← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:02]
A
Good morning everybody.
- [00:02]
B
Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Every day, weekday on X here on the Crypto town Hall account, 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. We have quite a few things to talk about actually today. We have obviously the massive increase in inflows in Ethereum even as the market was down. Obviously we talked about that a bit yesterday, but some numbers coming out the 10x outpaced the Bitcoin ETF flows in August and actually the Bitcoin spot ETFs had outflows in August while Ethereum did roughly 4 or 5 billion in inflows so far. And the month isn't open, isn't even over. And as you compare them as not the same size of asset, that's probably equivalent to 20, 25 billion in Bitcoin inflows. John VanEck went on TV yesterday and called Ethereum the Wall street asset, obviously parroting a lot of the stablecoin points that we've heard from Tom Lee and others. Bottom line is that right now, institutions at this moment clearly by any metric are much more interested in Ethereum than Bitcoin. That kind of echoes alt seasons of the past, which is funny, but it is what it is at this exact moment. But in the meantime, it seems like also some ramping up interest in a lot of other tokens from Wall Street. We have this news today. That's the title, which is that Chainlink has partnered with the United States government. We can dig more deeply into what that means momentarily. But we also had news of a large chainlink treasury company launching today. We know there's some huge Solana treasury companies getting ready to launch. Makes you wonder if we're going to see rotations or just more coming in to kind of boost all of this. So worth digging into right now, all of these flows. I mean, it's the end of August. Things are supposed to be dead. Steve, I see you here. Good morning, buddy. How are you? Mr. Gregory, what do you make of all this? What do you make of all this?
- [02:15]
A
Still sort of processing it.
- [02:16]
B
You know, I'd love to see the.
- [02:18]
C
All season come on.
- [02:19]
B
The Chain Link news I got to dig into, I think it just came out like maybe five minutes ago.
- [02:23]
C
But definitely loving this new ETFM flow for Ethereum.
- [02:29]
B
Yeah, agree. I mean, Tomer, you were giving me the funny eyes. I know it's hard when you know what's going to happen in the end, but there are these moments, obviously even as a hardcore bitcoiner where you just have to look at the data and say this is what's happening.
- [02:44]
D
Yeah, no, I'm not denying what's happening. What I was laughing at is if, you know, Ethereum has gone through a lot of narratives. It was the platform for decentralized autonomous organizations. It was the platform for minting utility tokens. It was the platform for I, I could just go on and on and on of all, all of these things. And so it's, it keeps switching narratives because it keeps losing at all of these things that it says that it's going to win at. But right now it's make hay while the sun shines. It's Wall Street's. Has it. Is there a logical statement behind identifying why Wall street would prefer Ethereum over any of the other cryptocurrencies or over Bitcoin? Not really that I've heard. It's just, it's. It's what the trend is right now. It's what the fad is right now. And I don't deny it. But I like all the other fads around Ethereum, I don't expect it to stick around for very long.
- [03:38]
B
Oh.
- [03:39]
D
Or to be permanent or proven sound.
- [03:42]
B
Well, so, yeah, there's a lot there. I actually really like Ethereum because I view it as an entirely different asset class than Bitcoin. But once you start talking about ultrasound money or all these things, like, you lose me completely because to me Ethereum is not even remotely that. But go ahead, Paul.
- [04:00]
E
I'm not the financial guy here, but I'll talk about the technicals on this Chainlink announcement. I kind of take it with a bit of a grain of salt because Chainlink's power, and specifically the link token and link token pumped today because of the news. But the link token is really used to bring data from the real world on chain and it allows people to stake a link token to make sure that they are providing accurate data. And this is the data that can be sourced globally around the world, like weather data, price data of an asset that's obviously not natively on chain. With the news of the government though, they're taking data that the government centrally has and it even shows in the announcement bringing macroeconomic data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis on chain. And really the government doesn't even need Chainlink. They don't need the link token at all. They can just say write this onto Ethereum. And now all of the different smart contracts can source that data for whatever defi they want. But this is more centralized data. It's like putting, if I were to put information about my personal, like wellness and you Know, people talk about things like insurance on chain. If I put, you know how sick I am on chain, that doesn't need a network, an oracle. It doesn't need an oracle to validate that data to make sure it's true. It's just something I can put in. Just like the government could put this economic data directly on chain, it doesn't need an oracle of users that hold the link token to vote on that data being true and then also to lose link token if they put data that's invalid. So this is actually a lot more bullish for Ethereum because chain link is native on Ethereum and people will have to pay fees to put it on Ethereum. But I think it's a bit less bullish on link itself because maybe it's a partnership where they handle the data and put it on chain, but the token itself doesn't really gain any true utility from this announcement. So I would take it a grain of salt for all those that are thinking, oh great, Link Moon, buy a bunch of Link. This is because the government's going to use a ton of it. I just don't see how they're going to actually need the token itself versus needing the company.
