A (3:48)

I agree with you on the Tomley effect. I would just expand slightly to say that it was wildly funded, oversold, underpriced, and so it just needed the spark. And he was a lot more than just a spark to, I think, send it back first to a mean reversion and then below. I mean that above.

B (4:06)

Well, I think it comes down to marketing. I mean, if you look at where, you know, things were maybe not going very well for Ethereum from price action standpoint. It was a lot of Vitalik led news. Yeah, the foundations, you know, missteps like a number of those things. And so from a narrative standpoint, it's got a good story to tell right now. And as long as they, you know, kind of the core founders and the foundation can stay out of the way of this, I don't see it stopping anytime soon.

A (4:34)

And I also find it interesting that this is clearly institutionally price driven. So when you look at past cycles, ETH was 100% retail driven, you know, the price.

C (4:44)

Yeah.

A (4:44)

And so this is kind of similar to what we saw with Bitcoin when it, quote unquote, grew up and became the adult in the room that's happening for Ethereum. Whether, whether you believe that's what Ethereum, Ethereum should or should not be, the evidence is very clear that that's what's. What's happening here. Richard and then Mateo.

D (5:00)

Yeah.

E (5:01)

Hey, Scott, how are you?

A (5:01)

Hey, buddy, how are you?

E (5:04)

Good, thanks, man. Yeah, so just to continue on from what Eric was saying, you know, I think I totally Agree, I think the narrative is alive and well. But if you think about where the messaging has to originate from, I mean where are analysts going to get their information from Tradfi? You know they're going to, they're going to come and ask questions from experienced crypto people and you know it's, it's going to emanate from cyclical behavior. So, so whilst we having a very institutional cycle, institutional demand cycle, you know we've seen it with Bitcoin, the rotation into at least Ethereum. I mean I think the question begs are we going to see a deeper further rotation into some of the other majors and there's a lot of stuff going on with other D. You know I saw something popped up with link is now being mentioned. You know BNB are getting a lot of interest. Xrp, Solana, CRO.

A (5:59)

I mean you have to also talk about Kronos yesterday, the deal with Trump Media. It's six or seven billion dollars or something.

E (6:04)

Unbelievable, unbelievable. So I think the trend is no different to what we as let's call ourselves retail for all intensive purposes. Historically we were, we would call that crypto native type retail description. If we're comparing ourselves to true tradfi. And I really think that they're taking the playbook and just following suit because as long as the cycle behaves different to the previous cycles, the best thing that they can do is to try and take advantage of that. We're getting quite deep into the cycle. We're almost 500 days post halving. I think those of us that have been in crypto understand that we're getting to the tail end of our, the typical cycle, you know and messaging like right translated cycles for those technical analysts and stuff are starting to, to pop up. You know personally I think the election caused a knock on effect to, to delay our cycle, plain and simple. There was a lot that went on in the beginning of this year and you know, we've seen America's open for business. It's changed the dynamic completely. Having the suits effectively being the vocal piece for our industry right now, which is unbelievable and it's great. But yeah, I think, I think a lot more to come from Eth, you know, how much more begs the question that you know, even in our own communities, people asking us the whole time, you know, where do they see this from? A speculative price point. But it's. We, I think we have a lot to be thankful for because if we were reliant on retail right now we'd be scratching our heads and I think would be, we'd be having a very, an interesting cycle.

A (7:43)

Let me tell you. Yeah.

C (7:45)

Good morning everybody. Yeah, I was going to just sort of initially parrot what Eric and Rich said, which definitely feels very Tom Lee driven, but it also feels like this perfect timing with the market cycle where Bitcoin had a good run, dominance was hitting all time high. ETH had kind of had a full circle moment as Ben would say. It went home and then was able to kind of touch back up. So everything, the stars just really aligned. And I think that we talked for months here during the east underperformance about how much it needed some kind of catalyst and marketing to take it forward. And I think it just caught that. And with that the bid followed and the institutional infrastructure was already laid for these flows to occur. And I just think we have to go back to even though we haven't seen where the stablecoin market will mature and these other chains and these other big companies, Stripe etc. And what they'll do with their own layer ones. But right now ETH is the place where these transactions are taking place. And with gas fees maintaining stability at low costs even at these price levels, I think that that's perhaps the most notable eat story here is that we hit nearly all time highs but we were still being able to process transactions without, you know, fifty hundred dollars per transaction. That's really significant. So, so the improvements that they've made behind the scenes, even though the foundation and the Ethereum community as a whole maybe did a poor job from a marketing perspective, the tech did improve and we'll see where it carries long term. But I think that that's a very notable moment. I also have some thoughts on, you.

A (9:42)

Know, I agree with you really quick. I just haven't like I've asked people because I'm not really tech savvy or a builder, like how did that happen? Because everybody's still talking about the, you know, layer twos and the whole narrative. But if ethereum transaction is $0.80 when the network is crowded, doesn't that take the shine off the layer two narrative to some degree? And is this just, you know, the merge and the improvements and we just didn't see it happening until there was actually a stress test because it used to cost $300 to mint a $5nft at these levels of usage?

