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- [00:00]
Scott
Morning everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town hall for Monday, April 14th. We're here every single weekday on X 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. We've got a lot to cover today. Obviously the biggest story in crypto of the weekend was the crash of Mantra Token Ohm. It went down over 90% in just a matter of hours and plenty of debate as to how that happened and what went on there. Some saying it's the luna of this cycle, but them kind of hitting back and saying it was a result of some activity on exchanges. We will try to unpack that a bit but I think this is one of those that's going to take some time to pan out. We actually had JP Mullen, the CEO on here a few times. He's been a guest. They've had a lot of positive fundamental news. So interesting. Going to see how that pans out. There was rumor that their telegram was deleted then that was not the case. So kind of all over the place. I think we'll dig into that in a bit. The other big news stories before we dive in with the panel, we had significant outflows once again from ETF products and digital asset products. About 795 million last week, which was the third week in a row. Not particularly surprising there. Swedish lawmaker Richard Norden has proposed that the government considering at adding Bitcoin to its foreign currency reserve. So Sweden talking about Bitcoin as a reserve asset, we had Pennsylvania man Waylon Wilcox who's pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns after failing to report over 13 million in income from selling 97 CryptoPunk NFTs in 2021 and 22. Hyper relevant because tomorrow is tax day in the United States. And remember you actually have to pay your taxes on crypto games. Seems that people forget that. I remember when I came in in 2016, 2017 and everyone thought you didn't have to pay taxes on crypto. Definitely not the case here. And of course Meta Planet and Michael Saylor Strategy all buying more Bitcoin this week. Okay, one more story we have here that I want to dig into a bit with Perry Ann as we get started. Here is Tim Scott. Senator Tim Scott, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee says he expects the cryptocurrency market structure bill to become law by August 2025. He also noted that the committee advanced the Comprehensive stablecoin bill Genius act in March 2025. So are we going to get market structure and stable coins here in the next five to six months?
- [02:41]
Perry Ann
Good to be here. Great question. Yeah. And Senator Tim Scott, that's the. That's the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. He's in a. An incredibly important position because, of course, the bill has to pass out of that committee before it can go to the floor for a vote. And just a little bit of history here. The House passed a market structure bill last year, and it was not taken up by the Senate. So whoever is the chair gets to decide which bills come up for votes, which ones start to make its way through the legislative process. And now Tim Scott has the gavel. Last year, Sherrod Brown was the chair of the Senate Banking Committee. And of course, Sherrod Brown lost his Senate race to Senator Bernie Moreno, who's a crypto entrepreneur. So elections have massive and important consequences. Not only did the Senate flip because Sherrod Brown lost his seat, but we now have Tim Scott, who's. You're chairing the committee, who's going. Who has obviously made commitments to move the bill forward so we have the support we need. On the House side, the problem was the Senate. The Senate didn't move anything. They wouldn't take the bills up. But now that we have a new chairman, we have the right people in place for the legislative process. We have waited years for this moment. I think this is, like, one of the things that's really important for people to understand when it comes to public policy. You know, there's, you know, we can debate, you know, all the, the T's and Q's and the letters of the law. You can come up with the best legal framework or the best legislation, you know, the world's ever seen. But if you don't have a legislative pathway built, nothing's moving. So that's why this moment is so important, because we have House support, Senate support, and the president wants to sign something into law that is, like, it's really, really rare that you have the. These moments come up. I used to work on Capitol Hill. I worked as a, as a staffer for a member of Congress before I started the digital chamber. And only about 2% of legislation that gets introduced, each Congress actually becomes law. So this is our moment, and legislative pathway is built. Tim Scott, chairman. Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has said, absolutely, this is a priority. We're going to move the bill. So this comes down to political leadership. If the powers that be, which you need the, you know, Senate leadership, House leadership, and the president, if they're all on the same page, this will get done. President Trump has made very, very, very clear that he wants to sign a stablecoin bill and a market structure bill this year. And he stable coins will probably go. They're on recess. They started recess started this week. So the Congress is out of session for the next two weeks. When they come back at the end of the could be when it moves. If not, it could be, you know, as soon as the early beginning or the end of this month or the beginning of May would be what we're looking at for the stablecoin bill to move. Market structure. The president has said he wants it on, on his desk by, by the time they leave for August recess. So done passed by July. So that, that is the timeline everyone is working on. And again, having that leadership from the very top from the President of the United States saying I want this bill done, and then having Republicans in control of both the House of the Senate, that's really the, you know, a key piece of the puzzle that's been missing for so long and why we haven't been able to have legislation done before. But all of that's in place now. It really just comes down to what's in the bill.
- [06:41]
Scott
And I was just going to ask that. So now how do we make sure that it's the market structure that we want? I think stable coins, there's nuance, but less. Right. But market structure, it seems like they could totally get wrong in theory.
