← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
Gold Hits ATH, ETH Struggles, BTC Stuck! What’s Next? | Crypto Town Hall
01:17:02
Loading summary
Transcript123 lines
- [00:02]
Dave
Good morning everyone. It is Tuesday, March 18 and 10:18. I think we did it in three minutes this time. So we're doing better in terms of getting started. Markets are, are, are, are not thrilled on the risk side, but gold is certainly flying, you know, pushing up against 30, 50 and you know, with ether's continued struggles. We were talking about it yesterday. There's a fair amount to unpack in the market. We can get right to it. Obviously, when you see gold miners outperforming, gold outperforming and the Nasdaq dropping almost 2% off the open, there's kind of a disconnect here where the risk markets think that things are bad, we're going into recession and the gold market is saying, well, okay, they're going to print more and we're going to go up first. Which is a interesting scenario. It actually makes some sense. But then again, I rarely expect markets to make sense when people are trading emotionally. So that's where we are. And you know, we could, we could get started on any of these vectors. Anybody raised their hand, that's fine. Otherwise you'll all have to listen to me for longer than you want. Okay, Mark, why don't you go ahead.
- [01:12]
Mark
Hey Dave, Thanks. And yeah, I was, I was part of the three minute delay there. So thanks for enduring that. I'll, I'll work on my time out of the blocks. The, there are two markets here. It looks like Bessant is in control. He's asking us to acclimate and there'll be a period of acclimation. He's almost acting like a headmaster telling his students that, you know, the first semester is going to be the hardest and it's really only in the equity markets. Unless, you know, other folks can talk about things that I'm missing. I mean, of course, crypto in particular, you know, the beta, higher beta names getting hit harder. But the thing that's not happening, Dave, is you're not seeing credit spreads or even the move index. And that's what I'm looking for as a potential end to the creative destruction that Trump and the administration is doing in order to try to get the deficit down with tariffs. So yeah, it seems to be more in the liquid equity markets, but high yield spreads are still in the 99th percentile relative to investment grade. There's still risk seeking behavior there. So that's what I'm looking at. I mean, gold is obviously telling you the signal of I don't like it. Proxy wars are not going to stop. That needs money. It means printing so you're right. But. And this is not a but. And in keeping with that, credit spreads are like great. As long as they print, there won't be a dislocation in the treasury markets. So therefore, you know, my 7 to 8% private debt is fine. So that's from, you know, more on the credit side. My background, I'm looking at that as a potential signal for contagion, but it's not flashing even yellow yet.
- [03:09]
Dave
Yeah, the other, only other signal that I've seen and there have been a bunch of people commenting about recession indicators and you know, I personally think that it's, it becomes a trick of, of nomenclature. I mean, we all know that, that Yellen changed the definition a little over a year ago. So, you know, actually was under a year ago. So, you know, who knows? I do know that searches on Google for recession are up and so investors are certainly worried about it. But you know, the real question is, you know, why would bitcoin be continuing to track more with the NASDAQ right now than with gold? And it is interesting. Personally, I just think bitcoin is in this kind of choppy little range here and kind of working itself out. But, and I don't get too, too bothered about these moves, but it is, it is interesting. Carlo, what do you think?
- [03:59]
Carlo
Well, good morning, Dave. Peter Schiff has taken a victory lap this morning. He's been aggressively posting about accumulating gold. And I just find that to be an interesting paradigm shift that we're seeing here. You know, I cannot explain it. The only thing I can, and I was thinking about this this morning. We have probably 98% of the world that has not yet really woken up to what is happening with Bitcoin. However, institutions, nation states and most of the major tradfi sector has awakened to what bitcoin is. So is this just a lag? Are we just seeing consumers and retail respond in the predictable way in the threat of recession and that maybe they're missing the mark here? That's kind of what I'm thinking and I'm curious to know what some of the financial heads in the space think, because it seems to me that people are just going to the default. Gold is a safe haven and kind of missing the obvious play here that the institutions and tradfi and even now nation states are seeing. So are we just in a paradigm here where we're just waiting for people to catch up to reality?
- [05:14]
Dave
Well, I think it depends on reality. I mean, my point of view has always been that the, when all the Broker dealers have crypto trading services that they're ready to offer that the public consciousness will miraculously wake up and you'll see more. But that's really going to be the back half of the year, so we'll see. Anyway, Mark, you had your hand up first, then Amateo.
- [05:36]
Mark
Yeah. On the financial side, I think the headlines are all there. I mean, you could not have crafted a better set of headlines. And I think all of us would realize or think that Bitcoin would have sustained or gone through the 109 peak, especially after the distinction that Trump made between the Bitcoin strategic reserve and the language there versus the stockpile. But it has not trickled down to beyond a few financial institutions like BlackRock, who is all in with their $150 billion model portfolio inclusion, biggest headline yet in the private markets. And then Fidelity, Bitwise, et cetera. In speaking to advisors at Merrill lynch, at ubs, formerly Credit Suisse, where I still have some colleagues, they're not touching it. They're not allowed to. They're not really interested. And at $1.8 trillion, they're not incentivized. They'll pick up yield in the private debt markets. They'll get exposure still through equities, either private or public markets. And their models don't allow for it. Their compliance departments don't allow for it. And these are conversations that I've been having and I'm veering away because it's such a wall. It's just I'll wait for it to break. I'm not going to break through it. So I don't think that the traditional financial markets are embracing Bitcoin to the degree that we think they are.
- [07:07]
Dave
Well, I want to push back a bit on that. It's a question of time. I spent 35 years working building businesses and working with compliance departments. And compliance departments are very simple. They're binary. It's either yes or it's no right now, until. Because remember, Paul Atkins has not been confirmed at the sec. Brian Kintens has not been confirmed at the cftc. Gold has not been confirmed at the OCC until they are in their place and they wave the checkered flag that says, okay, start the race. You can do this. These traditional firms, particularly the big banks, are not going to touch it. And the compliance department is going to be waving the red stop sign until that changes. The fact that that's going to change is inevitable. I mean, the odds are you wouldn't even get odds on polymarket against it. But doesn't matter. Compliance departments don't anticipate, doesn't mean business people don't want to where they can make money. But the real question is when can they? And they won't be able to until the back half of this year. Well, at a bare minimum they won't be able to until, you know, FINRA on the broker dealer side says you're allowed to and the CFTC comes out with guidance. You know, I don't know if we need a market structure bill or not, but I do know we need to have a very clear signal or no action relief at a minimum. Amateur. Sorry, my mic went off.
- [08:35]
Amateo
Good morning, Dave. Good morning everybody else. Yeah, I think that what you're saying, Dave, is exactly right. Where we're actually seeing institutional buys in addition to the lagging implementation of a lot of these policies and the infra to actually get this liquidity into the market. But I think one thing that we don't always highlight as much as we used to, which is how Bitcoin tends to be a predictive indicator a lot of times of moves in the short term. And I think obviously the big news today is around the FOMC meeting and what we expect is no rate change, but volatility is expected. And so I think in the short term we're going to continue to see quite a bit of pressure and recession fears, even if they're overblown. I don't know if we're going to get a hawkish or dovish Fed today. I curious to see everyone else's perspective on the outlook and if we expect any changes. And the last thing I'll say is when it comes to bitcoin price, I wonder if one of the headwinds here is actually around microstrategies. There was a report released that they accounted for 28% of Bitcoin inflows in recent months. They just purchased 10.4 million, which just shows that the liquidity tap might be drying up a little bit. And then today announced a new perpetual preferred stock offering. Are they out of leverage? Are they out of capital? Is one of the biggest buyers starting to slow down? And I just wonder if that's hanging over Bitcoin at this time.