C (10:16)

Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. I don't remember exactly like the whole series of upgrades they rolled out but Scott, that's it, it's the merge, it's the improvements. Proof of stake. It's all the things that they've done. And the last thing that Vitalik had said about ETH is he actually thinks that the gas fees can be 100x lower, I believe is what he said, something like that from where it is today. So that's like another order of magnitude improvement when it comes to some of these layer twos. I think that they become more community marketing infrastructure plays than they necessarily do. Scalability. I think the perfect example of that is base, where you have rabid community, you have Coinbase's support, you have incentives for builders, you have interoperability with infrastructure. Soon enough it's not going to just be gas savings that motivates people to build there. And I don't think that's the primary motivation for builders on base, maybe for users, but I think that that will be a temporary thing. So that's the most notable thing where it's like ETH has gotten better. I think we joke sometimes about like, when price goes up, they're like, oh yeah, the technology is better today than it was tomorrow, but this is proof that, that, that it is, it is, it is better today than it was a year or two years ago.

A (11:35)

Yeah. Craig, you're throwing up a lot of hundreds clearly in the eth. Looking good camp here.

F (11:41)

Most, most definitely. Can you hear me?

A (11:43)

Yeah, I can hear you. I can hear that you're driving, but we don't mind that. That's part of the, part of our natural flow and comfortable comfort level.

F (11:50)

I appreciate it, my friend. No, I was just going to say that one of the metrics, I was playing around with an AI agent and was saying that GWE, if we see an altcoin season, when that happens, hopefully 60 chance according to my AI agent that it'll happen this Q4, we'll see 40 Q1 of 2026. But it was saying that GWE needs to be around 5 right when Bitcoin dominance top pop off and then maybe you see an altcoin run and in our various different meta positions. But I'm excited for what's ahead for Ethan. Just in general, watching all these big institutions coming in and lining up the money and then hopefully we'll see some retail get excited and have that on ramp through Coinbase and other centralized exchanges to come in and play a little bit.

A (12:34)

Yeah.

G (12:35)

So what is the selling point for L2s if gas no longer is a problem on E?

A (12:42)

Well, that, that's my question. I mean, I, I still think that L. That L2S can be much cheaper. Than ETH, but in my opinion, there's also a floor where it matters less. Right.

G (12:52)

Well, I mean, the security of ETH is just going to be infin, infinitely higher than some L2. So aside from like community dicking around, I don't know that there I, I. It seems to me like Vitalik's full core argument for why L2s should exist, and he pushed them very hard, was to take some of the stress and off of eth. But if ETH can handle it and it's cheap, I don't know what the selling point is. I mean, genuinely, I'm sure someone in this panel has an idea.

A (13:20)

So listen, I think it's going to come down to what it's being used for, in my opinion, and I think we should go to the panel on this. But if BlackRock is using it to move money around for Biddle, I don't think they care if it's 80 cents or 8 cents. Right. But if it comes back to, I think massive NFT or DEFI usage and stuff, I think speed and cost could, you know, 8 cents could be a lot better than 80 cents for certain people in certain usages. But I think that if we believe that ETH is becoming this massive institutional monster and that's where Wall Street's going to live, they're going to pay that slight premium relative to whatever they're using it for, for the security in the name. So that's my opinion on it.

G (14:02)

But yeah, I think we can agree that like, you're right, but we probably don't need as many L2s as we might have thought.

A (14:08)

Yeah, that's what I was saying. I mean, I think L2s were built to solve a problem that Ethereum is actually slowly solving on its own. So it doesn't mean there's no place for them. But I still believe that a lot of blockchains are going to need to find a very specific purpose to be successful. You know, like it could be an L2, but that's very specific for DeFi or NFTs or whatever it is, or, you know, Metaverse, something like that. Nicholas and then Mateo again.

H (14:34)

Yeah, just to, just to comment on that, you know, I spent a lot of time talking to, to Vivek from Ethereal Eyes on, on, you know, what are the institutional, institutional players really looking for out of the technology? And I think you nailed it, Scott. It's, you know, these, these big institutional players are looking for security primarily, and when they're, you know, looking at tokenizing, equities, et cetera. They're not really worried about the cost of transactions. So I do think that we will see most of the institutional level Usage on Ethereum L1. But then you know, then in the question of L2s, what's, what's the purpose? And if, if, if you can have, you know, sub, subsent transactions and high volume for, for retail customers, that's where it is. Right? So I think, I think that that's where L2s like base are going to, to really dominate in the future. And I do think we're going to go through this like layer two consolidation in the same way that we had a layer one consolidation in like the 2021 to present where we thought that there was going to be an abundance of L1s that might be Ethereum killers, et cetera and eventually they kind of consolidate to the top 1, 2, 3 or however many there are. So I do think that that's exactly what's going to happen in the L2 space.

A (16:04)

I'm gonna tell you. I think bank.

