← Markets Outlook
Loading summary
Transcript29 lines
- [00:00]
Rakuten Advertiser
Rakuten is the smartest way to save money when you shop because you earn cash back at over 3,500 stores. Fashion, beauty, electronics, home essentials, travel, dining, concert tickets and more. Your favorite stores like Lowe's, Levi's and Nike pay Rakuten to send them shoppers and Rackuten then passes on a part of that payment to its members as cash back. You're already shopping at your favorite stores. Why not save while you're doing it? It's a no brainer. Membership is free and easy to sign up. Get the Rakuten app now and join the 17 million members who are already saving. Cashback rates change daily. See rakuten.com for details. That's R A K U T E N your cash back really adds up.
- [00:41]
Jordi Alexander
This cycle has been a meme point cycle, but we really sort of like front running the learning process now where the participants are getting so sophisticated, the criminals are getting so greedy as we just sort of like saw like there's a certain amount of greed coming now where they just want to extract it all quickly. They won't. They could wait, you know, for the Malay coin. They could have waited and you know, hopefully make it into like a long term project. But once they extracted it, I think a lot too quickly, then he disavowed and then it's everyone just pointing fingers.
- [01:20]
Host
Joining us now to discuss is core contributor and co founder of Community meme coin, Bonk Nom Bonk and Celini Capital founder Jordi Alexander. Jordi and Nom, thank you so much for joining us. So you just came off of the stage talking about meme coins. We're going to rehash the highlights with you right now. Okay, so over the weekend the big topic was Javier Milei, the president of Argentina and he was promoting Libra, which we was revealed to be a rug pull by Hayden Davis, a market maker. And he basically said that, you know, you don't make money on meme coins unless you're part of the insider team. So I mean, I just would love to break down this. Your initial reaction, first of all as a meme coin creator and then we'll talk about your trades as a high frequency trader, but go ahead.
- [02:15]
Nom
Yeah, I think a lot of what came through Hayden's ideas and his messaging, which is a whole nother topic of conversation, is the idea that memes can only exist based on inside trading or some opportunity where it's a information asymmetry. And meme coins actually started as an idea and became very, very popular amongst retail Traders because of the idea that VC backed tokens or traditional token launches were full of those insiders. And there was the idea that memes are supposed to be these fair launches where people have these opportunities, get access to trades very early on and that they don't have to worry about people who got in, you know, five or 10x ago, you know, four years down the line in investment schedules that they never had the opportunity to. The unfortunate side effect, a lot of the financialization of memes that have especially happened over the last year is that now not only on the technical side with teams who are launching these, but also in terms of market makers or, you know, KOL groups or individuals who are promoting these things. We're seeing a lot more issues around insiders and tradings there and obviously there's been a variety of these, but Libra is probably the most timely of these going on right now.
- [03:22]
Host
Yeah, he said he was connected with Melania Token also. He mentioned that the Trump token had a $5 million pre buy before it was launched. So you're a trader in this crazy market. I mean, what are your thoughts on are you, I mean you, you're in it, so you must be making money or find it profitable. So what's going on here? Are you an insider? I hope not.
- [03:49]
Jordi Alexander
Not an insider. However, we, you know, we are very sophisticated financial participants. So we're not, you know, the retail buying, the top, you know, $70 billion Trump coin. We're not, that's not us. That's not like the, the buy candle, just to be clear. But you know, we focus a lot on understanding like blockchain microstructure so we can trade efficiently and there's all these mev bots and all these people doing different things. I think Meme Coin started initially as this like pure, you know, fun thing. People just saw something, it was funny and then just start making money and then they just, it becomes very viral. People love something that's simple. They don't have to like read a white paper and understand all this stuff. They can just make a bet and sometimes they make money. I think what's happened though is like this cycle has been a Meme Coin cycle, but we really sort of like front running the learning process now where the participants are getting so sophisticated, the criminals are getting so greedy as we just sort of like saw like there's a certain amount of greed coming now where they just want to extract it all quickly. They won't, they could wait, you know, for the Malay coin. They could have waited and you know, hopefully make it into like a long term project. But once they extracted it, I think a lot too quickly, then he disavowed and then it's everyone just pointing fingers. So it's really good for the space that these conversations are happening. I think Hayden has done actually maybe not himself a service. I see all the lawyers on Twitter commenting how he should not be talking about his stuff and plead the Fifth. Actually, I think it's really good that we're getting some light shined on what's.
