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- [00:00]
Brian
Foreign.
- [00:09]
Joe
What's up everybody? Welcome back to a special edition of the Crypto 101 podcast. It is another rendition of what I deemed Meme Coin mania. We've got Brian and Joe here, our crypto mavericks, you know, home of the momentum money makers. When stuff is going on in the so called trenches, we like to bring them on so they can break it down and there's no better time to do that. Over the last two weeks I think we've seen at least I could count off the top. I had two top tier meme coin, trench warfare type things going on that we need to break down today. Number one being jail stool, number two being Libra. So that's what we're going to be doing here today. We're going to give you guys the inside details of everything that went down and hopefully give you some clarity whether, you know, you're somebody that knows about everything that went down and looking for some of the inside details or maybe, you know, more general to the space and not in the trenches or on X every day and are looking for some clarity around the situation that went down with these two things. We're here to do it today. So Brian and Joe, welcome. Brian, how you doing? I know, I know you're in the trenches as of as Joe is as well, but you know, any nicks, any wounds? What's, what's, what's up with you?
- [01:23]
Brian
Yeah, man, I mean some of my bags bled the wrong way, unfortunately. It's even I, I had a position in jail still. I know we're gonna talk a little bit about it and I'm a little down on my buys. I thankfully was on an airplane and missed the Libra Argentina president rug. So that's a saving grace. I would have probably aped into that and didn't, didn't, didn't necessarily get too hurt there. But overall the, the meme coin market, the AI market, just the macro market, Solana, it was 200 bucks on the 14th of February is now down in the 160s, so everyone's bags are bleeding a little bit now. We'll get a little bit deeper into it, but I'm as optimistic as ever. Maybe it's blind optimism, but I think there's, we needed a little bit of a cleanse here, a little bit of a flush out. Gus wading through what's happening and I, I'm bullish on some sectors and a little bit more bearish on some others and we'll dive a little bit deeper, I'm sure.
- [02:20]
Joe
Yeah, I think That's a good point. I mean, you guys clearly have your own way of going about these markets and you have your strategies and it's worked plenty of times before. So just because maybe like there's a curveball in the jail st and you know, the Libra thing, it's hard to really see that coming as well. Like we'll talk about. But that doesn't mean you desert, you know, your fundamental approach to how you trade these markets. But, Joe, how are you doing?
- [02:44]
Dave Portnoy
Yeah, I got some collateral damage. Although I wasn't in jail stool or, you know, the Argentinian one, Seoul got hit and then I got dragged down with it. I was a little bit looking on the side here. Side note, Unicorn Fart Dust is interviewing Luca nets from Pudgy Penguins. It's a weird thing happening right now. Just when you think nothing's happening, there's always something happening. And I guess that's the tale of the last two weeks. I'm like, nothing is going to happen, Brian. But jail still come out. Crime is legal. And then Argentinian president Coin came out. And I'm happy, we'll be happy to dive into the details.
- [03:17]
Joe
Yeah, not the first president to launch a coin, as we all know. But yeah, let's dive into it. So we're going to start off with jail stool because Dave Portnoy, as we know, kind of led the charge on that one and then was also kind of involved in Libra 1. So we'll tee that one up second. But timeline wise, you know, Dave's been hinting he's. He's dipped in, he's dipped out of, you know, crypto, world famous for, you know, buying bitcoin at the wrong time. I think he's now a bitcoin holder, a big XRP holder as well. And he is ddtg, growable, has always been around, you know, the finance and trading stuff. So he's hinted at launching his own meme coin and he finally learned how to use a phantom wallet and dive into the salon ecosystem and start trading some of these meme coins. And I think he. He got really excited when he figured out how to do it. And, you know, obviously a tweet of his launched a couple ones super bowl week. The guy basically took over super bowl week. Like, we covered a couple weeks back on the rundown. So I think he started getting the heat of like, you know, kind of basically dumping on people. Right. And so, so then he found this jail stool one. So it wasn't something that he created. He wasn't the dev, he wasn't involved. It just got sent to his wallet. And he thought it was funny because it was called Jail stool. And there's a picture of him behind, behind bars. And so he decided that he was going to back this project, throw some money in and tweet about it. And so to set the stage for you guys, he basically said, hey, I'm buying this. I'm not going to sell it until it hits a billion dollar market cap. And off to the races we went on Jail Stool. So that's kind of teeing it up for you. You know, Joe, I'll fire it to you to kind of lead us into the next phase. And then I want to hear you guys, you know, from your perspective. You know, how did you look at this? How did you break it down and then kind of give us the storyline from there? Guys, it's been a massive year in crypto with big price movements, headlines everywhere, and major institutions with even countries getting involved. That's why you're here listening to this podcast right now. And if you've been curious but feel like you've missed the boat, don't worry, there's still time, like we talk about on these episodes every week. With only 21 million Bitcoin ever to exist, it's designed to be scarce. And that scarcity can mean real staying power. And the team at Coin Flip Preferred believe stepping into crypto should be simple, secure, and on your terms. That's why they pair you with a dedicated crypto expert who guides you through every step, from your very first transaction to more advanced solutions. Plus, Coin Flip is a registered money services business and does not custody funds, so you stay in control and protected. With nearly a decade of collective experience, Coin Flip Preferred's client managers know the space inside and out. If you're ready to explore the world of digital assets with confidence, visit CoinFlip Tech Crypto 101, or use the promo code Crypto101 for 50% off transaction fees. Valid 1 per customer until May 30, 2025.
- [06:12]
Dave Portnoy
Yeah, sure thing. Hey, you sold that car yet?