C (16:06)

Yeah, I think that that is exactly right. I think that it's where 100 to 300 bips really matter, not where they don't. So they obviously don't matter when moving billions, but they matter tremendously when you're just talking about commerce, retail, fast micro transactions, high volatility, algorithmic transactions, agents deploying a multitude of millions of transactions which will come. So I think all of that is where that really does matter and there's still a place for this, but I think consolidation will happen. I wanted to mention something that I just, it occurred to me yesterday I decided to like add up all of the altcoins that are above 10 billion or more in market cap, starting with sort of Hedera not including wrapped assets and just sort of going up the list between Bitcoin and Hedera. And when I did that, the market cap of all of Those assets equaled $3.6 trillion, meaning that the top 18 assets, including stablecoins account for nearly 95% of the entire crypto market cap. We talk a lot about how many coins there are, how many projects there are with, with the sheer velocity of like innovation, everything outside of the 10 billion mark encapsulates 5.2% of the entire market. I think that that's a pretty shocking thing to, to consider and I also think it's pretty asymmetric and think that there's a ton of opportunity for where we're headed and like a proper full stupid altcoin season. When you look at just how heavily weighted the top 18 is compared to the rest of the market.

A (18:04)

Yeah, it is the entire market. We get so heavily focused on the things that we read about on crypto Twitter, but they're a drop in the bucket when you actually take a look. You're. You're very right. Great point, Craig, then, Richard.

F (18:20)

Yeah, I was just gonna say those, those are great points. And I think the reason I'm banking heavy on the L2 base is because of, because of Coinbase and because of that, that collaboration of partnership. So really excited to see how it works. But I did not know that, that, that when you look at how that altcoin season will run and those top projects of Scott Cryptos, how that could actually affect and impact the market, when things really light off, it's going to be exciting to see. But I think the L2, again, you're only on the L2 if you're on the L1. You know, that's, that's just my last thought, so thanks.

A (18:54)

Yeah, Richard.

E (18:57)

Yeah, so it's an interesting point. And just to speak topically about this L2 thing, you know, we working with Polygon at the moment, we've just been engaging with them for the last couple of months. I've been privileged enough to be on some interesting groups with some of the leadership there, and there's no doubt Polygon have suffered at the advent of this L2 wave. But as an example to the point of what a lot of people have spoken about, they've decided to really focus on things like micropayments. So specialize in something that requires really, really low fees with high frequency in markets that are very sensitive to, to the cost of gas fees. So someone mentioned you earlier, you know, like, if there's ultra large transactions happening on ETH for RWA and for tokenized settlements, it's really immaterial if it's $0.50 or $0.80 or even a dollar. But once this breaks into the mainstream, and I think this ties in quite tightly with that comment around stable coins and how significant a sector this is for overall for crypto. So, you know, so I think the specialization in what these L2s decide to eventually do, I think you're going to see almost like a sanitizing of a lot of incumbents, and you're going to see the stronger, more secure, more reputable L2s actually come back and stamp their authority because a lot of the brands still carry so much trust. And I think that's a really important thing. I think you know, I get asked this question all the time, you know, why is it getting so much interest in demand? Because it's, you know, if anybody comes along and they're showing an interest in crypto, look at the top 10. I mean it's, it's the next big dog. And you know, this, the, the branding in crypto is as important as traditional business. So I, I think it's, we're heading into some interesting times and I'm looking forward to seeing these really strong candidates coming back and, and, and establishing themselves as real players in whatever market segment.

C (21:12)

They decide to operate.

A (21:15)

Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. I guess also maybe a way to sort of drive the conversation in a slightly different direction. But related is we've now seen obviously the institutionalization, institutionalization of Bitcoin. Clearly I think we are seeing the institutionalization of Ethereum. Does it stop there or do we start to see this trend accelerate into the next, you know, level of tokens that I'm tell you, you somewhat mentioned there. Like I, I've got obviously a clear eye on Solana. I, I have for a while. I think that, you know, it had the meme point narrative cooled off and now it's searching for something else. And it's been pretty eye opening this week to see how many treasury companies are launching on Solana and how many big name players in crypto are behind it. And the size, right. Not really small announcements. I think it was 1.2 billion from Pantera. Right. Pantera could launch a Bitcoin treasury company. They could launch an Ethereum treasury company. They're launching a Solana company. That is eye opening to me. You have, I think it was Galaxy Multicoin, Multi Coin obviously makes sense on Solana, but powered by Cantor as the banker. Cantor has only done Bitcoin, doing a billion dollar Solana treasury company and jump crypto in that one as well. And so you got to Wonder with Solana ETFs, I think somewhat inevitable, all these treasury companies, we're seeing similar, I think things around xrp. You know, a lot of people starting to talk about it with ETF and others like are we going to get a next iteration of these or where does the to end, you know, what would the cycle need to look like for all of these to be successful? Just kind of general thoughts on where this entire trend is going on the institutional side. Sorry, you know, I don't want to put anyone on the spot, but you guys can jump right in.