- [06:55]
Perry Ann
Yeah. Well, we talked about this last week. You know, the, on the stablecoin bill, one of the things, I mean what's in the bill absolutely matters. We need to get the policy right. We don't want to create regulatory capture or we don't want to create new issues by having bad public policy. And you know, we know what needs to be done. So there's no reason why we can't get the policy right. On the stablecoin side, I would say the one thing that's really, I mean, there's a couple things we've been fighting for to make sure are in place. But one of the things that's still in the language of the bill is there's a clear prohibition on yield bearing stablecoins, you know, you can't offer yield. The issuers cannot provide the yield back to the, the user. And that's something we've been advocating for at the digital chamber. That's something our members want to see. But it is not, it is not in the bill. And we do think that is like one of the shortcomings. But having that federal pathway, you know, is good, but we are missing, you know, a key opportunity there. And that's going to make us stablecoins less competitive internationally. So that is something we think is important. On the market structure side, I every negotiations have been underway for several months. The negotiations are happening between a very large group of stakeholders. You know, again, there was a market structure bill that passed last year in the previous Congress. So, you know, the bill, you know, the bill was written, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. So there's strong texts there. And then on the Senate side, we had two different versions of market structure. We had Senator Lummises and Senator Gillibrand's bill, which there were a number of very key differences between their bill and the House bill. And then there was also the bill that came out of the Senate Agriculture Committee, which had only about half of what the House bill had. It had everything under CFTC jurisdiction, but it missed all the statute under SEC jurisdiction. So it's a new Congress. So that bill did pass, but because the Congress ended all the bills that are still outstanding, they they die and they have to be reintroduced again. So that now there's been negotiations underway of can we get one bill that's the same on both the House and Senate so it can move? Because if you have two different bills, you still have to reconcile them. And that is a whole other process. And then plus the industry's at the table and the White House is at the table as well in terms of what's actually going to be in the bill. The bill that passed the House last year was pretty solid, but there were a number of concessions that were made in order to get bipartisan support now that to get Democrats involved. And over 70 Democrats voted for that bill, which is great, great. But there are a lot of things in there that were, in my, in my opinion, a concession. So we don't really need to make concessions anymore because Republicans control both the House, the Senate and the White House. So that's been a huge part of the conversation. Is okay, well, we had a solid bill last year, but can it be better? And that is the conversation that's, that's underway. I will say the legislation is really important because that regulation by enforcement regime that Chairman, former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler was driving was so detrimental to the growth of the industry. No crypto companies had any clarity on are we under the SEC's jurisdiction or the CFTC's jurisdiction, unless you were in Bitcoin or ETH other than that. And even ETH was a little bit questionable in terms of like your legal status. But if you're doing anything else beyond something In Bitcoin or eth, you have this huge enforcement risk hanging over your head. And there were hundreds of enforcement actions over the past several years over crypto companies. So the reason why it's really important to have this in statute and so we can never have a Gary Gensler era again. We have Chairman Paul Atkins who just passed. He, he, he, he's our incoming chairman. He hasn't been sworn in yet, but he was voted on by the Senate on Thursday night. He's, he's actually one of our former advisory board members at the digital chamber. He is the first pro crypto SEC chairman that the United States will ever see. So it's really exciting for him to come in. He's going to do some amazing stuff. There's already been some really, really positive things for the crypto space that's happened just in the first couple of months of this year that Commissioner Hester Purse has been driving with the SEC crypto task force. But none of that is happening through congressional action. If you can do, if you can solidify these, these big issues which is what market structure is, if you can get that into statute there won't it future proofs the work of this administration where you can't have another chairman that comes in and takes a different position. Und and then we're back to where we were under the Gary Gensler administration. So what's happening on Capitol Hill is really, really important and getting the legislation done is a massive priority for this year and it's something we really need to stay focused on.
- [12:39]
Scott
That was a great update on everything happening on Capitol Hill and very hopeful that these tailwinds will continue to play. I know Tom, you had your hand up and jumped in before. I don't know if it was about this or something else but you can feel free to. Ron?
- [12:54]
Tom
Yeah, yeah, sure. So it's, it's right on this topic. I was in D.C. last week. We met with Boheinz's office, Senator Lummis office, a number of other senators, the treasury and a few others. So we, we really went across to see what the latest was across Washington and echo a lot of the individual comp comments were just speaking. I just note a few points behind the scenes. So from our conversations, August 1st was the timeline for both bills. The one point that wasn't mentioned was Bo Hinds office is looking to finalize.
- [13:28]
Dave
The.