- [06:16]
Hayden Davis
Yeah, sold it to Carvana.
- [06:17]
Dave Portnoy
Oh, I thought you were selling to that guy.
- [06:20]
Hayden Davis
The guy who wanted to pay me in foreign currency, no interest over 36 months?
- [06:25]
Joe
Yeah, no.
- [06:27]
Hayden Davis
Carvana gave me an offer in minutes, picked it up and paid me on the spot.
- [06:30]
Joe
It was so convenient.
- [06:32]
Brian
Just like that?
- [06:33]
Joe
Yeah.
- [06:34]
Dave Portnoy
No hassle? None. That is super convenient. Sell your car to Carvana and swap. Hassle.
- [06:39]
Joe
For convenience, pick up.
- [06:40]
Dave Portnoy
These may apply. I saw on the Timeline right away. A lot of the trench warriors, the web three degens take the opposite. I don't know if they were shorting jailstool but they're like, we can't wait for this guy to experience, you know, web3 full on in terms of like token launching and memes and how to operate and how an individual like himself is kind of out of his arena, so to say. And it kind of played out exactly what they hoped. Meaning like, you know, I mean I can't go full in the depth but really he tried to pump the coin. Didn't pump at all.
- [07:14]
Brian
Right.
- [07:14]
Dave Portnoy
And then everything. He tried auto mechanics that he tried to make it, you know, a billion dollar, a billion dollar token, which, you know, there's very few of those. There's only like what, 10 or 11 of them. This was back a few months ago. Now it's even harder to get to a billion dollar market cap. So for so him just saying that alone is like he doesn't know what he's talking about. Like there's, there's no way you, it's very, very hard to hit a billion dollar market cap in the world of meme coins. I now stop there.
- [07:39]
Joe
Well, Brian, I know that you were, you were more in the trenches I guess early on. I know I was texting you basically right away. And so I guess it depends on how you look at it, right? Like yes, when you compare it to a million dollar mark, a billion dollar market cap, he's not going to get there. However, this thing had some legs right off the get go here probably, I'd say because I do remember from the tweet to then he hosted a space later in the day there was about like a six hour window where you could have caught the rocket up there for any. I mean correct me if I'm wrong, Brian, what do you think it was like from the time he tweeted it to the space? The six hour window could have been like a 10 20x window. You could have got in there. But what, what were you seeing on the front end of this where, you know, it was getting into the 100, you know, $200 million market cap range.
- [08:25]
Brian
I hammered it. I really did. I, I hammered it. I still have most of my bags as well. I've wrote it down. Probably not the best trade I've ever made, but the thesis behind of it, behind it. I felt pretty confident at the time because I mean we're talking about Dave Portnoy who was onboarding stoolies, retail customers that have never experienced Crypto in their life. He's showing them how to buy it, how to sell it. He's been talking about crypto. There's obviously within that circle there's some degenerate behavior. And he was running it up. He was talking about it. We're talking about the super bowl week, one of the biggest media days ever. And this guy launches a coin. I'm like tweeting at him, wear jail stool shirt to the super bowl, use it as incentives. He launches merch. He's like 100% of the profits are going to jail stool. I did not think this was going to be like a long term buy hold, but I might be on the opposite. Joe and I haven't even talked about, I guess that in depth. I did think it was going to get to 500 million to a billion. I was like, I don't see how this is going to stop. It was just ripping. People were anxious for this because the weeks before that we got kind of wrecked on just some macro news. We got wrecked on the deep seat news out of China, which was like nothing at the end of the day. And then secondly, Trump tariffs and so that kind of hurt our bag. So we're all kind of grasping, looking for the next hot thing. And we see Dave Portnoy with 3.2 million followers on Twitter, who's host, the Davey Day Trader, talking about this in you people definitely had an opportunity to get in and get out. I was not personally disciplined enough. And that's a learning lesson. Personally I'm gonna take because I, I am notorious for if I catch a 2 or 3x I really pull my initial profits out. But I was euphoric. I was like, this thing is gonna keep running. Just mention it a few more times. Dave, unfortunately, he kind of got caught up in the trench warfare a little bit, was attacking people on crypto, Twitter, you know, calling them names. People started to rebel. He started to kind of in, in the thing is everything that Dave did like people were calling, hey, you rugged these other coins. I'm kind of on his side of where he was openly like, I'm going to buy jail stool. Keep putting money into it. I'm not going to sell my tokens. As far as I know, as of today, he hasn't done. But then he was open. He's like, I'm going to buy these other coins and not sell that and, and sell them. And people are still aping into it. I mean, I didn't get into those coins because I, I, he was literally telling us in Black and white, what he was going to do. And I was like, please put the money into jail stool. So, long story short, after the dust settled, I definitely realized I needed to be more disciplined there as a. As a trader, a meme coin trader there. But I. I was euphoric. I thought this thing was going to run and keep on running. And I'm frankly kind of shocked it's sitting at the market cap. It's at. I thought we would have been at least 50, 60 million still.