B (23:07)

Well, I think it begs maybe a better quality of Question is, will these treasury plays be just that, purely a strategy style treasury play where they strip away any sort of operational company or is this an institutional adoption wave where these are operational multinationals who see the need and the benefit of holding X of their overall balance sheet in a Solana or a Ripple or insert asset here. And that to me is probably the longer tail, that's the bigger opportunity. You get an Estee Lauder or a Boeing or another multinational who's already operating in 50 or 100 countries globally that sees the need from a currency standpoint to hold 20% of their overall operational balance sheet cash in an asset class like that. I'm a lot less bullish about the idea of let's stand up an XYZ Corp. Shell company and, and put 500 billion or $1 billion worth of Solana on the balance sheet and let the chips fall where they may. That to me is not a story that can continue forever. It almost feels like musical chairs. But the former to me is very, very interesting.

A (24:26)

What do you guys think?

H (24:28)

Well, I look at this as like beyond Bitcoin which is a clear treasury asset value add any other of the, of the asset classes really like they don't necessarily make sense as a Treasury asset until we have consensus on what the, the valuation model is going to be for for these assets. And I don't, I haven't seen yet any consensus on you know, how do you value or price project a Ethereum or a Solana. I've seen some very interesting research from like Fidelity Institutional in categorizing these gas assets for general programmable blockchains like Ethereum as economies, digital economies. So similar to traditional economies of sovereign states where it's a GDP valuation model. But I think that's going to be the thing that really takes off once, once there's consensus around that then you have a firm valuation model then it's not so much a, a, a kind of like a, a thought of, of what these things are going to be valued at into the future and what that's meaningfully going to, going to cause really though is, is a well formed data analysis that really shows assets that aren't worth worth their valuation currently. So we'll probably see a falling off of certain assets from these institutional treasury companies. But otherwise we might see something like Ethereum be valued much higher than it is today.

A (26:13)

That makes sense. Anybody else thoughts on sort of the direction of the institutional interest and I guess digital asset Treasuries as well?

D (26:23)

I mean I, I guess I could like Go ahead.

E (26:26)

No, I'm just gonna load more like a simpler, much simpler answer and, and without overthinking it. You know, I mean I, I happened to, I was online a couple weeks ago and replied to CZ on something and he, and he was courteous enough to reply to me because I said is there any demand for BNB at a Treasury level? And he said funny enough, their foundation and said that there were 30 corporates that had shown interest in BNB. And so, you know, whether this is just pure speculation and seeing what's happening with other cryptos and it's trying to get first mover advantage and, and you know, like somebody just said there may be this, this attrition with valuations not sticking and, and, but it's a matter of, of people just having a go. I know that sounds fairly thin, but that's what it looks like to me.

D (27:19)

That's the only thing I'll add on my end is you know, at least most of my conversations because I'm more in the politics world is more of like, you know, the bad side of things and what's going to happen. I know that's been beaten to death on various panels of just when or if something of these treasure companies are going to blow up and what that means and again for more blowback especially considering a lot of the regulations and legislation is kind of still currently in play and just gives folks another reason to be opposed or to create some hassle in D.C. but yeah, so far it seems everything's been going fine but for folks who've been through cycles a lot like this, there's a lot of scared when there's a bubble or a lot of hype around a certain thing usually in crypto means something bad eventually is going to happen.

A (28:02)

Do you think Ron, that these digital asset treasury companies could be big enough that they get meaningfully on the radar of legislators and could actually affect, affect what we get pushed through or not? I mean, you know, I guess it depends on the timeline of the legislation because you know, if market structure gets done in the next two or three months, I don't know that DATs will have had a chance to blow up by then. But like if you believe, and I don't necessarily but if people believe there's like the next ftx, it's going to end up on the radar at some point.

D (28:30)

Oh it's already, at least for this comes from more the detractors. But during the Clarity debate there were a couple House Democrats who were eventually opposed to the crypto Bill itself who are highlighting the treasury companies themselves and actually they were making the analysis to ftx and even, you know, there's been some conversations, you know, bubbling up more of the detractors about systemic risk to the general economy and markets generally. So you know, again, detractors are always going to make those arguments. It's kind of the easiest arguments to make. But the treasury companies have definitely already been name dropped from some of the detractors. So I'm sure they'll probably gloat and say, you know, I told you so if and when one of these does blow up. But that's, that's, that's the case going pretty soon.

A (29:14)

Yeah, I guess it makes sense. It's on the radar. Like we can think that this is some sort of new trend, but they were already skeptical about micro strategy. Right. So like this has been on the radar for years for a lot of the people who are in the quote unquote anti crypto army or whatever. So it's just more fuel when they see the trend accelerating. Is that kind of accurate?

D (29:34)

Exactly. It's just a political feather to the cap you can add and they always have to come off better saying I told you so. And this happens anytime there's a marked correction on any side. Trap, fire, crypto, there's always that set of detractors and they usually come through. Liz War Camp said and this is why we need X and Y heavy handed regulation. But again, so far nothing has been of concern here. Microstrategy ironically has not come up too much, at least from what I've heard on the Hill. But especially the treasury companies recently that was a talking point I saw coming up through the detractors.