- [13:30]
Tom
Output from their findings along with David Sacks July 22nd which will come in the form of they said some sort of book related as it relates to crypto and that could be for all the agencies that are under the president's authority to fall in line with the policies that they're recommending or perhaps some formal executive orders as it relates to that if they won't follow those policies and procedures. So this summer we're going to have a number of actions related to crypto, and not just from the legislative side, but also directly from the administration itself. You know, there was some continued challenges getting Democrats on board for my conversations. Obviously, you know, a few are ready vocally supporters of vocal supporters of crypto. But the challenge is, you know, a lot of the things around the world, Liberty Financial Group and perceived insider trading tactics up and above just the meme coin stuff, you know, look no further than the Justin sun sort of pardoning after a big donation. And all those things are making it really challenging to get our Democratic sort of colleagues on board. But overall, the mood, and at least from an outsider perspective, is really positive. The administration is really committed to crypto and are willing to take input and calls and discussion points and certainly hear a lot of the challenges that we're dealing with today on the investing side. So I think it's all good. It's just, again, going to take some time.
- [15:01]
Scott
All right, let's pivot to markets a bit. Tom, I agree. I think that's well covered and glad that we have you and Perry and both in Washington on our behalf in the last weeks. So obviously we're looking at the market right now, bitcoin trading right around 85,000 stocks. I haven't looked in about 30 minutes, but we're trading relatively up since Friday, but flat on the day. Dave, we talked about it a bit this morning. I would argue that bitcoin has shown divergent strength in this tariff trade war since the announcement. It's up. And stocks still, even though they've bounced, are still relatively down from when the tariff announcement and war started. What do you make of it right now?
- [15:48]
Dwayne
Well, let's first of all, bitcoin still in a range and you know, to some degree, being in a range is good given all the crap that's going on. And bitcoin doesn't have a damn thing to do with profit margins of companies whose supply chains are threatened. And so therefore it makes sense that it would trade separately. But it also, when that happens, it allows investors to start gaining an understanding that it isn't the Nasdaq. And, you know, it's certainly not high beta to the Nasdaq, which is, you know, my and that that matters. So, you know, this is the second time that we've seen and that we've seen MicroStrategy buy and you walk in on Monday morning and the price is $3,000 higher than he bought. Now of course, the time before that he bought is right around these levels, maybe $1,000 higher. But you know, it's clear that there, that they've been probably not the best time purchases. I think your guys at Arch Public could probably help him. Time is purchasing better, but the, the fact that they're not, he's not just buying the top anymore is relevant and that it's not just him that is setting the price is relevant. And so I think when you look at, at Bitcoin's diversity and it's pretty clear that there is some, what it really is is there are buyers who are accumulating and the sellers are approaching exhaustion. And the only way that this doesn't have a fairly sizable rally at some point is if there is ridiculously bad news. Now bad news could be the global economy crashing because the US and China both play chicken. They both put their steering wheels at each other and they let it crash. And sure, I mean, you know, that would be bad for the global economy. I think what a rate, what emerges from that would be extraordinarily good for bitcoin because the liquidity spigots in both places, in fact around the world will get turned on. But in the carnage, things could happen. But I look at this as a continuation of the trading range. I called it multiple Times that the high 70s was a tradable bottom. We had a triple test of said tradable bottom. That to me feels pretty strong. I know that there are other technical analysts out there who say that technically, no, it's still in a descending wedge. I couldn't care less. I think that what matters is that the buy sell equilibrium is tilted toward the accumulation side and the real question is how much supply is going to be left. And I think that Perri Ann said a bunch of things that matter. No way. No way a strategic bitcoin reserve is priced in of any size. It's just not. People think that it's all posturing. I personally think that I discount it. I hope it happens in certain respects. But I don't think that's priced in. I don't think that a strategic geopolitical hash war for bitcoin and accumulation of bitcoin and game theory and the geopolitical thing is priced in. I don't think that Wall street firms being able to move into bitcoin in the back half of this year is priced in. And I certainly don't think pension funds treating Bitcoin as a strategic asset is priced in all of those things we have in the future. So I am continuing to be long term bullish. I understand what's going on. But that said, when the President's administration is having a food fight between the top people in the administration, you're going to get a lot of volatility. And we've seen, it's not like there's been all that much constructive destruction, but when you see volatility in the treasury market like we've had for the last week, you get a lot of people very nervous. That should be really good for bitcoin and it's making the holders feel even more confident. But it makes the non holders look at this and say, well, what the hell is it doing? And so you have that cross current.
- [19:44]
Scott
Dwayne, how are you viewing this?
