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#283 – The Rise Up Morning Show – March 25, 2025
Recorded: March 25, 2025 Duration: 1:28:25Space Recording
Short Summary
The transcript discusses the launch of the Neutron Network and its innovative approach to DeFi, focusing on improving blockchain performance and expressivity. Neutron's creator program offers financial support to amplify their work, while trends indicate a shift towards centralized platforms for trading volumes. The crypto market is in the final stages of a bull market, with Bitcoin outperforming most altcoins. The Rise Up Morning Show continues to grow, engaging its audience over two years.
Full Transcription
And welcome to the Rise Up Morning Show.
The Rise Up Morning Show.
Happy Tuesday, it's March 25th, unless you're listening in the future, in which case, wherever you are, whenever you listen, we hope that it's green.
And we are so glad to be here with you for helpful news, commentary, and of course, answers to your crypto questions.
If you're just seeing us for the first time, welcome your infratreat.
We are joined today by our handsome in both places friend, Spade of Neutron.
We're going to have a conversation about it.
His journey, first at Lido, now at Neutron, becoming full-time web three, something people
used to ask us about all the time, right? Alex, how do you do it? What even is it? Does it actually
exist? Just had one yesterday. Turns out the answer is yes and it doesn't have anything necessarily
to do with OnlyFans unless you're Will Watson. Eo!
Only chins.
Only chins, yeah.
So if you've got a crypto question, then leave it in the comments.
Definitely check out Spade at 0x Spade over on X.
And if you want to get ahead of where we're going, then also be sure to check out Neutron underscore org.
on X while we welcome Spade to the studio. Spade, thank you for joining us today. Do you want to take a
second and tell the folks in the audience just who you are and what you do in the web three space?
Sure. Thanks for having me first. It's a it's good to see to see all of you guys and get a chance to
indulge in some banter. I'm I'm stayed also like my my real name is Arol. I'm the CEO of Haven Labs, which is a software development company that works on the neutral network. I
TLDR is like what we do is we customize the chain itself to make DFI actually work basically.
And to make it like way more, you know, accessible and profitable for people to engage in like safer and such.
Okay. And you you started, I kind of like to just jump right in here, you started your journey like working in crypto as a contributor in the Lido community.
Yeah, so basically I was working as an investigative journalist before going into crypto.
And, you know, what brought me into the space was I really like the idea of like, hey, we can take the financial system and we can like make it trustless, abstract, like all the middlemen and such. And, you know,
that's sort of what initially piqued my interest.
And so I started getting on chain and with Defi Summer,
there were a bunch of these new entities,
like these DOWs kind of appearing,
and they needed contributors to help with a whole bunch of things
because they were growing way faster than
then sort of like their contributor base and like their muscles right and so I started engaging on chain with a bunch of these dows
and eventually you know like there was this forum post by one of the contributors that we they were like hey we're going to upgrade this
this protocol to do xy and z and the last line said if you think you have skills that we could use like just reach out
so I did so I told them about like my background and such we had a couple of calls and it turned out that the lighter on terra team
at the time so like lido is this like big protocol on ethereum it also has a deployment on
it had a deployment on a blockchain uh called terror and which at the time was huge um and the team
that was in charge of that was 11 developers and that's it which meant that there were nobody to do
you know like to basically like um
gather feedback from the community, help communicate what they were up to and such, and that was a big problem for them at the time.
So I joined the team initially as a community manager and really quickly realized that like, oh, you know, there were a bunch of things beyond just community management to do.
And so I started taking on the marketing and the business development and the strategy and stuff. And so a couple of like,
you know, like a quarter or so later,
Constantine Mushook,
which is kind of like the co-founder of,
you know, P2P Valator and a bunch of these,
like, really impressive companies in the space,
kind of like,
Staten, it was like, hey, you know, we want there to be somebody who manages this team,
who is kind of acting as the CEO of it, and we'd like you to have a shot basically, like,
are you in? And so I said, yes, that'd be an honor. And, you know, fast forward a couple of years.
We've now spun out of P2P fully to create the Neusho Network. I, you know, I,
co-founded the Hidden Labs Company as well as like, you know, contributed to the genesis of the network and such.
It's been a wild ride.
It's been a wild ride.
And it's, it's, what I like the best about it is, uh, it sounds like you were,
you were in journalism for, that was like your, your career before doing this.
Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah.
So it's a pivot, but not really.
Go ahead, Will.
No, no, I was going to say, I mean, like, it is a pretty big pivot that you see on paper
where it's from journalism to CEO of decentralized finance focused project, right?