A (30:07)

Is it on the radar only of the quote unquote anti crypto army or are there kind of some sensible people who are like damn it, this could muddy the works for us. Because I actually am in that camp to some degree when I'm handicapping what it'll look like in the future. I don't really think the treasury market is such a big deal now, but I'm on record hundreds of times as saying I'm definitely worried about Bitcoin, treasury company number 75 that is taking on some massive risk basically as a hedge fund larping as a Treasury company to, you know, beat the others and offer better rates or to, you know, to somehow find creative and risky ways to bring in capital, oh, 100%.

D (30:50)

All it takes is just one bad actor and it ruins the party for everyone. I mean that's that's tale all this time but and that's usually when DC reacts is when there's a bad situation or blow up and then that's usually when they come in. And again FTX is a good example of when Gen went really heavy handed and use FTX as a example to go really hard on the crypto industry and show that this wasn't the massive fraud. Yeah yada yada. But again at least when it comes to supporters of the treasury companies we see it more on the bitcoin angle and again there's more the bitcoin max crowd like your Senator Lummises of the world. But overall even when it comes to kind of more the Ethereum base or Solana, treasury companies like that in particular really hasn't come up to my knowledge yet more on at least the congressional and regulatory side. Although I'm sure the regulatory conversations have been happening behind the scenes.

A (31:42)

Makes sense. Is there anything else you're hearing maybe bubbling under the surface that we might not have heard?

D (31:48)

Nothing really too notable. I mean again, tokenized equities is still the hot topic at least among the regulatory side of things. Hesserpur did go on was it Empire podcast a couple days ago said that we might be seeing something coming soon. What that is unclear. We didn't get too much clarity from Atkins last week either, but it seems like the SEC is on a listing tour and they plan to come up with some new guidance and regulations. We saw that with the liquid staking recently, tokens getting some clarity. So fingers crossed we might be seeing some more tokenized equity stuff or clarity on that front, which would be the chagrin of the folks like Citadel and Systema have been pushing back on that front. So that's kind of what we're waiting for and waiting to see. But it's unclear when that's going to happen.

A (32:33)

Yeah, it's been a weird time. It sounds like the banking lobby has been pretty loud. They're not loving stablecoins at the moment. Right. And Citadel, we joked about it here a couple of weeks ago when Citadel came out and was like you guys need to slow down. Yeah, you guys are messing with our business. Could you please let us catch up?

D (32:52)

Yeah, they're really starting to be vocal again. It's all strategic. It's all before this legislation, but the banks are pretty much saying hey, we're not going to support the market structure bill, whatever it is unless you close these quote quote loopholes which would say there's no interest bearing stable coins for affiliates and Broker dealers, which is like, that wasn't the deal they struck in the Genius Act. They were fine with the prohibition as it was, but they're basically trying to move the marker as far as they can to get their support. So, you know, we didn't really expect them to be on board with market structure legislation to begin with, but they're starting to loudly say, hey, we're going to have this line in the sand. So it's going to get really interesting in a couple weeks.

A (33:30)

And sorry, again, do we expect market structure really to happen before 26?

D (33:37)

Lummis said last week at Salt that she is expecting before Christmas.

A (33:41)

I know, but she also said we'd have a strategic Bitcoin reserve by now. I'm not discounting her. I just think that she's our cheerleader. So, you know, she's definitely, I think, pushing the narrative. I wonder if behind the scenes, you know, there's more skepticism that might happen.

D (33:54)

No, realistically, like, that is actually a pretty decent timeline. Again, it's like four months. It may seem like forever, but Congress still has to go through its processes. And the next kind of big one is the draft hasn't come out. So we've seen a little bit of the Senate version of the market structure bill, but they said they plan to release the full versions hopefully by mid to late September. It could be October because there's a shutdown facing Congress at the end of September. That's going to take up a lot of drama. But once that draft comes out, the whole wheels go into motion. So we'll have hearings. We'll have the eventual markup in the committees. They'll have the particular votes in the House Agriculture and, sorry, Senate Agriculture and Senate banging committees. And then they'll go to the Senate floor for a full vote. Again, it's kind of like a repeat of what happened in the House in May, in July.

A (34:36)

So.

D (34:37)

So once the draft comes out, everything kind of gets moving into higher gear and that's when we'll probably see the banks and the other lobbying groups who like it or don't like it, go into full force to try to kill it or move it forward. But until then, everything's kind of behind the scenes in a holding pattern.

A (34:51)

Fascinating. Can I ask you a more pointed question that you don't have to answer just in context of something I did this morning? So this morning I had on my friend Gaurav Duby from TD5. He's basically one. One of their major verticals is market making for, you know, smaller tokens all coins across the board. You're obviously now at Winter Butte, right? And our conversation was like the kind of nonsensical perception of evil market makers. Is that a narrative that you obviously we saw all the ridiculous like Binance, Winter Mute, fud. I never even dug into it, but earlier this year. But like, is that something you have to answer about now in your role at Winter Mute? Like, is there any perception from an institutional or government side that market makers are a problem in crypto?

