← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:01]
A
Good morning everybody and welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Every weekday here on X at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. In my case 7:15am Pacific Standard Time today here in Vegas. I'll be back tomorrow. But was here to interview Michael Saylor yesterday at Money 2020 and of course woke up at 3:30am this morning ready to go because even that three hours of jet lag apparently too much for my old body to handle. We have a title here, Bitcoin rallies before FOMC. What's coming tomorrow? 98% chance of a Fed rate cut. So I think everybody knows exactly what's coming tomorrow tomorrow and markets likely pricing that in. I'm not sure that we can connect the market pump or bitcoin buying that's having right happening right now necessarily with the fact that we're getting a completely priced in cut tomorrow. But it's worth discussing what is driving the market. There's quite a lot of big news today. Obviously we have a number of ETFs launching and starting trading, you know, today, tomorrow, within the next few hours looking at hbar, Litecoin, Solana staking etf, all of those things happening. Also in the news we have IBM announcing the launch of its enterprise crypto service platform which is pretty big news that will likely go completely undiscussed. And of course the S and P giving a debt rating, a credit rating to strategy. That's the first time a Treasury company has gotten one. It's a B minus, not necessarily the best rating. But I spoke to Sailor about it yesterday and he was super pumped that treasury companies are now even on the radar of the S and P to get a rating there. I think we can start with the market. Bitcoin trading at 115,951, about to be back up at 116,000. ETH4100 Solana outperforming both up 2% 24 hours at $202. Dave, did you make it through TSA?
- [02:21]
B
I have. I'm in the Admiral's Club. So there you go.
- [02:25]
A
Yeah, all of the flights here have delayed for the last two days I think. I don't know if it's the government shutdown or the furlough, but my travel looks like I'm getting home now at one o' clock in the morning, which.
- [02:37]
B
Would be great for tomorrow. But yeah, I'm going to New York and for whatever reason this time the plane is sitting at the gate. So if it's late it won't be too bad. So not, not too Horrible, but whatever. Anyway, yeah, this market, it's always let's.
- [02:50]
A
Talk about the market. Yeah, yeah.
- [02:52]
B
I always find it funny how we have to come up with explanations for why certain things happen when in reality, especially in the market. In Bitcoin all it takes for any rally whatsoever is for some of the supply that has been triggered by its climb over 100,000 to abate because the demand has not abated. It hasn't even come close to abating. And so it's really easy. I mean the amount like Matt Hogan had a tweet yesterday and he's right, there's an enormous number of stories that are all positive that are being ignored. I mean just. And you know, like you mentioned IBM, you know, what does that mean? You know, it's telling you that everything is going to be tokenized. You we talked about Zelle going international yesterday. We talked about JP Morgan accepting Bitcoin as collateral. All of this is indicative of the fact that there's a lot of money that will be able to move without friction where right now there's a ton of friction and that matters. But you know what causes it instantaneously to go higher? Well look, the S and P just made new all time highs. We're printing money, the denominator keeps going and that's Tom Lee thesis and he's not long. Anything that has a reasonable narrative is going to attract capital. And gold meanwhile is doing exactly what you would expect it to do, which is it had a little blow off copy from the hot ball of money that was going into it but it's not going anywhere. It's still in its uptrend and it's just going to quiet down for a while in base, which is the same thing that we'd said when bitcoin first went over a hundred thousand. It's going to quiet down in base and guess what that we're still in the middle of that range. There are a lot of technicians looking to take profits at or looking to establish shorts or said they did a couple days ago at 116. So we'll see what happens. But my guess is the first attempt at this level the rally will fade. If it doesn't, well, all of a sudden all those bears are going to flip positive and that's when you can get some really interesting stuff.
- [04:49]
A
Well bitcoin did take a shot at this level a few days ago. I don't remember when it was.
- [04:54]
B
It's an important level for these guys.
- [04:56]
A
Just above the 50 ma, you know, 200 ma is way down there below, we were trading between the two. So if we start closing candles for a lot of technicians, you know, consistently above the daily 50 in this area, maybe, you know, we start talking about the, the 120th again. But it's all, you know, it's, it's all small detail. I think we all know directionally where it's going with time. And 120 and 116 are the same price when we're at 250.
- [05:20]
B
Yeah. And that is the incredibly important point. The long term bulls are where the bids coming from, but they're not chasing. And the technical traders and the momentum traders are still out of the market or short. And so that's generally pretty constructive. But I mean, people can get shaken. Traders are easy to shake out of positions, investors are hard to shake out of positions. And at the end of the day, we have yet to get to the point in, and I don't want to use the word cycle, say in this, this, this market where, where the traders are, are dominating. And so we'll see.
- [05:58]
A
All right, panel, let's open it up. What do you guys think? Brian, go ahead.