So, and that's one of the biggest questions I think a lot of people have out the gate too,
which is I love crypto, but my resume does.
does not match the skill set of what I think I need to know about crypto.
Clearly, that's a really good question, but clearly you made that job.
I think there's two things.
Yeah, I think there's two things to note here.
Like, the first one is, um,
this industry needs a wide array of talent, right?
Not everybody needs to be a software engineer, right?
Like, that is very important, but there are a bunch of other functions
to make this industry function that are required, right?
And so, you know, in my case, the skills I had was
I have years of experience digging into very, very complex topics and being able to like talk about them in a way that's like, you know, more understandable and such.
And, you know, being able to like do that research, communicate clearly and that kind of stuff, right?
And so that was valuable because nobody in the team at the time was able to do that work in the first place, right?
So just to give you an example that like there are other skills that matter basically. And
Most likely, regardless of what your current career is, there are probably skills that are applicable to the space that you could do this.
The second thing is most of this industry, like this industry is very nascent. It's very new.
And that means that like, you know, if you look at like other industries, right, like marketing in web two is something that you have.
you know, playbooks that have been refined over decades that you're supposed to know and know how to apply, right?
In crypto, there's a lot of like figuring out left, right?
And so while on the consensus like, you know, consensus algorithm design and like, you know, distributed system side,
you have this kind of like wide literature, like years and years of, of kind of like progress.
When it comes to like how to do marketing and how to do business development in crypto,
like there's a lot of like innovation and figuring out left to do.
And so like that is a chance for you to basically like come in and so like try to figure things out,
develop your own playbooks and so like grow from there if that makes sense.
Right. Like you learn alongside with the space. Right.
And actually I feel like this might be a good way. We had a question in the chat here and you'll be the perfect person to answer.
What are some of the ways, you say we'll need all skills, what are some of the ways that this like massive technologies that we call Web3 are going to make the world different?
You know, we talk a lot about the financialization, the tokenization.
But, you know, if I'm a teacher, if I'm a parent, what are some of the ways?
We talk about it a lot on our show, but I'd love to know what you think, Spade, what you tell people when you're painting that picture of the future for them, how will it be different for everyday people?
I think depending on which part of the industry you look like, the answer can be slightly different,
like you look at the answer can be slightly different because different projects try to tackle different aspects of it.
What we do is, you know, when we look at the traditional financial system, what we see is that like a lot of it is actually,
like the best opportunities are kind of not accessible to everyday people, right?
Like you probably have never invested in a hedge fund and.
I do that all this time. What are you talking about?
You guys talk.
Well, good for you, man, but like, you know,
medallion fund doesn't want to take my money.
Schmillion Schmatson is here.
This is a most misrepresentation of the past.
That's my very, very wealthy alter ego that Evan created.
But anyway, sorry, continue.
You know, if you get a, if you get your deals, like, let me know, I'm down.
But you know, the TLD is that like,
today and especially in the context of like inflation such like both the money you already have is not something that is something that can be threatened depending on where you're living
So so like a couple of examples right like I live in Thailand I have family in Thailand, but I'm originally from France right and so I do
transfers across borders like
every every month basically, right?
The way that you would do this traditionally
is like with Y's and that's like 70 bucks
every time you do at least every time you do a transfer, right?
With crypto, I do this monthly for like,
six cents or something like this.
So that's the first benefit, right?
And so just like making sure that people have access to their finance in a way that's like global,
that doesn't have the friction that is like, you know, instantaneous and stuff.
All of this is like already pretty valuable.
The second thing is just like the way that the traditional finance financial system is built is fairly gate kept.
such that if you're already rich,
you have access to way more opportunities to build wealth
than if you don't have that to like wealth already.
And so what we're trying to do is like,
make, you know, like, make these opportunities to build wealth over time in like a sustainable, compounding way, like way more accessible and manageable for people to basically, like, you know, consider and have access to.
And that doesn't mean like this, like gambling, right? Like gambling is fine. Like people like, I mean, you know,
Like, people want to speculate because for a lot of people, that's an opportunity to build,
like to build some wealth really rapidly.
And a lot of people are like interested into this.
And that's fine.
So what we do there is we try to build the fairest markets such that you don't have like
Citadel turning off the buyer sell button when they don't like the trades you're making.
Like it happened with GME.
on the one hand, building fair markets that are efficient for you, that don't rug you or tip the scales against you.
And two, giving you access to the best opportunities possible, such that if you're on the more conservative long-term side,
you're able to build wealth gradually over the years and have access to all of these opportunities that traditionally you wouldn't.