- [06:02]
B
Yeah, we just pivoted the conversation entirely obviously there, Paul, but you did help me stay on the topic here. Dave Weisberger has come on co hosting and talked about this a lot of times, which is that we still have this sort of bifurcation in the companies and the tokens and we have very little clarity in most cases on how the value will actually accrue to the token holder. Not even, not even specific to Link. XRP and a lot of other companies. Right. Ripple can do well without the XRP token doing well. Chainlink, as you're saying, could do well without the token doing well. And that is a problem we've had I think across crypto. So I'm not sure if people whose hands up are wanting to talk about link or the Ethereum flows and such. But Ryan, I saw you were specifically emojiing the link conversation, so I'll let you jump in there.
- [06:48]
C
Yeah, I mean for me, having link putting this type of data on chain is just really great indicator for having a poly market launch on top of base. It's great gambling data. I don't really see how it's going to benefit a lot of other smart contracts. But then again, I, you know, I don't know, there's a lot of projects out there, but yeah, I'm not. It just seems kind of like, oh, we need something to announce. This is one of the worst weeks and you know, typically the market year. So we need to announce something positive to keep our token up.
- [07:27]
B
India's. India's Bitcoin man. I don't know what you call you. Do I call you India?
- [07:31]
F
Yeah, it's okay. You can call me India, Bitcoin man, or India, whatever suits you can call me Florida.
- [07:37]
C
Okay, you're up.
- [07:40]
F
I'm more of a macro thinker, man. I believe micro is very macro, is very, very important for today. But at the same time, I also agree with tomorrow that, you know, ethereum valued at 23% of Bitcoin's market cap, doesn't make sense because it always needs some new narrative. Solana valued at 1 million bitcoins, also doesn't make sense, but we'll talk more about it. I have no comments to make on Chainlink, although I've used Chainlink a lot on smart contracts on Ethereum while I've coded, even in Solana. But I don't see the necessity for the US government to be actually partnering with Chainlink. I agree with the gentleman before me.
- [08:19]
B
I'm a tail. Yeah.
- [08:23]
A
I think I'll take a different stance here, which is when you look at the importance of, and the, the theory of like, everything will be tokenized, which is kind of something that we've been saying as a philosophy for years now, you're going to have to have some kind of link, pun intended, to take that, that, that actual data and bring it on chain. You need a trusted, registered, certified tool to do that. I don't think I'll counter the point that the government could just throw this data on chain. I don't think that they have the infrastructure, the sophistic sophistication or the tools to do that. I think Chainlink is extremely well positioned, both from a regulatory standpoint. I think it was Chainlink that just got the SoC2 certification, which makes them uniquely positioned for these kinds of contracts. The fact that people would take this kind of news, I understand that there may not be a fundamental underlying utility that is extremely geared towards this exact data, but the fact that we're actually getting government data coming on chain is monumental news. And I just don't think that that should be underappreciated, appreciated and that the fact that we are using a native crypto project to do that is monumental. It also signals to the rest of the world the importance of having more transparent data available within the market. I do agree with Paul that one of the big things that we're going to see on this is betting markets that are going to take place on this data. It's going to emerge very quickly. People are going to be betting very precisely on what this economic data is going to do and where the trend's going to head, etc. But more transparent government? Yes, please, more real time data. We know that the government tends to lag extremely, like behind in making data visible to the general public, although some of this stuff that they're bringing on Chain already is. So I think it's monumental. Actually. I don't think we've really seen anything like this enter the market thus far. And I think people should really appreciate the work that link is doing. And, and if you're not bullish, I think that you're being silly.
- [10:46]
B
Yeah. Interestingly, just I had Sergey on my live YouTube show two Thursdays ago, two weeks ago today, and they use that to break their own treasury announcement. And when you listen to him talk about how deeply tied they have become to the United States government, I think there is something absolutely real here. Once again, I can't speak to what that means for the token, but I mean, he was at the, you know, he was one of the few people selected to meet the President sitting there with the Winkleville twins and Saylor and such. And I do think that there's something very, very real here. I should actually, Ryan, before I jump to you, I just want to read what the actual news announcement says because I don't want to take for granted that people have any idea what we're talking about. We're excited to announce that Chainlink and the United States Department of Commerce have worked together to bring US Government macroeconomic data on chain from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. These new chainlink data feeds securely deliver critical information around key US Economic data on chain, including real gross domestic product, personal consumption expenditures, price index, that's pce, and real final sales to private domestic purchasers. Pretty big news, Ryan, go ahead.
- [11:57]
C
Yeah, so I can see this playing into, you know, automated trading bots on the Dexes and that type of thing that people want to follow economic news. The hard thing is, on a technical level, blockchains are just not great for storing data. It's very expensive. It's very slow consensus around global consent. Decentralized consensus is not a cheap thing to achieve. So it feels like everyone wants to put everything on chain. And from a technical level, it does not make a whole lot of sense. But shifting to what you said about the Ethereum inflows Really excited that we're finally getting to this spot in the market. I think every other cycle we've seen a little bit tighter cycle between Bitcoin's upswing and Ethereum's upswing. This seems to be a bit more of elongated pause between Bitcoin's upswing and Ethereum's. Or I guess Bitcoin swung up last December and then we had another one in July which is a little bit atypical for a cycle. But now that we're seeing Ethereum swing up less than a month later, I'm excited. I think we're right on the verge of something good. But then I have that other nagging voice in my head that says if everyone thinks we're on the verge of something good, then is it the exact opposite or is it the self fulfilling prophecy? So I can get my own head with market cycles here.
