← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
BTC Steady, Dow ATH, Fear Extreme! Calm Before Chaos? #CryptoTownHall
00:48:43
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- [00:00]
A
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town hall every weekday here on X at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. You know that you're lacking in news if the Dow hitting an all time high is in your title. But here we are talking about the Dow Jones on Crypto Town hall as bitcoin is quote unquote, steady chilling right around 69,000American dollars per bitcoin. Can't imagine today's show will be as exciting as yesterday's. Dave?
- [00:33]
B
Sorry. I was laughing as I was clicking the mute button. Yeah, you know, you know, a lot of people talked to me about that yesterday. I, I just want to be very clear. I think having multiple opinions and personalities is a good thing. Frankly, I don't think you're a little. But, you know, you know, certainly, you know, we all. I have my own days where I am like that. But the James has, is a personality and what he does and thinks, he basically doesn't give a about people react to him. And that's fine. I totally appreciate that. And you know, I grew up in a house with, with my or my father. And there's gonna be a funny story. So in 1987, in or in September of 87, he, you know, and he was, he watched CNB, their version of CNBC back then. But he had zero training on Wall Street. Nothing. Just total street smarts. Everybody went to college and he sold all his shit. He said, something really shitty is happening. I'm getting the fuck out. And he was right and Wall street was wrong. And I've always known that people who are smart, who can see what's going on, you don't have to rely on formal training. So I don't disrespect people that are smart and have a good view of the market. And that's partly why people said you were patient. Patient. I mean, the guy's putting his money on the line and he makes some sense of. So that's fine. Now his way of expressing himself, on the other hand, okay, you know, that could use some work. But that's why, I mean, I think it's really important, particularly in our industry, where so many people started, as Gaurav did and I did, on the engineering side of the business. And so, you know, learning finance as an engineer is very different than learning finance by buying and selling and trading. I mean, if you look at people who actually grew up in the trading pits, I mean, frankly, you pretty much needed to be the American version of a rugby player to trade in Chicago. Right. You know, in those days. So It's.
- [02:27]
C
There's all.
- [02:28]
B
It takes, all kinds, but whatever. I mean, I do think that there's. That there are a lot of very strong opinions in the market, and the fact that we are at extreme fear, again, down to nine, I guess, is. Is important. Right? You know, it's like the market in the entire crypto community is convinced. I mean, I've seen bullish saying that. I think we're going to stay steady around here and chop around, call the bull. You know, when's the last time that happened? I mean, sure. You know, seriously, all kidding aside, I mean, you know, the expectation. I don't know very many people. There are a few, but I don't know very many people who believe in or betting on bitcoin rallying without, you know, dropping below 60 or below 50 in some cases, places. So to me, that. That. That's one of the reasons that actually is making me think maybe I'm not bullish enough. But whatever, you know, it is what it is. Oh, come on. Poke somebody here.
- [03:24]
A
We can get to the panel.
- [03:25]
B
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm looking for hands. Come on, people. I mean, Lou, you know, you do. You do meetups every Monday. I mean, is everybody basically just, you know, measuring the ropes to hang themselves or. Or, you know, what's going on?
- [03:39]
D
You know, weirdly, I've been doing Crypto Mondays for more than eight years now, and it has traditionally been a lagging indicator of where the market is to the degree that, you know, it keeps growing even after we hit the peak of the bubble for months, and it keeps shrinking, you know, months after we've reached the bottom. But this time, we're not seeing a meaningful decrease in attendance. We're not seeing chapters shut down. There is large global interest, and it seems much less correlated to the price than we've seen historically.
- [04:22]
B
Let me ask you a question, because I thought I heard you say something like that on a different show, why I called on you. But is it because you're getting a different mix of people, I. E. People who look more like an old dude like me who've been on Wall street for years? Or is it because. Or. Or is it from within? You know, is it young people who are getting into it? I mean, what's kind of the demographics, you know? Or is it the crypto community is just waking up and saying, what the hell is going on? I want to find out. I mean, there's any one of a number of reasons that could cause it.
- [04:56]
D
Yeah, I mean, I would certainly say, you know, obviously we're global. I would say in New York, RWA is huge. So. Rwa, you know, we do Crypto Mondays Wall street on the first Monday of every month. That one is packed. But, you know, I, I would broadly say that the biggest thing actually driving attendance at Crypto Mondays, you know, and the surge that we've been seeing around the world is actually, is Luma. It's made it much easier to, you know, connect with people and, you know, and, and build the list of, of members.
- [05:34]
B
Yeah, I still get your invites even though I'm down in sunny Miami enjoying the 70 degree weather while you guys freeze your asses off.
- [05:41]
D
So, yeah, hey, Crypto. Crypto Monday. Miami rocks. Crypto Monday. Fort Lauderdale is awesome.