Yeah. And one of the thing, and I don't think we talk about this enough because it's not something that a lot of people realize, but
The more money that you have, and this is talking about the traditional financial system, the more money you have, the more money you are given.
Money begets money.
And what I mean by that is like you can get a loan dirt cheap at a dirt cheap interest rate if you have a lot of money because the bank trusts you to do good things with that.
However,
you probably are in definitely less need of that lower rate than somebody who's just really trying to get started,
who get hit with a higher rate because the bank doesn't know if they can trust them with a lot of money yet.
And so it's kind of like a back – it's because of a risk management strategy from the world of traditional finance.
And as a result, people with less money get hit with larger rates than people with more money.
And there's so many more examples of that.
Whereas in the defy world –
fuck that, get rid of that.
And everybody just gets access to the same rates
and everybody can see what everybody's getting.
You know, it's a beautiful thing.
If you're just joining us,
our guest is Spade, 0x Spade of Neutron.
And we're talking about how to break into the Web3 industry.
But I'd really like to pivot away from the journey
you took here and figure out what you're doing now.
Do you want to tell us a little bit about Neutron?
Sir.
So I guess a good way to put it is this, right?
Like, defy.
Defi started in like 2020,
Defi Summer and everything, right?
And we created all of these mechanisms on chain
that allow you to do things like trading
and lending and borrowing and such.
but what we continue to see though is that like most of the activity most of the trading most of the
volumes continue to happen on centralized platforms right why is that well it's it's kind of because
there are two things that have constrained defy in the space and prevented from like being a
fundamentally better alternatives than what already existed right and on the one hand you have kind of like
the, just like the sheer performance of these systems,
this is broadly getting sold in the industry.
You know, like roll-ups and like things like Solana,
APDUS and whatever are kind of like helping push the boundaries
towards where you can't see the difference
between a really fast blockchain and a centralized exchange.
Finance, for example, is 14 milliseconds of latency, right?
A lot of blockchains are going to get in there
within the next few like quarters or years, basically.
The other thing is expressivity, right?
For example, when you're trading in basically anything else in finance, you're trading on an order book, right?
But if you're trading on crypto, you're probably using an AMM, right?
Why are we using these pools?
Is it because they're fundamentally better?
Not really.
It's more so because they worked within the constraints of the system
that we had with decentralized blockchains early on.
And so what Neuchamp does is we look at these constraints and we lift them such that
you can build defy mechanisms like financial mechanisms that are much more efficient
and that are able to actually provide users with guarantees that are at least the same
as kind of like alternative offering or even better, right? So we have this like
you know, in protocol order book and oracles and automation features and such that allow us to build really efficient kind of like market designs, learning and borrowing and like basically to provide more capital efficient design such that you can do more with your money, if that makes sense.
Totally.
Yeah, totally.
And one of the questions I wanted to ask is in terms of how people can get involved with what you're doing.
I know you have started on Cosmos.
You've got the Mercury upgrade coming soon.
So you're kind of doing your own chain thing.
I imagine that'll be a time of much growth, opportunity.
If people are interested in learning more or interested in starting to participate, what's the best way to do it?
And does your team need like help?
Do you need people to amplify what you're doing?
Do you need people to explain what you're doing?
Do you need technical help?
Those kind of things.
Yeah, for sure. I think good, like, you know, keep, the best way to keep track on the project is probably just like follow us on Twitter and we announced like a bunch of programs there for people to get involved, right? Like, for example, we recently announced the Neuchamp's creator program, which is basically meant to like,
support folks who want to like help us amplify like the work that we do
by providing them as much context and information and knowledge as possible,
supporting them financially and everything, right?
So like if you're interested in helping us on this one, like check that program out.
And generally speaking, we we evolved our community a lot in like,
like the roadmap of the project as well as just like the
you know, all of the work in the ecosystem building that is happening on the Neutral blockchain.
And so, you know, you can join our community channels like on Telegram, on Discord and such.
And, you know, we're in these channels basically so you can add us and like just your ideas, get involved and such.
Yeah, this would be good good ways to get started, I think.
Okay, cool. Well, thank you very much. I am aware that you got to stop at the hour.
So what I'd like to do is I'd love to pivot to answering some of your crypto questions.
If you've got a question for Spade, if you've got a question for us, let us know.
Alex, I know that one of the things we wanted to talk about today was a question we got from our friend, Magic.
And maybe Spade can give some input on this as well before we let him ride his dog and pony off into the sunset.
Do you want to tell people what we're talking about and kind of lay the table for this?
It's a great topic.
Yeah, for sure.
So one of the things that gets talked about a lot in this kind of market stage is, you know, should I do any kind of portfolio restructuring?