- [05:23]
Host
Happening because before it was so opaque and people had a theory or some thoughts about what might be happening behind the curtain, but he actually said all the worst things and made it public. But I wonder, since you're operating and trading in this market, how are you beating it?
- [05:46]
Jordi Alexander
How beating it? Yeah, so we're generally market neutral in most of the things that we do. And there's always very like arbitrage inefficiencies between exchanges between different markets. So a lot of what we do is just keep. Keep things kind of in line, you know, making markets efficient.
- [06:05]
Host
Are you running bots or. I.
- [06:06]
Jordi Alexander
Of course, everything's algorithmic. Yeah. I'm not sitting there like trying to. Well, sometimes I am, but like you're.
- [06:12]
Nom
Clicking buy and sell.
- [06:14]
Jordi Alexander
Usually not. Yeah. So we have like thousands of algorithms running constantly on every product.
- [06:19]
Host
Okay. One of the things that Hayden said with Coffeezilla on YouTube was that, well, you know, of course I had to snipe the cryptocurrencies because you have all these other traders that are sniping the cryptocurrency. And so I'm going to snipe it, I'm going to hold it, and then maybe I'll inject something on. I don't know what I'm going to do with it. He is sitting like over $100 million. What should you be doing to create a sustainable meme coin market?
- [06:44]
Nom
I mean, that's an incredible problem to have of. I have $100 million in capital and no idea of where to deploy it. I'm sure plenty, plenty of people listening have an idea of what to do with it. For Bonk, we spend a lot of time working on building sustainable companies and businesses where the idea is that they're long term greedy rather than what Jordi was talking about with the short term greedy ideas where the businesses are supposed to be working on making their own fees and revenue. And ideally that's connected back to the token, whether they're using it as a payment currency or whether they're using it as a store of value in some way, shape or form. And any token can be doing this. And especially in the updated regulatory markets that we're looking to see, more teams should be looking at these ideas of like, how do I pass value capture from a protocol level down to any of these tokens that are supposed to be a benchmark for the success or failure of any of these products. What you run into issues with with meme coins is this whole idea where people want them to have no value so that then they can theoretically have infinite value, where there's no definite models that they need to connect back to. For, you know, how you value any of these things so that they can be worth billions of dollars. If you're Hayden and you're sitting on $100 million, you should probably be figuring out how does any of that help the country of Argentina, which was the whole point of running the project. So maybe give the money to the people who are running the country. That's probably a very good starting point for him.
- [08:04]
Host
Well, as the co founder of Bonk, how are you creating a sustainable meme coin community?
- [08:10]
Nom
Sure. So we focus on a couple of different areas where we think it's either providing people with tools to engage with the blockchain. These can be trading bots that they're engaging with, such as bonkbot. This can be interfaces using to improve the wallet. So we do things like Pooper Scooper, which is designed to literally clean the out of your wallet and help solve a lot of the problems that you're seeing around spam transactions and NFTs. Or you're looking at ways that people are transacting directly either in terms like the purchase of, you know, art or NFTs through platforms like Exchange Art or even the ideas around just like purely trading other tokens through things like Bonk Swap. There's plenty of areas at the application layer that interact with how people are spending their time on on any blockchain and how they should be interacting with these applications that provide opportunities to gain value at the fee capture area. And those are how you're going to be able to build something that directly puts value back towards the token rather than relying on constant new market participants to come in who are essentially acting as, you know, the next greater fool.