- [05:47]
B
Really is a Crypto Monday in Miami. Interesting. Wrong list because I didn't know that.
- [05:52]
D
So, yeah, when, when the mayor opened up the blockchain center in Miami, Nine story Boxing center in Miami, he hired Erica Gemma, who was the head of Crypto Mondays Miami, because she crushed it and had the biggest community in the crypto community in Miami.
- [06:08]
B
Cool. Can you do me a favor and just DM me the link to that so I can find it?
- [06:13]
D
Will do.
- [06:14]
B
Thanks anyway, Jamie, you got your hand up.
- [06:17]
C
Hey, guys. I appreciate the invite. You know, I think, I think, like, people have been shocked coming off of last year, you know, seeing the, you know, the divergence between the metals and bitcoin ending the year down. And so, like, and, and the way I kind of look at it is I think like, I describe as, like, last year was like the first year of institutional bitcoin involvement and, and that just ended. Now we're beginning year two. And so, like, I feel like people need to kind of push the reset button on the CAGR projections and, you know, just start over. You know, there was a CAGR prior to institutional bitcoin impact, and then there's going to be a KEGR after. And I think that, you know, the network's still strong as ever, you know, regardless of price. You know, I feel like there's going to be a future of bitcoin that has, you know, as a premier store of value. And I think that stablecoins, Ethereum and infrastructure for payments and transactions is going to replace the Swift system. So I think they're both going to do well. But right now it's just a whole new dynamic for what people were used to. But this cycle to me reminds me a lot of 2021. In April, May, Bitcoin dropped 50% and also the dominance dropped as well and then Ethereum took the lead and then bitcoin re accelerated to, to new all time highs. And I'm looking for a similar activity here. And until I, until I, until that doesn't happen, that's kind of what I'm, I'm expecting to happen for this cycle as well. And that's kind of what I'm. In our spaces we're kind of, we talk about to try to at least give some people perspective so they don't get too ahead of themselves or too disappointed that it hasn't happened already.
- [08:04]
B
Yeah, I think that I've often made the statement that Price tends to drive narrative instead of narrative driving Price. And obviously that's backwards but you know, there's a need, we all have this need to explain what's going on. And you know that, that, that is, is, is a very, in very large measure. I mean at the same time there are some reasons that do make sense that things are unfolded the way they have. And it's not completely insane but you know, it just the, the bifurcation of opinions. And the fact is that every single time I remember now, I don't remember that many, I only go back to Bitcoin to 2017. But every time there's been a major dip is I would love to see a correlation. It's kind of hard. I ask rock and you. They can kind of get at it and they confirm anecdotally that I'm probably right. But it seems like every time you go through these sorts of downdrafts, you know, whatever, it seems to reach a crescendo of. I don't even use the word fud. Let's just call it people tap dancing, you know, the Peter Schiff saying it's going to zero Michael Burry making stupid ass claims that miners are going to death spiral or back previously it was Elizabeth Warren. Bitcoin's going to boil off the oceans. It's like all the just absolute stupid shit that gets said always seems to crescendo right around bottoms. And you know that that is probably the least scientific indicator I could think of, right? I mean, Jamie, I don't know if your hand is still up, but you know, am I wrong? I mean, you know, are you seeing the same thing?
- [09:41]
C
Yeah, I mean, you know, we went through the quantum stuff and we went like all the fun but it happens every cycle. People forget, you know, it's like they get, you know, worked up about what this new narrative is. But you know, people who have come in, in the recent years don't realize the stuff that we dealt with, you know, you got in 2017, I came in 2019. And you know, these, this has all been going to zero since then for a myriad of reasons, you know, and so, you know, I just think, you know, people just, you get desensitized to it as you get through these cycles. Right? So we just like, it's good that people like us are in these spaces for people to listen to, to get to hear some perspective so that they don't, you know, get too worried or too excited and just to kind of be patient and wait for things to reprice. This, this is the, this is not going anywhere. It's just taking time. And listen, the one thing that I'm sure we can all agree is like, whatever price we think it's, it's, it's should be at or will be at, then that's not the price it's going to be at. So, you know, you know, so I think everyone just kind of needs to just stick with it. If you believe in the thesis and your thesis on Bitcoin network hasn't changed, then neither should your investment strategy.
- [11:03]
E
DB hey. Yeah, it's been a while. I'm honestly still kind of surprised we're having the where is everyone discussion because it's so obvious and the infrastructure still sucks. I'll say it, the UI UX in crypto is God awful. I've been in the space for seven years now. I'm a veteran, I know the tech better than most and I had to use AI the other day to figure out how to get Ethereum from abstract chain to Coinbase so I could sell it. And if I have to do that, your typical user, your retail isn't going to touch this for quite some time. And I'm just, I'm sorry to say it, that's the current space right now. It is garbage and we need to really work on the UI ux. On top of that, we just completely destroyed things for people the last four or five years with meme coins and the rugs and the lack of security, they have no interest. We drove them all away. So where is retail? Where is everyone? We need a lot of changes and a lot of fixes to happen before they're coming back.