- [11:23]
Joe
Yeah, I was kind of on the other side of you where I did the classic get in, get out early. You know, small, small trades, small profits, excited about it, you know, like a 2 or 3x. But like, I was in. So I was traveling. I was in Hawaii, and I was like, I'm not paying attention to this all day. This is gonna. This is gonna end up, like, taking my enjoyment out of my trip. And then I remember later in the afternoon, I saw where it got up to. I was like, oh, holy. This thing. This thing moved. But yeah, it goes. It goes. It goes both ways. And I think somebody like Dave, who's very volatile and like, I agree with you in the sense, like, he's, you know, said what he's gonna do, which is, you know, a lot more. A lot more transparent than what we're going to talk about next with. With Libra. But it all ties in together because I think there's a couple characters that are in the same thing. So I guess the story of Jail Soul is probably not over yet. And Dave has even admitted, like, he's looking into launching his own token with utility or whatnot. So, you know, I think that's. Correct me if I'm wrong because you guys are. Are the experts here. Isn't that something that you crave in the sense of if somebody like a celebrity is going to launch a token and it was somehow tied to, you know, barstool or the success of Dave as an individual or the company, like, with utility or special benefits. Like, that's the whole thing that gets people excited to get in. Right. So he kind of tried it, I guess, initially with like, the jail stool merch. I think people might want a little bit more if there's a true, like, Dave slash barstool token. But I think if there was anybody to really put in the work and try to see if it was possible, like, I think Dave would be right up there as somebody who might try to launch something with true utility.
- [13:02]
Dave Portnoy
Yeah, that's kind of what I saw. I. I only Peeked at it briefly during the weekend at launch because, you know, we were busy with super bowl, and I. I'm on the other side of this meeting. I know Dave more so for his pizza reviews, more so than for barstool.
- [13:16]
Brian
And.
- [13:17]
Dave Portnoy
And we were. Or at least people on my side were waiting for him to launch a token. So this came out of, like, left field. Like, he didn't have true ownership of it. Right. And although he did try to be loud. Loud doesn't work in web 3. The louder you are, the worse it gets you. Actually, you don't say anything. That's kind of what ended the Trump coin, is when something. When he said something, it was when something bad happened. And that's kind of what happened. We're all waiting for this amazing halftime super bowl announcement, but all it was was people getting upset. He's like, oh, basically he's buying jail stool. And that was his big announcement. That was, like, so dumb. So he didn't understand the pump. Pump mechanics, I guess, of the DJ world. And that's why it kind of fell flat, in my opinion, as an outsider. Not like a huge.
- [14:05]
Joe
And I think my. My counter. That is. I agree with everything you're saying, but, like, Dave's also a master of media, and so at the end of the day, he's actually winning. Whether he's winning or losing or the coin goes up or down, it's like he's actually winning. The guy took over super bowl week media with jail stool. By the end of it, in my opinion, it was like. I mean, it was right up there from 20 and trending on Twitter to, you know, even people that really aren't in the crypto space talking about it. Obviously, the barstool fan base talking about it. And it's like, yeah, I think he's interested in it and wants to partake in it, but he. But he's a media mastermind, and he always has been. And so, you know, if you're in the crypto space just learning about Dave pornography. Oh, isn't that the pizza guy? It's like, well, you. You know, he is just. He is the pizza guy, but he's also a media mastermind. So, you know, take it with a grain of salt of, you know, he's. He's not native to the crypto space, but you got to understand where he's coming from, too. So as long as he's being loud and yelling and trending on Twitter, he's. He's winning. And he certainly, in my opinion, won the Super Bowl. Week with another master class of media. But, yeah, I think. And, Brian, if you could just close. Close the cap on this one. And we'll move on to Libra, where Dave is still kind of involved with the Hayden character. But then kind of, you know, Dave got the backlash of Web3Crypto, Twitter, and he started, you know, calling everybody crybabies, because at the end of the day, it's just one big game of musical chairs. And just because the music stopped and you didn't have a chair and you wish you did, and a chair being, you know, profits that, you know, I think he. He's basically calling everybody out, and I. I don't think he's wrong again. Yeah, maybe rug pulling and whatnot isn't the right way to do it, but at the end of the day, like, you're buying all these meme coins in hopes of. Of making profit. And, like, you know, plenty of people can say, like, oh, I want the community of this, that, and the other thing. But then you probably shouldn't be buying jail stool, and you definitely shouldn't be buying greed. And then if you want community and culture, you 100 shouldn't be buying greed too. So how did this whole thing end? Brian put it. Put a cap on it for us.
- [16:04]
Brian
Yeah, well, just. Just to jump on what you guys said. Some things that made me more bullish about it is I was watching the spaces of Dave's, and he was talking about launching his own barstool token, but he was gonna. He was gonna airdrop it one to one on jail stool people. So that made me not want to drop my jail stool token as well, because Portnoy in barstool is, like, exactly what I'm looking for. Somebody has media attention, a master marketer, and has a captive audience that really follows him. So there's so many ways that they could apply utility to this. And then he has this partnership at the end of the day with Kraken, and he wants to keep that partnership intact. He want. He doesn't want to, I think, screw over his stooly followers. And a lot of people that started to buy that token bought it on Kraken. And I was like. Once it started going down after that, I was like, all right, he's talking about launching his own token. He probably wants to make all his people that bought it on Kraken whole again. So he's gonna do everything in the best of his ability to get this coin back up to where it was. And like Joe said, being loud in the web 3 space doesn't always work out. I. I still don't hate the token right now. It's down, and it's down bad. But I'm just like, kind of made a commitment to myself. I was like, well, you've wrote. You've wrote it this far, Brian, so you're gonna. You're gonna ride it for a little longer. Because if. If Barstool does create a token and put some actual utility and airdrops at the jail stool holders, I do think there could be a revival there. We've seen it in a lot of coins now. Just overall the market. This is so. Yeah, you were right. Then he started launching, like, greed and greed to these tokens. Oh, this is something I want to get over is whenever Jose didn't have ownership of jail Stool, I was actually bullish on that. Kind of just the organic way he took it over. He. He organically became the number one holder when the dev sold. And he's like, well, hell, I'm the number one holder. He's essentially the face of it now without anybody having more coins than him. And I became even more bullish. And I was need to rethink that process. But part of me is like, I don't think I miss saw it. It just wasn't the best trade. And that happens. I mean, it just. Just happens. I mean, and you're right, you know, like, it.