- [06:02]
C
Hey everybody. Yeah, I just point out I +1 on all these huge, huge positive, medium to long term catalysts, whether that's digital assets going into US retirement plans, whether that's a proliferation of digital asset ETFs, whether that's new market structure legislation that should come in the U.S. the thing I was going to say is this is a huge week from a fundamental standpoint with a lot of potential catalysts to the upside or to the downside, depending on how they unfold. So we've got big tech earnings. You have Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, all reporting Wednesday. Thursday you have a US China trade deal that could be announced. Trump is meeting Xi on Thursday. A framework for a potential trade deal has already been set. And then you have of course the Fed meeting which you mentioned. I think it's almost 100% chance that they'll cut 25 bips. And I think the big question is to whether or not they allude to another cut in December, which I suspect that they probably will. And so if all those things go our way, earnings are good. We do make progress on US China trade relations and the Fed cuts and signals more to come. I think like, yeah, we could see a rip higher.
- [07:20]
A
Anyone else jump in market thoughts?
- [07:25]
D
I'm happy to chip in here. I'm a bit disappointed with the, the new etf. I'm a bit disappointed with the new ETF stocks. I mean, H bar should be pumping. Soul should be pumping. LTC should be pumping. Am I missing something here?
- [07:40]
A
I think HBAR was up about 16 the last I checked. So that one did get a move. Solana I think was like a maybe mentally a foregone conclusion. But yeah, you would expect to see moves commensurate with what, you know, happened in the past with ETF approvals.
- [07:57]
B
Why Scott? Seriously?
- [08:00]
A
I. Yeah, no, no, I mean because we, you know, it was alt season in public equities. So you know, when something actually has an excuse for it to move on the public side, maybe you would get some tailwinds on the crypto side. But yeah, I guess everybody knows they're coming. So what's the big deal? Not only that, how many people are going to buy an hbar etf? I don't know.
- [08:20]
B
Solana has a very hyped. Very, you know hyped is the wrong word because that implies negative. A very, you know, an all star team behind it. And it's a treasury company, it's in the public market. So anybody, any financial advisor or investor who only had brokerage account already has the ability by a forward, you get exposure to Solana and get yield, etc.
- [08:41]
A
Or you taxi. Right, Brian.
- [08:44]
B
Right, Exactly.
- [08:45]
C
Right, right, right.
- [08:46]
B
But my point is it was already there. So you know, the first vehicle that allows for, for opening up money in traditional assets to a crypto event is a big deal. After that it's, I mean it's just marketing and marketing takes time. When I say marketing, I don't mean it in a pejorative way.
- [09:05]
A
I mean that, that is true. But I mean Bitcoin's obviously different. I mean it was the most anticipated ETF launch of all time. But you did have microstrategy. Not the same.
- [09:14]
B
Well, but it's different.
- [09:15]
A
Maybe.
- [09:16]
B
But yeah, it's different. A lot of people you had marketing. That's what I was just saying. Don't underestimate how many people were reached by BlackRock salespeople, by Fidelity salespeople, by Matt and his team at Bitwise's salespeople, etc. That is not a small thing. And the amount of education it took was a lot. Now, yes, it wildly outperformed all the, the estimates. I mean wildly, I mean not, not even close. I just remember, I'll still remember when Alex from Galaxy came out with a report saying it would get attract 15 billion in people, you know, in the first six months or whatever it was. And he got vilified. People are like crazy. It's not Gonna be that much?
- [09:56]
A
Yeah, 5 billion was supposed to be way too much.
- [09:59]
B
He said 15. And people made, made fun of him. And then it outperformed by what, 4x, you know, in or 3x in the same time period. I mean it's, it's not like they said he was wrong. People actually made fun of him for it. So, you know, Alex, if you're listening, I know you do sometimes, you know, you can take your victory, victory lap anytime you want. But the difference is understand these ETFs matter, but they matter in the same way all these other news stories matter. Brick by brick. Bit by bit, the investing public is going to move from oh, these things are tulip foam to these things are tech stock. And don't underestimate that because everyone's seen, and a lot of people have seen things like boiler room and up there's some people think of crypto as well as this wild crazy casino, et cetera. And sure, because they hear about dog whiff, whiff hat or Fartcoin, but Solana Hedera, a lot of these have real use cases that you could argue that some of them are over pumped. You could make all sorts of arguments, but you can't argue that there's real technology there doing real things. And so that hasn't penetrated the average investor.
- [11:10]
A
Just think about that.
- [11:11]
B
And literally not penetrated. We are in, we're not even in the first inning. The pitchers are warming up for that. I'd say we're into the second inning, maybe in bitcoin, but you know, but in these things, no, we're we. The game hasn't even started. And my guess is it'll be as long as. Yes, last night's World Series game, which.
- [11:27]
A
For those who I was literally just gonna say. So is the analogy 9 innings or is it 8?
- [11:31]
B
18 innings. Yeah, I mean, it's gonna be a lot. Look, this is a long cycle, right? You know, cycles tend to be compressed now, but it's a long term that, that's really my point. Anyway, I managed to gin up a bunch of hands, so then you don't have to listen to me speak.
- [11:44]
A
Good job. Thank you, Austin.