- [12:16]
A
We may have driven them away. I tend to agree with that partially, but I think we're being honest. They've also just found better places to gamble, which is what they were here for in the first place. I think very few people who were Here in the last few years of crypto were actually here for the UX UI or because they were using it. Most people I think were speculating on all coins and now they can speculate on the weather. So what's, you know, like if you're a 17 year old kid in a foreign country who was trying to find a place to gamble, meme coins were the best place to do that. Now you could just, you know, go YOLO on, like I said, an election in your local country or something on a predictive market and call it a day. So I just don't think that crypto speculation is going to come back in that same way, which maybe means we actually find utility and value, which is fine, but I think that's where people went. I don't know. I see four hands, I just don't know how many are new or old.
- [13:12]
B
Yeah, I want to make a quick comment and then I can't tell if, if Jamie's and lose were were ghost hands or new hands, but new one. Jamie, is it a ghost hand?
- [13:25]
C
No, no, no. Lou and graph.
- [13:30]
D
I, I was just gonna say a couple things. First, you know, I agree it sucks. We all know it sucks. And you know, if you go back and you take a look at the Internet, you know, the Internet was round. The first email was sent in 69, but nobody really used it until 1994. You know what happened in 1994? Anybody? Marc Andreessen brought us the browser and all of the sudden something that was incredibly difficult to use became incredibly easy to use. And at some point that will happen here today, tomorrow, next week, 10 years. I don't think anybody knows. But you know, and last thing I'll say is I, I completely disagree with the statement that we drove everybody away. Nobody has come to begin with. The number of people as a percentage of the world's population, as a percentage of the people who will own Bitcoin in 10 years rounds to zero. So people came, people left, but nobody's really tried it yet because it's way, way, way too hard.
- [14:35]
E
Well, if I could actually respond to that real quick, you're right. The amount of people we've seen in the space is minuscule. We haven't even gone past the 0.1% adoption phase yet. So we have a long way to go. But I will say that everything that we've seen happen, all the rugs, all the scams, the ftx, the Sam Bankman's, the Celsius that has driven people away and given people the mindset that the entire space is just a scam. And I see this Internet, that's what.
- [15:09]
D
People thought of the Internet in 2001 and 2002 when everything crashed. Yet the Internet continue to grow and grow and grow and grow and for the next 25 years and eventually, you know, in the short run prices are popularity contests, in the long run, they're weigh machines.
- [15:25]
E
Yeah, no, I, I, I definitely agree. That's why we have a long way to go till we get past that whole stigma. And my father in law talking to me about the latest headline of the $1 billion hack and versus the utility. Yeah, we it's still has a very bad name and look to the majority of the world.
- [15:45]
B
Well, I have two questions. First, you know, in terms of the statistics, I mean Coinbase's statistics are obviously way higher than 0.1%, but we all know that those are probably inflated. I'm curious, is there any good data? How many people actually have like Metamask wallets or ledger? How many ledgers have been sold or how many treasures have been sold or anything, Things that would indicate not just holding crypto in a Coinbase account, a Gemini account, Kraken account, Robin Hood account, a Binance account.
- [16:16]
E
So I actually did a deep dive on this in a video I think six to nine months ago and comparing all the numbers across so many different analytic sites and pulling all the data I could from basically a lot of the stuff you found or you mentioned. What I found is there's only between 5 to 10 million daily active users in web, 3 in crypto, and that's when you see websites or cointelegraph talking about 80 million active addresses or wallets on chain X or whatever. But yeah, so we're talking about the real numbers on a daily basis are about less than 10 million and well, this was about six months ago, but they are so much smaller than people think.
- [17:08]
B
Thank you, DB I thought that's why I asked you the question. I actually expected the answer, but I didn't know that it was that. Well, that's really helpful. Korra, I think you were next.