- [10:18]
Dave
Mark, is your hand up as a legacy or.
- [10:22]
Mark
Yeah, no, sorry about that. I was just actually DMing you. I liked your, you know, your, your point about the. And what was just said here about the regulatory side. So cue me in because I was, I was just DMing you on your point about Atkins and about how it is setting up for the back end. I agree. And when I talked about why is Bitcoin here, I was saying it's here because right now, today there is a still a siloed demand for, for, for Bitcoin. And you know, even the FASB ruling that came out in 2023, August 23rd, I think was a past and it came into place for fiscal year 25. It will not be compulsory until fiscal year financials for 25 are filed. So I think once you see companies that are allowed and are filing for moving from impaired assets of fair market value on their balance sheets. MicroStrategy hasn't done it yet. They won't I think until the end of 25. That is a signal, I think as you said, Atkins is a signal that will maybe trigger compliance departments. But I put it back to the crowd and maybe you, Dave, what other signals would there be for the broker dealers or the wirehouses to say model portfolios can have 1 to 2%. That's really the signal. I don't have that, that intel so.
- [11:57]
Dave
Well, I don't know when I can tell you what. And that's why I think that the Strategic reserve EO matters a lot. If they manage to codify that, that would be a blaring red signal. Red is usually considered bad. A blaring neon signal that it would be now because the what is and this is minutiae that a lot of people don't know. But most of the pension funds, most of the model portfolios in this country and actually really in the western world are driven by a group of people called investment consultants. These are actually, these are firms that are the gatekeepers to most of the pension money who are choosing active and passive managers, etc. Etc. When those firms put move Bitcoin from alternative assets into a mainstream asset alongside gold, that's the starting gun.
- [12:55]
Mark
The common fund, folks like that.
- [12:57]
Dave
Well, no, the common fund is a fund. No, I'm thinking like Mercer Towers parent. I don't know how many. There's been probably been mergers.
- [13:05]
Mark
Yep.
- [13:08]
Dave
Sorry, I got a call. Any case, can everyone hear me again?
- [13:15]
Amateo
Yeah, you're all clear now, Dave.
- [13:16]
Dave
Okay. Well anyway, what I was saying is the investment consultants are going to matter and that's where. And that's where the, the. That is basically going to be the stark sign. I don't expect that in 2025 to be honest with you.
- [13:30]
Gareth
But you.
- [13:31]
Dave
We don't know if you want to talk about things. That would be a very big deal. That would be a very big deal.
- [13:36]
Alex
Yep.
- [13:36]
Mark
Thanks.
- [13:38]
Dave
Hold on, let me switch.
- [13:41]
Mark
Switching back to the front and center. I don't know if it was Carl or, or Alex speaking about, you know, bitcoin down. You're right. Bitcoin, you know, is of two minds. It is that store value that, that separation on a four year basis never down more than 23% long term store value. But it is also that risk asset. So it is following things lower for the time being. And that's just the nature of it. And that's one reason why people will point to it and selectively look at the correlation or the beta to NASDAQ and say why should I get involved? Even though as BlackRock and Fidelity have done the, the correlation over, you know.
- [14:31]
Dave
Sorry guys, can you hear me again? I got another call came blasting in.
- [14:35]
Mark
Yeah, Dave, we got you. We were just following up on the split mind of bitcoin that was brought up prior to me speaking about it is still a risk off ass.
- [14:44]
Dave
Did I glitch out?
- [14:46]
Mark
Oh, Dave, yeah, we got you covered. I think. Yeah, I think you're glitching out. Maybe pop back in and out again.
- [14:58]
Dave
Damn it.
- [15:03]
Mark
But you know, back to the, you.
- [15:05]
Dave
Know, can anybody hear me?
- [15:07]
Carlo
Yeah, I don't think we can. I don't think Dave can close.
- [15:10]
Zilian
Yes, we do hear you.
- [15:10]
Carlo
I don't think Dave can close it because he's the host. So we just may have to carry on and hope that he can reconnect.
- [15:17]
Mark
Okay. He's got his ruminations. We, he doesn't know we can, we can hear his, his exacerbation discussion right now with himself.
- [15:26]
Amateo
If anyone wants to disagree with Dave, now's a great time.
- [15:31]
Mark
Yeah. So back to the floor with, with anyone on the, you know, on the current, you know, state of markets. You know, I think, you know, shift doing a lap when he has 3 to 5% of his portfolio in gold, you know, if, if that's the right stat last time I checked, you know, God bless him. Not, not, not really doing a whole lot of good for the balance of the portfolio if, if that's your allocation. Reliance.
- [15:58]
Carlo
Yeah, it's also, it's also interesting to me that it all but ignores what's happening on the ground. I think he's kind of clung to an outdated notion in my opinion and he's married it and he's almost made himself a meme in the sense that he's doubled down so much on it and it's his number one talking point right now. And it just is stunning to me that someone who is as accomplished as he is would just outright dismiss and ignore what is happening on the ground with bitcoin. I just don't understand the disconnect there. Is it just because it gets him engagement and is he secretly buying bitcoin? I don't know. But it just seems strange to me that someone who is as steeped in financial markets as he is could just outright dismiss this offhand.
- [16:50]
Dave
Well, you know, I made that point like two and a half years ago and it was obvious that, that Peter believed that nothing virtual could have value in his mind. If you can't touch it, it doesn't have value. Which of course ignores quite literally the, you know, the youngest third of the population entirely and ignores anybody if you've ever played a video game or you've ever done anything. And it's just, to me, it's illogical. But that's the way he looks at it. And he ignores the gold silver divergence and the gold platinum divergence, where platinum is rarer and more valued in jewelry, yet platinum is now one third the price of bitcoin. All right, one third the price of gold. And you know, which kind of is proving that bitcoin, that gold's monetary value is what's driving its price, not its jewelry value or utility value. Those arguments, when you make them to Peter, they go completely off into the ether. Why? Well, either he's just incredibly stubborn and considering his track record with his bank and yeah, he probably was unfairly taken advantage of by the authorities, but not great. So, you know, is he making his living off of having huge engagement by tweaking the bitcoin community? I mean, it seems like that's, like that's the most logical outcomes Razor. That's what I think. But what I will say is, is, I mean, for a while I muted him and didn't follow him. But his crowing is such a great market timer. It's not quite as good as Kramer, but it's pretty damn close. When he starts doing victory laps, you have a pretty good idea and you can chart that against the bitcoin gold ratio.
- [18:21]
Carlo
Not only does he doing virtually virtual victory laps date, he's actually directing people. In his most recent post last night, he's directing people to his website, encouraging people to buy gold, shiftgold.com and the opportunities to buy in increments of ounces and micro ounces and so forth. It's, it's. He's talking a book at the same time as completely dismissing an entire asset class.