- [13:27]
B
But yeah, yeah, I mean I think Matt Hogan this morning when I spoke to him put it pretty clearly, at least with the Ethereum Bitcoin conversation he was basically like we saw the playbook. You get etf, then you get flows, then you get treasury companies and the asset goes so Ethereum you kind of get the etf, it was very delayed but then started to get flows, then you get the Tom Lee, then you get the treasury companies. Very clearly if you want to play that game, Solana's next salon's getting etf, it's going to have flows and we've already got multi billion dollar treasury companies from very serious players getting ready to launch. So I think that you can see the institutional playbook here. If you think there's going to continue to be rotation or the next man up, go ahead Tomer.
- [14:16]
D
I know this conversation is jumping all over the place, so I apologize for going back to the previous topic, but are we thinking that because if government puts its data on chain it makes it true in the first place or it makes it more true or more verifiable? Like isn't are we, are we now trusting what the government has to say and excited to have that put on chain?
- [14:40]
E
I mean I think it speaks to the fact that this is not really quite the same kind of data that chainlink was really built for. This is meant for globally reportable data where things thousands of people that hold chainlink tokens can verify it through independent sources and then put it on chain. This is just simply taking what the government is already centrally creating and centrally publishing and then just simply putting that on chain. And so you're right we it's 100% trust in the government versus the decentralized, more Oracleized trust in data that Chainlink typically would put on chain.
- [15:09]
F
Then how does this accrue value to Chainlink?
- [15:11]
E
Paul it doesn't. It doesn't put value to Chainlink. The token obviously if the company is being paid to facilitate what I think is a trivial triple technological feat which is putting data on chain which is absolutely trivially easy, but if they're being paid to do that by the government, the government is pretty wildly known to overpay for things then it's going to bring a tremendous amount of value to Chain. Like I mean the government is also the same entity that paid $500,000 a couple decades ago to create an iPad app that makes an arrow point to the left or right to determine if you get TSA pre at the airport. So recall that that's how much the government overspends and I'm sure they're going to do the same kind of overspending for Chainlink. So the company will benefit wildly. The token by association I think that's what the cryptocurrency industry has been kind of criticized for is that there's an associated token that doesn't actually accrue value just like Scott was mentioning. But to the layman that doesn't know any better, they'll go ahead and eat up the token. Anyway.
- [16:13]
B
I'm Taylor, go ahead.
- [16:15]
A
Yeah, so I mean again I'll sort of counter that sentiment which is this is still a decentralized Oracle with node operators that are actually powering the bringing the data on chain and as a result of that that requires an immense amount of staking. I think we have to look past just is the government turning cash into link to power transactions and look more macro at the network that the vast amounts of data that come on chain require more node operators participating. We have chainlink staking which is only going to continue to accrue. We likely have link ETFs that will then embrace some form of liquid staking down the line with the news that have been developed with this we have more and more link pull that a circulation we we have more and more fees that will be used at the level of operating chainlink and like actual maps adoption of bringing all this data through the Oracle and the pipelines on chain. So I think when you look we pull back a little bit you can see that this is one of the most serious impressive ecosystems that are also going through the complete compliant route to get everything set up to be very dominant in the space with no second best. So, I mean, I think that. That when it comes to actually, like taking data, bringing it on chain, it's the industry leader by far, and no one's even close.
- [17:53]
B
India.
- [17:56]
F
Not to belittle the narratives that are built around these coins like Chainlink, because everybody wants to pump their back, so be it. I don't really worry about that. But Wall street needs narratives. But as somebody just before me said, the blockchain for first principles is not the most ideal way, actually. It's not cheaper, faster. You could do it from a centralized database. So I completely refute your point that whatever the narratives that you may be building and then the liquid staking and bringing everything on chain, that too from a centralized node like the US Government. I don't see the economic principles behind it, but it's fascinating to see the discussions nevertheless.
- [18:43]
B
Sorry, I'm having mic issues. I'm a teo. Did you have a response to that?
- [18:47]
A
I mean, I think my response was baked in. I just. When you look at centralized systems. Yes. Are they faster, maybe cheaper? But they didn't go with a centralized system. They went with a decentralized system with a contract to then bring centralized data into the decentralized ecosystem. You know, this. This was a very intentional choice to do this. Maybe not at this moment, but down the line we might be able to. You know, there was also. I saw you retweet, Scott, that pith was dedicated to sort of verify this data. I think there's going to be a lot of tools to do that. Where all of a sudden, government data becomes something that the ecosystem has more opportunity to audit to get more visibility, and maybe not. We'll see. I mean, some of this you have to read into. But the contract is here, it's finalized. So I don't really care if someone could do it cheaper or faster. I care about what actually occurred.