- [17:22]
F
I was looking to crack a small joke on the initial topic of finding a reason why is everything, or especially the top two, dumping. And then we got into a serious topic, which I want to contradict. So let's begin with the joke. I have a thesis and nobody will shitpost me about this. This is a joke. Okay. I think Ethereum is an aluminium ALLOY and because US is about to implement a 35% tariff, there is a reason it's falling. So anyone who has a research paper or research related to that most welcome to post. Bad joke, dad joke. I probably wouldn't challenge you DB on your stat because I'm not equipped. I'll spend my, you know, 10 minutes on that research and probably talk about it tomorrow. But 10 million could be, could be the users that are using a specific segment or a specific type of transaction. I think with 60 million tokens, with 27 million pump fund tokens, with biconomy alone in their in their smart wallet infrastructure boasting 250 million addresses, it is super tough to believe that there are just 10 million daily users. But purely an assumption. Are you including everything that also includes a boatload of exchange to exchange transactions and all these and then second Lou, yes there were UX revolutions and utility revolutions in Internet in 1994, but let's not forget there was a fundamental technology shift in communication and communication. I mean that's primarily what makes us human. With the emergence of era, however, there is no fundamental shift in humanity with the emergence of blockchain. Yes, we are solving trust, but trust is parallel solved with other means. So the ultimate utility of blockchain has always been a part of the tech stack and these days a part of a financial tech stack more than anything else. And so let's not over expect the impact of a browser like fundamental innovation in that segment. You're right, there is no limit to innovation and probably we'll find a killer use case. But for the last whatever, 15 years or let's say 10 years, particularly after smart money invention with Ethereum. I think so far the only biggest use case in the killer app of crypto is finance and defi Stable coins are pretty slick of an invention. I think so far it feels like we're at the peak level of innovation after trying everything from supply chain to gaming to whatnot, lottery and now prediction markets. That's, that's a. You know, I'll take a pause here and listen to db.
- [21:12]
B
DB do you want to. Yeah, okay, cool.
- [21:13]
E
Yeah, good question. I'm actually glad you did assos because I wanted to clarify too. So the, the numbers that I came to do include a lot of the stuff you're talking about. The, the meme coins and stuff that's just inflated metrics for the most part. A perfect example is I counted, I have over 50 different addresses myself and on a weekly basis I'm active on five to 10 of them. And those are all considered. Some people label those as users. I'm one user with 50 active addresses.
- [21:44]
D
This space was downloaded via spaces down.com visit to download your spaces today.
- [21:49]
E
And but to answer your other question, no, this is not user or owners of ETFs or DATs or even exchange users. I don't consider those crypto or web3 users because it's not on chain. A crypto user is someone that's actually using the technology. If you just own the token in an exchange, you're not a user, in my opinion. So the numbers that I come to, the 5 to 10 million daily active users are those that actually use blockchain rails.
- [22:25]
F
I just got thrown out of the crypto clan, Lou.
- [22:35]
B
How do you feel that you were thrown out?
- [22:36]
C
Gaurav.
- [22:40]
F
I saw it coming already. Like when I stopped using Defi, I mean when I never used defi for the, for the fear of getting hacked and my wallet getting exposed. So I saw it coming already. So I'm like, like I'm not, I'm.
- [22:55]
B
Not depressed, but that's kind of the point, right? I mean people want to know why things haven't exploded. They haven't exploded because there's reasons that people are afraid. I mean there's a good reason to. I mean until this is, this is a very big problem. Like, like I always look at defi and I break it into multiple pieces, right? All defi not created equal. There's defi like, you know, like ave for yield. No, not trading, just deposit, get yield. Now some of those have turned out to be not so good and others have turned out to be to work consistently without any issues. And the average human being isn't. The average person isn't terribly good at figuring out which is which. Right. And a lot of the people on this platform are not very helpful because they promoted some of the worst ones more than some of the others. And so that, that's a real problem. That's a, those are self inflicted wounds. And the fact that I, I actually think it's intentional. I think the anti crypto army, the reason that they do what they do is they don't reason they're trying to block regulation even though it's completely antithetical to the notion of protecting investors is because they want it to fail. But, but Dave, they want it to fail.
- [24:11]
C
They don't, they don't want anything want.
- [24:13]
B
Because they understand that at its zenith, once defi makes it into the mainstream, that the entire system that relies upon collecting economic rent and that sounds like an extreme thing. No, I mean $67 for a wire, right. You know, those Things go away when stablecoins are ubiquitous. Being able to not charge interest or having people held in funds that are underperforming because it's really expensive to change the to funds that are better performing defi fixes that in fact, you know that, that, you know, everyone's seen the ad for Nerd Wallet. Now imagine Nerd Wallet implemented as defi where humans don't actually have to get involved. I mean that is scary as to the legacy financial institutions and so they understand that and I think that's why the anti crypto army, you know, fight so hard. Not because they're dumb, but because they're evil. There's difference. They're trying to maintain the edge for, for people. But until there is an environment that people can trust and the community figures out a way to direct people to the things that can be trusted, growth is going to be slow. That's my thought, Gauravi, but we are.