- [18:48]
Dave
But he always did with Euro Pacific Capital too I mean, look, I. We could talk about Kramer and why does he do things you can talk about ship and why does he do things you could talk about, you know, others? He's going to look really foolish again. He always has. You know, everything has its part. But the fact is, you find a bitcoiner who doesn't also favor gold over financialized stocks, and that's going to be very rare. Bitcoin, right. Most of us understand hard money matters, understand that gold still has hard money attributes. And so, you know, it's not about bashing gold. It's about understanding that there's an entire world of people out there who need digital hard money. And this notion that you could digitize gold, every time they say it, I look at the people and say, okay, so you're going to digitize it and you're going to trust that it's real. When's the last time we've had audited trusting trusted gold that we know is real, that hasn't had some instance of counterfeit? Because bitcoin is so much harder to counterfeit, so much easier to verify.
- [19:51]
Carlo
And, you know, to add to that, Dave, it's stunning to me also that gold is something that you cannot not accurately track. There's no ledger. There's no immutable, fully transparent ledger that can tell you how much gold is actually stored in relation to how much has been discovered. And it seems like it's propped up based on speculation. And people make fun of bitcoin as being purely speculative because it's digital. But who can give an accurate audit of how much gold is in the world relation to its value? And isn't that something that at this point in the world, maybe we should be, like, fixing?
- [20:28]
Dave
Well, I mean, we. I asked everyone the question yesterday and didn't get good answers. I'm curious if the panel cares if they audit Fort Knox and it's less than people think. If the Fed's reserves were audited and it's less than people think. If London, if we. If it turns out that. And if we had Lawrence Lepard up here, he would go on about this. And I think he's probably right. That paper gold has been used to suppress the gold price for years by hypothecating or by basically people selling it short with futures and never having to borrow it. If any of that starts to be true, what happens to bitcoin? What happens to gold? Because it's not obvious. I mean, yes, gold would probably go up, but it's pretty obvious that people would look at that and say, wait a minute, but you can't do that with bitcoin. Is there an advantage here? And so that becomes an interesting question. Don't you think I would tell you?
- [21:22]
Carlo
Yeah, actually you and I were the ones who went back and forth about this before we kick it to Amateo and I kind of started that conversation. And the interesting thing about that debate is the whole point that people want to accumulate gold is because they're afraid of a financial collapse. The dollar falling apart, the United States losing its prominence. But if you can't actually pick the gold up and go anywhere, then isn't it just as useless as bitcoin?
- [21:49]
Dave
I mean, I, I, I don't know about useless.
- [21:53]
Carlo
I'm saying that pejoratively, of course.
- [21:56]
Dave
No, no, I, I understand. Look, I own gold too. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna lie. I actually own more silver because I think silver in any of this stuff will revert closer. I mean, it's not going to regain its monetary value, but you know, it, you could look at that in a different way. And that's always been something that people care about anyway. Amateur. You had your hand up for a while.
- [22:17]
Amateo
Yeah, no, I was just gonna say that I, I would imagine if it looks like the Fort Knox audit doesn't pass, etc, do it or initially be a reaction of, oh my gosh, gold is far rarer than we thought. But I think that in a mid to long term scale we would immediately reach a place where there would be broken trust in the gold market. And I just don't think markets operate well with broken trust. And I think when you go from broken trust and then you have a trustless global asset that is accounted for, you get an asymmetrical bet that a lot of people would take. And I think that bitcoin itself, something that we always discount is just how fast it can rebound off of different macro conditions. And I expect the same here no matter what happens with gold.
- [23:17]
Dave
Me too, Mark.
- [23:20]
Mark
Hey Dave. So on the trust front, let's go back to that Fort Knox. If there is anything beyond a minor accounting issue, I do think that the trust factor will rattle markets. I think everything would trade lower initially. And to this crowd we all question why hasn't bitcoin picked up, et cetera, et cetera. I think we have to go to the behavioral economists, Kahneman, Tversky about just our bias and how long it takes for us to adopt new dynamics or shed old lenses and filters that we have. So I think the fact that we have blackrock and Fidelity, although they're tradfi and they're consolidating corn at Coinbase and then Fidelity in their own place. I think that those folks will be the shepherds along with folks like us that will help direct people into the fact that bitcoin's different. So these types of forms are critical, but we don't have the same kind of scale that, that Tradfi has. So I, I think that everything would trade lower on the Fort Knox. And that's something that maybe we should sort of get out message and say, hey, this is a temporary negative, but it's actually positive for Bitcoin because there is a possibility that there will be at least a delayed accounting, if not a, you know, a not full accounting of what's supposed to be there. I don't know what if you guys think that's too, too conspiracy conspiratorial, but you know, something hasn't been looked at for decades and I don't really assume the best.
- [25:04]
Dave
Well, I, I, I haven't seen Goldfinger circling or any, anything like that happen. But, you know, who knows? Look, the other, the other big thing that's been going on in the markets are a higher correlation to the nasdaq, not just with bitcoin, but of course with altcoins. And I attribute that to the crypto community kind of writ large. And there have been some headlines, actually, I think it was, I can't remember which one. Maybe in the block I read it, people talking about the crypto community running out of money, which I think is kind of funny. I think what they're talking about is running out of money on leverage and getting bored and tired of banging their heads against a wall. But as long as bitcoin on the margin is set by speculators on big leverage, then what happens? Well, what happens is the short side is where you can make money by. You know, that's the famous hyper whale, you know, the big whale trade that everyone was staring at this weekend. But when you look at the alts, I think that you're seeing a lot less leverage. And overall less leverage of the system is incredibly healthy for a rebound because no leverage means when momentum changes, then you get fomo. But you know, look, we've seen these cycles before. Hell, we went eight months in a big trading range not all that long ago. So we shouldn't really be terribly surprised. Actually, I saw Simon come in and out. I kind of thought I was going to tee him up. But let's see, is he on here? Nope. I guess Simon gone again. I don't know if anybody cares about that, or do we want to switch gears and talk about Ethereum?
- [26:36]
Carlo
Another big thing that's really drawn a lot of attention is that terrible Solana commercial that was dropped and immediately withdrawn. And, man, when I first saw it, Dave, I have to say I got excited for a moment because it kind of had the same vibe at those early Coinbase commercials that we saw that were just so well done. But then as it just sort of meandered on, it just became so cringe, and I really failed to understand the point of it. And just whoever was put in charge of that man, is probably getting their phone blown up today. That was just an epic mess.
- [27:13]
Dave
Yeah, it didn't help my bags. I can't tell you that much.
- [27:18]
Zilian
I was.
- [27:19]
Dave
I was less enthusiastic that I could say someone just had their hand up. I. Yeah, I was.
- [27:25]
Alex
I was trying to figure this out. Guys. Like, I think. Look, I. I think I just don't.
- [27:29]
Amateo
Understand the US Culture right now because.
- [27:32]
Alex
Like, to me, that ad was hilarious. It, like, it kind of captured this, like, frustration with, like, observing, like, US Society from the outside, being obsessed with, like, weird pronouns and, like, these things.
- [27:45]
Amateo
That don't really matter, and finally kind.
- [27:46]
Alex
Of getting back into a builder mindset. But it seems like I'm definitely in.
- [27:52]
Amateo
The minority and, like, I'm not able.
- [27:54]
Alex
To read the room at all. So can anyone explain this to me?
- [27:58]
Paul
Like, what was.
- [27:59]
Alex
Like, what were the things that were.
- [28:00]
Amateo
So cringe about it?