D (35:35)

I mean, I, I just joined about a month ago so much on those.

A (35:39)

You are officially their only spokesperson. I want answers now.

D (35:44)

I will say, you know, look, the reason why I came to wear mute was, you know, what's good for market makers is largely good for the industry. So it was, you know, I had a couple options when leading the blockchain association that are facing me and I was like, look, this is a pretty cool opportunity, especially considering for wi. At least it's a US office and we're starting from the ground up here. It's like a team of five of us right now in New York and massively growing. So for me that's what personally attracted to it. So I'm excited for it. You know, I saw some of the fun, especially since joining in some of the X comments here, but I won't talk about any particular. So I'm still getting a whole spun up on things, but overall it's really exciting.

A (36:21)

Like I said, I didn't want to put it on the spot as something specific to Wintermute, just kind of in the lane of like, hey, people are worried about treasury companies. I'm wondering if beyond the crypto Twitter sphere, if people worry about market manipulation or are those still things that you hear about non specific to Wintermute? But when you're having these conversations, do people believe that, Mark, you know, that manipulation is still a major problem with crypto exchanges or any of those things because that was a major narrative of the, you know, the anti crypto army and one that's bubbled in our own sort of world.

D (36:53)

Yeah, no, I mean, definitely not. I mean, I'd say like at least in D.C. or mostly the friendly D.C. circles, it's understood the role market makers play. I mean, obviously at least my role in particular, we're going against probably more of the citadels of the world as well as kind of those stratifying components who are going to be trying to block a lot of the developments coming out of the SEC and Congress here. So that's more where my remit is and that's what I'm pretty excited about to going up to the big dogs because it's finally happening after a couple years here. But no, at least, you know, we saw some of the anti crypto army folks try to say that the whole pump and dumb situation or try to benefit themselves but of course, you know, they would then be there with FTX or something that wasn't related at all. So yeah, I'm actually that DC but excited for this next challenge.

A (37:34)

Yeah, it just feels like to me regulated exchanges are under such end. Anyone who's trying to like a winter mute or another market maker that's trying to compete with the Citadels are probably under incredible regulatory and scrutiny. You got to imagine that everything that these companies do is being watched. I mean Binance literally had a major suit against them. I can't imagine that nobody's watching what Binance does.

D (38:06)

Yeah, well, they didn't have too many folks in dc, at least in the Binance side. But that was probably for a reason back in the day.

A (38:12)

Listen, exchanges or companies are doing now versus what they may have been doing five years ago is a very different conversation. Like, you know, I, I think Tether is one of the best companies on the planet, but I'm quite sure that there was a point at which Tether was not fully backed by assets that people would be thrilled about. Right. But I'm very confident that for the last few years they have been so, you know, and listen, cz, it's funny and this wasn't the direction I meant to go, but like I've spoken with CV on podcasts and I've, I've listened to him pretty extensive and he framed it in a way that made a lot of sense, kind of comparing I think the early days of crypto exchanges and crypto businesses as being like the early days of driving. You know, he made sort of this analogy on my show years ago where he said, listen, like in the early days of driving, you were kind of the only person out on the road. You didn't need safety features. They didn't have lines on the road. Nobody worried about which direction anybody was driving. As there were more cards on the road and there were more accidents, they started adding safety precautions and actual stop signs and roads, lines in the middle. And he's like, when we started and when most of us, Coinbase others started, we were like the first cars on the road. First car on the road. Then obviously like, there's no regulator to tell you what you can and can't do. But you still want to drive, you know, and so I think that there's a very big differentiation between the early days and now. I'm going to tell you. I know I got broken up there. I don't know how much you guys missed.

C (39:44)

Can you hear me? I know we're cutting out a little bit.

A (39:47)

I can. That was my. I always have my phone on do not disturb. But every once in a while, somehow, like a spam call gets through.

C (39:52)

Oh, good.

A (39:53)

Go ahead.

D (39:54)

All good?

A (39:54)

Yeah.

C (39:55)

I just wanted to share a short point which was, you know, no matter what fud market makers deal with or the kind of negative outlook that people may assign in certain market movements to market makers, the one thing I want to reinforce is that none of us want to be actually working, trading, investing in crypto without them. They serve such a critical. Such a critical piece of managing and balancing liquidity, oftentimes in very low liquidity levels, spread across an unbelievable array of market assets that allows opportunity for innovation and gives companies a way to actually build and provide an opportunity to invest in them that's not traditionally accessible this early in an investment innovation cycle. And none of that would be possible without market makers and tokens. I just don't think people fully appreciate that where it's like, yeah, maybe some of the rebalancing, maybe some of the liquidation efforts that they have to do to protect their assets can come under fire at times where people just don't appreciate what they're doing and how they're doing it. And I'm not saying that there isn't manipulation at times. There may be not pointing at any specific company or specific instance, but no one wants to build or invest in this industry without them. They provide a critical role to managing broad, deep, and very diverse liquidity through a really complex system.