- [11:47]
E
Yeah, so one part on the ETF thing to pile on, Dave's point is you've really got to put yourselves in the shoes of like the average investor here to understand what is going on with ETFs, especially as they get integrated with RIA's retirement plan portfolios, et cetera. And I would tell you, maybe to echo what Dave said, the only asset in the entire crypto space that has really breached into that consciousness so far is bitcoin. And I do think that's kind of why we've seen some divergence in bitcoin price for many of the other things recently. ETH is probably number two on that list, but I'm going to be clear, it's a pretty distant number two right now and everything else is a long tail after that. So there is this sort of diminishing effect as new DATs are approved for, call it lower and lower tier assets compared to those just in terms of like what people think of them, what the general public consciousness is. Because if you go to the average person on the street, you say, hey, have you heard about Hedera? Their first question is what's that? Right. It's not yes or no, it's like confusion. So it doesn't surprise me that reactions there can be more muted. Two to bring it all the way back to where we started. When you're looking at a backdrop in the current market that the Fed is going to be cutting into a record S and P, into mildly above target inflation, but also some fears about unemployment. Right. Like you would expect asset prices to continue to do well. This is a very constructive environment generically. So I would also urge most people think about the total backdrop when you're looking at price action here, not just specific assets.
- [13:29]
C
Yeah. My view is for these longer tail assets like the ETFs, impact on digital asset prices will be all about flows. I'd plus one on your awareness point. I'd seen surveys that said 99% of Americans have heard of bitcoin. You know, that percentage for Hedera I'm sure is in probably in the low single digits also too. Like bitcoin had this huge run up into the ETFs. It was this big thing for literally a decade where you're not getting that with some of these smaller altcoin ETFs. And then I do think like it's now like folks are starting to invest in crypto more and more, but they dip their toe into BTC first. After a while maybe they move into something like Ether Solana. But I think except for like a small percentage of degens that are probably not putting in a ton of money, I don't think people are going all in on these kind of lower tail or longer tail altcoins. So I think it'll be about the close.
- [14:26]
A
But to Richard's point though, like the crypto people do know what Hedera is and I don't think he's implying that there would be massive flows into a Hedera etf, but it is the kind of news that would move the token for the people who like to trade tokens. It is up like 16%. But I don't think it's crazy to think that holy crap, like something like Hedera, after we've only really had Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs would have a more sizable move. And that is not, in my mind dependent on whether like the mainstream has heard of Hedera specifically. Yeah, it sounds more like a, probably like a, you know, medication they take for their high cholesterol or something. What scenario? But still, crypto people know and you would think that since they're all degenerates, they're going to kind of trade on news like that.
- [15:17]
D
Yeah, that was my point. I was doing it a bit tongue in cheek to try and open it up. But I think it's symbolic of where we are. I think it's where we were with some, symbolically where we are with old season. So, you know, we've got to just keep hoping that, you know, something happens.
- [15:31]
E
Because this certainly hasn't done much, Eric.
- [15:36]
F
So, I mean, other than being a great name for a cholesterol medication, which I agree, Scott, I think the news on Hedera gives license to everyday, you know, CIOs and CFOs who were looking to build in the Hedera ecosystem additional cover when they go to their board of directors. Because if you look at the council, that makes up, I think it's 30 people that sit on the Hedera council. Many of those names are already Fortune 500, Boeing, et cetera, that haven't traditionally really played in the crypto markets. But, but when they're able to go back to their board or their investment council and say, look, Hedera has now got its own etf, it expands the conversation. And so yes, a pump on the token itself is probably to be expected just from, you know, the crypto markets themselves. But the larger implication is where this convert, where this, you know, ETF launch takes the conversation in the long term. And I think that's nothing but bullish. And so as you see additional alts come into the space, I think it's actually really a great harbinger for the larger ecosystem, if you will, because this just expands the players that are involved. And again, knowing the team at Hedera, like Tom from the council side and some of their other folks, like they're Serious people. They've got the pedigree of kind of the blue chip technology players. And so that's where they've been looking to drive this for a long time. And so I think they're probably, you know, popping champagne over at the their offices because this is the exact sort of thing that'll be a catalyst for where they go over the next 18 to 24 months. And so I my hallucination would be that you're going to see some major probably partnership announcements in the next three to six months because there's now additional cover for, you know, these folks might have been reticent.
- [17:38]
A
Yeah, that all makes a lot of sense. I wasn't trying to be dismissive of Hedera specifically in any way, shape or form, just to be clear.
- [17:48]
F
I know I actually laughed. Trust me, I laughed out loud.
- [17:51]
A
I do think it speaks to what Dave was talking about before and what we talk about here with all of the news flow is that at this point all of these massive news stories that kind of just pass in the flow and don't really move price, it's because it's a mature market and it's just plumbing at this point like all of these things. Dave, you talk about this all the time, like in six months or a year we'll look back and be like damn, that was big.
