're talking about it. And I just think that our space, my take was, you know, I, I wasn't a fan of it in the sense that I think they've produced so many great ads before that it would have been interesting to try one of those really thought provoking ones. Because you have everybody, there's certain people that just watch the super bowl for the ads and so you have that engaged audience and normally, like the, if you go around and ask everybody that just flipped off the TV or booed the TV be like, oh, you didn't like that, did you? Did you watch the bitcoin? Compared to a house commercial, they'd be like, what are you talking about? I've never seen that. So you had an opportunity, I think, to deliver a thought provoking message because everybody's engaged and you could have done it in the same way where you tell a story and then slowly ease into the bitcoin compared to a house thing or something like that. And I don't know, I thought you had a chance to do something coffer broking super fun. Everybody was singing. I saw Pat Metric David saying like, oh, they should give him a raise. It did its job. I mean, maybe. So, like, next time when people feel fomo, they're going to be like, oh, remember we sang. Remember we say Backstreet Boys and they'll download Coinbase. Like, is that, Was that the angle? Maybe I'm crazy. But yeah, I didn't, I don't know, I just didn't think it got the awareness of the brand. But it was kind of in a negative way. So when people think that they're going to laugh and be like, oh, remember we sang Backstreet Boys and then flipped off the TV because it was Coinbase, I don't know if when bitcoin goes back to 150k if they're going to be like, oh, remember when we sang Backstreet Boys? Like, let's download Coinbase and buy some bitcoin. I just. I don't know. That's my opinion. That's my take. I saw a lot of people, especially big time KOLs. Everybody loved it. It was great. It was so fun to be real. It was the second best Backstreet Boys out of the Super Bowl. T Mobile had the first one. They had the real, you know, the Backstreet Boys in person. So it wasn't even the best Backstreet Boys ad, but a little fun, A.

[B]

Little fun dancer there. Yeah, I mean, I guess. I guess it all goes back to there's no such thing as bad publicity sort of thing. And you and I spent five, six, eight minutes talking about Coinbase and Coinbase commercial. So there's, there's a couple, a couple different ways to skin the cat there. But I think the biggest takeaway from that is to fade the public. Coming from the prediction market. Degenerate gambler in me. Fade Jim Cramer. Fade the public and you probably, probably do. Okay, so that's, that's kind of a bottom sig, a local bottom signal, if you ask me. But you know.

[A]

Okay, Spin zone. Spin zone.

[B]

Ready? Ready?

[A]

Listen. Spin zone. It was market research for Coinbase. That's what it was.

[B]

They know it wasn't to try to.

[A]

People they already know it was market research. It was a. It was a, you know, 60. I mean, and I guess the caught, you know, the cost of the ad was really cheap. Well, besides, I don't know what they have to write a check for. Write a check for the Backstreet Boys, but I'm sure Brian Armstrong got like a private concert or something, got VIP tickets at the Sphere was included in that contract, so he doesn't mind. But yeah, you know, maybe it was just market research. I'm gonna put it on the chart. I'll have Brendan put the Coinbase super bowl ad on the chart where everybody was out of their mind flipping off the TV and that. Yeah, it could be definitely a fade. Retail bottom. Any. Any final thoughts, Brian? If there's any questions, throw them in the chat. London has no idea about the Super Bowl. That's not true. Come on. We love. We love the Premier League over here. There's a lot of people that love the super bowl over in London. Where do they play? What stadium do they play in? Wembley. I mean, Wembley sells out every year when the Jags go over there.

[B]

Yeah, I was just gonna Say, aren't we pushing the NFL pretty hard on London right now? That's like. That's everywhere.

[A]

I think France, next year, Germany, Brazil. There's a. There's a game. I think. Think it's unbelievable. We got some. Any. Any questions from the chat? Toss them in there. If not, we'll wrap up. Brian, any final thoughts? Super Bowl Quad God. Anything Quad God meme.

[B]

Coin.

[A]

Can you do some research for that?

[B]

Maybe I will. I'll bring it on next week. I'll be. I'll be wearing my money jacket if I find it, because how can you fade the. How could you fade a guy that's called the quad God and he does figure skating? No, My final thoughts are things are going to be okay. They really are. It's going to be gross for a little while. Like I said at the beginning, we're gonna have to put our big boy pants on. But it's all gonna absolutely pay off in the future. And I don't think the future is that far off. Again, it's not like a week or two away, but it's. It's not. We're not years away or anything along those lines. This is huge opportunities, and I put my money where my mouth is in. And not only the. The majors might be go. The majors might be going down. There's still some opportunity in the space as well with this whole AI crypto integration and in the world that's happening. So you need to absolutely be paying attention. And everybody that I refer over to, like when they want to learn more about crypto, so they just keep limiting. The text is coming to me. I send them to the Rundown. I think the Rundown is one of the best shows. Just golfing with some buddies on over the weekend. And my buddy Redbird, Shout out if you're listening. Was kind of asking me about the market. I was like, obviously you didn't tune in on Friday. And he goes, what? And I sent him the link. I go, you listen to this and then you come with your questions. He sends me a message last night. He goes, no questions. Jenny Wealth.

[A]

I need to know what Redbird's warm water is. Ask where his warm water is.

[B]

He's actually an ex NHL player. I didn't want to call him out his real name, but he's actually ex NHL player. Great dude.

[A]

Hell yeah. Well, that's. That's all for us today, everybody. One final call. If you want that early access to the. You know, the gems that Brian and Joe are finding, even, you know, when the market's down like the hyper liquids or the meme coins that are running. There's a dollar trial for momentum money makers in the link. Please give it a try. If not, the least you could do give us a thumbs up bottom right, hit the logo and subscribe. We really appreciate everybody tuning in. We love doing the rundown. Clearly an hour is in eight minutes folks. That might be a record for a bear market episode and that just kind of shows how we really feel about this. We're not going anywhere. We love doing the content. We truly believe in the space and the rundown and the Crypto 101 podcast. Encrypt Nation is the best place to get all the information, education and community that you need to not only survive the bear market, but thrive on the way back up. When we do hit there, that's going to be all for us today. It is Wednesday. We'll be back on Friday with Brendan and we'll be back, you know, forever because we're here and we love you guys. We really appreciate everybody tuning in. Have a great rest of your day and we'll talk to you soon. Bye Bye everybody. Working across teams is tough, but Asana helps you handle it. That's because Asana is where humans and AI coordinate work together. AI can spot roadblocks and assign work in a snap so everything and everyone stays on track. That's how work gets handled. That's asana. Visit [e-mail] that's a S A N A dot com Asana youa know that wellness goal you set at the start of the year? It's not too late to stick with it and make your future self proud. Especially with the all in One Nutrition Shake from Kachava with 25 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, greens, adaptogens and more. No fillers, no nonsense, just the highest quality ingredients. Stick with your wellness goals. Go to kachava.com and use code NEWS for 15% off. That's K-A-C-H-A-V-A.com code NEWS.