- [18:15]
Joe
I'm sorry, Go ahead.
- [18:16]
Brian
We're trying to make money. Well, just trying to make money. And you know something? You have to take the lumps as much as you do whenever you get big wins. And. And that was one of them. I. I still like the percentages.
- [18:27]
Joe
You guys are momentum money makers or crypto Navy Seals. The crypto Mavericks. I've said it a million times. You know, you guys are in the trenches and. And it is. It's a. It's a game of musical chairs. But with your research and diving into the industry and seeing where this stuff is going, it's like that old phrase, you know, you got to know where the puck's going. And so if you guys identify a room with a bunch of chairs open and you think the music's gonna start playing, that's where you guys go. But you've done that before through, you know, your research and deep diving in the trenches. And then this. This thing just came out of nowhere. It was a tidal wave of excitement and yelling, like Joe said. And, yeah, like, you know that. Then it's a different game. It's like, okay, like, are we hearing about this early? Are we late. What's the future of it? So I think it was, it was a different kind of game. So I don't think anybody's wrong whether you stayed away from it or Joe and then our other people in web3 just completely stayed away from it and then it tanked, you know, 18 hours later and you say haha, gotcha. Or you know, if you're somebody that, you know, has Dave's notifications on like myself and you saw the tweet, you know, at a penny and I was like, I'll just dive into this whatever. And then it ended up working out. It's like there's, there's two sides of the, the coin, pun intended. And I agree with you. I think the relationship with Kraken is really interesting because Dave always does right by his sponsors, especially the big ones. And to have a crack in like Davey Day Trader presented by Kraken, that's a big number, That's a big number to, to sign a check over to Dave. And he always, you know, I know he really does right by his employees, he does right by his, you know, his investors, he does right by his sponsors. And you know, I can say that as a former employee, I think, you know, people that listen to the show now under, you know, I've heard that a couple of times but if there's anybody new out there, you know, I spent years at Barstool and, and I, I think he wants nothing more. I, there, there's a, there's a vendetta like Dave is very vengeful. And the first time we did this crypto thing I was involved. I helped produce the, the Safe Moon video. I'll never forget in the office the buzz around like which coin did Dave pick? We all got to get in and then we found out it was Safe Moon and nobody knew how to buy it. We had to have like this guy Quigs, a legend of the game, had like literally an office hours station at his desk showing people how to download the wallet and get it. I think it was Trust wallet, maybe I can't remember exactly which one but you know, he's, he's doing like, he's got a PowerPoint show and everybody had to download the wallet to buy Safe Moon. And as we all know, awful decision, didn't work out. And so, but I think that Dave remembers that and is like, man, I want a winner, I want a winner. And so I think that the, between that and the partnership with Kraken, I don't think this story's over quite Yet. So we'll put a pin in for now, and, you know, we're going to revisit it when anything new comes up. But let's transition. Let's move to. Literally, you think that was a big thing over super bowl week, and you're like, okay, this market will cool down. Not nothing crazy will happen this week. Not the case. We have another nation state, Argentina, launching a Libra token with a lot of controversy around the setup of who set it up, who okayed it, who was helping launching it. There's this character named Hayden who also crossed paths with Dave involved. So we got a lot to unpack here. So I don't know where you guys want to start with this one. I wasn't in the weeds with this one as much as I think you guys were where I was with Jail Stool. So who do you think? Where are we starting with this Libra Token?
- [21:50]
Dave Portnoy
I can share my screen and kind of give people a visual of what we're talking about. So here's the arch. There he is. Go ahead, Brian.
- [22:01]
Brian
Let me just say one thing before you dive into it, Joe. I. I think that the Libra token totally screwed us over with jail stool, by the way, and everything in the market. I don't think we would be as down as bad on jail stool. And we're gonna get into this Libra story and how it bled the market, but I think this kind of was the cherry on top that exhausted people of just like, what the heck is going on? And then they just started to sell off jail stool, and people sold off jail stool to get into this Libra token because it was the new shiny toy. So we saw cell pressure on Jail Stool attention from Jail Stool leave into this Libra token, and then we'll talk about what happened there. But this. This was just kind of like a perfect storm that really just kind of screwed up the market. It wasn't just meme coins. It was like Solana in other parts of it. Joe, I'll let you get into it, but I just needed to say that before I forgot.
- [22:53]
Dave Portnoy
Yeah, yeah, it's nothing too crazy. I mean, people can follow along very simply. This is right here on the right hand side, the president of Argentina, Javier Melee. Hopefully I said that correctly. And this is Hayden Davis. He's like a, you know, he just has a network of key opinion leaders within crypto, maybe known as a crypto, you know, insider or. And he helped, you know, to launch an Argentina meme coin. And the president okayed this in his ex on his Twitter and they call this guy like the Trump of Argentina. He has a hat called Make Argentina Great Again. Elon Musk has notably worn that a couple of times or one time. And everyone's just crucifying both Hayden Davis and, you know, the president of Argentina for launching what they believe is, well, now it is a scam coin. I wouldn't call a scam coin. We don't know how much the president of Argentina knows here, but here's what happened was that when he confirmed that this was an actual token that he supported, it rocketed to $4.5 billion. Now it rocketed before.