- [18:16]
B
Exactly. And I want to jump on Eric's point because he said something and that matters and I don't think people truly appreciate. So if you're a company and you are investing and building in the ecosystem of a digital asset, it opens up the possibility for strategic investment inside digital asset. People probably don't know this but pretty much every single fortune, whatever thousand firm have, unless they're you know, bitcoin bankrupt or a zombie company. But they tend to make not so trivial strategic investments in companies whenever their involvement in the company is likely to increase the asset value of that company. So if you consider, you know, you consider that, that is if you consider there's a company that called market which now it's part of this mergered S and P. But it became a multi billion dollar company because all of its main users of its, of its data and it started with credit default swap data but it doesn't matter what it was all were, you know, took a fifth, you know, took a stake and ended up owning 50% of the company. A combination of usage fees and investment. And it's a really good business model for a operational firm. So if you think about how they do it are these operational Firms going to buy tokens and hold them in custody wallets? No. Are they going to trust an intermediary that maybe has a credit rating lower than theirs? Maybe not. But will they trust an ETF to hold in treasury for a token that represents an equity developing in. Well, yeah, and it's a perfectly rational thing to do. If you're working with Hedera, if you're working with Solana, if you're working with any of these, it all of a sudden becomes important once again. It doesn't happen overnight, but it becomes something that, you know, if you're, if you're the CIO of a company and you're, you've decided to invest millions of dollars in building technology based on Solana, for example, why the hell wouldn't you talk to your strategic investment people and say, listen guys, we're going to make this more valuable. You may want to participate and that will happen. Those conversations are probably happening now. And that's, that's what the ETFs open up. Sorry, I don't know if you see the hands but Constantine.
- [20:35]
A
I don't, I don't even see Constantine on stage.
- [20:37]
B
That's what I was afraid of. So Constantine, sorry.
- [20:40]
G
Yeah, no worries guys.
- [20:43]
A
Yeah, we literally, guys, I know I like, I know we actually, like people will often be like, I was a guest and I raised my hand and nobody called on me. What's going on? Like, we probably literally don't see you. So sometimes you guys just have to jump in. I'm sorry.
- [20:56]
E
No worries.
- [20:56]
G
Like that, that teaches me. Like it's a fascinating conversation. To be honest. I'm not much to that about Hedera. I was not looking into them like and I, I was actually more bullish about the circle announcement. I don't know if you've seen like, you know, they, they now they're talking about their own blockchain with ARC and they have BlackRock, Visa, AWS and Entropic who are jumping into this like, which is pretty big announcement and they, you know, they're going to push forward to it. And there is another announcement by BlackRock today like which, that you know, as a CEO to like, you know, that you know, the crypto and gold are not for profit making tools but they're protection against currency debasement and global instability. Now of course we knew it all all the way, you know, like even like maybe 10 years ago, whoever, like we're the OGs here. But hearing it now for the, from the major institutions, you know that basically investors hold these Assets not out of greed but out of fear of losing their savings. That is like really important. And, and just, just as a friendly suggestion I don't know if anyone has a chance to read BlackRock investor letter this year. It's I would highly recommend and if you have like you know the CFO so the family offices you want to approach and you need some reputable name and like you know with the primer that helps you to indicate the key narratives and the key points like of the one of the biggest Asset manager holds $10 trillion AUM. I think that can be a good one. And they talk, you know, they're about the infrastructure. Then there's the next level of the private credits like real estate equities and fixed income. And I love the quote from there that the tokenization is not a crypto experiment, it's the modernization of markets. So if we look at what's happening right now like I'm actually a little bit just just to jump off, I don't know also like on on the BNB network I was watching lately V with all the like liquidity injections and with the latest burn of like 33rd quarterly burn when they destroyed more than almost 1.5 million BNB worth of $1.6 billion. I think they have a very good run and fun fact. I don't know if you've seen also this fun news that there is a projected statue installation in Washington D.C. you know that's anonymous race 50,000 to install the 4 meter golden monument to CZ. So anyone who's traveling there might enjoy probably going to stand next to Trump and yeah it's going to be fun but just a lot of new updates which are like I don't know making me more bullish. And one thing that I was also looking this morning that the Dex Dex platforms are also the first time I think they exceeded $2 trillion like with you know hyper liquid lighter and Aster leading the flow. But there is a lot of new contenders coming to this right? And that's also I think is a very good indicator because most of the time Dexs have very, very, very organized order books and very like kind of transparent. So I'm really excited about this as well.
- [24:16]
A
I saw Lunette so Lou, go ahead.
- [24:20]
B
No, there's a lot there from Constantine. I actually you know some news that I thought was you know, meaningful has been impactful and I don't know if you guys discussed it on a previous show but you know just over the last couple days this x402 standard for you know, that I think Coinbase built around agent to agent payment, you know, has started to, you know, climb precipitously in terms of usage, you know, literally just over the last week and as a result is. Yeah I think brought renewed interest, your interest back to the intersection of Web3 and AI which yeah, I think every. Yeah. Everybody should realize is going to be huge. Yeah.