- [19:48]
Zach
Thanks. Good morning. So I agree with much of Dave's comments here in the sense that on a long term basis, yes, a lot of the talk of the strategic reserve and these sorts of things aren't really priced into what we're seeing in the market. I think what's been happening to a certain extent is when we look at bitcoin and gold, for example, we've seen a divergence at the top of the year and that continues and that persists till today. I think we're seeing, because of what's happening in Treasuries, we're seeing a lot of people go to gold as a safe haven, asset, at least within the interim. So I think that's what we're seeing. If you're looking at inflows in regards to bitcoin, we've seen quite a bit of outflows in the last little while here. So there's a lot of downward pressure still remaining, you know, despite the price recovering in the last little, in the last little while here to 85, you know, to around 85,000. So I think that's what's going on and with the mixed messages that are coming out of the administration, I think if you look at this at a high level and you have faith in Stephen Moran as the head here, as the grand visor here, looking at all of these things, if we're really talking about possibly weakening the US dollar and we're looking at almost a mix in regards to a reserve. So while keeping the integrity of the US dollar as a reserve and then also looking at bitcoin as well, strategic asset on a longer term basis here. If the dollar does continue to plunge, it's not necessarily something to panic about. That's when we could see more buy into Bitcoin and people looking at Bitcoin as more of a strategic asset similar to gold. So I think a lot of the interim noise and action we're here seeing is just really all the talk about tariffs and then things should settle down, say over the next three to six months as we get more of a standard or more of a direction in tariffs moving forward. So I agree with, you know, so overall I do agree with some of the, you know, with some of the comments here, but you know, if we're looking on the interim, then things can go either way, but on the long term, then it's a better prognosis for Bitcoin overall in gold as well.
- [22:10]
Scott
Zach, you haven't had the opportunity to share any thoughts. What do you think?
- [22:15]
Gareth
Hey, what's up, Scott? Yeah, I wanted to speak on the, the mantra thing real quick, if that's cool.
- [22:20]
Scott
Yeah, that, that'd be a great pivot. I, I haven't dug so deeply into it because I was traveling, but it's a pretty astounding dump.
- [22:27]
Gareth
Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, some of the things that, that I was looking at, you know, before all this happened, and I think this is kind of a good learning lesson, you know, especially looking at altcoins is the liquidity was just, just stupid low compared to the market cap. And that, that's usually like a huge red flag, you know, and, and I mean we're talking that thing was in what, 6, 7 billion range? I mean the market cap should have been, or excuse me, the liquidity should have been way, way higher. The other thing too, like it was kind of weird how they basically, you know, there was no big partnerships, There was no big like key people that connected to the project. To me, there was a lot of red flags.
- [23:10]
Scott
They did have huge partnerships all over the United Arab Emirates, I think to Mac and quite a few of the large real estate. At least they had those announcements and they were supported by those companies.
- [23:21]
Gareth
Supported, Yeah, I think that's the thing. Supported, right. But I mean like you look at, you know, a company like Ondo, right? I mean you go to their website and see BlackRock, like that's a different kind of, kind of deal. Chain link, one of the top RWA plays. They're basically interconnected to, to every big player in the space. Right. So the other thing too was if you look at you know, if you have, you know, there's a bunch of these services where you can kind of track wallets. I mean, basically 90% of the supply was bundled. I mean, it didn't take much to kind of untangle that. Anytime you see that, that amount of bundling in any project, that's a huge red flag. It's not to say that, you know, it's necessarily a bad thing all the time, but anytime you have a bundle like that, what you want to see is the team come out and talk about it. If they come out and say, hey, this is why we're doing it, okay. But if they completely dodge it and won't answer any questions about it, I think it opens up a big question too about the altcoin space too. Scott. Right. Like what kind of regulation is good? You know, could it be as simple as a kyc know your customer? I mean, you look at like kind of Ethereum Cardano, like some of these, some of these big projects. I think one of the things that, you know, helps them is you have a face, you know, you kind of know, oh yeah, that Vitalik guy. Oh yeah, there's Charles, like, you know, and so like, who's behind Mantra? I don't know. I didn't know. I mean, maybe they were out there and I missed it. But like, they weren't like forward facing, you know, front facing. So I think it opens up a bigger conversation. But the big thing to me was the supply was so bundled and that liquidity was just crazy low to market cap. Those are two things that you can look at like right away with altcoins. And if those two things don't check out, just know that that's a, that's a really, really risky, you know, proposition.
- [25:14]
Scott
Gareth, I'm glad you jumped out because I'm assuming you're looking pretty closely at this at Coin Telegraph.
- [25:20]
Dave
Yeah. Hey, Scott. Hello everyone. Good to be with you. We actually just got off with a, like a 50 minute call with John Mellon, who's the CEO of Mantra. Obviously, he's someone that I've actually interviewed probably three or four times in the last four months. So I know quite a lot about the project and some of the partnerships that they've had. As you mentioned, they had a billion dollar deal with DMACC to basically be the blockchain that they're planning to tokenize a lot of their real world assets on. And that's a pretty big deal if, you know, one of the biggest property developers in the United Arab Arab Emirates is, is giving you the thumbs up of approval and I mean just to add credence to that, I had a long conversation with dimac managing director. So she had told me that she did a load of due diligence for a very long time about all sorts of different chains to, to eventually start tokenizing some of their real estate and some of their assets. And they had a long conversation with John from Mantra and she grilled him before they, they, they announced that partnership that they would be using their chain to do all of that. You know, so when you see all these kind of nods of approval, it does give you a lot of sort of assurance that this platform or protocol is the real deal. But obviously what happened in the last 24 hours is absolutely crazy. I mean that token price fell off a cliff. So we had John on the show. You can go and check out the video on the Cointelegraph X account.