- [23:54]
Joe
Let's clarify, let's clarify what confirming, like, because from what I recall, correct me if I'm wrong, there was a retweet from his account and then there was deletions, I don't think. Did he ever hold a press conference? Did he ever verbally say, was there videos in or was it just the retweet and the deletion? Let's make sure we clarify that for the people.
- [24:13]
Dave Portnoy
Yeah, yeah, he ran a Trump playbook which is, you know, Trump did the same thing, which is, you know, a retweet and then a delete and then a reaffirmation afterwards, but basically a confirmation of sorts from him and, you know, saying that it's going to help the Argentina public, it's going to go toward resources for the economy. And, you know, the KOLs, the key opinion leaders, started, you know, pumping this to the moon. And what happened was that a lot of people, what Argentina president supposedly did not know that, you know, insiders are in on this and pumping it to the moon. Eventually what happened was that all these people cashed out. You know, not as crazy as a Trump token.
- [24:53]
Joe
Right.
- [24:53]
Dave Portnoy
They cash out $87 million, which is quite significant in terms of liquidity from a single token with this guy alone, his company, just in terms of providing liquidity, was able to generate over $100 million of it. So basically it just set a really bad taste in people's mouths because people thought this was a legit government promoted token where it would help the economy. But nope, it was just basically another pump and dump from insiders.
- [25:20]
Joe
So.
- [25:20]
Dave Portnoy
And that's kind of like the high level of what happened. I'll let Brian chime in here.
- [25:25]
Brian
Yeah, it was complete bs, to be completely honest with you guys. I mean, I think everyone knew what was happening. Not, not the public, but all. There was a lot of insiders, a lot of KOLs. I mean, we're talking about Portnoy Portnoy was paid to promote the token. And then actually once he mentioned that he couldn't, I believe it was like, 5 million Libra token. Once he realized he couldn't announce on his Twitter that he, he received these tokens for free, he actually sent it back. So hats off to Dave there. I believe that's all true. And he was actually reimbursed for his personal losses on the coin. Not sure how I feel about that, but honestly, like, can't fault Dave for that, because if someone's willing to reimburse you for losses on a coin, who's going to say no? But a lot of the issues I had is that Hayden Davis admits that he was sniping the supply of Libra alongside a massive team allocation. They, they, they set this up. It was a rigged game. You're gonna hear that a lot. I do not think all meme coins, all AI coins, all cryptos are rigged games. I do think there are more than we really want to admit to, and a lot. But that's kind of like what we try to do is decipher, like, how many people's the developer's wallet hold, how many people are actually organically launching this. What's. What's behind this. But this token overall was very difficult for anybody to ignore if they were on the timeline, because when you see a token go from a few hundred million all the way up to 2 billion, it's tough not to full port into that, especially when the president of Argentina is in some indirect way endorsing it. If he did, if he didn't, I mean, I'm not even going to get into that. And then you have all these KOLs that were allocated funds or rumored to have allocated funds, and they're pumping it. So your, your favorite influence is out there talking about it. And it was the talk of the town. And once Malay distanced himself from the token, it crashed to about $300 million. People got wrecked, put a bad taste in everyone's mouth. And it's kind of like, I think everybody in the trenches were like, kind of looking around at each other like, can't believe this happened in this way again. It was very similar to what happened with Trump and then the Melania coin. And correct me if I'm wrong, I think the Melania token had had a lot of the same mechanics as what happened here with Libra, and we saw what that did to the Trump coin. If Melania never launched, Trump was going to $100 if, if this, all this BS here with Libra didn't happen with insider trading and sniping girly. This. This would have probably been printing for multiple billions of dollars. Unfortunately, there were some just really shady actors here, in my personal opinion, on this. I know a lot of people have been talking about regulation and more restrictions. I don't know. We. We kind of know what we're getting ourselves into. I don't know if, like, legally there's some fraud here, and I do think, you know, you can go after people that are committing fraud, but I don't. I don't want tighter restrictions. I mean, we know what we're doing here. You know, we're. We're gambling. We're looking for 100x's in some of these. And when we see runners, and I'm not asking for somebody to give me my money back when I lose, and I'm not paying anybody their money back if I win. It's kind of the game that we're playing right now. But it's a shame how it all happened. It was a cleanse. Overall, though, I think in the space we've seen a lot of coins get wrecked. There's a lot of decent buying opportunities. I think Joe and I were talking about this with our private community. Times like this is when I'm at my best, when there's major coins that bleed out and fundamentally nothing has changed. I start buying, buying and buying, because I was like, you only need, like, a couple headlines for the whole narrative to change and some of these coins to pump back. But I. I don't know how I feel about a lot of these just, like, straight memes right now. I. I think everyone in our private community knows I like, lean pretty heavily into this AI world. I think there's going to be a rotation over from some of these meme coins into the AI crypto world, because not only do they have some meme ability to it, there's some really strong communities behind it, but they're doing some things that are, like, fundamentally like making the world of crypto a lot easier. But I do think some memes are going to survive as well. But it was overall just a cleanse of the sector, and I think we need to become a little bit more sophisticated as traders.
- [29:56]
Joe
Yeah, that's a good point. I think. Let's tie the cap on the Libra thing and we can kind of go bigger picture here. So I pulled a video for us. So this was Dave interviewing Hayden, and it was. It was a pretty big grill session. So there's two minutes here, a Little back and forth and in my opinion, Hayden doesn't really come across all that trustworthy and how he acted in this. But let's take a look. It's about two minutes.