- [28:02]
Carlo
I think it was the attempt. You know, I only got to see it one time, and it got taken down, and now actually someone minted it and put it on the Zora blockchain, which is hysterical, because as a lawyer, I'm curious to see if there's going to be any kind of DMCA to take it down by Solana, which would kind of be funny. But I think the problem with it is I'm all for encouraging building, and I think Solana has such a promising future, and especially with the advancements that are coming with Fire Dancer, I just think that they. They kind of were trying to tap into a conversation that was maybe speaking directly to one segment. And I think if you're trying to build a brand, I think you can universally communicate that in a much better way. Kind of like Coinbase has with their commercials, which are very subtle comments on, hey, young people, there's a different way, there's a better way, there's a future here without overtly hitting all those buttons. Because it's not just the United States that's caught up in this woke culture, it's the world. And I think if they wanted to make that message, they could have done it a little subtler and gotten their point across and maybe not dragged it out. Because to me, it seemed like an exorbitantly long ad. Too long for attention in this economy.
- [29:28]
Amateo
Yeah, it was incredibly long and really like an unnecessary cultural commentary for what it's trying to represent, which is also highlighted, that is advertising. You know, not just Solana, but like an event associated with it. As someone who is a marketer, if you're looking to highlight builders on Solana, there's an innumerable amount of ways that the war is over when it comes to building in America on Solana. A guy who maybe has ambitions venting to a condescending therapist, I just don't think is the way to convey that idea. And I just think it shows further the thing that has been causing a lot of downward pressure in the market, which was this meme coin cycle that was just completely out of touch. And I think it just continues to be completely out of touch, which is just unfortunate and just shows where we're actually at.
- [30:28]
Dave
Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, was. Was very much along the same lines. Amateo, which is if you're investing in Solana because you expect a rebound in the mean Coin casino and that's going to be the be all and end all, then other than the my first expression will be may God have mercy on your soul, because that's not going to happen. I mean, yeah, sure, some will come back, but most people who are investing in Solana or believe in the blockchain is because it is a superior blockchain for doing high speed financial transactions which could fit incred a lot of other verticals. The last thing you want to be doing if you're in the Solana foundation is, is even touching popular culture. You want to distance yourself from that because that's where the real money is. But that was sort of the way I read it. You know, I kind of thought that their response was overblown. But then again, in crypto, when people, you know, we've been either in fear or extreme fear now for a couple of weeks, two or three weeks, and people in crypto in two or three weeks, that feels like a lifetime. And there are people who are like, you know, you picture, you know, going withdrawal symptoms from dopamine hits of the market going up. I mean, people with their hands shaking and all of a sudden it's like, oh, they see this thing, it's like, God damn it, it's this fault and people are looking for an excuse.
- [31:40]
Alex
Alex I would love to comment on that, Dave, because you mentioned something that's really, really important and I'd love to steer the conversation back to ETH struggles, but at the same time compare it with Solana because you said something that's very important. Dave I actually sold all of my ETH as soon as I saw the debate between Solana, Ethereum, we had Justin Drake on the Ethereum side, which is one of their top senior researchers, and Tolle, who's the CTO of Solana. And the reason why I sold all my Ethereum to go all in in Solana is because I noticed one core component when it came to the mindset that Anatoly, despite being a CTO and having a tech mindset, he also had very strong business acumen. While what I saw with Ethereum and most of the foundation researchers, they're really living in a utopian world where they think that everything can be liberal and free without a business model and anything that can help the chain scale. And as a matter of fact, it was a really smart decision when I saw that debate, which was, I think, I believe end of 23, because Ethereum is one of the only major assets that didn't reach a new all time high. BNB reached an all time high since. Bitcoin reached an all time high since. Solana reached an all time high since. But Ethereum didn't manage to do so. And the reason why I believe this is the case, Dave, is multiple fold as you said, Solana is the financial chain. It has more spot and leverage training trading than any other chain including Uniswap. And so all of a sudden Ethereum, that used to be the financial chain, everything that you can do off chain can be done on chain. It lost one of the most important metrics for any chain and that is how much trading volume and transactional volume that you get because that generates fees for the validators, it's directly connected to the security of the network. And all of a sudden when I saw all that trading volume leave Uniswap, I'm like, oh shit, Solana is becoming the Wall street chain where Ethereum has become an on chain commercial bank. And the reason why I call Ethereum an on chain commercial bank is because the only thing it can do today either than store your assets in a decentralized manner is to stake and most of that liquid staking or restaking comes from eth itself, its own asset. Or you can do money markets, you know, lending and borrowing with AAVE if you want to go on a retail level, or lending and borrowing with Morpho if you want to do more sophisticated institutional type lending in defi. So for me, Dave, the only way for Ethereum to survive is number one, they got to pull their pants up. They got to bring someone who actually has a business acumen, like Joe Lubin when he was involved back in the day. Now it's really, it's just devs leading the troops with no clear strategy whatsoever. And their strategy of scaling the ethereum network through L2S is the worst and excuse my French fucking strategy to that exist in terms of, in terms of all networks. And the reason why I say that, imagine guys, Ethereum is a big mall, right? And every single dap is a store, a digital store. Now how can you create a system where those digital stores are stealing your revenue without paying you rent? And that's what's happening with Ethereum because one out of a hundredth of the transaction fees from the L2s are going to the L are going to Ethereum and 99 is going to the L2. So how can you fucking steal the transactional volume and not pay rent? So first of all, that's messed up. It's a really weird business model. I've never seen that in any type of industry, including Web2 in my life. And then on top of that, Dave, what's even more worrisome and sorry, I don't want to, I'm saying, I'm saying these bearish feelings because I want Ethereum to solve these problems. I'm not saying this through hatred, it's through love. So I don't want to come across as a douchebag. But another thing that bothers me is it's so bad that even uniswap their number one dap, imagine you have that store in your mall that is literally taking 70% of all the volume, all of a sudden announced that they're building their own L2. So like Ethereum's number one store is leaving with their own chain again. So this is not looking good. It feels like a mall that's having all their digital stores shutting down and leaving. So for me to, for Ethereum to survive once again, business acumen, hire some people in business development and go and chase after Wall Street. You know, instead of JP Morgan building their own chain, get JP Morgan to build on the layer one for any type of Money markets bring back that on chain commercial bank and hopefully they will survive. But I'm not Bush guy. Sorry for being negative. Hope we'll kick off a nice conversation.
- [36:18]
Dave
So before Carlo, just, just to point out, as a commercial, since Scott Skiing this week, he actually wrote and talked about this in his newsletter this morning, you know, in some depth, and basically echoed a lot of Alex's points. So for those of you who get the Wolf Den, you can read it, but his point was that, you know, someone needs to kick. He said it nicer, but Vitalik and say, listen, you can't let people steal from you and take your lunch money every day and expect to grow. Which is really the way that I read it. Carlo.
- [36:49]
Carlo
Yeah, no, I cannot disagree with Alex. And I almost kind of felt, and I actually posted about this, that Ethereum in its messaging seems a bit lost. I do think there's fundamental promise there if it can reclaim. But it almost has become a counterculture chain is the way I see it. Its messaging and its agenda seems to be counter to what its use cases are. And I think it's kind of gotten lost and maybe there's just too many chefs in the kitchen. So I think, I think perhaps a re messaging and a reminder of what the fundamental benefits of that chain are would certainly be helpful at this time because it does seem to be losing market share relative to Solana, relative to Bitcoin especially, the gap is growing exceedingly large.