- [19:54]
B
All right, let's pivot the conversation from Chainlink, because I want to talk about all things Trump, everybody's favorite topic all the time. Obviously. We have 6.4 billion or 6.8 billion. I think 6.4 billion raised for a Kronos Treasury CRO token from crypto.com has doubled basically this week. That's a crazy amount of money. And this is from Trump Media, by the way. So Trump Media, the actual public company, raised over $6 billion to buy the Kronos token. I don't know the market cap. I haven't looked. But when you see announcements of 1 billion here and there for much larger tokens, 6 billion is eye opening for a smaller market cap token that's obviously less popular. And on the heels of that, on the crypto side, you have World Liberty Financial finally launching their token on September 1st in a couple days. Trump drives this market. Can we all agree Trump owns crypto?
- [20:54]
C
It's.
- [20:55]
B
It's his market to do with what he pleases. Guys can take the other side of that if you want, but I literally tweeted that about nine minutes after the Trump meme token launched in January because that was it. That was the end of times. Go ahead, Ryan.
- [21:13]
C
I mean, if nothing else, the guy is building an empire, right? Like, they've got everything from cell phones to cryptocurrency to mining to, you name it, their social media. I mean, this is like a master class on how to leverage your brand into every single possible industry when you have the upper hand. And he's not just. I don't think he's just thinking about himself, but this is like literally a Trump family dynasty that he's building here in every single industry vertical. It's, it's pretty amazing to watch in real time, and it seems rather unstoppable. And I'm not sure we want to stop it because it's. I mean, he's producing good products. I mean, minus Trump Token and Milani Token, but it is fascinating to watch.
- [22:08]
B
Do we know how good of a product World Liberty Financial will be? I mean, let's be. And I'm not saying that it won't, but, like, they've been actually very transparent, or at least their wallets are available, so people know what they're investing in and know what they hold. So I think that that's a positive. Obviously, we've seen the reports of what they've bought or sold at any given time, but do we still really know what the platform is going to end up being? Seems like we have this sort of amorphous defi narrative around it. Right. And once again, does anyone know if the token will actually accrue value based on the success of the company or platform? Has anybody done a deep dive into World Liberty Financial here? I mean, this should be the super bowl of altcoins. It should. Like we. We have the institutional side with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and then obviously whoever gets an ETF next. But if you're looking for something to cause a stir or wake up the altcoin market writ large, what's bigger than World Liberty Financial? Because look what Trump Token did. How high did it go 60 something billion market cap in the first weekend. That was a meme. This is an actual thing. So I'm assuming that there's a case to be made that this should do exceptionally well, at least in the short term. I mean, do you guys have any thoughts on how does it look? Paul, go ahead.
- [23:31]
E
You know, it's funny looking at World Liberty Financial, it looks like it is defi without the actual D, without the decentralized finance. They're issuing a stable coin and a governance token in a world like a MakerDAO. Which does give us more of a defi feel in the sense that you mint an algorithmic stable coin and you have a governance token. There's actually a smart contract that the governance token allows you to vote on the changes to the, to the smart contract, how the smart contract should behave. World Liberty Financial sounds like it basically took MakerDAO and fully centralized it. You get to vote on the governance of World Liberty Financial. And so the people that run the company say, okay, thanks for voting that way. I think we will go and make changes to our platform based on how you vote. But you have to trust us to do that. And in the same sense, it goes and mints a stablecoin but it's centrally backed as opposed to being backed by a smart contract and its actual digital currency assets. So it's kind of defi and kind of not. I think it took all a lot of the concepts of defi, just put a company in it as opposed to a smart contract. So it's, it's vague, it, it has all the right buzzwords, I think create a lot of the buzz that we've, you know, seen and what we're, you know, why we're talking about it in the first place. But kind of taking away from a lot of what defi really is supposed to be, other than just using the buzzword.
- [24:52]
B
Yeah, Paul, that's all really important. But will the number go up?
- [24:55]
E
I think it will because the investors don't actually look any deeper to what these products really are. So it will for a while. I think it's like a 2017. If you remember the 2017 ICO boom. That is where a lot of great tokens like AAVE came out of unifi. I mean, sorry, uniswap and whatnot. But then there was a plethora of garbage projects that raised a ton of money. Number went up, but they had no true value behind the token. There was no real utility behind it and it was governance of a company. There was a dating app I saw that had a token this kind of fits closer to that except that it's the government launching it, but that's what it reeks of to me.
- [25:37]
B
Ryan?
- [25:39]
C
Yeah. From what I can tell with World Liberty Financial, it looks like it's built on top of aave. So it, it's not really even anything different. I think Paul's exactly right.
- [25:53]
B
It's.