- [30:20]
Brendan
Question is what to do with money that's not mine. I'm not, I'm not never claiming it's my money. I'm not running off with the money. I don't want. I have no desire to run off with the money.
- [30:29]
Hayden Davis
Whose money is it?
- [30:31]
Joe
It's.
- [30:31]
Brian
I mean.
- [30:35]
Brendan
I mean that's what I don't. That, I mean it's, it's the, I mean it's the. I, I don't know. I mean it's definitely not my, it's the, it's Argentina's. I don't know what, what, what association you give with that. I mean the point was like, you know, Malay's team or who I thought was Malay's team. I mean again, you're talking about like.
- [30:55]
Hayden Davis
Even at one point when we were talking, we were going back and forth and we had a couple discussions about this during the course of like deciding to launch where you're like, I think. And again, this is how I looked at it and I actually said it to you. I'm like, I wasn't trying to make money with my coin short term. And I think you, it's like we, you were telling me like I wanted that thing audited. I wanted all the money in public wallets. I was going to tell people what wallets it was in so people could. I was going to tell people exactly what I said. I'm going in and out and I want it all tracked. So you've said to me like they kind of went back. Like I thought I was going to be able to inject capital back in and then it didn't happen.
- [31:40]
Brendan
Well, yeah, two things happen if I'm super honest. One is the, the, I mean, there is a third party journalist in the room. Just for my own safety because I thought something like this in a worst case scenario could happen. That documented the whole thing. So that'll be posted at some point, probably like later today or this week. But I was instructed, hey, don't inject any back in until Malay's second video. So Malay's second video never comes. Then he deletes the tweet. Then he says he doesn't support the project. Which by the way, I don't. Again, just want to be super clear. I don't, I don't think Malay even fully knows what's going on.
- [32:27]
Joe
So it cuts off there but it's, I don't think Malay really knows what's going on and credit credit to Dave for the hard hitting journalism for real though because I think what he was doing was like I wanted this to be X, Y and Z. And I think from Hayden's perspective in my opinion like somebody like that who's got the hands on behind the scenes setting all this stuff up is just like oh yeah, whatever you want Dave. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you ready? I'm going to send you the tokens. Like promote it, promote it. I think it's, it's a, it's a huge yes man scenario behind the scenes and there are a couple times there the Hayden guy like didn't know you know what to say. He's like oh, I don't know whose money it is. It's like yeah because you're the one holding this giant bag and Dave's calling you out on it. Like there's nothing more I think Hayden wants than to sell that hundred million and go buy a new Lambo. But he, but he knows the spotlight's on him now so he's like oh yeah, I don't know it's Argentina's money but you're saying it's Argentina's money but now you're like I don't understand like you know who in Malay knows what's going on then maybe he doesn't know what's going on. It's okay, well then why are you marketing it as an Argentinian coin? So a lot, a lot more questions than answers and I think it's a good, you know, educational time for the, the meme coin community especially for people who are new because like Brian said like hey we know what we're getting into but you know, as Dave onboards new people and new people come into the space. You know there's going to be a lot of, a lot of learning lessons and I think this was one of them.
- [33:53]
Dave Portnoy
Yeah, I do have a thought on everything that just to wrap everything up because so much has happened right. Everyone's getting fatigued. We can make a TV drama about what happened with Trump. Melania Portnoy. I just, I forgot about you know Central Africa not too long ago too right. They had car, they had the coin launch and come up and then now Argentina and what I wanted to share with people watching this video is that it wasn't always like this. And personally we never talk about much meme coins that has founders because there's for people investing in meme coins you don't want Founders Risk. And we knew there was Founders Risk with Trump. But the risk reward there is way better. And that's why I didn't get involved with Portnoy. Not because he's a bad person, I don't know him. But there's Founders Risk. If you look at the top meme coins, there's only two with a founder, which is Trump and Melania. That's the top 10. There's no other meme coins with founders. Bonk, sheep, Doge, you know, fart coins. AI. That's what people love about memes. Like we were talking about Mu Dang earlier in the year, right? The Happy Fat Hippo, you know, that's what people like. This is exhausting and tiring and not fun for people in Web3. And maybe people like it in the world of Web2, coming in and seeing it. Maybe they're getting onboarded that way. But it's evolving. Celebrity coins aren't new. They happen in the last cycle, in 2021, when everyone and a mother are coming out tokens. Like Azalea, who still has hers, by the way. And I never got into those either because I treat those kind of like an NFT project. You know, they should be more. What is it? They should have checks and balances. Right? If you're a president of Argentina, how do you not have checks and balances for launching a country? A token for the country. Right. It doesn't make any sense. So, you know, that's why personally we. I stay away from those and doesn't mean that it's bad in any ways. Definitely. Like you said, TiVo, just get in and out.
- [35:38]
Joe
Right?
- [35:38]
Dave Portnoy
Those are good coins to be fun and talk about, make memes out of, you know, but in terms of, you know, actual meme coins, that there's actually, you know, strong communities behind, believe it or not, that actually make memes out of it on a daily basis. And they're actually doing things in the world of Defi. There's a lot out there. But that's why I kind of see these as projects, you know, they don't. They're not going to pump as hard, maybe 2, 3x. But they have to have like, what we talked about early utility. Does it tie back into barstool? And people don't like that in the world of memes. They just want something to go to the moon immediately, steadily, or something that they could wear meme outfits or cool T shirts and attend events into. And that's kind of my point of view, you know, the More. More of these that come out in terms of founder type of meme tokens with faces behind it, the less hopefully that people will, you know, dive straight in and treat it like, you know, I'm not saying that, you know, Doge is like the North Star for meme coins, but, you know, it's going to be a lot different trying to put bets into meme coins with founders versus meme coins that just kind of organically grow.