- [37:39]
Dave
Well, I mean, I think my mental model has always been that Bitcoin is completely separate than the rest of crypto, that Bitcoin is a digital store of value. It is by design a monetary policy that is fixed. It is by design a chain that is designed specifically for never going down. Lots of other things, you know, conversion of energy. You know, we could go on and talk about it. But it is. If you look at Ether, what drove Ether to its highs? Defi Summer. And what was Defi Summer? Defi Summer was mostly, and I know people are gonna get upset about this, but mostly, you know, crypto masturbation. Right? You know, you, you, you, you basically people enriching themselves on the back of their own stuff. So, you know, it was like people thought they had invented perpetual motion machine or a flywheel or an infinite money glitch, whatever you want to call it. None of those things are ever real. They will never last. And obviously, Defi Summer more or less ended when Sam Bankman Fried and Matt Levine got up and talked about it. But. And there's a huge but. There is A massive market that is going to get tapped, that is many multi trillion dollar markets in the financial world that Defi will ultimately disintermediate. And the question is, will it be on Ethereum, will it be on Solana, will it be on xrp? God knows the XRP army believes that's the case. Or will it be on some other chains or a set of chains that have yet to be developed? That's the real question mark. You had your hand up or was it Amateo first? I didn't see.
- [39:13]
Mark
Amateo can go, yeah, go get him.
- [39:16]
Amateo
Yeah. I was just going to say that when we look at the historic outlook on Ethereum, it was always designed to be a public good and it was always designed to be a model of if you build it, they may come. And I think what you actually see with the struggles of Ethereum is representative of the evolution of the entire crypto industry that now has sophisticated capital market structure. It's becoming even more sophisticated, it's becoming more adopted by TradFi. You have a competitive startup environment with VCs funding and efficiency wars. You have liquidity pools and competitive user adoption and cost, cost per customer acquisition for different apps and different platforms. That was never in Ethereum's design model. And rather than wanting to compete in that model, I think they've sort of doubled down on, hey, this is a public good and it serves this purpose. And I don't think we've seen any emergent leadership that has any desire to challenge that or change that. And I think that it still serves a very fundamental purpose in DEFI and will continue to do so. But it's a more competitive environment. And as long as they just determine this to be a public good and don't want to take a competitive edge, that's just, it's going to find its place within a highly competitive market with a lot of aggressive builders looking to get people's liquidity and attention.
- [40:51]
Dave
Sorry.
- [40:51]
Mark
Yeah, and sorry, go ahead.
- [40:53]
Dave
Mark speaking.
- [40:54]
Mark
Thanks, Dave. Who was that speaking right then?
- [40:56]
Dave
That was Amateo.
- [40:57]
Mark
Hey Amateo. Yeah, so it listening to you, you're sort of saying that they, that they lost their way a bit. And in following up with, I think it might have been Alex speaking about the mall analogy, which is, I've adopted that as well. And, and we all know that every town has two malls, you know, the one everyone goes to and the one that people used to go to. And there was an analyst I worked with when I was at 3 IQ who was excellent. He came up With Ethereum has become the middle child in the blockchain family, overshadowed by Bitcoin's unique, as Dave said, qualities. It is the only truly decentralized, you know, blockchain and utility will come over time. That's what, you know, Bitcoin people think, and I do as well. Beyond just a store of value. And then you have the modularity of Solana, which is just servicing and has so much promise. I think Ethereum is in an existential crisis because it did a lot and then it's giving nothing right now because you know, the potential rollback that was even suggested after the Bybit hack. There's no trust there that a transaction could be blocked or excluded if the foundation deemed it or the population deemed it to happen. And yet it still can't provide the speed of Solana. So I agree. I think there's a chance it's going to become that second mall unless it does get a reboot. From a business standpoint, as I think Alex was mentioning.
- [42:43]
Dave
Yeah, in my mind the most important question with, with any of these blockchains is what is the tam and what could they actually return to the token holders in value? And at some point that matters. I mean we, we saw an interesting lesson from the Internet bubble was when people the most stocks started to get crushed the day they got earnings. You would think that wouldn't be crazy, but there was this ridiculous thing that all these pre revenue companies, the stock values were huge. The instant they actually had revenues, people looked at those revenues, said wait a minute, that's not enough to justify this. And they got pummeled. And that was really the start of the fraying of the Internet bubble. When you saw that there are bears out there who are making the same claim about crypto, saying, well wait a minute, you have all these chains that have all this enormous promise if you look at the total TAM for what the market could be. But all the analysts are looking at Ethereum, for example, and saying, okay, great, well it's the leader right now in terms of what it's doing. But if you actually look at what it's doing, it pales in significance to its market cap. I wonder how much of that's going on. Gareth.
- [43:55]
Paul
Hey. Sorry, Dave. I was having some connection and sound issues there, but I finally got you. Yeah, I just wanted to weigh in on this conversation. I've had the pleasure of interviewing Joe Lubin from Consensys and obviously one of Ethereum's co founders a couple of times. And last year we had a fascinating Podcast hour length conversation about the entire Ethereum ecosystem. And this is actually something I asked him more than a year ago, was this shift to a layer 2 ecosystem that's dependent on layer twos to bring scalability and speed and cost efficiency, what would that mean for, you know, stakers that are putting down 32 ETH to be validators of the network? And what then is the financial incentive for all these people to do that if you're shifting all of the economic activity to a layer two and a lot of the values being locked up there and a lot of the money is being made there, you know, and this for him was one of the key reasons why Ethereum has been wanting to get to sort of, you know, chain abstraction and intense based architecture where a lot of things happen in the background. You know, moving to sort of a Web2 experience where whatever you want to do, like let's say you want to, you've got some Ethereum and you want to buy Bitcoin, you should be able to do that in two or three clicks. And you shouldn't even be aware that some cross train bridging is happening or token swaps are happening. And what that would require is a very connected ecosystem of layer one protocols and layer two protocols. But it still didn't answer the question. Well, for me, in terms of what does everyone who has invested in staking at the layer one get when all of this value moves to a layer two? And to be honest, I don't really know if there's a great answer yet. And this is why we're getting to this element of disillusionment with the Ethereum ecosystem. And look, I have a great appreciation for all the different blockchain protocols exist. I really am a big bitcoin advocate because I believe in the value proposition and its fundamentals and how it works. But I also believe that these other chains have value. They're designed to do specific things. And you know, there's some things that bitcoin can't do and that's just by design and that's okay. But when you look at something like Solana versus Ethereum, it does everything on L1, right? It's got the throughput, the speed, the cost efficiency that Ethereum doesn't have. But arguably the trade off there is security, so there's some trade offs that are involved. But at the end of the day, people have put a lot of money down on the table to be validators and they're looking long and hard at that 32 ETH. That's going down in value and they're not getting so much return for being validators on the network. And sooner or later these people are going to start looking at moving their capital elsewhere and that's an existential threat in some sort of regard. But at the same time, a lot of people have built amazing tools and amazing technologies on Ethereum, so I don't think it's just going to die. And there's been a lot of doomsday saying about that. I don't think that's the reality either. But there definitely needs to be a lot more clarity and a lot more sort of group think going on now than there is for Ethereum to really gain the trust and its position in the market. Because at the moment everyone's just dunking on them and it's hard to argue against that at the moment. So, yeah, that was just my thought jumping in on this space and, you know, hearing Alex say what he had to say.