- [25:53]
C
It's just kind of a centralized service where you get to vote with the token and you kind of have to trust them to do, you know, basically fulfill the vote it on. On first blush, just kind of looking at what they have. And as much as I can see under the hood here, it looks like a money grab. It's like it's not real tech, it's not real anything unique. It's honestly, it just looks like a money grab.
- [26:22]
B
In this context. Shouldn't the aves of the world, I mean defi is actually humming. Right. And that's not being reflected in the tokens, which should actually capture some of the value. Right. So shouldn't this be a powerful narrative for the aves of the world?
- [26:36]
C
Absolutely. And that's, that's the hard thing is a lot of this comes down to marketing and the Trump brand and that the, the thing that they do the best out of anything is marketing and they, they have the name, they have the channels and they do a hell of a good job with it. So anywhere there's to grab cash, it just seems like they keep upping the ante each time. Trump Coin is probably just a test of it. And now this World Liberty Financial is the $5 billion cash grab.
- [27:10]
B
Which is still 12th of where Trump went, Trump Token went, which is just wild when you think about it. So it's just going to be really interesting to see where this opens market cap wise. Just really quickly as an update to the story of Bob Chaitlin partners with the US government in the news group in the background, Coinbase actually has made an announcement they're involved as well. I don't know if we said this, but it says we're proud to be a crypto infrastructure partner of the Department of Commerce on this project. On chain data equals higher transparency plus better accessibility. And then PIF also as kind of mentioned was getting in on the action saying the U.S. department of Commerce has selected PIF Network to verify and distribute economic data on chain. So it's not just Chainlink here, clearly some others in the mix. And then it also said this data is updated monthly or quarterly as applicable and is initially being made available across 10 blockchain ecosystems, starting with the following chains, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Botanics, which I'm not sure I've ever heard of ever in my life. Ever. Ethereum, Linea, Mantle, Optimism, Sonic and Zksync. So lot a lot going on here. A lot going on here.
- [28:20]
E
You just stressed that you had not heard of Botanics yet. And I want to give people some awareness. It's actually quite an exciting chain because it's one of the most. I hate to use the word decentralized, but one of the more decentralized L2s on Bitcoin, giving EVM capabilities to Bitcoin and allowing people to, I think in the future be able to stake Bitcoin as part of the validator set. So it is actually pretty exciting tech. I'd like to. I love. I'd love to have you have some of their. Their team on a show and actually go and give them the grilling on, on what they've built and what they're delivering and the roadmap. But they've got a lot of projects carrying over from Ethereum onto Botanics. And for those that, you know, use wrap Bitcoin right now just to be able to use DeFi on ETH and other chains, you'll be able to use Bitcoin more natively on Botanics. And I have no vested interest in Botanics. I'm just excited about the project.
- [29:09]
B
How dare you say something positive about something without having a vested interest? Paul, this is crypto. I know.
- [29:14]
E
Well, I'll say this, though. I do have Bitcoin and Botanics is a pure bitcoin play. So I guess I lied. I have invested.
- [29:21]
B
Interesting. The name. The name is like, in crypto, there's marketing. Should be like bringing tulips online or something, since everybody here loves a good tulip narrative. But yeah, that sounds actually really interesting. And it's funny because, Paul, what you just described now, time passes so fast. Six months or a year ago, whenever we really had this sort of explosion of building on bitcoin has gone very quiet actually, with all these other Ethereum narratives, but it's still very powerful and happening in the background. Obviously. Yago is a good friend of mine from Bitcoin os. I talk to him about what they're building all the time. But Bob, I mean, there's so many of these incredible platforms that are starting to allow you to build all these same things on bitcoin and kind of that narrative has just kind of been cool for now. I don't know why. I think it's just been outstripped by. Yeah, but it was before that though, right? I agree, but I think it, you know, that's happened before that. But yeah, that's a huge part of it.
- [30:18]
E
I think it cooled because they just didn't. Hadn't shipped yet. And so Botanics is one of the first of Botanics Citria, Alpen Labs and I think one of the one that skipped. In my mind, it's one of the first ones to ship and I give them credit because the business development and Botanics was really good in the sense that they actually got a lot of DEFI protocols to port over. GMX is live on Botanics. They were the first to ship on day one.
- [30:40]
B
Yeah, as I'm saying this, I forgot that I tweeted news this morning tether to launch USDT on Bitcoin using the RGB protocol. So that could help spark it. Go ahead, Ryan.
- [30:53]
C
Yeah, real fast. So I love Botanics, by the way. I wrote a paper in 2013 on decentralized private key sharding and consensus and when Botanics popped up several years later, I looked at their white paper and I was just like, holy crap, someone's actually doing it. It's really, really exciting. Essentially they do sharded private key consensus on a layer two, so you can freely move Bitcoin between blockchains with doing consensus around signing. So very cool technology. Really excited to see it finally coming to fruition. But yeah, big fan of some of these Bitcoin layer twos. It's just they have a long way to go to catch up to the Ethereum ecosystem.
- [31:51]
B
India.