- [36:40]
Brian
We saw. We saw this a little bit, Joe. And I was just thinking about with Pepe, and I'm not sure if Paulie. Remember Paulie on, like, crypto Twitter. I'm not sure if he was like, the owner, but he was like the face of it for so long. He actually made me make me sell my Pepe bag, which would have been worth an astronomical amount of money right now. Now. But early on, Pepe was pumping and he wouldn't shut up about it. And he was a very controversial figure. And he actually made me sell out of it because I was like, I don't like this. And once he kind of got out of it, started to get picked up by centralized exchanges, became more organic, became more decentralized, and now it's one of the top meme coins in the entire world. And you. We kind of needed him to get flushed out, man. The jail still thing still gets me a little bit. And I hate to keep going back to it because I just saw a path here for it to be successful. At least I thought I did with Dave and just how polarizing of an individual he is for, like, onboarding people in the Kraken partnership. I. I just. I was like, this guy could do something with. With the marketing. And I'm not sure if this story's over. I'm really not like, I'm still tuning in, tuning in to what Dave's doing because he could. He could make something happen. But right now, my personal jail stool bags are down bad.
- [37:59]
Dave Portnoy
Here's a good comparison, right? Like, Portnoy is very famous in Web2, but like CZ, right? He's not even a CEO of Binance anymore, but he retweeted a token that was a test token on Binance. They're like, oh, we're testing a meme coin launch. And this token literally caught test. TST went from 20 million to $500 million. That's the difference between someone native to Web3 or like Brian Armstrong from Coinbase, if they said something versus Portnoy. Portner has a lot of pull, but he's not Like Trump, right? Trump is like, he's like the megaphone and, and like Elon. So that's kind of like the outside looking in and just, it's just kind of a comparison of kind of how the trenches move. They. They put their bags behind someone and then, you know, they rally to the top and then they get out. You know, it's all fun and games, but just know that it's a game. Just know it's a game. Because CZ doesn't maintain that Token. He just pumps it and people get out eventually anyways.
- [38:52]
Joe
Yeah, CZ maybe needed a little vacation after some, some prison time with the family. The. I think both made great points. I trust Dave more than I trust Hayden and Libra Token. Like, there's no. The Argentine government was not involved in that. Like, I think you maybe, maybe best case scenario, had some cousins or sisters or people close to Malay that were like, yeah, I can get his phone and retweet it, you know, or, you know, get him to retweet something. But I don't think there was anything official tied in with the Argentinian government at all with Libra. But that's, that's my take on it. And then, yeah, with Dave, I think, you know, the guy likes to build stuff. So I think it's more of an interesting flyer to take than, than Libra. But let's wrap this up with some, you know, zoom out, bigger picture. We talked about it, or I talked about it with Brendan, about how Solana, you know, took a haircut too. Basically all the turmoil and a little bit of general market direction. But, you know, the thought was maybe all this turmoil on the Solana meme coin chain, you know, took Solana down a little bit as well. So what, what. Basically the question to wrap it up is what's our, what's our medium long term vision here? I think we kind of talked about it where, you know, got a little crazy. We're taking a step back. But, you know, you like, you like the entry points on a lot of the, you know, other projects that you liked before. Nothing changed. So, you know, you're diving into that. So what's your view, you know, heading out into the future after another kind of meme coin mania dies down a little bit.
- [40:23]
Brian
Yeah, I, I can start. I, I think we chop for a little bit. I think we chop. I mean, we have some salon unlocks that are probably priced in slightly. A lot of people have been talking about it coming up in the next, I think in March. So there's Gonna be a lot of tokens that hit the market. But overall I'm still bullish on Solana. It's not just the casino like we talk about. They're great with Defi, they're great in Depin, they're doing a lot of great things. There's a lot of people building on Solana. So even though we have some unlocks coming up, even though this Libra token drained a ton of liquidity and put some bad taste in people's mouth, I think it's a nice reset. I do think we chop for a little bit just in all macros. But again, just like everything, Bitcoin can pull us up, pull the entire market up better than anything. You know, we start getting rumblings, more of a strategic reserve and we start touching base to a hundred thousand dollars. I don't think Solana is going to be trading at $160 per coin. If that's happening, people are going to start getting into it. But right now there's definitely some short term pain and no pun intended because there's a pain pre sale that just launched yesterday that we gave a call out to our private community and people did great on that. And the pain people know how to launch a meme coin. Shout out pain. And that Swedish, I can't even remember his name. That's Swedish actor Harold. Harold, that's right in the meme coin team because they refunded 80% of everyone's Solana gave the equivalent amount in their pain token back and people did well like a 2, 3X and it's, it's still chugging along and I don't think that story is done either. So there's definitely a path here for some certain coins to still continue to do well. And I'm, I'm bullish in this AI space. I think that's, that's a place I've been living over the past couple months. I think a lot of rotations gonna go into AI using AI agents to do transactions and decentralized finance and just making crypto easier. We're hearing about that every day. We got the Virtuals team meeting with Elon, Musk and X. We got Elon talking about using agents for gaming on Twitter. I mean that narrative isn't going anywhere. I only believe that's going to grow and that's really closely related to like a lot of the meme coin traders out there. And I think there's going to be some meme coins that do really well. But we're going to see some short Term pain, you know, but we, all we need is like one positive catalyst, like another pain token to start getting the markets alive. And that, that's kind of my thought. We're gonna chop for a little bit. I don't think we're gonna bleed much more. And I really believe I've. I bought a lot of tokens last night, or really this morning, I should say. I. I bought a lot of tokens this morning of just projects that I like. And I'm like, we've. They've seen like 67, 70% corrections. Yeah. I'm getting dollar cost average into it because I see a path for it going up.