- [47:24]
Dave
First off, yeah, I'll go to Zilian and then Alex next. But I have one question for you, Gareth, which is how important, important in your opinion and in your, in the people you talk to is Petra in particular the, the, you know, the validation side, not just the trade, not just the trading or the, the execution side.
- [47:43]
Paul
Look, I think the validators are everything to the Ethereum network. And one of the, one of the things that Vitalik has spoken about at length was, and this was part of the roadmap a couple of years ago, and I haven't heard too much about it, you know, in recent months and years was sharding and the shift to being able to essentially run a validator or an Ethereum node on things as small as a smartphone, right? And this was supposed to bring tremendous scale to, to the ecosystem and the network and really help it address some of the, the scaling issues and the cost issues. But again, it begs the question, you know, all these validators, people that are putting a huge amount of capital down to get some return for maintaining the network. It's a business at the end of the day, right? Like no one just strings up a node or sets up a data, you know, like a warehouse, you know, a data center, if they're, they're not in it to do business, you know, to provide computing to AI networks or whatever, you know. So yes, at the end of the day it matters. And I think this 32 ETH was there for a reason. You know, they wanted to give people a real incentive to be validators in the network because that, that ensures the decentralization of Ethereum. But it also ensures a certain level of, you know, like there's a bar that you have to, you have to reach or you have to meet in order to be a validator. And that is 32 ETH. And in terms of capital, that's a lot of money. Most people can't afford to do that. And it means that the people that are serious about it are going to do it properly. But now the people that are serious about it and are doing it properly want their return on investment. And if all of this value is just going to a layer two and everyone's transacting on layer two, I know if I had put down that money to run a validator at some, some point I'm gonna be like, listen, is this worth my while to have my money there? I might as well take my 32 ETH and go and dollar cost average into Bitcoin and you know, go to the OG network and invest in something, you know, that is proven hard money and something that, you know, as decentralized as it is, has a very strong reason to be. So yeah, I think the validator question is still so important in the network. And all these layer twos are fantastic. They do great things, but you know, investors are trying to figure out where they're going to get the most return for their money.
- [50:11]
Dave
Sure, but the PETRA upgrade is going to allow up to 2048 to be staked in one validator. Right? Or did I read that wrong? I mean, that's, that's.
- [50:20]
Paul
I'd have to go, I'd have to revisit the numbers. I stand to be corrected there as well.
- [50:23]
Dave
No, no, it is 32 right now. But I thought that was the whole point of this, was to allow significant more centralization. I hate to say it, but I guess, you know, well, that's the trade off now, right?
- [50:35]
Paul
Because at the moment you have a significant amount of decentralization in the Ethereum network. And like people can argue the merits of this. The other blockchain protocols, you know, Solana and Ripple, in terms of centralization versus decentralization are probably a lot more centralized. They're still decentralized, but they're not as decentralized as Ethereum is. And that has to do with those validators, you know, that's, that's an important part. That's why all the layer 2s in the Ethereum network settle on the Ethereum L1 because it's highly decentralized, it's very secure for that reason. And that's why they settle there, you know, so they roll up all their transactions for really cheap cost and they, they tap into the security, you know, the promises of security that the Ethereum L1 gives them. So yeah, all of these changes are, are a lot to, to consider and I, I just don't think that there's any real consensus on what needs to be done yet.
- [51:32]
Dave
Okay, Zilan then Paul, then Mark.
- [51:35]
Zilian
Yeah, thank you and good good day to you all. The Ethereum question is very personal to me because most of my net worth, Ethereum did a lot of things to me in my life but they recently just destroyed it. So it's like a net gain. But look, the Ethereum foundation, the Ethereum ecosystem, the Ethereum blockchain itself has been success, huge success story until this cycle simply because I really, you know, because obviously when you have most of your net worth in something, you think about it very hard because you're taking a huge risk, especially when you have children etc. So it's important to, to. It was for, very important for me to kind of figure out what went wrong just to learn a lesson and for me when I do the analysis really from that standpoint, I just see that until the, the. The what happened in Ethereum is that obviously it is the most secured smart contract chain out there, right? And that could be a very valid use case and a very valid point when you have global finance settlement layer for the world financial transactions, right? Because you want something that is secured, decentralized to the max, as much, as much as possible, etc. But unfortunately it missed. But fortunately, fortunately and unfortunately, fortunately Ethereum has been lucky or was organized in a way that it had two cycles where the killer, in 2017 the killer application was ICOs. So there was a lot of traction, a lot of interaction with Ethereum. The last cycle it was NFTs started there and even the meme cycle this time around started in Ethereum with Pepe, right? So it had this basic marketing poster where we don't do marketing type of thing, but we just managed to back the killer applications that basically drive utility into our chain. This time around there was no narrative. So obviously the killer application started in the Ethereum network but moved very quickly into Solana simply because the requirements from a feature perspective and the requirements for the user base that it was attracting did not require that much decentralization and that much and only required very cheap fees, etc. And yeah, so, so for me, Ethereum obviously if you build anything, especially when you're, when you have this High the high valuations that Ethereum is trading at right now. You have to have a certain use and certain intensity of use to the people that you are to your, to your audience. And today the audience up until now is mainly retail. So obviously value is going to be driven whatever retail decide to interact with. And from this and you see and what happened to Ethereum from my view was basically this Ethereum kind of got stuck into this seniority type of thing and completely decoupling as proning itself and remaining a developer first type of chain where you have your developers really, you know, they're building technology and build it, they will come. I think the competition right now is a lot more focused, a lot more structured as a, as corporations if I may say, a bunch of people having the same coordinated mission statement, pushing for the same goals and achieving those goals. And I think that it is time for the Ethereum Ethereum ecosystem as a whole either to advance very quickly and to find a solution to this or people are just going to move their value elsewhere. Because I can tell you from my personal experience, I'm still a big believer in what Ethereum can bring to the world, but I'm destroying my life at the same time. So there is, you know, so Ethereum made a lot of things for me but also destroyed a lot of things for me lately. And that is simply because Ethereum needs to understand Ethereum foundation, whoever is influential in that organization. Because at the end of the day we need to stop living in utopias of decentralized, complete decentralized organizations. At the end of the day you're going to have some influences, you're going to have some cohorts, you're going to have power of influence, power of execution and power of pushing certain points over others. So the people that have influence in the Ethereum foundation or in the Ethereum ecosystem in general have to wake up. They are still in the retail game. They have done mistakes, as it was pointed out of layer two is not paying their dues and basically just capturing market share for free. They will not be the money of the future. They are a smart contract chain. They should behave as such. They should push projects that can bring them users onboarding that can bring them user interactions and rebuild their thing. Because at the end of the day I think they lost track. They thought they were going to be money. Well guess what, they're not. The world right now considers only Bitcoin as a store of value. Ethereum is very far from that narrative. So it's time to move on. And find something else. And that's all I have to say.
- [57:25]
Dave
That was a mouthful.
- [57:26]
Alex
Can I comment on that, guys?
- [57:27]
Dave
Yeah, absolutely.