- [31:53]
F
You know, Eric Trump just recently said on stage that my dad is a bitcoin maxi, which I find very humorous. I think he's a crypto president all for cash grab, which is good for him. You know, at the end of the day they all want to accumulate more dollars. I think he's a dollar president, but having said that, I don't know who's giving him the advices because EVM architecture in my opinion is a very flawed architecture. I think if they're going to launch something, they should have actually listened to David Sachs and launched it on Solana or a Move architecture. All Ethereum spot contracts basically have fallback functions. Reentry and C attacks are very common for Ethereum. Not to belittle Ethereum or the EVM architecture, but I don't know why they're in the first place launching it on Ethereum and.
- [32:36]
B
Blackrock doesn't really care about decentralization. Right.
- [32:42]
F
I agree with you, man.
- [32:43]
B
Yeah, I mean you're speaking from the perspective of like a very intelligent, deep crypto native and not from the, hey, we're going to go with the one that has the biggest name, the most money and seems to be the most secure and that's what they're probably choosing on. And by the way, right now Ethereum has the ETF and the institutional stamp of approval. So if you're working at one of these companies, it's very easy to sell the let's do this on Ethereum and really hard to say, hey guys, have you heard of Botanics? Let's launch our tokenized treasuries there as blackrock. It's not going to happen right now. So that, that's why it's just the name brand and the size.
- [33:24]
F
So you would agree with me that it's all about narratives. It's nothing to do with technology or decentralization. It's all about, I mean, I think.
- [33:31]
B
That way about nationalism, religion, sports, teams, money, literally everything. So yes, I agree with you. I don't. I think everything in the world that is viewed as true is because it's a shared narrative. So yes, short answer is yes. But that doesn't take away from the fact that they're choosing Ethereum and are likely to choose Ethereum. So I don't think that that's going to change. But I guess what, you know, Ryan, Paul, you guys look so deeply at this stuff. Like what would change? What would cause a BlackRock to say, Hey, I get it, this needs to be built on bitcoin?
- [34:09]
E
Well, it's still their biggest etf. That's probably the biggest thing.
- [34:12]
D
Right.
- [34:12]
E
And so bringing back the Bitcoin narrative to pump the inflows on Bitcoin is probably the biggest reason. And even though they're not holding Bitcoin on One of these L2s, it's just part of the narrative. Just like you said, hey, we can now do these things on Bitcoin. Now you can go and do defi and do AAVE and leverage. Trading on GMX on Bitcoin is something that might get them to pump that narrative just for the sake of pumping once again the bags of the ETFs that they so largely hold in this ecosystem.
- [34:43]
C
Yeah. The hard thing about Bitcoin is that it is decentralized. You can't control the network and you can't control the block creation unless you also heavily invest in infrastructure and mining. And that's what we thought BlackRock was doing when they took a big position in Core Scientific, we thought, oh, okay, BlackRock is taking a big position in mining. But now it doesn't seem like they're as committed and focused to trying to control or be invested in the Bitcoin ecosystem other than just holding the etf. I really think over the next year or so we're going to see a transition where BlackRock and some larger asset managers move into ecosystems that they have more control over, mainly proof of stake ecosystems where if you hold more of the coin, you have more of the, say in the network.
- [35:42]
E
Ironically, that's actually what's coming with bitcoin and the L2s. They're all proof of stake since none of the L2s can actually mint new Bitcoin. And so one of the things that I would, that I'm guessing will happen is the transition of a lot of these centralized ETFs and folders. First of all, being able to offer rewards from staking. Like I know early on when Coinbase and similar companies offered staking, that was shot down as being a security and that seems to be slowly getting rolled back. Meaning that they can actually yield. That's been rolled back right now that.
- [36:13]
B
Was, well, as a staking, as a secondary service was effectively just rolled back when it was dropped. You know, and Kraken, you'll remember Jesse Powell a few weeks ago quipped, you know, can I get my $30 million back? Because they basically paid. Right, exactly.
- [36:27]
E
Because they're offering staking. And so that still is unique to other chains than bitcoin. But the L2s coming online will allow these services and ETFs to provide yield on staking on Bitcoin itself. So that could bring the narrative back because now it's like, oh, you don't just hold your bitcoin with us, you can actually earn yield on it. I say this with the damn, I hate hearing this because that kind of motivates people to leave their money in things like ETFs. And of course I'm a self custody maximalist. I want people to hold their own keys. But I'm also being real as the regulation changes and if it is beneficial for things like ETFs, that will happen and it will change the narrative around the different assets that didn't have this specific feature staking specifically. And Bitcoin's one of them.