- [25:26]
F
Going too far away with the conspiracy theory idea. I think I had a very recent experience of the problem firsthand, which is the UX and I'm talking about Jupiter, which is known to be one of the best UXs. And I think I told this to Scott and also on the space, my first ever defi like proper defi transaction was buying Millennia. And that's the power of memes, by the way. So I bought a boatload of Melania on the launch day and then I put it on Jupiter on a limit order. And then I recently saw the movie coming back which is probably more than like one one year and a month and dude, it took me like three prompts on AI, a whole bunch of reading and a struggle to actually find my tokens and the limit order because like they've upgraded the version of whatever swap and like they don't have a right reflection of it. My tokens are not in my wallet so I actually thought I lost them and so on and so forth. So we are horrible, horrible, horrible with ux. So before even you know, these anti crypto armies would come and you know, do whatever harm they plan. We are already doing enough harm to ourselves with improper planning. You're talking about a company that makes 300 million in annual revenue in the bear market, like in the worst market ever in crypto. This company makes a a few hundred million dollars in revenue. How tough could it be to think about revenue and plan about it? And by the way, these are my friends and I love cash and everybody else in the team, in the founding team, but this is the reality. This is my reality of yesterday, of the only defi transaction I ever did in life by my own hands. Of course. My organization does about 5 billion in volume over DEXs, so that's firsthand. Second, I asked this question in Davos to Anthony Scaramucci while he was on stage. Why did bank of America CEO and the whole cartel voted against the Clarity Act? And the statement that came next morning by the bank of America CEO that if we enable defi, sorry yield bearing stable coins, we will end up losing a few trillion in bank reserves. That would be about 35% of all bank reserves. And his answer was amazing. He's like, yes, there will be many innovation as such and they could have easily integrated a solution or something like that within their existing Reserve, which is 100% of the bank reserves without losing anything and passing on this the power of innovation, the power of benefits to their users. But like you said, they're probably just evil. I don't want to say evil. I just want to say everybody's scared of the unknown, so they don't want their 10 hours.
- [28:38]
B
Noting that he said the quiet part out loud because what he basically just said is, yes, we're getting $100 billion a year plus in subsidies by trapping those deposits where we can just put them at the Federal Reserve and do nothing economic with them and gouge our users by not paying interest. I mean, he said it like it's a bad thing. The reality is that that is the bet. The best possible outcome for society would be the private banking system to lose about 75% of their quote reserves, have it turn into a competitive world, have that money getting circulating throughout the economy, real interest, real volume, real financial services as opposed to cartels. And you know, it is amazing that there's a single politician who believes. Now I don't think they do. I think they just take the money and just shut their mouths. But it's amazing that any serious human being could believe that it's a good thing that $2 trillion, and I think the number's higher, by the way, but that $2 trillion leaving the banking system would be bad. I mean, it's actually inconceivable that you can make the argument that $2 trillion leaving the financial, leaving the banking system and going into the real economy is a bad thing. I mean, that's literally exactly what this administration wants to happen, which should tell you something. Anyway, Lou, you had your hand up. I'm sorry, time for gorav triggered me. So I apologize guys.
- [30:02]
D
So put it up. So long ago oh yeah, we're trying to send you. Why doesn't anybody care about it yet? And I think there are two fundamental things that need to happen. One, the infrastructure needs to be in place so that people can, can use it. And, and B, we have to give them something that they want. You know, I've been in startups 30 years of my favorite all time story. I was the biggest streamer in 2001 but it sucked because the pipes are too small. And 2006 I was running bulk, the largest social network in the world. We had more than 20 million people. Now the pipes were fat enough and I could build it. You know, we could have built it ourselves, but we were very acquisitive. I talked to three tiny companies who were allowing kids to stream. We ended up buying the largest one for 250,000 and 5% of our company. And three weeks later somebody uploaded a video onto the number two site that we had talked to called Lazy Sunday. It was an Andy Samberg Saturday Night Live video. And that day that website became the fastest growing website in the history of the web. Six months later, Google bottom for a billion and a half. That was YouTube. And why did YouTube grow like that out of nowhere? Because the infrastructure was finally there for a good experience and YouTube gave them a good experience. And that's all we need to do. We need to build shit that works that people can use. Like they use their phone without reading a book.
- [31:36]
A
Yeah, Dave.
- [31:37]
B
Yeah, I, I, I don't, I just see Lou's hand still up. I think that, that is, that is at. Jamie, go ahead.
- [31:44]
C
Yeah, no, it's just interesting hearing grav talk about his, his, his UX experience now because like, you know, I just think about like back in the day, you know, when I first got in and then you know, I mean, you know, it's like, it's like a luxury cruise now compared to the user experience back when in, in 2019, you know, I first bought my first SAT. Like, you know, bridging to other ecosystems and getting transactions stuck and trying to, you know, you know, just navigate, even onboarding just to through exchanges was a nightmare, you know. But you know, I mean, you know, to garage broader point though, I think it's important that for adoption to reach its max potential, you know, the UX needs to be seamless to the point that it's as easy as picking up your phone to send some value through like your cash app or Venmo. Right. So you know, I mean I, you know, I don't, I don't I'm not a numbers guy. Like I have the luxury of co hosting with, you know, Fred Krueger. He's like the mathematician, you know, and bitcoiner. So, you know, he's confident that there's an absolute power law, you know, and you know, and that growth in that path and you know, is, is very confident, you know, toward a million and then ultimately 10 million. And you know, the parallel thing is something that is, you know, above my pay grade. But he's done so much work on I can put it in the nest too, so people can appreciate it. But there's definitely a growth path and I think when we get to that, that UX where it's seamless and people don't even know they're doing it, it's really going to take off.