- [26:52]
Scott
We've had him here too. Yeah, we've had him here quite a few times. So yeah, just said they have it. They're not really forward facing. Yeah, and this isn't even a defense. I'm just saying he's J. John for what? He may not have reached the status of a Vitalik or a Charles Hoskinson, but they're very much out there. I mean, I think when this happened, he was flying from Paris blockchain week apparently to another conference.
- [27:14]
Dave
I asked him about that.
- [27:15]
Scott
They're not hiding for sure.
- [27:17]
Dave
He had already arrived in Seoul so he was actually asleep when it all happened and, and someone knocked on his door to wake him up and, and then he got, he got to attention. But I mean, look, I, I, I, I didn't, you know, I, I went as hard as I could drilling in because the information we have is, is pretty hard to, to kind of, you know, go hard with, you know, criticisms or accusations. But essentially what he said is what happened with the token was a result of how some of the exchanges were managing leverage positions with Ohm as the underlying collateral. I'm not going to tell tell you guys on this space whom he said which exchange it was, but it was a, a single exchange that he pointed out. And he basically said that they're in long conversation with them and they might pursue legal action just, just on how they managed those leverage positions and took over those positions and liquidated tokens because as you can see, it's a cascading effect and the price went down.
- [28:11]
Scott
But, and it's not bouncing right now either, right? I mean.
- [28:14]
Dave
No, it's not.
- [28:14]
Scott
It had a Little bounce. I went, I think it went from what over $6. I didn't like the exact price down to 50ish now then exactly the dollar something range on that's just dreamers, right? Taking well look speculative bet but now it's 70 cents.
- [28:28]
Dave
It's not, it's not bouncing at all. Look, I mean my main question to him was like, you know, how can you, you know, convince people that this is an insider trading and everything. And he basically said, you know, like their main investors didn't move the tokens. They've been pretty open and honest with them. He also said that Arkham's labeling of certain wallets was incorrect and that you know, one of their major investors that had moved a lot of tokens was not labeled correctly. I am very skeptical. I'm going to be very honest with you, as I think we all should be. We need to look long and hard at the, at the data on chain and figure out who move tokens where. If we can label them and put names and faces to them, we should. The fact remains a significant token holding was moved on chain to exchanges and there were major liquidations. So I mean it's, it's pretty simple, right? A lot of people move tokens onto exchanges and they sold them and it collapsed the price completely. So I mean it's a pretty bad black swan event if you think about it. You know, from a 6 billion dollar sort of market cap into below $500 million, that's, that's massive, you know, 90 drop. And Isaac, I wanted to say as well, I did ask John about the 90% token holding of mantra. That's a big red flag. And I said to him like this is a problem if your project is the, the main group of People is holding 90% of the tokens. And he admitted on the space that yes, it's, it's, you know, it is, it is something that they've thought about for a long time and they, they obviously haven't divested their holdings or anything. But for one entity to hold 90% of the tokens is a big, big.
- [30:03]
Scott
But yes, I guess the question is, and to Zach's point, okay, so maybe as I listen to guys discuss this, there can be a fundamentally sound project doing great deals and building things that has foreign tokenomics and structure. Those two things are not necessarily mutually exclusive, right?
- [30:22]
Dave
No, they're not. And at the end of the day you need to have utility and people using the chain. I mean if, if one big real estate company is saying, hey, we're Going to use your chain to tokenize assets. Great. Okay, but is it happening? You know, is there a huge amount of TVL on your chain? Is there a huge amount of transactions happening? Probably not. And I think any investor worth their salt would have, would have told you that. And you know, look, I'm very interested to see where this goes.
- [30:50]
Scott
I just don't understand of a price swing, even if, like one way I'll move tokens to exchanges or if an exchange handled.
- [30:57]
Dave
No exactly.
- [30:58]
Scott
Handles the transactions wrong. Like I don't think that mismanagement of leverage positions on a relatively illiquid coin should move at 95%. I can see, you know, 30 or 40%.
- [31:09]
Dave
I'm not convinced either, Scott. I'm going. Honestly, I'm really not convinced. And that's why I say, I mean, like, we had an opportunity to speak to him first today. I know Ran has spoken to him after us and a few other publications. You know, we gave him a platform like you tell us your side of the story. Let's, let's poke some of the, the criticisms here and some of the, you know, the biggest red flags that have been put out there. We asked all the questions. I think he did a job of answering them. But it's like if you compare how Ben Xiao handled the Bybit hack to this, I have so many questions left unanswered that I'm really not convinced. I'll be honest with you. And where there's smoke, there's fire. I don't know what's going to happen. But.
- [31:49]
Scott
Yeah, I mean, it seemed like there was sentiment that it was either a flat out rug pull or a hack. And it's seemingly neither of those things. I just don't understand that significant of a drop. I think we might have lost Gareth. Can you all hear me? Yeah, I think Gareth jumped down. I guess the next natural question to everyone on the panel is, is this another black eye on the industry? Could this cause negative regulatory attention anywhere? Because people are saying this is another Luna. It doesn't feel quite like another Luna to me. But if it was another Luna that sparked the entire contagion of the last bear market to some degree. Right. Which was obviously followed by Voyager, Celsius, FTX and all those. Go ahead, Tom.