- [25:09]
A
We had talked about when the announcement happened, the way they were doing it, but certainly kind of fell off the radar since then, Lou. So yeah, thanks for putting that back on.
- [25:19]
B
Yeah, I mean they announced I think back in April.
- [25:21]
A
Yeah, I remember talking about it and then obviously forgetting about it. So interesting to know that that's actually happening as with all things in crypto. Right, Go ahead Richard.
- [25:32]
D
Yeah, just to keep the crypto theme maybe just a bit of a tangent but you know, we certainly being traditional investors and marketing partners with, with the various aspects of what we do, I would say some of the most interesting projects we've spoken to in the last three months are all really utility based and I since things have really shifted towards real utility and you know, if you've been in crypto a long time and you know Scott, I know you've probably had some experience in this, you know, when possibly being offered opportunities and stuff like that, you know you're kind of going with the narrative what's hot, you know, in that particular time. But you know the things like prediction markets, there's, there's just a whole new flurry of new projects that are, that are getting strong backing and prediction. So obviously with the rampant success of polymarket and Kelsey and you know this Perp Dex thing is it looks like it's really got some stickiness, you know, seeing real competitors to the likes of Hyperliquid and Ester and, and I'm really encouraged, you know, having been entrenched in this space for eight years that finally, you know, we, we starting to build technology that could potentially circumvent bearish type elements. Although you know, with underlying tokens those are going to be incumbent to fairly strong market conditions. But I think no different to anything else. But yeah, and just seeing this, you know, we chat to a lot of projects that work in the agentic space as well and there's this, you know, this new protocol that's, that's come out that's going to make this agent to agent transaction more effective. So aside from all that's going on in macro, it's like is crypto paying attention to how do we just continue to grind and build, to make stuff that people are going to use to bring the masses in. I mean it used to be gaming and used to be social fire and these things have been unfortunately been very, very difficult to get user acquisition up. But I think something is definitely shifting.
- [27:42]
B
Yeah. Scott, you made a point this morning which I think bears repeating and I'm sorry if you made it right at the beginning of this when I was going through security, which was that even Michael Saylor made the comment that he's more constructive on the rest of crypto, which I interpret to mean he's publicly willing to admit what you and I have been saying for years, which is there are use cases, there will be modernization of the financial system and that creates opportunities for certain crypto assets. Obviously not for ridiculous junk. But I think that matters and that speaks to what Richard was talking about. There is a massive total addressable market here and it's, it's going to come up against a lot of institutional existence. We're seeing that with stablecoins. Right. You know, the whole year, no yield stuff. But what's going around it is the more interoperability you get and that's where the serpent is. It's actually a big deal. That's where we're. And also, and I had a, you know, conversation quickly on, on about tether when you know that the Giants are going to want cook for interoperability which is going to make and change the way all these payments are done. And so there are massive opportunities here. We'll see whether they're in tokens or in equities, you know, new companies or not. But, but it is a very big change and I don't think that's the massive understanding. Okay, good. I thought that you.
- [29:02]
A
Yeah, I did not talk about that here, Dave, by the way. Yeah, I said it on my show earlier this morning. But I, I made a, a classic ice breaking XRP joke to Saylor and he told me privately he was like, I think you'd find if we had a conversation about Altcoins it would be much more constructive than in the past. So very, very different approach there from him. Go ahead, Austin.
- [29:25]
C
Sorry.
- [29:28]
E
Yeah, not a problem. I just want to leg on to what Dave is saying about building in this space is I guess, what's the right way to say this. We've eaten a decent amount of low hanging fruit already. That's not to say there's not more, but as you get into payments world, things get harder, more scaled, distribution matters more. Some of the core principles of Crypto around censorship, resistance and decentralization start to come into conflict with things like, you know, what the law is or consumer protection. So I don't think it's going to be easy. And I think one of the things you may find back to the divergence in prices that we're seeing in some cases is the gains will not necessarily go to tokens.
- [30:11]
F
Right?
- [30:11]
E
Like, put differently, if there's a huge explosion of stablecoins globally and everybody is using them, do the benefits of that accrue to like actual companies, to networks, to the consumers? I'm not sure that picture is nearly as clear. And if you're thinking about what to buy and how the market is going to react, and this is seen as, call it uniformly bullish for one specific vector, I think you need to ask some more questions. You know, as somebody who's been involved in that space for a while.
- [30:42]
A
If.