- [33:21]
B
Yeah, I often say that, you know.
- [33:23]
F
If you do what with Fred, what's.
- [33:27]
B
That.
- [33:29]
F
You do what with?
- [33:30]
B
I do.
- [33:31]
C
We do a co host with him. He hosts just kind of like this here platform and we host a space. Dave was in there yesterday. We were hanging out and we talk about all things bitcoin related. And so yeah, he goes into it real in depth, into some of the parallel aspects and it's really fascinating. Like I said, I'll put it in the nest so you can kind of take a look.
- [33:55]
F
Yeah, yeah, I, I know Fred pretty well. We meet in satoshi roundtables and we've had some ch.
- [34:00]
C
Come on over to the space man. We're all friends. Let's do it.
- [34:05]
F
Send me a link.
- [34:06]
B
So, yeah, cool. Okay. So you know, and Jamie.
- [34:12]
F
Jamie, sorry, one. Sorry, I forgot to respond on your point. It's not like I didn't try in 2019. It's not like I did try to use my Bitcoin sv, BSV and BCH when they fogged and instead I ended up using the. What do you call them, Futures, but in a different way. Crypto invented the fog futures on Poloniex. So UX always won above the broader or the problematic blockchain UXS. And same was the case with the DAO ICO participation. Right. So I tried participating in the DAO ICO on Ethereum, which was the first ever ICO probably. But after trying it with about 100 Ethereum, I decided to use Tokengate, which was of course another disaster. It was hacked, but the UX on Tokengate was exchange, like one click, no matter what you want to do. And then even when it was a question of the refund, it took them an automated script that by default gave Me Ethereum Classics and Ethereums in my wallet back with the refund. So the bottom line is the, there is essentially there has been a struggle through and through, and it, it still exists today till the time, I don't know what will bring the attention of entrepreneurs to this topic.
- [35:57]
B
Jamie, you want to comment? Because I just want to make one other. One other point. No, you're.
- [36:01]
C
No. Well said, Dave.
- [36:02]
B
Okay, so one other point today, which I thought was funny. So I did a video last night specifically talking about the topic we were talking about the other day of Bitcoin being, you know, it's necessary for it to become inside the financial system in order for it to gain adoption. And predictably, I got poked by someone in the XRP army saying, yeah, well, you know, bitcoin is terrible technology. XRP is so much better. Anyway, we went down the I I I until he started in with the ridiculous name calling that they always do. I I We kept going back and forth about network effects versus first adopters, et cetera. And it prompted me to do just a really quick back of the envelope calculation, which I think, which so far there's crickets on response to. And I'm curious, Gaurav, what you think I just said. Listen, you keep talking about XRP is this great network, et cetera, but if you just forget mining for a second, you just look at nodes and validators, Bitcoin has literally, and you can do the math, 25,000 versus 800 nodes validating its network, which is 31 and a half times. Yet Bitcoin is only 10 times the value of XRP. And it's obviously clearly past escape philosophy, which tells you, in my opinion, that Bitcoin is way undervalued relative to XRP in the current world. Just pure math. And I'm just curious what you guys think. I'm sure there are probably people in the audience who are just now gnashing their teeth and I'd be happy. I actually invited Mikkel to explain it. But I don't understand how that math is wrong.
- [37:32]
F
I mean, that math is fundamentally wrong in the perspective of respectivity. I mean, what is the valuation of XRP except the massive manipulation of not just the sentiments, but also the typical low float, high valuation dynamics? So let's not even get there. There is no comparison of ripple.
- [37:59]
B
So you're saying I'm wrong to anything.
- [38:01]
F
And by the way, I've been a ripple bull all my life. Ripple made me more money than literally anything else, you know, in hundreds of millions. But you know, the reality is what is Ripple is still the biggest question. And what does it do? What is xrp?
- [38:17]
D
I mean, Dave, follow me so I can DM you. And have you ever been.
- [38:22]
B
Oh my God.
- [38:23]
D
Have you ever been to an XRP event?
- [38:26]
B
I haven't. I almost went to XRP Vegas, but I just. I couldn't.
- [38:31]
D
You. You should go. I don't know if you've ever been to a DOGE event, because I. Obviously, I'm sure you would think, yeah, bitcoin's really cheap compared to doge, but, you know, in order to understand Doge, in order to understand xrp, you know, you gotta understand.