- [32:38]
Tom
Yeah, I don't even think this is a blip on the radar outside of our little tiny bubble of crypto. And it really just provides another feather in the cap to people who have been talking about this stuff for a while. There are these backroom OTC deals with all these folks who then have the incentive to short the token to realize some level of, of profit. And a lot of the tokens are still held by insiders. So these very small, small moves can exacerbate price action, which then leads to further dumping and sort of creates this death spiral for a lot of these tokens, particularly when a lot of them are held up by the order book of these market makers.
- [33:16]
Scott
Tom, I agree, and I don't want to interrupt, but like, that is 100% true, but this happens so fast. I don't buy that. Like, price started going down and everyone noticed it so fast that they also started selling. Like, I heard about it and it was already down 90% in before I even took the chance to look.
- [33:33]
Tom
Right, totally. And if you look at some of the detail that's come out, It's I think 17 wallets transitioned over $200 million worth of tokens the prior two days. So that is a ridiculous amount. But who held those tokens? Right? It's either the team or some of the market makers who had it. So there's some manipulation behind the scene scenes, it seems like. But the broader problem is just that so few people hold so many tokens for a project that we all assumed had this market value, which was not really real.
- [34:11]
Scott
It's the best performer of the cycle, arguably.
- [34:14]
Tom
Yeah, one of the best for sure.
- [34:17]
Scott
Yeah.
- [34:17]
Sonny
Zach.
- [34:18]
Gareth
Yeah. And I just want to bring this back and this is, this is good to hear that he's kind of forward facing, but I think the thing to go back to is the liquidity, right? Because low liquidity equals high volatility. This is why you see a meme coin get into the billions and then overnight it's back at 100 million, right? Like, you have these wide spreads, so that's that huge gap. And so like a project like this, if, if you want us to take you seriously, like, it can't have that kind of price impact, right? And, and I think that's the big thing. So however many whales or whatever happened here, insiders, whatever you want to call it, I mean, if they dump, you know, a meme coin should go down 80% when they dump, but not a real project, because should. They should have the liquidity. They should have the liquidity there to, to manage that. And I think that was the really big thing that if I got to talk with whoever the main guy is there, like, why was the liquidity ever that low? Like where, why, where was that money, you know?
- [35:19]
Scott
Yeah, it's pretty wild, Sonny. I happened to see you in the audience and invited you up. Thank you. Sonny and I just spent an entire weekend in Miami together at ufc. Dude, you. You had, you had, first of all, incredible seats. And then I look up from where I'm sitting and you're standing there talking to Dana White and President Trump. I was going to ask you specifically about. About Mantra and how you manage to avoid these things with Vechain, but I also, I mean, that was absolutely crazy.
- [35:49]
Sonny
Oh, thank you, Scott. Actually, I'm just hanging the lounge, waiting for my flight. I do enjoy listening to your town hall every time. So, you know, I. I try to be in an audience only, but actually for Mantua, I don't know if it's true, but honestly, I've been reading about all of the tweets and talking to my friends. I think there is a red flag kind of happening even 24 hours before the dump happens. Like a large amount of Token, more than 3 million tokens actually floating to the different type of exchanges. And then the community start to react on that, a little bit panic about that. And then the flash dump just came in. But there's another red flag maybe. I think it's worth everyone's attention. It's about the token supplies. I heard. Well, again, I'm not able to confirm that I heard 90% of the supply actually controlling either in the teams or either in the investors per se. That's already a big flag for me.
- [37:04]
Zach
Old school.
- [37:05]
Sonny
When I get started back to 1314, the decentralization sits on the top priority. Even when we launched the ICO in 2017, we set up minimum number 51% of token needs to go to the community, needs to go to the public. I don't know, I just feel like right now that could be really drawing everyone's attention. That's number one. Number two, like we discussed in Miami, I still believe the utility and the products should be in the king. I even feel like that's kind of sense of urgency which record to all of the builders, focus on the utility, focus on the real value and eventually people will come to treat you. But not just on the other way around because of the liquidity, because of the price action. And then people come to your attention to treat your tokens. And instead of the taco with Trump, actually it's pretty interesting. Dana, bring me to president and make an introduction. Say, oh, Sonny, that's my friend, you know, he's a founder of Vechain. I didn't even have time to explain anything. And then president just instantly replies oh, I'd be very nice to all of your crypto guys. So I just say thank you, Mr. President, for everything you do for the crypto. Open up the clarity in terms of regulation, everything bring us to the next level. So yeah, that's just a major talk.