- [37:09]
D
You know, if you don't mind my jumping in, I'm trying to zoom out and, and think hard about what's being said today because there's so many announcements, so much excitement and like, is it Citria, is it Botanics, is it this, is it that? What exactly are they doing? And I'm just taken by, you know, there are things that are built to last and there are things that are built to attract attention for the short term, and burnout, like a firework. And distinguishing between those things helps you make different types of decisions depending on what you're interested in. I think the bitcoin maximalists come from this point of view of this thing is built to last. It's built to be indestructible, it's built to serve a narrow and specific function. And. And then every. And I don't mean to be disparaging when I say this, I think, I think with everything else there's like, what might be, what could be, let's try this, let's try that. It's tremendous amount of experimentation and obviously a tremendous amount of. Sometimes expectations that get high and then are disappointing or disappoint, lead to disappointment, and then you get all these fundamental questions which we don't, which we never really talk about here because they're more technical. But for me, this really distinguishes the difference between these different philosophies, different camps that we see in this space. Now, I'll just leave it at that, because I don't want to monopolize and I probably don't have anything else to say.
- [38:38]
E
I think there's something unique about the ecosystem of projects coming out with the Bitcoin L2s, with the Ethereum L2s. The transition to them, one could argue, was for scaling. But another theory which I hold by is the fact that all those L2s issued a token, and by issuing a token they were able to get VC funding. With VC funding, they can acquire developers. And really a lot of developers that would have worked on L1 scaling on Ethereum had no money to make there. There was no new token that they could ICO and sell to VCs and VCs dump onto the public. And so they built an L2 with Bitcoin. Bitcoin. And the bitcoin community just won't accept some random shitcoin token for governance of an L2. And so you have to build it with a much more pure play bitcoin type of an ecosystem that doesn't have a token. And if you want to drive adoption within the bitcoin community, and so ironically, I mentioned these projects like A Botanics and Alpen Labs, and there's really? No, like, all right. Oh, damn. I bought the token and didn't pan out like a 2017 ICO boom. It's simply an extension to the network. Now, granted there are several that are competing and some will die, but I do think some of them will succeed. But at the end of the day, it doesn't quite fit that same narrative of, oh, gosh, you know, let me go and buy into this thing, hope it succeeds. You know, it's simply an extension of the same protocol that already has a lot of name recognition and that's bitcoin.
- [40:04]
B
Where do you stand on, you know, bitcoin itself versus building on Bitcoin? Obviously there's sort of a bifurcation even of the bitcoin community about whether layer twos with tokens and such are a good idea on bitcoin.
- [40:17]
D
Yeah, look, my own personal take is that I think so much of all this other stuff that we talk about already has a mature technology behind it, which is called database, SQL Database. And ultimately these things are largely centralized and so trying to retrofit them onto a blockchain ends up being a tremendous amount of effort for something that blows up that, that doesn't end up being valuable. The real problem is having sound money that's reliable for the long term, that's permissionless, that people can, that isn't going to become corrupted so that we can plan our capital allocation long term around it and do real experimentation there. So I am, I'm very skeptical when it comes to building on Bitcoin or building beside Bitcoin for things that can be answered with a database. And that, and that's the first question that I often ask. Can the government put its data in a database that it makes publicly accessible? Yes. With an API? Yes. Why do we need to put this stuff on a decentralized blockchain and pretend that there's anything going on there other than a very inefficient way of doing things. Now, you know, the government does things very inefficiently, so them putting stuff on a blockchain is consistent with that. But that's the whole reason we need bitcoin, because we can't put the government in charge of money and they make the money very inefficient and distorted and stolen and all this other stuff. So without going into all the bitcoin narratives like, I think, I think for us to find value outside of Bitcoin or at a higher layer of Bitcoin, I haven't seen myself the innovation. And I think the reason we see so many catch ups and then collapses is because the fundamentals are aren't really there to build anything really valuable and long standing outside of this pure monetary idea which itself is a hard idea for people to wrap their heads around. I'll pause there for you. Does that make sense?
- [42:17]
B
Yeah, yeah it makes perfect sense. That's why I asked.
- [42:21]
F
So I agree completely. I'm a Bitcoin maxi and I agree completely with Tomer. The world's largest problem is a store of value problem, nothing else. That's what Bitcoin basically solves a purpose for. Having said that, I don't know if you've heard about David Siroy. He's also working on Robin's bit VM and he's further progressing the idea. Yeah, he's exactly. And he's working further on the idea of ZK rollups and optimistic probabilities and in which actually you do not require a token. So I think anywhere that you require a token is basically just a money grab. So that's my 2 cent thought in cordon to to.
- [43:01]
A
India.
- [43:01]
E
Thanks for that. I wholeheartedly agree. I think the foundation of the financial system is sound money. But you know the, the Bitcoin maxi narrative of it ends at that is really short sighted. If you think of our world with, you know, dollars in value, sure you need a money that you can hold, then you need a payment method to be able to send that money. Then you need all the financial primitives on top of it. I like to call it like a financial stack, much like a tech stack. You have a web server and you got Linux on the bottom. Here you have technology, here you have a financial stack. And to say that we just need sound money is just the bottom level of the financial stack. And that causes you to then say okay, once you have sound money you can centralize everything else on top of it. You can centralize the exchanging, you can centralize the borrowing and the lending and then we end up with the same problems we had four years ago with blockfi, Celsius, go way back, Mount Gox and whatnot because we had sound money but no other financial primitives on top of it. So you can't belittle defi and smart contracts. I 100% agree. You don't put everything on chain. Anyone that says oh this doesn't get whatever technology put on chain. The blockchain is a database. Absolutely idiotic. The blockchain is not a database where it's the world's worst database. But being able to build true Financial primitives that have the same principles as Bitcoin. Censorship resistant, globally accessible. No kyc. Build that stuff on chain and you're replacing more of the financial stack, not just sound money, and therefore disrupting more of the existing financial system and replacing it with true defi, true cryptocurrency.