- [43:14]
Dave Portnoy
Yeah, I'm along the same rails as Brian. Definitely. People are scared off because of the tariffs and inflation not steadying. And that's kind of buckling down bitcoin right now. And if bitcoin pops off and the Solana ETF pops off, then the Solana bags will definitely move. So Solana's ecosystem, it's a casino, of course, But I always tell Brian it's like the casino is like the Las Vegas back in the 50s when it was ran by mafia members. Like we needed to evolve. So I'm not afraid about Solana at all. I don't think the unlock, I think the unlocks priced in is near like 90 circling supply anyways. So Solana is going to be fine. I'm not worried about that. In terms of overall market, this is great because I mean, like, we always need a cleansing, right? There's so much nefarious things happening, you know, they're not with good purpose. And we document it here, well, in crypto 101 and with us crypto mavericks, you know, being around as long as we have, we've seen these movements. We've all been there with the ICO days of 2017, right? Everyone and a mother launched a token, talking about innovation. 2021, NFT stole the limelight. If you didn't have an NFT, you're an idiot. 2024, 2025 rolls around. Meme coins are the talk of the town. Everyone launches a meme coin and their mother. If you don't have a meme coin, you're not relevant. We're seeing that play out right now. All those bubbles have burst, right? Everyone's got fatigued and tired and that's where we are in the market. Everyone's fatigued, everyone's tired. There's too many tokens out there. And this reset is much needed. We're chopping for a while, but I Am very confident in what Brian just said. AI agents is going to steal the limelight. Just like you didn't have an ico, an NFT or a meme coin back then. If your project, if Barstool does not have an AI agent as a mascot, as a glorified chat box or whatever, or as a, as a. Just a resource, you're going to feel that same way. Like Coinbase already launched one that's, that's moving transactions with wallet and funds. It's crazy. NBA All Star Weekend came out. There was a, there's a basketball analytics AI agent that's helping people with one sports betting or ESPN analytics, like Malik Andrews talking to, you know, all Stars. So, and, and so that's what's going to happen in the next move and you can capitalize on that. These AI agents have tokens alongside with it. So that's going to be, I believe, if I had to put a big bet on. And we are, we have a lot of AI talk within our private community of AI agents. That's going to be the next big mover for sure. Because that's where the innovation is happening and that's kind of why we got in here in the first place. We all forgot we're here for the tech, but we stayed for the memes and pumping our bags. But in terms of following the puck, that's where the puck's probably going to go.
- [46:02]
Brian
Yeah. And Joe, a lot of those AI tokens, I can't say all of them, a lot of them are fair launches. You know, they feel like fair launches compared to some of these like bundled meme coins that are just getting launched from countries and things. And there, there is a working product there. I'm not even sure if I want some of these projects to come out with working projects because the hype sometimes really builds up that value. But we're seeing some really cool stuff and really cool innovation in the AI world. And I'm right with you there. I think that's gonna, that's gonna. The space where a lot of people need to start paying attention. I think that's just. And it's a lot of fun. It has a lot of the same mechanics of meme coins with communities and what the. What, what they're trying to solve. And I, I like kind of the fair launch style as well.
- [46:50]
Dave Portnoy
Yeah, it's going to solve a lot of issues that we're facing in terms of token launching. Some of these kols is going to help solve people getting in safely out of these tokens. And getting out. So it's going to solve a lot of issues.
- [47:02]
Joe
Awesome stuff, fellas. And I think the cherry on top of everything you said of looking forward is Trump was at a conference yesterday in Miami and it was hosted by the Saudis. And, you know, everything was on the docket from investing in America to real estate and bitcoin. And I believe Michael Saylor was there and Trump gave his speech and, you know, gave the same rhetoric that he did on the campaign trail of, you know, America's gonna be the crypto capital of the world. Touted the bitcoin all time highs. And so I think if anything, it's just, you know, continued positivity to see that, you know, he didn't, he wasn't just saying this to get elected. It's still on the forefront of his mind. You know, we've got everything Howard Lutnick got confirmed. We got David Sachs as the cryptos are. So yeah, the momentum's there for consolidation and moving forward and couldn't. Oh, I couldn't agree more that that will be moving forward in a positive direction eventually. But thank you guys for joining. Guys, Brian and Joe, they always join us when there's stuff going on in the meme coin world that we need to know. You can check them out. I've got a link below if you want to keep up with their private community. I got a link below. You can sign up and get, get their emails and also we'll link over to their podcast, the Crypto Mavericks, where they're interviewing a lot of these in the trenches type of, of companies and you know, along with Brendan Bryce, our whole team, including Brian and Joe, we appreciate you guys listening. Stay on the forefront of crypto. Thank you guys for listening. Enjoy the rest of your day. We'll talk to you soon.
- [48:42]
Dave Portnoy
What is Dax, are you tracking all our cars on Carvana value Tracker on all our devices? Yes, Kristen, yes, I am.
- [48:49]
Joe
Well, I've been looking for my phone for.
- [48:51]
Dave Portnoy
In Dax's domain we see all. So we always know what our cars are worth. All of them? All of them. Value surge trucks up 3.9%. That's a great offer. I know.
- [49:03]
Brian
Sell. Sell.
- [49:05]
Dave Portnoy
Track your car's value with Carvana value Tracker today.