- [38:47]
B
Yeah, no, that's fair. I mean, I. It's funny, I had dinner with.
- [38:51]
D
And you know, they don't need any product. They have an army. Right. DOGE doesn't have a product.
- [38:58]
B
Yeah. But anyway, I was just doing. On the basis of just network effects, just pure. I mean, to me, look, it's always about math. You know, at some point. Now markets obviously trade way the hell away from that. But I was just trying to come up with a simple structure. I mean, it's funny, as soon as I pointed that out, the responses went to cricket. So I was just wondering if anyone thought that I was being unfair to. To our friends in the XRP army. Jamie, is your hand up from before or is that everybody in the XRP.
- [39:27]
A
Army will think you're being unfair to them no matter what you said.
- [39:30]
B
Well, that's good. So. So let's get a dialogue. None of them are following me anymore. They all follow my own.
- [39:35]
A
Doesn't matter what you said though. You said XRP and you didn't say $100 in the same sentence.
- [39:40]
B
Yeah, well, that's one of the most absurd things ever.
- [39:43]
A
I mean, it's like the whole $10,000.
- [39:46]
B
I underestimated XRP is going clearly going to be the entire financial system.
- [39:51]
F
I follow you now, Scott.
- [39:53]
A
Thanks.
- [39:55]
F
10,000 three times.
- [39:56]
A
When you have so much my money in your wallet.
- [39:57]
B
Yeah.
- [40:02]
F
Say 10,000 three times.
- [40:03]
A
Yeah, 10,000.
- [40:04]
B
I'm not a co host, so I can't see if any of them are frantically trying to come up on stage. But my guess is I don't think.
- [40:10]
A
You said anything particularly negative. I'm just kidding. I think. You know, listen, I. I would make the same joke now about silver bugs as I just made about that.
- [40:18]
B
Oh, I'll take the other side of that one. I'll take the other side of that. Easily triggered if you remember. You know, Monday, I made the comment That I think that. That bitcoin and silver are going to be far more correlated going forward. And, you know, I still think that that's true for, For a variety.
- [40:33]
A
Sorry, I just meant from a community perspective. If I say anything even remotely about silver, that's not extremely positive. There's like whole world that I found of people who are easily triggered by insults to their favorite precious metal that I did not know existed.
- [40:49]
B
Well, that's. That's crazy because that, that makes me. That, that really. That hurts my.
- [40:53]
D
Yeah, you're.
- [40:53]
F
You're basically.
- [40:54]
B
Because I. I do think silver is going to grow much higher.
- [40:56]
D
Yeah.
- [40:56]
B
Yeah. When you say that, it makes me.
- [40:57]
F
Think solar battery, evs, electronics, Nvidia, AI. You're basically kicking the ass of all these industries. If you say silver and not say, whatever, $10,000.
- [41:09]
B
You may as well just say global warming is a hoax. And, and, you know, and in the same sentence, say, you know, say something against Trump and say something for Trump a few sentences later so the whole world will. Will, you know, will be calling you a little bitch. And then that'll be. Then you'll be done. Yeah.
- [41:26]
F
If nobody's saying anything sensible. And then I have another dad joke, very quick one on silver, too, which has been floating in the Indian markets. I. I don't know if you guys know, but in India, silver is very, very commonly used to garnish sweets, you know, or desserts. And, and so the most popular meme of the last two weeks has been just about two weeks ago, silver was used in AI chips, batteries, solar panels and whatnot. And after the recent fall, it's back to only sweets.
- [41:59]
B
Really. How do you garnish? I mean, I know silver is antibacterial and people use it in.
- [42:04]
A
Ever read gold? Have you ever drank Goldslager, Dave? Did you ever go to college? It's got real bits of gold in it.
- [42:09]
F
Yeah, we do gold and silver both.
- [42:11]
B
I did not know that.
- [42:12]
F
Yeah, we do real gold. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do real gold. And silver is like when I eat a lot of.
- [42:18]
B
Silver was the only way you could get caffeine. There was no. It wasn't even Jolt Cola back then, much less Red Bull. So, you know, it's like there were dinosaurs.
- [42:27]
F
You're confusing sugar for caffeine.
- [42:30]
B
No, I understand that. I was just trying to put an idea. I was going to give him an idea of the epoch.
- [42:36]
C
But.
- [42:37]
B
But yeah, anyway, given the kind of day it is, if there's. If anybody else have any other topics to talk about or should we just Wrap a little bit early.
- [42:45]
A
I think we wrap it up and run it back another day.
- [42:48]
B
Yep. Yeah. And we'll see. And we'll bitcoin be pinned to 69,000 tomorrow too? Could be.
- [42:55]
A
I'll be waiting in suspense.