- [44:33]
F
I'll try and pin you the exact video of David Saroy, but I think you misheard me. I never said that. You know, you do not need to build up the payment stack.
- [44:43]
E
Not you previous speaker. Sorry, previous person that was talking. I can't remember who that was.
- [44:47]
B
So.
- [44:47]
E
No, I actually agree with you. I actually know David Throy. I had coffee with him three times. Great guy. A moderate panel at Bitcoin Vegas with him. So very familiar with David. Great job. But sorry, I was making sure it was someone else that I was commenting. I couldn't see who that was because.
- [45:02]
F
You can actually build RWAs or you can build even gambling casinos or whatever. Defi. But you don't need a token. That's exactly what he's building on. That's what My point was.
- [45:14]
E
100% agree. And I like that in comparison to the Ethereum L2s, where they all had tokens and they were just a land grab, just a money grab.
- [45:25]
B
Something rare. We always have people requesting. As a policy, we never bring up people that we don't know on the show. But I see Chris Loeffler here, I believe, CEO of Caliber, which I believe is the Link treasury company that was announced today. So must have seen the title and jump in here. Is that correct, Chris? Did I get. Did I get that right? Chris, you there? You're on stage now. Tech always goes great. So. Yeah, I guess we can circle back to the rest of the other conversation, although I think we've pretty much wrapped up. Yeah. There you are. Hey, how are you? Good, how are you? You're the first person in the history of Crypto town hall that requested that we brought up. Congratulations.
- [46:14]
G
Well, we had. We just had a good announcement this morning. Well timed, I guess, to that. We have launched a digital asset treasury strategy focused on Link. So just figured I'd drop in and listen and say hello.
- [46:28]
A
So can I ask.
- [46:29]
B
I had it here. Pulled up in the news and. Yeah. And discussed it actually this morning on my other show. So great that you happened to show up. I literally never click on the accounts of people requesting and I just saw it, so. Pretty crazy. Yeah, go ahead, ask the question.
- [46:41]
D
Yeah, this is about Link, because I'm just learning about it a little Bit more from the conversation we've had about it. So it sounds like it's a, it's a token that, that is that people use to validate the verity, the truth of claims as, as an Oracle. If you build a Tre, if you're building a large treasury asset or treasury base, does that give you control over declaring which things are true and which things aren't? Is that a centralization risk or am I completely missing the point of what Link does or what the treasury approach to it is?
- [47:15]
G
No, no, I think what we see Link does and what it is is essentially the. It's the underlying infrastructure of providing data to blockchain across many, many different projects. And so if you, if you, you know, I come out of the real estate and finance world and investing in infrastructure is something that we do all the time. And when we started to look at different opportunities in treasury and we saw the Link story, we just, you know, we fell in love with the fact that we get to, to be a part of the underlying data infrastructure of the entire Web3 ecosystem. And so acquiring the Link token and investing into the protocol itself is just the first step for us. We intend to take this and implement it into our private equity real estate investment platform. We intend to use the infrastructure of Chainlink to, as an example, automate the calculations of our net asset value for our assets and provide transparency to our investors who own real estate with us. And there's just a lot of really interesting applications of the chainlink technology to our actual business. So not just taking advantage of what we saw as a clear opportunity to buy Link at a price that is highly undervalued, considering the use case, but also to invest into and to infuse the technology into our business.
- [48:51]
B
Anyone else got got Chris here. You can ask all about Link. We had the whole conversation before.
- [48:59]
A
I came in late.
- [49:00]
G
Sorry guys, we're on the West Coast.
- [49:01]
B
Yeah. Oh, no, it's good. I'm saying we literally like had a whole conversation on Link and value accrual to the token versus the company and everything at the beginning because of the obviously announcement at the top. And you probably could have answered a lot of those questions for us, but.
- [49:16]
G
Still appreciate you the connectivity like DTCC and to Swift, the application of Link across the financial ecosystem and basically bringing in traditional assets into Blockchain is incredible.
- [49:34]
B
Yeah, I was just saying before that I had Sergey on two weeks ago on my show, kind of doing their live treasury announcement and when I do get the opportunity to speak to him, it's incredible. Incredibly smart guy and clearly, well, you know, tuned into what's needed and what's being built and very much part of it. So, you know, I think you'll, you'll probably do exceptionally well with that. Guys, we're go ahead and wrap the show up. We will be back, of course, tomorrow, 10:15am Eastern Standard Time for the next crypto Town hall, thank you so much to all our guests and for all of you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.