- [38:47]
Scott
I, I just think it's, I guess a statement on how this administration is approaching things in general. That, I mean, it was him, Elon Musk, who by the way, I don't know how Elon Musk's kid sat on his shoulders and on his lap for like four straight hours at UFC without ever going to the bathroom or anything, but that kid has the best temperament I've ever seen in my life. But I mean, RFK 10, RFK, Ted Cruz, Martin, Marco Rubio, I mean they're all in your row. But like all of the ufc fight till 2:00 in the morning, 1:30, 2:00.
- [39:20]
Sonny
Yeah, well, Elon Musk and the kids basically stay in the seat for like until, like until the end. They never leave.
- [39:27]
Scott
I have a five year old. I don't know how that is humanly possible. My kid would have needed like 47 snacks and.
- [39:32]
Sonny
Yeah, well, I guess the geniuses kids are also genius. A little bit different than usual people.
- [39:39]
Dave
Yeah.
- [39:39]
Scott
But I guess my question, Sonny, is, you know, when you see this happening with Mantra, and again, we're sort of unpacking it, we don't know exactly what happened, but there's no question that you shouldn't be able to manipulate a token down, even if you wanted to, to 95%. Like as a founder, you have a, you know, a project that's had real utility for all these years. Do you think that seeing these things, like it's a negative blight on the industry to any degree. And more importantly, how do you avoid as a founder putting yourself in a situation where something like this can happen?
- [40:10]
Sonny
Well, you know, the crypto world has been like for the last decade. Honestly, there are many this kind of thing happening. We shouldn't be surprised about that. But I would say, you know, right now with much more clarity in terms of regulation, whatever Mica from Europe or us, just start the stablecoin regulation, more and more regulatory work, kind of clean up bit about, you know, today's market, I would say. And another suggestion to everyone, you know, not, let's say when you try to look at any kind of portfolios, do your own research, try to dig deep, try to, let's say, test a bit the products, whatever announced by, by the project, by yourself, and make your own judgment about that. But other than just following up the big news, following up the big, let's say announcement per se, also on the other side, again calling for the urgency not only from the builders per se, you know, we got to build up the real value, build up the real utility of the, of the projects. But also even for the investors starting to look at the real fundamentals, you know, do full due diligence. It's like a kind of like a back to Internet era, like Silicon Valley style, right? You gotta, sure you gotta make a risky move, you gotta bet on the future. But also you gotta spend hours and hours, maybe days, weeks to talk to the founders, to understand who they are, what their devotion is. Like the story I shared before, you know, I was having a meeting with S and p team. The CEO of S& P was in the meeting. So I asked him the question, like okay, if you wanted to invest any portfolio in crypto, what kind of portfolio you want to look at? And surprisingly he started with something totally controversial than the usual crypto pattern. He said I wanted to see the long history record because it kind of proved like the team as a capability to build long term, as a capability of surviving through whatever up and downs, difficult times. And also the devotion to go for continuously iterating and building. And then he mentioned about all of the fundamentals, like most of the, I would say institutional investors, whatever from the Wall street, from Europe, from uk they're checking about, you know, what kind of a problem you want to solve, what's the advantage of your solutions, what's your value proposition, what's your growth story, all of those kind of fundamentals, like real fundamentals. I think it's, I would say it's very important. I even wanted to call for, let's say actions for all of the builders in the crypto world. Prepare all of your terms. It feels like you are pitching to a serious venture capitals or funds, you can do the same to the public, to the community, tell them what you want to do, resolve what's your devotion and what's your value proposition and share the growth of the story of your products, of your platform to the community. So allow the user to be able to verify your story and eventually announcement is just a promise to make to the public. Eventually you got to use your own product to deliver whatever you promise to the community. So yeah, that's just a few thoughts for me.
- [43:45]
Scott
So yeah, so challenging for your average person who just wants to buy something to do that level of due diligence. I Think that's the biggest problem. Right. Most people who want to buy something don't understand these deep tokenomics that, you know, Zach sort of broke down or where the supply is or, you know, the liquidity or volume versus market cap. It's just very, very hard.
- [44:08]
Sonny
It is, it is very hard. But also I think it could be a small tips to everyone. You know, when you get some, even the big influencers or you know, big VCs endorsement project, if there is no details the reason why they endorse that, why they invest that maybe could be already a red flag a bit, right?
- [44:33]
Scott
Yeah, absolutely. So, Sunny, I know you got to catch a flight. I just randomly dropped it. I am just going to highlight the fact that I happen to know and can't say it yet, but you guys have a huge announcement that's under embargo coming in about an hour. So people should be keeping their eyes open for that.
- [44:51]
Sonny
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Should be just in a couple hours.
- [44:53]
Scott
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, we had a really fun time in Miami. Sunny and I cleaned up a beach on a deserted island.
- [45:01]
Sonny
Oh yeah.
- [45:02]
Scott
In the middle of the bay. We did a whole bunch of interviews. We talked to Dana White. He was there cleaning up trash for like an hour. I couldn't believe it.