- [09:06]
Host
Do you have to vet the people that come into your, you know, your investors or your community because that they don't just come in and then dump your token?
- [09:16]
Jordi Alexander
Yeah.
- [09:16]
Nom
One of the great things for Bonk is that we didn't have initial Investors we managed to launch before these sorts of things happened, so we never had to worry about a Kelsier or any of these other individuals coming in. And what we want to see is basically, how can we work with as many teams as possible in, you know, the startup grand thesis of launch hundreds of different products or protocols, and then when you find ones that have good value, capture inside of their market or have the ability to be market leaders, then you spend a lot of time and capacity investing in them and making sure that they grow as quickly as possible. So ideally, anybody can build something on Bonk. And when we find a really good team that's working on it, then we help them as much as we can.
- [09:54]
Host
All right, Jordi, when you're making investments, what are the red flags? What are you looking for? And I guess when we're talking about the meme coin market, is it over now or.
- [10:06]
Jordi Alexander
That's a very good question. Is it over? That's kind of like the question that we were thinking. I think things will have to become more sustainable. Like you said, we have the two extremes. We have the pump fund, where I think you just get, like, 3%, and then you have to get all these snipers, and snipers are fighting for the rest, like this awful game with the sniping. Then you have Trump, who basically took 80% for himself or for his team, whatever. That's insane. Like, 80% of the token is going to unlock for the next years, and they can just decide when to extract, know what they can. That doesn't seem good either. So, yeah, we need something more sustainable for allowing, you know, just the right amount of chance to make it where it's not, like, totally rigged against you. And I think, you know, some of these AI tools will be able to devise much better launch pads now that are more fair and, like, transparently sort of being run by, like, a neutral. I like AI agents because they're very neutral. Like, they're not some guy with, you know, greed. They're just designed a certain way. So, you know, in terms of investing in these things long term, I think.
- [11:16]
Host
Yeah, like, can you invest long term?
- [11:20]
Jordi Alexander
I think. I think some things, like, we. We call them meme coins, but, you know, the line is quite, quite fuzzy. And some things started wanting to be like meme coins. A lot of real projects wanted to launch as a meme coin because it's a meme coin cycle and they want the attention. So instead of launching as a real coin, they pretend to be a meme coin, but they're not really a meme coin. So I would say, like, that maybe is more sustainable because there's actually, like.
- [11:49]
Host
A utility behind them. They're just not a meme coin. But they actually were a project that decided to be a meme coin.
- [11:57]
Jordi Alexander
Yeah. So I've helped one myself called Puff, which is on Mantle. It was a real project, and it's kind of based around the liquid staking protocol, meth. So Puff is like. It's a dragon, it's an animal coin. It looks like a meme coin, but it's sort of, like, tied into the utility of the ecosystem as well. Ended up getting a very utility airdrop, and I think that was very successful. It got a lot of people engaged, and everybody did well. Nobody lost money. It's still trading, you know, above. Basically nobody. You can't really, like, lose money if you participated in the early Puff days or, like, you know, at all, really. So there's ways to use the fun and the kind of like, the logos and then the excitement and actually have, like, some fun, but, like, real businesses behind. So, like, Bonkbot or, like, you know, liquid staking, like, all these things. So there's hope.
- [12:52]
Host
So be a real project and then become a meme.
- [12:55]
Jordi Alexander
That's. That's the only way we can do it.
- [12:56]
Nom
I think there's nothing wrong with having, like, a meme as an idea, but people eventually have to work together as the cult of the meme and create something. Right. Otherwise, the cult just doesn't do anything, and it's just hanging out, waiting to sell. You have to convert people from being enjoyers or people who just like the art or whatever it ends up being and turn them into people who are helping to push the token forward and create things going forward.
- [13:19]
Host
All right, guys, thank you so much for joining us.