- [42:59]
F
Is there anyone. Is there anyone in Hong Kong live reporting?
- [43:03]
A
Is that as consens.
- [43:06]
B
There are a lot of. I mean.
- [43:08]
F
Yeah, yeah, we're right in the middle there.
- [43:10]
B
I know he, you know, but it's, it's a bit late there now. And, you know, and we all know what happens during crypto conferences, you know, at between 11 and, and 1 in the morning.
- [43:21]
F
So, you know, you're talking about bull markets, Dave. There's barely food.
- [43:28]
A
Get together and cry about their portfolios. Is that what happened?
- [43:34]
B
Yeah.
- [43:35]
F
No, no, no, Scott. They talk about AI and their recent.
- [43:38]
B
And you know this. I mean, you can say it as much as you want, but I know you're smirking, Gorov, because builders are building. There are still things going on in the industry. It's just, it's the, the hype cycle and the non.
- [43:48]
F
What are they exactly? Building, Dave? They're graves.
- [43:52]
B
Yeah, I think that, I think you, you maybe, maybe you're being serious. I don't know. I think there's a lot being built. Build.
- [43:59]
F
No, no, I'm joking. I'm not seeing many on that point. I'm not seeing many applications either in the incubator or the VC around anything else. But it's either prediction market, one more AI agent that cleans your shit or whatever. And nothing exactly about that is crypto. Prediction markets are pretty slick. I think prediction markets is the biggest thing. And then payments in banking. I mean, I've already said that. And I'll repeat, Davos this year for me was all banking. Banking infrastructures, payment infrastructures, card companies, crypto cards, crypto payment, rail settlement systems, and that's it. So basically, Web two guys looking at Web three. But you know what? The ambition and the perspective hasn't really changed since 2016, which is, hey, Gaurav, can I launch a token and raise $500 million? I'm like, yeah, sure, if your token is called Bitcoin. So, yeah, the innovation industry and subcategories have shifted massively towards prediction markets. AI agents, the most useless category of, of crypto, not, not in themselves. And then lastly, banking payments. But again, I don't see a token play there. So quite literally, I don't really see anything.
- [45:29]
B
The interesting question, and I always say this is, I'll make one correction of what you Said it's not banking, it's the banks are rushing to take advantage of the technology to try to keep all of this inside the banking industry. But the truth is it's really all about the financial, all the financial products that can compete potentially and free up money. The economy. That's piece one, piece two is the biggest problem in crypto has always been a lack of link from viable products that can earn revenue. And A, does it need a token? And B, if it does have a token, how the hell do token holders participate in said revenue? To me that's the issue, has always been the issue and will be the.
- [46:14]
F
Issue that has always been the biggest issue. We are still like had, I know this sounds like ranting, but had that not been an issue and had we been so serious about it and you've literally triggered me like this is the reason we created TDFI and everything else, which is stay true to tokenomics. But I mean nobody really really does that.
- [46:36]
B
So no, you're right, they won't do it. And that's not actually the first funniest part. The reason the banks, if you really think of if they are smart and they are, the reason they don't want a clarity act, is they don't want builders to be able to come up with innovative tokenomic solutions that incentivize building communities that compete with them. Because if you actually have a legal framework to do so in a way that isn't ridiculously cost prohibitive and doesn't have an accredited investor rule that blocks it, if you could do that, that's when it gets serious to them. Until that happens, they think they can co opt it and that is what's going on. And that's not, you might call that a conspiracy theory, but I'm telling you that is not a conspiracy theory. That is a theory from someone who has literally spent two decades inside the belly of the beast. I know, that's how it works, right? They're not dumb. I've actually been involved, in fact my entire career has been involved in cannibal, what they used to call cannibalistic technologies. I started with program trading and I will tell you, I have been called cannibalistic that exact word thousands of times. And that's not hyperbole. I don't know if it's tens of thousands, but it's definitely thousands. And so the banks, that's how they look at crypto technology and the entire ability to use tokens to incentivize users. That's why rewards are such a big deal now. That's why the Clarity act is there. I mean, this is the sort of thing that I'll probably do maybe if the market stays as though I'll do my daily video on this exact topic. But trust me, this is a big deal. But, you know, it's a little bit late to start exploring it now. But you triggered me, so. Sorry. Anybody else?
- [48:15]
F
Yeah, let's stop triggering each other and close. As Scott said, you're very entertaining, sensitive.
- [48:23]
B
Okay.
- [48:25]
C
I appreciate everything, guys. And Scott, I thought you knew. And Dave, I thought you guys were a class act yesterday with a strong personality on stage. Stage. I. I really appreciated how you handled that. You did great.
- [48:36]
A
Just said appreciate that. It's just another day at the office around here.
- [48:39]
C
Yep. Yeah.
- [48:41]
B
Okay. Well, take care. See everyone tomorrow morning.