- [45:10]
Sonny
Yeah. And honestly, everybody is surprised. Like Dana spent four hours in the island with us and clean up. I think he did like 20 pounds of trash by himself. It's amazing.
- [45:20]
Scott
Every one of us had a sunburn neck. I showed up on that island. Didn't really realize the situation. Sunscreen lacking.
- [45:27]
Sonny
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead with all of you other panelists. Don't mind me.
- [45:34]
Scott
Thank you. So, yeah, I mean we're going to wrap pretty soon. I actually Perry and I wanted to ask you is this is ohm mantra, Is this on the radar at all for you guys as like a potential issue or is this just much smaller than kind of the contagions and issues of the past?
- [45:51]
Sonny
Actually, when I, when I read about, when I wake up this morning, like I basically instantly got my phone flat flushed by this kind of message. The next thing I do is, yeah, we saw it. And also we kind of, you know, did that really a little bit analysis and also all of the references check. And then I just share with my team to let's say, okay, whatever is good or bad. You know, take a lesson learned from, you know, whatever happened. That's what we do on usual daily.
- [46:21]
Scott
Yeah, perfect.
- [46:22]
Perry Ann
Yeah, it doesn't help. I mean it definitely makes, you know, our job in D.C. harder when you have these issues. And this is what the opposition is constantly bringing up. Rug pulls, scams, pump and dumps. How do we protect the retail investor? And Sunny gave a lot of really, really good, just tips and insights on how to do due diligence. You have to understand the tech. One of the things he also mentioned that he does is they spend real time with the actual people building these protocols and these platforms. But that's, I mean that's what you should do as an investor. But that's not going to work for retail. And that's kind of the point of the market structure legislation is it provides that legal framework for the protection of all investors including retail. And that's who people are most concerned about. So when these things happen, it definitely can have a big, big impact. The stablecoin legislation, this has been pending in Congress for several years now. But when the Terra Luna stablecoin collapsed and you had those billions of dollars of losses that happened so, so quickly the way Congress responded to that is they created a ban for algorithmic stablecoins. And that was in one of the first iterations of the bill we've been able to get that removed. But things like this can create a knee jerk reaction. So it is really, really important that those building in the crypto space are doing so in a responsible way. Because when you have these huge blow ups and you have billions of losses, particularly for retail, it, you know, it can create some very serious challenges on the policy side that impacts everybody.
- [48:22]
Sonny
Well yeah, I just wanted to make a last comment about that actually. That's why I bring up, you know, the regulatory work. I think it makes some help to everyone, especially to the retail investors. Usually we know the institutions, they have the right position, they are able to connect it to the funders directly or even the team try to do full due diligence, those kind of stuff. But the retail investors usually kind of, you know, has an imbalance the information of any projects. But actually you know we, we have been through like a whole year, more than a year effort to talk to the MICA regulators. The VISA just get confirmed in the MICA compliance a few weeks ago. But the whole year process kind of give us the feeling like you know, when we go through all of those details that kind of the depths in terms of the regulators, try to understand your projects, understand what you try to do, even including some kind of, you know, operational process, risk control process and everything, then you feel more confident about that. Well, I, I know there are still many things are not able to Share in the detailed to the retail but at least to guarantee let's say a little bit level of protection to any people to looking at the investors. Well this time I have to say Europe is a little bit advanced than the US thanks to the last administration. But just wanted to give you guys a little bit share. I don't know if you know about the MICA in details, but MICA has a three different category of regulation licenses. One is exchange and custodian like most of the places. Number two is digital asset service providers. So including you know, payments, OTC traders, market makers, all of the stuff. Also it's not. It's quite common in the other territories as well. But MICA also have a third category is called token issuer. So they wanted to understand more from any project to issue the token, how the way they manage the operations, how they guarantee the decentralization of the network operations. Plus even they wanted to make sure whatever you promise to the public using the standard format, it's called xlm, whatever the format, it's a standardized European format. And put this white paper public and register into the regulators. Then every time if anybody has any issue with whatever your rules, whatever your operations or even the technical settings, then everybody can go back to check. Okay, that's what you promised in your white paper. And then if there was a conflict, then you will be, you will be controlled, you will be managed even from the project itself. You need to be very careful about what you do. Even you wanted to make changes or upgrades. You got to follow the exact process to guarantee whatever, like protecting the ritual investors. So I think that's something us also could follow. Could take a reference from what the MICA do. I think it's really protecting the retail investors per se.
- [51:55]
Scott
Thank you for that insight. I'm glad you were here today to help us sort of break that down. As a founder who's been through all of this, we're at the end here of the show. I want to thank everybody on the panel as always for all of your insight. It'd be interesting to see how the ohm situation plays out over the coming days. I think we'll get more clarity and obviously eyes generally on the volatility in crypto markets in general. But we'll be back tomorrow 10:15am Eastern Standard Time for the next crypto town hall. Thank you so much to all our guests. For all of you listening, see you to tomorrow. Bye.