A (41:33)

And if you have a problem with them in this industry, then you should take a really deep, long look at Wall street and the stock market and start having problems with any asset that's being traded anywhere. That's just like that. When Ron says, hey, I'm in. I'm working for Wintermute to compete with Citadel. He's not worried about whether Kanye's meme coin had some manipulation. Right? So it's like there's different parts of this market into your earlier port amateur. There's like this tiny part that seems big to us where maybe some of this stuff is still happening. But like, everybody who's participating in that, I think is player versus player and is discounting that that's happening there. Like, I don't know. Does anyone on planet Earth buy Kanye token and be like, this is totally fair. Like I'm not just playing a lottery game or like I'm in the casino.

C (42:23)

Well, that's it.

G (42:24)

Everybody buying it knew it was a, knew it was crime and they were hoping to get in on some of the crime and nobody should have. But like you know it, you can't stop. There's no trustless way. There's no police. You can't stop celebrities from grifting and big brands. You just have to know that, like it's very, very easy to know whether that big brand or celebrity is going to care about the token after.

A (42:46)

Right?

G (42:47)

Like if Walmart made a token right now, I'd bet that they don't want to let it go to zero for a couple million bucks. If someone releases, if he, if Kanye makes a video that looks like he's a, has a gun to his head and he's like, yes, this is my token, like you can pretty be pretty sure that it's going to get dumped. But on the other hand that doesn't mean it's not going to get crimed all the way, you know, to 10 billion first. So people, people are gambling. It's exactly what they know they're getting into. Nobody's even mad at Kanye for that.

A (43:13)

Reason, I think Richard and then I'm going to tell you again.

E (43:21)

Can I just ask a different question? I'm quite curious to know what people's thoughts are about WLFR when they launch in terms of valuation.

A (43:30)

I, I have no idea like it, we're talking about World Liberty Financial obviously for, for those who don't know, I mean it would be hard to imagine they fail.

G (43:42)

Isn't it like trading at 100x?

A (43:43)

I haven't even looked. I don't know. I think it's about when did you start trading? This has not even been on my radar, to be quite honest.

E (43:51)

I think it lists on the 1st of September.

D (43:53)

What is it?

E (43:54)

Is it called, what's the public holiday? Is it Founders Day?

A (43:57)

Labor Day? But with your accent, I can't blame you for not knowing a holiday that 97 of Americans also can't identify and the other 3% can't tell you why we have it. It.

E (44:10)

Yeah, I just, I'm just curious. I mean I think it's going to be a, an interesting one. I mean with a listed company spending 1.5 billion, you got to imagine. And paying 20 cents at pre market. I was just curious to know what people use on it. But, you know, I think it's going to be, you know, from a pure crypto perspective, could be quite a catalyst for the balance of altcoin season because it's definitely falling into the shitcoin category, let's be honest. I mean, not saying it's, it's, you know, they don't have a business model, but yeah, it's just another altcoin.

A (44:45)

Yeah, maybe. See, I, I, I like preface the show saying, hey, maybe it'll be short. And this has been one of the best, most fun conversations with an actually small panel. And here we are at 1105, like 10 minutes from when we usually end the show. So great job, guys. But maybe for the last 10 minutes we can then spend the time because of this CRO news that we just saw. I should bring it up so I can actually read it to people. We sometimes take for granted that people here know exactly what we're talking about. But Obviously we had crypto.com, which is the CRO token, spiking 42% after crypto.com seals $6.4 billion deal with Trump Media. This is basically for a treasury company, 6.4 billion is huge. The biggest ones we've been hearing about are 750 million a billion, 1.2 billion in larger tokens than CRO. So this makes a lot of sense. You also have the fact that Kronos had burned a huge percentage of their supply and then a few years later recently said oopsie and decided they were going to bring him back for a marketing budget or something, which wasn't the most popular thing in the world. But I guess the next natural conversation here when talking about World Liberty Financial as well is how comfortable are we at the level at which the Trump family is participating in crypto? I mean, we gotta be able to fill nine minutes with that, right? I mean, where do you guys stand on how deeply involved everything Trump is with the crypto market? Ron, you got, I know you got an answer.

D (46:06)

I mean, like, it's not helping. I'll say that in D.C. you know, like, at least the Democrats who are just trying to go after anything Trump does on any front, like, this is just an easy layup here. I mean, I will say too, you know, at least a lot of the Democrats, when they're against Clarity, the market structure bill, they were referencing the meme coin and the wallets and Worldly financial as the like kind of poster child of Trump corruption, which is a concerning trend, because hypothetically, if the Democrats do take over the Senate or the House next election. A, everything's going to grind to a halt when it comes to split Congress, so that's a suck. But B, whichever one does host, or whichever one is in charge of whichever branch, they're going to host a lot of oversight hearings. And you bet for sure the crypto executives that were involved with worldly financial or at least some of these deals are going to have a hearing and get grilled by the Democrats for trying to empower the President or empower Trump or empower corruption, whatever angle you want to take. So again, it'll be all just talk, but there's definitely going to be hearings on this if the Democrats take over because they're trying to align the Trump corruption and using crypto as the main example for that which is concerning. So it's going to be a trend going forward in politics.