- [57:30]
Alex
So there's really something important that Zilian just mentioned now and I agree with you on the security, safety, decentralization, but the issue is the safety and security of Ethereum, of the Ethereum chain is not a unique value proposition. Does not have a unique value proposition. It's not a usp. And what I mean by that is think about the safest and most secure countries in the world where you're going to have Iceland on the top. Is Iceland a place where everyone here wants to live and do business? Absolutely not. So safety and security is very hard to monetize. It's very hard to create an incentive model, especially when you have Bitcoin, which is way more secure as a network. So that particular trade in Ethereum to me is worth zero. Because if you really want safety, the only thing that you want full security and safety is for storing your assets, for storing your assets. So like custody and you have ledger for that, you have way better technology with multi signatures like MPC that can secure your assets. So where I agree with Zilian is they have to come up with a new model. They have to come up with a way to really make their mall or their island or their world to attract more activity. Because the safety and security is not a unique value proposition. It has zero value to most people. And the decentralization angle of it, of course it's great for, you know, the libertarians and for the maximalists, but I'm telling you guys, when you look at safe countries that have activity, so let's say Singapore or let's say Dubai, those are countries where people want to live in. They're probably not as safe as maybe Iceland, but there's more activity and that that's what creates an economy. So. But I want to go back to what Gareth said, something really, really important that we probably do not discuss enough. And Gareth was talking essentially about the whole concept of open source code. And the problem that I see with what Ethereum is doing is that a lot of the theorem guys, they're libertarians, a lot of them are socialists. And I said that from the good, from a good perspective, as in, you know, they want something fair for everyone. They want it to be free, they want it to, you know, really to have justice. And they're living in their own utopian world, which we talked about earlier when I was comparing to Solana. And this is a really good point because Gareth, what he's asking essentially, in other words, is does Open Source actually work? Because the core component of Open Source, other than forking codes or copying codes or being able to build on top, essentially was for us to build on top. Right? We're supposed to all be a part of this world where each person, each one of us is adding Legos to our Lego piece and building on top of each other on the side to help grow and on chain and the future of finance, essentially. But that's not what's happening, because open source code would work ideally, if you are a liberalist or even a socialist, where you're like, okay, I'm not a shark or a capitalist who's trying to do everything by myself and own as much market share as possible. So I think that's a, that's a study that I would love to see. Does Open Source actually scale in the way it's designed to? Which I believe it doesn't, because as what we see with these L2s, people will fork and they always want to own everything. And it's just a typical man's behavior of always wanting to colonize, take more and more and more and have that capitalistic mindset which is in some ways defying the concept of open source code. And one more example that I can give to that is for instance, guys. So I love Coinbase, it's a great exchange, I love the team, many friends there. But why would Coinbase have to start its own chain? Like why? Like literally, I'm asking you guys why? Why can it build its applications on some of the code that already exists? And then another question here is why would every single exchange launch its own chain? Rather than building on top of the open source code or providing ways to connect or interact between the chainsaw, add some interoperability, build some tooling that does not exist on a chain. It's just that by nature and by the capitalistic instincts that we have, people want to own everything, they want to dominate everything and they want to just increase their market share, which goes against the concept of Open source code, which is building together to enhance the overall experience for the user.
- [61:52]
Dave
I mean, before I let Paul go, I just want to point out the most obvious example, which is Linux, which is arguably the most successful open source project ever, yet all the money was made by people who adapted that code and use that code. It's just pretty damn obvious. Anyway, Paul, you've had your hand up for a while. Thanks for your patience.
- [62:14]
Gareth
No problem. I feel like stuff that I had to Say kind of morphed over time as people kind of chimed in. And so ending with that thought on Linux. Now, while a lot of the money was made by other companies that use Linux realizing the open source ecosystem, how open source is able to succeed is that a lot of the people that extract value contribute back into the open source code. And so lots of companies, large companies, contribute back into open source. IBM contributes back into CouchDB, which is a database that we use at our company. And that's how you proliferate the, the open source narrative as opposed to being an end product. It's an end product for multiple companies to contribute back into. And I think that can as well work its way into the crypto ecosystem. As we know, different companies do contribute and pitch in dollars into the core development of Ethereum, into Bitcoin as well. But getting back into something that I think Gareth and Alex had said with respect to why Ethereum is kind of failing from the viewpoint of its just raw value. Raw value and what it's bringing to the ecosystem is truly, I fundamentally believe. I don't want to sound like a broken record from what I said yesterday here on Crypto Town hall, but the L2 ecosystem has really kind of destroyed it. And what it's done is truly extract value from the validators. The validators are at the core and I disagree that you don't need validators and that the security. This is a little disagreement that I have with. I think it may have been Alex, that the security isn't important. I think the analogy of a safe country is different from a safe blockchain. Having enough dollars securing a blockchain inherently increases the ability to have higher total value locked. Like the TVL on a blockchain should not exceed the amount of the security budget of a blockchain. And so by Ethereum having a higher security budget, it can handle higher TVL on various dapps. So that piece is important. However, these L2s are extracting a lot of value. Coinbase on base alone extracted about 15 million in fees over Q. I think it was Q4 of last year. And that's continually growing and that's only one of the L2s. So if we want to see Ethereum actually achieve kind of its new all time highs and recover from this narrative of oh, it's kind of dying, it's that middle child, it's kind of forgotten and surpassed by their chains. I feel like it significantly needs to do one thing which is go back to focusing on its L1 and scaling its L1. And you mentioned the Pectra upgrade, Dave. Unfortunately that is just another upgrade to help the L2s. It's designed to increase blob size, which is really what the L2s use to stamp and secure their data onto the mainnet blockchain. So it's basically reducing fees even further for the L1 as opposed to scaling transactions on the L1 itself. So I think fundamentally I'm not seeing good signs of it refocusing on the L1. And that's the number one thing I'm looking for before I feel like Ethereum will once again achieve kind of top mind share in this narrative of functional utility blockchains versus the store value narrative of Bitcoin buzz.
- [65:27]
Dave
I see you joined.
- [65:30]
Simon
Hey Dave, thanks for having me up. Paul, I wanted to ask you a question question on that. I mean over, over the course of the last I, I'd say even year Ethereum has kind of been criticized just culturally by a lot of people that are and I'm talking about more so retail users and advocates of Salana just due to the culture that it's forming. A lot of people calling Ethereum sort of the, the woke culture chain in sort of the way that Vitalik moves and, and how he speaks. What did you think about the Solana news yesterday where Solana was kind of criticized for the same thing when they deleted that advertisement? Do you think that's perhaps like a shift in culture between the two chains?
- [66:16]
Gareth
Honestly, I think that is just a distraction from the viewpoint or an excuse as to why a chain succeeds or fails. At the end of the day, if people are able to launch the apps that they want to and are able to use them, that seems to drive the actual utility. Now there is a marketing need. So Bitcoin didn't need marketing. It was the first of all the chains. As soon as it came out, people had their eyes on it. After that you kind of need some level of marketing and the marketing is to bring at least awareness. Once you've brought awareness, then you actually have to bring utility. And I think everyone's aware of Ethereum. I know people in the streets that don't own any cryptocurrency, but they know what Ethereum is. But then you actually have to drive utility to it. And I think that's where Ethereum failed. And let this be a warning for Bitcoin as well. Right. Both Ethereum and Bitcoin ran into exactly the same problem. They both ran into scaling. The difference is Bitcoin had a secondary narrative to lean on it had that store of value narrative. And while people think that is what Bitcoin is for, don't want to bring back the scaling wars. Go back to the original advocates of Bitcoin, they also want it as a utility chain. They wanted to be able to spend with it transfer of value, digital, digital, private cash. Ethereum was also marketed as a utility chain. We can actually create decentralized applications, but it doesn't have the fallback narrative of store of value, pure store of value. And so if another chain, and I know this is a big, big if, if another chain truly accomplishes a utility narrative, it has the ability to creep on the store of value narrative. So once again, a little bit of a warning to the pure play Bitcoin pointers out there. Don't rest on your laurels, just like don't rest on the laurels that Ethereum tried to with utility but not actually achieving scalability. So both use cases do need to achieve scalability. And regardless of is it a woke chain or not a woke chain, whether or not I sit on one side of that political spectrum, to me is irrelevant. I'm all about making sure something is actually usable to the mass market.