- [30:42]
B
No one wants to jump in, I want to pile on that because that's a very important point. And there will be benefit through tokens, there's no doubt about that. But understand that if you're. The farther you get away from the consumer, the farther you get away from the higher margin, the more likely you are to become a commoditized asset. Commoditized assets do not have the valuation that we tend to get crypto, where we're not supposed, without looking at it being commoditized. And you need to understand that. And that's my big argument with the XRP army. And most of them are delusional, right? I mean, they talk about, you know, XRP at worth more than gold is today, right? Actually some of them have it as a 10x what gold is today. And, and they don't understand that that would make their entire value proposition untenable. It's just too expensive to use, you know, and you just need to understand where things go and you know, look, XRP has been one of the best at changing its narrative, right? You know, it started as a payments thing because you could buy it in one post and sell it another. That's gone. That literally does not exist at all anymore. The core technology was used for is useless compared to standard coins because it's dramatically inferior. That's not that the kid doesn't have other things we can do because it's a block trading, whatever. But people, when they understand narratives, have to actually look at where it's going to where value is going to happen and there's going to be massive value creation. You have to ask yourself why and Think about it and understand and ask questions. And so what I would say, my most important advice I would give to people isn't to be bearish any of these things. And I'm not there. It's xrp, to be blunt. I'm not what in fact, I think it's a trade. It's still probably going to continue to be the other Bitcoin. But the truth is if you are part of a quote community and you slavishly think like William Kitty did with great gamestop that you're going to get the same thing to happen again. Well, good luck with that. That doesn't, that that's a one for a pony. It doesn't tend to happen that much. So all season where you just throw a dart and anything you, you hit is going to be a FedEx. I don't think we see that again. I think that that's something different. I think that that won't happen in crypto. It may happen in some things. You know, it could be some new cycle comes up, AI agents, whatever. There's, there's so many things that could happen. But this broad notion that just because you have a token it's going to go higher. No, that that's, I think those days are behind us. It'll be something else. So just like we didn't see that in Internet stocks again, you know, for when it happened didn't mean that huge value Internet stocks but it wasn't, you know, a thousand of them all going up. Oh, I'm stunned. Nobody wants to react to that. I thought it would have pissed off a lot of people by that, by that, that react.
- [33:35]
A
I, I tend to agree so but yeah, I'm trying to see if there's any other. I know we've got, I think, I believe there's a sponsor joining in five minutes but we could circle back, no pun intended to the circle stablecoin and the fact that they are launching the public test net of their own blockchain because I think it's a big conversation to have about how stablecoins are going to make money once interest rates come way down, which we know is what Trump wants.
- [34:05]
B
Well, there's two aspects of that. One is has anybody ever in a place where, where they didn't let him get away with fluff, ask calmly about how is it that Ethereum is the biggest beneficiary with stable coins if the two largest stable coins, one is building their own with a consortium and the other has a penchant for going to the, you know, Multiple networks and having the most use on the networks that are cheaper and more efficient to operate. Obviously I'm talking about circle and tether. I would love to hear his answer to that question. I'm not saying there isn't one. I would really love to hear him say it. Anybody will answer that. I'll take that as a no.
- [34:48]
A
So I would say I have not. No.
- [34:51]
B
Wouldn't you find that interesting, Scott? I mean that is yes, obviously. Yeah. So when you, when you finally get him in an interview, you'll have to ask him that question.
- [35:00]
A
Yeah, I want to ask. It's Brian's here and we got a couple more minutes. Brian, are you surprised obviously, since you are the chief strategy officer at a Solana treasury company, that Solana staking ETF launches are not moving price more? I didn't get to ask you before.
- [35:18]
B
I'm not.
- [35:19]
C
I think like most folks had really expected this to happen. I think especially after like the generic listing standards were introduced and folks saw like all these amendments to all the, the spotty TFs ones. I think everybody basically knew that this was coming. So I think the simple fact that it came and it actually happened so quickly, like to my understanding, they just added this certain amendment that allowed the registration statement to go effective after 20 days. And it was almost like, oh, all of a sudden it's happening tomorrow. And there was no really like built up anticipation in front of it. I'm not actually even sure that everybody knows about it. So to me, yeah, I go back to my comment. I think a lot of it will be about flows. I do think like the flows will be somewhere on a relative size basis between what we saw with Bitcoin and what we saw with Ethereum, which, you know, I'll take like that would be really strong. So yeah, I think like that's the key thing that I'll be watching going forward.
- [36:24]
A
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Solana I think is so deeply ingrained now in the narrative that this is not the same environment as when the Bitcoin ETF launched. And I think it's also important to remember that the ETH ETF launch was horrible for a year before ETH even caught a bid. So looking at the Bitcoin ETF launch as an example for all other ETF launch might be disingenuous. I mean, Dave, don't you think?
- [36:53]
B
Well, yeah, I mean it wasn't that long ago that we were talking about ETH as it, as it cratered. So it didn't just drop below 2000. It cratered through 2000. It was trading at 1600. Right. And then Tom Lee comes in and says, and this is post ETF1, ETF6 at this point, comes in and says, wait a minute guys, this is the asset you really want to own. It's a 2 million ban. It triples, I mean literal triple to the top, to the high. You know, which, you know, if you're, if you're a hundred million dollar asset, that's no big deal. But you know, you're talking multi hundred billion dollar asset.
- [37:33]
F
Right?