E (47:21)

But, but it's on the blockchain. I mean, is this not a glorious thing that, that for the first time this entire transaction and process is going to be auditable? I, I, I beg to differ. I, I think that, I think the Trumps, if you listen to them, you know, they're not, they're not hiding the fact that, you know, and the winkle forces, how many people were debanked, throttle choked, whatever the the term was. And you know, this, this for me is a very clever strategy that if America is genuinely open for business, why not lead from the front? I'm pretty bullish about this. You know, these transactions are all been done in plain sight. I mean, I'll give you an example. I mean there's a, there's a company that we're involved with. I advise on the Foundation. Their CTO is, one of the co founders is CTO for WFI and the WLFR team did a USD1 transaction. He sent me the blockchain records there it was on the Explorer. And I was like, well, you know, this is not a secret. The, the, the acquisitions and the transactions that would be done for the purchase of Ethereum and such was right there, plain sight. I mean, you didn't have to go and sit with the banker and say, please can you open your records. We need to, you know, get a court injunction to get access to your databases. It was all in plain sight. And I'm just going to leave that there. I really think that there's something in this. You know, I don't have any political bias. I just think that there's been some very clever maneuvering. Look, I was not happy about the amount of liquidity that got smashed out of the market at a bad time with the Meme Coin. I was like this is not great. And I suppose that there is still a bit of a stench around that, but this is slightly different for me. I have some inside track on what's really going on behind the scenes with WA fights by launches, a defi product lending and a mobile app that wants to get into the hands of retail users, making yield accessible to the Everyman. But yeah, I don't know. I think with it being on the blockchain is a real bonus.

A (49:31)

Anyone thoughts there? They have World Liberty Financial for all the criticism, been very transparent, what they're buying and selling at least. Right. And I think they are trying to build something defi based. You can hate on the fact that Trump is making money on it and who knows, you know, what accusations can be made behind the scenes. We obviously saw the Meme Coin dinner and people said that could be foreign government influence. I literally think it was just a bunch of people like hanging out and giggling about the fact that they were at a Meme Coin dinner with Trump. But what they're actually doing, to your point on the blockchain and they share it pretty openly like they know. I think they also know they're going to be relatively heavily scrutinized.

C (50:11)

Right.

A (50:13)

It doesn't help. Ron, to your point and Richard, the melania, I mean the Trump melania weekend was, it was just, it was just bad, just atrocious.

E (50:25)

Yeah, totally, totally agree.

A (50:29)

Anyone else thoughts here? Because if not we pretty much. Yeah, go ahead. I'm Matteo.

C (50:35)

Yeah, I'll just chime in and say like I can appreciate that they're trying to do things on chain. I think that leading to the on chain stuff, there was clearly a lot of backroom deals that went into this. I kind of go back to like David Sachs selling his crypto and removing his skin in the game to have an unbiased relationship to his role as crypto and AIs are. And that's coming from David Sachs who was a very early on seed investor in Solana. And so I just, to be honest, like I just don't think I understand the intentions are good. I'm not happy about it really, just because I think it just. I was so tired of our industry as a builder being under attack for so long and now just this glaring attack vector and target on the industry's back as a result of this. I wish that they would have just devested their own family's interest initiative and did it for the good of the people in the country rather than a self serving element. We'll see what kind of product and opportunity comes out of it. But it just feels extremely self serving to the, to the Trump family as a whole. And it's just not. I don't think I have yet to see a net benefit for the industry as a result of their actions.

A (52:05)

Yeah, think that's. Well, yeah, it's nice to have a crypto friendly government. So there's that. Yeah, I think that has definitely played in our favor. But the family and the sons and stuff I think has brought more skepticism than otherwise. But you know, I think that if you really take a deep look, a lot of people saying that they own a lot more crypto than or have a lot more value in crypto than real estate, which is just wild considering it's all basically happened in the last year. All right, guys, we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up. That was a great show. Really, really, really enjoyed it. This is a great panel. Sometimes it's nice when there's not too many people to manage and we get in a nice flow. So that was really great. Enjoyable. Made. Made my day, like, I'm not gonna lie. Some days I come and I just.

D (52:54)

Brutal.

A (52:55)

You know, it's not, not, not easy to do these shows every day. YouTube and, and spaces and some days I just don't want, don't want to do it and. And then Dave's not here. If it's a day I don't want to do it. Brutal. You know, and Mario and Ran, I, I would have expected more from them. Obviously, you know, on a normal Wednesday, both of them would be here sharing their deep market market insights and thoughts. But they, I guess just decided not to show up today or literally ever. All right, guys, that's all we got. We will see you tomorrow. Thank you.

C (53:26)

Bye.