- [68:14]
Simon
Zillion. I saw your hand go up as Paul was talking. Did you have a comment on that?
- [68:18]
Zilian
Yeah, very quickly. Yeah, definitely. I think from a fundamental, I totally agree from fundamentals. Unfortunately this environment is built on sentiment and I think from like an outside the US view, I think the shift that is happening in the US from, you know, from a dominant type of stance, woke versus non woke, etc. I think Ethereum is definitely, it's definitely priced in right now in Ethereum a little bit. So yeah, the walks now are the bears basically everywhere and the bulls are the other side. But, and this is just the fun side of it, sentiment side of it. But on the marketing subject, this is really something that, that a lot of people that were trying to build blockchains were advised against because that was basically advisor would tell you, look, if you're building a chain, try to make your marketing very discreet or completely dissociated from your foundation model simply because you'll be deemed as a security, et cetera, et cetera. Obviously a lot of people copied what Ethereum did from a setup perspective, from a corporate setup, like an organizational setup perspective. But a lot of chains really kind of understood that marketing is important. You have to be able to build awareness and to also be able to pick winners because maybe this is not out in your face, but these foundations, these chains they do pick winners, they do support certain projects over others which they believe they will bring as much traction as possible to the blockchain or whatever their, their, their, their value, whatever their metrics are. But there is a force that picks winners and that force, it could be obvious, non obvious. And what really makes a difference here is how quickly certain chains are able to adopt certain narratives and provide the infrastructure that will make that narrative even more proliferated, push it as much as possible, allocate capital to it, etc. Etc. So the marketing is very important, is becoming more important and more as we have a lot of competition obviously. So being, you know, these chains, when they become like having the illusion that they can continue to exist without having an actual sales force behind to sell the features of their infrastructure, they're living in a lot of land for me. That's all.
- [71:01]
Amateo
Yeah. I just add that we're talking a lot about two main things. I see, which is the Ethereum design flaw of L2S, which is an actual design flaw that will require a structural change to accrue value back to Ethereum.
- [71:17]
Carlo
Right.
- [71:17]
Amateo
And I think many of us agree with that, depending on where we're at. The other piece of like marketing and growth, and it's just coming back to my last piece, is that you have to want to do marketing, you have to want to invest in marketing. And I think when we see the Ethereum foundation consistently selling down eth on validators and holders, the big question is, you know, it looks like a lot of that money is going into infra team, not into marketing. And I just go back to my previous point, point that this thing was designed as a public good. It wasn't designed as a highly competitive market performing blockchain that was going to dominate led by people with that mentality. And I think the philosophy that we look at when it comes to the founders with Vitalik and these other people all agree. And many of the others who had, who have had that mentality and have wanted to be competitive haven't stayed. So I think that the underlying desire to actually compete in this market has to be demonstrated. And until it's actually demonstrated, the people who are coming along with great tech and the desire to compete will continue to outperform when it comes from peer growth in the short term and in the midterm.
- [72:45]
Zilian
Yeah, just quickly, I just want to give a very quick example. Polygon Partnership team. I'm just going to give you a very simple example. Bunch of guys that are determined, they are in a setup like a Call center. They, they, they, they work 12 hours a day, they're on the phone all day and they're making partnerships. Same thing with Chainlink guys. It might not be appearing, but they enabled when we wanted to onboard with Chainlink we basically, they basically told us you do nothing, we do everything. Can you imagine? So, so there are, there are projects, there are people that are really building this infrastructure. They're really pushing the solution and pushing the adoption. And for me that's essential. Obviously a public good blockchain is a great design, etc. Is a great ideal. But in a competitive market, when there is a price on the thing that you provide, it doesn't live long, it dies at a certain point because simply there is no one pushing and everyone is pushing something else.
- [73:46]
Dave
Well, it's a good thing that the Bitcoin foundation and Bitcoin CEO are marketing so hard.
- [73:52]
Zilian
Well, they were first.
- [73:54]
Carlo
Right.
- [73:54]
Zilian
So first mover and right narrative couldn't resist.
- [73:59]
Dave
Well, we're getting up against time. Anybody else have any final thoughts or should we call it here?
- [74:06]
Alex
Okay, you know, I just wanted to stress the, the Linus Linux example because I thought that was a brilliant one guys on what Ethereum could become. And I know Ethereum has really, really changed the name of the game being the, the number one smart contract platform bringing, yeah, bringing the evm, you know, compatibility solidity and tons of really cool things. My only big concern is I think it would be a pity if Ethereum would become just a small tool for the future of blockchain, like being a CPU or being gpu, right, or something like that, not the part of the supercomputer. So yeah, I just wanted to summarize that Linux is a really good analogy because Linux, at the end of the day you need a business team, need a commercial team. And I don't think it's just business and marketing by the way. I think it's also branding because you know, Solana doesn't necessarily have a very strong business development team. They have super teams. But you know, companies like Apple, they've managed to create such a cool brand where kind of the products sell for themselves. It's more support that you would provide, you know, in terms of grants maybe sometimes or just, you know, having that tech support when you're building stuff and being available. But yeah, I really wish them best of luck.
- [75:22]
Simon
Well said. I think. Zilian, you had a comment there?
- [75:26]
Zilian
Yeah. You know, the worst thing about Ethereum foundation is that they don't care. Okay, so we talk about them for hours. So we give advice. They don't care. They're in their bubble, unfortunately. But thank you for this talk. This was great. Thank you.
- [75:40]
Simon
I did find it ridiculous up until a few months ago, learning that the Ethereum foundation was actually not staking any of their eth. I thought that was almost humorous.
- [75:51]
Zilian
To learn or not using aave. Can you imagine the people that invented Defi are not using it?
- [76:01]
Paul
Yeah.
- [76:02]
Simon
At the time, I looked into what the yearly budget of the Ethereum foundation was versus what they could have been earning using AAVE and just liquid staking for the amount of ETH that they own. And I want to say that the numbers came to that they were operating at about 75% over budget in terms of what they could be earning per year just passively using AAVE and lido.
- [76:24]
Zilian
It's crazy.
- [76:26]
Simon
But, Dave, I'm kind of hijacking your space here. I know that you were. You were looking to wrap up. I just want to thank everyone and all the speakers for. For joining. And we will be live again tomorrow at 10:15. So if you're tuning in, make sure to follow all the speakers. And thanks for Dave, for. Thanks to Dave for really killing it this week and hosting these spaces in Scott's absence.
- [76:49]
Dave
No problem. Thanks. We'll talk again Tomorrow morning at 10:15 on Crypto Town Hall.
- [76:55]
Mark
Nice. Thanks, all.
- [76:56]
Simon
Thanks, everyone. Have a great day.
- [76:59]
Amateo
Thank you.
- [77:00]
Paul
Thanks, everyone.