- [37:33]
B
You know, that's a, that's a very, very large move in a very short period of time. And so if I'm sitting in Solana and I'm, I'm a fifth of the size of Ether thereabouts and attacking a similar, if not, you know, whatever, addressable market, I'm looking at this saying, well, you know, I don't know when, but it not going to take a whole lot to get a lot of people excited. I mean, you know, it really depends who the winners are. This whole thing with authentic, you know, payments is not small. And there's two aspects to it. There's what will be the value that's exchanged. Will it be some version of Bitcoin or Ethereum, Will it be various whatevers? Will it be, you know, stablecoins, Fiat? You know, we don't know. Right. You know, we have no idea. The same thing is true, but the other piece is what they're going to run on and they stop you run on something where that's where that matters. So all of those are the questions. And we really don't understand or know anyone who says they know. Well, I, I mean they have strong conviction, they don't know. There's a big difference. And so that's why you're saying what you're seeing, right? I mean, Richard, I assume you have conversations with investors about this and you're basically saying, yeah, this is a pretty good bet for that exact reason.
- [38:49]
D
I mean, am I being too simple, too simple in thinking that it makes the marketing team for these banks so much easier if you're having a conversation about a larger asset class and just having to circle, you know, go around in circles with Bitcoin and Eth when actually is quite a compelling case for certainly some of them. I mean, we've, we've agreed that Solana has certainly we wrote about this in a report ironically and, and then this news came out. But like I had to go and, and I mean there was only so much Information I could dig up about, you know, the 20 odd ETFs that were pending with, with the major banks. But it was more just the reason why. And so when you, when you go to the obvious metrics, I mean, it's got some fantastic metrics and, and whilst they might not be Wall street type numbers, they're still impressive and I just would imagine that, I mean, there are any people on the panel that have done this before that have, that have pounded the, the tar and had to go and sell these kind of instruments and, and, and use some kind of a narrative. If you're selling into an emerging market or into commodities, where you're selling, you know, coffees, you know, surely it makes it easy that they're able to sell, you know, select 10 cryptos.
- [40:04]
A
Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Absolutely. It's been a great conversation. We do have, we do have T5 up on stage, so wanted to take a few minutes to specifically chat, chat with them and thank them for being a sponsor and joining. So first of all, who's behind the account there? Who are we talking to?
- [40:25]
H
Hey guys, pleasure meeting you all, the CEO and founder. Pleasure being here.
- [40:35]
A
Sorry, I lost connection there. Can you guys hear me? Good. Hopefully, hopefully you can. I couldn't really hear you, were breaking up a little bit, but hopefully it was my connection and not yours. So here, let's start. Maybe you can just give us the TLDR. What's T5? And I know you describe yourself as a defi super app, so what does that mean?
- [40:55]
H
I definitely hope it was your connection and not mine. We'll find out enough. Yeah, so the TLDR is basically defi fragmented, too complex and we're not embodying any and we take all the code and the antillas of crypto, so from wallets, yield, swap, bridge, on and off ramp, etc, and we integrate them under a interface so the user gets rejected and we just abstract everything away. So no seed phrases, no chain fragmentation, no gas fees, just making crypto easy.
- [41:36]
B
Perfect.
- [41:37]
A
Yeah, you have a little glitch on your phone, but I figured we could still hear you. So perhaps you can like, can you walk us through what it actually looks like as a user if you're using this compared to traditional defi apps.
- [41:55]
H
Yeah. So currently doesn't matter almost which defi application you're using. You cannot use only this application. So if you, when I swap a new swap, you have your wallet on metamask and even liquidity position on aave and it's been routed through every tool is Relying on other tools and basically it doesn't matter how good metamask uxui is and how good are beautiful the fact that the user need to go from one tool to another tool and get used to completely different experiences of hurting the experience. So I think one of the main things we come to fix so you never have to get used to new interventions, you only have.
- [42:54]
C
One.
- [42:59]
A
Got it. Awesome. So what inspired you to create this? Like you know, what's your background and how did you decide this is what you wanted to build?
- [43:10]
H
Yeah, so I think I told this story maybe like a million times by now. I'm sorry for everybody in the audience who already heard it. I started my crypto journey about years ago. I'm currently 24 by the way. It is relatively young but yeah I was doing very well. You know 20 especially the all season etc was very easy to make money and other was like asking what I'm doing etc and I started on boarding people to crypto space and it's kind of I didn't do it and I think past six, seven years I've been bought around 500 people to the crypto space like personal one one which is quite a lot. And yeah I think usually when we look now at the crypto space and you don't have gas fees to transfer USD which is like the most classical.
- [44:17]
A
Right.
- [44:19]
H
Then you get used to it. Right. But and over we just get used to everyone. Humans are adapting, that's what we do. But because so many people over and over again struggling with those things didn't have this luxury of adapting and I was trying very hard to find a solution that's actually like A to Z make it like make it better and it's unfortunately it's like they weren't really. I don't know if it's a good place about like so called competitors but yeah but couldn't find a real solution for that.
- [45:03]
A
So what specifically are the pain points I guess that you saw with Defi that you need to solve and how does that make you different from other DEFI platforms?
- [45:14]
H
Yeah so one of the things I just mentioned is the unified interface. So you have thing in one app, you don't need to go to any other app. And another thing is when you bring this kind of variety usually until now people choose either black or white. So if you bring that kind of a wide variety either you, you say I'm going to give the user everything you can dream of and then you get overwhelmed. For example like in OKX Wallet bitget Wallet Then they're kind of trying to be your like one stop shop.
- [46:04]
A
But.
- [46:06]
H
It'S like for a new user there are hundreds and hundreds of tools and services and options there that almost no one needs. And it's really, really hot in the experience. Then on the side Defi app and Infinix which are really, really trying to abstract away the experience to further. You don't even have a browser right and you don't really have the ability to flow. So the limiting is similar to what Apple is doing. Like only what I and many other ways make sense. I think the first one is obvious like it's unbearable for new users and later is actually sounds like it makes sense the beginning, you know, Palm fun or virtual or a million other things that coming up like we had a few days, few suddenly everybody want to use it. And when you get to this point like you get to this world of crypto where it's changing, you don't have like, you can't assume that you will like tell you what they want to do and, and, etc and, and they, and they will, they will accept it because there's so much so many like every other day, every other week there is this thing that you have to have inside. So you have to have this like gray zone between this white and black where you give the users a clean and holistic experience but still allow them to explore. And I think that's what we do the best.
- [48:00]
A
Great. And so I was reading about this and you have something called Teapot. Maybe you can explain that to me and how that actually works within tfi. Yes.
- [48:17]
H
Stands for I just say it right away, don't judge me. But we love acronyms and I love the tpod. So the Teapot stands for the Everything Up Protocol Owned treasury which is as the name says, Treasury Bicycle. There is a very cool meta now which I really like to see and I think it's a very good idea. Like I think it doesn't make sense that both of marsh doesn't generate any, any revenue to sustain that. But I also think that the this meta is stable because these market balls in your four depression cycles, in bullet cycles and as long as everything goes good then you do a lot of buybacks but the moment things are getting bad people get less forward so they're more likely to sell then you actually have less buy pressure and more sell pressure. So it doesn't really make sense. It makes sense as long as everything goes well. So what we do with the bot is instead of funneling the revenue towards the Post buyback we funneling it to a portability that will be generating yield and this yield will go towards the buyback. So right even at the beginning the buyback will be like relatively a bit smaller. Like it will necessarily be growing basically forever.
- [50:03]
A
So there's obviously a. I'm reading the T token tea how does that work in the ecosystem And I mean I guess discuss the tokenomics and all the partnerships to sort of drive the token.
- [50:18]
H
Yeah. So regarding I don't think economics that's interesting but regarding the token utility. So there is the classics of the governance which we are trying to actually make a bit cooler and make it monetizable if sort of like a bribe and fees discount and yields inside the platform. I think something pretty cool is that we're doing is that we are going to have a lot of different projects and companies join the TPOT standard and they will be airdropping their tokens to staking works in a model similar to what curve doing with the VE3 3. The longer you lock the more.
- [51:21]
A
Basically.
- [51:21]
H
The influence you have and the more weight you have. I think it's a great way especially now with web 3 opening the whole world even like web 3 tier 3 countries so called. So basically it doesn't matter how much money you have, you can compensate that with loyalty and yeah that's basically what you can do with the T token and regardless of like the demand from that there is also the constant demand ever going by design from the teapot itself.
- [51:58]
B
Yeah.
- [51:59]
A
And I know we've only got a couple minutes left here so maybe just talk a bit about community and then you know future plans and things should be looking for. People should be looking for from you guys moving forward.
- [52:14]
H
Yeah. So regarding community actually I don't have anything to add. I would just take this stage to.
- [52:21]
C
See that.
- [52:23]
H
In here it's been. It's been a very very long journey started. It's a very big milestone very soon. Really appreciate each and every one of you. It's been I think the support God for the very early days when we had so many bugs in the platform were insane and I think it's really the market fit. And regarding plans of the future I think two very short things is one we are about to introduce the new app. So we currently call the app beta and asking me why put it better. So we have partnered with a company called Midcard. They designed the Siri for Apple, Robinhood, Spotify and many other beautiful brands. So we're doing a complete redesign restructure of the whole let's already have some screenshots that we'll be sharing very soon with the community and I think it's the most beautiful app I've seen in my life and I think one of the things that people in the community waiting for a lot is the PAAs like the protocol identifications that will adopt.
- [53:40]
C
The.
- [53:42]
H
So we have actually more than live and many more 26 so I think that's going to be one of the most exciting part and especially for the potential expansion of the ecosystem and talk about.
- [54:07]
A
Awesome. Thank you for for joining and for sharing all that. Obviously you guys follow T5 underscore official it's right up on stage. Give them a follow. I'm a ton that was good. We worked through the technical glitches there but it sounds very very exciting and good luck with everything you're doing. Everyone else, another great episode of Crypto 10 Ha. We will be back tomorrow at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. Thanks for joining everybody. Thanks to TPAI and we'll see you guys tomorrow. Bye.