And if yes, what's the best way to do it?
And am I just panicking?
Am I overreacting?
Am I thinking about this the right way?
Kind of all of the different soup of emotions that goes into this decision to potentially do some restructuring.
We talk a lot of the time about how, you know, obviously you don't want to just see prices.
Fall, panic, and sell a bunch of stuff at a loss.
This stuff is hyper volatile.
you know, more often than not, things recover, especially in the short term, even if you, you know,
are taking more of a short-term gamble on something. So this question I thought was really good.
And let me, let me grab the whole text of it here, because this particular person has given what I think to be a
pretty solid amount of thought into it and kind of cut the portfolio up and uh you know had some
thoughts about it and i guess one more piece of context we've been talking a lot about how it's okay
to do things when positions are underwater because we're talking about kind of a percentage game here
so if you have for example two positions you have long-term conviction one you're wavering on the other
They're both down, you know, X percent kind of overall.
Consolidating at that point is just like trading them together in a profit if that's kind of how you're looking at it.
So, you know, keeping percentages separate from maybe your actual entry price.
Yeah, and we're going to talk a little about numbers here.
So you might want to get a band and paper out.
I'm going to get mine too.
Really quick, Alex, too, while you're pulling this up, let me say this comes from the rise up Discord.
If you want to ask us a question and you don't want it to disappear after the show is over or you're frustrated by the character limits on Twitter or on TikTok, the best, best, best place to get our attention is in the Rise Up Discord server.
And if you're like, wow, I've never joined a Discord before.
That seems a little intimidating.
Then...
The workaround is you can head to our website.
It's available in all of our bios,
the rise up morning show.com.
And we've got the link to the server right on the front page,
and we've got a little need discord help button
that takes you to a handy-dandy video tutorial
that'll walk you through it if you're nervous.
Don't be.
Everybody there is very friendly,
and there are great questions like this one.
So...
Basically, here, I'm going to give you the quick overview.
So the status is this particular individual entered into the crypto space, as they said,
jumping off a cliff backwards into crypto mid-December.
I love that analogy, which I enjoy.
As we explore new ways to say how overwhelming it is to join this space right off the bat.
We've been usually saying it's like drinking from a fire hose and one of my friends recently described me as jumping into a river.
And I was like, okay, I like that one.
I might be pivoting to jumping.
So we're kicking it up a notch with jumping backwards off a cliff.
I love it. Good start.
Current status.
Converting some things to USC that I have no conviction in, parentheses because of influencer FOMO and the areas where I'm over leveraged.
is more the part that I'm stumped on.
So example, have, let's say $1,000 in Arrow, which is currently down $25,
excuse me, $250.
So 25%.
Would it be better to convert like 500 of those dollars into stable coins with a more long-term
outlook for the remaining balance?
to double back or re-enter at a lower spot?
Or would you just rotate completely out and pivot to something that you have a better long-term conviction in?
And the examples there are Bitcoin, Chainlink, Avalanche, Solana, Ethereum, and Ando,
which we've got more conviction in, but are still also down 20 to 25% except for Bitcoin.
And these are from entries.
The other assets wanting to de-risk are sui, arrow, near, tau, super, beam, and jasmine.
And I hope you remember it all those because there will be a test at the end.
Oh, damn.
I got most of them.
I got near tau, jasmine, beam. Okay, okay, okay.
Down in a range between 28 and 48 percent, with a slightly green position in Cardano and XRP.
Honestly, just because it was cheap hoping for three to five X before May, learning enough
things to question that conviction, but like everyone else, overall portfolio is currently
down.
Where I'm at is that in this investment journey, I would like to have the capital to make
my decisions more confidently, parentheses, limit orders, understanding the state of the current
market trends, et cetera, kind of a bunch of the stuff that we talk about you need to
take into consideration.
But I'm okay taking some of a loss on some assets just to have peace of mind.
So I think here we're also hitting on another really good thing that was one of my biggest level-ups,
which was you might be in a position that could potentially, you know, with risk, pay off eventually.
But if you're sitting here just like stressing out the whole time and losing sleep and aging rapidly
and getting more and more gray hair every day, taking years off your life, it's probably not worth it.
Yeah.
And so I am curious.
Spade is the guest.
I'll kick it to you first.
First of all,
When you're talking about restructuring, does anything jump out from this example as being like a big yes or a big no?
Red or green flags that you might notice?
And then, you know, how would you kind of handle this if someone handed you a platter with, you know,
and I can run you back through anything if you need a reminder.
I put the notes on the screen there, the cliff notes.
Perfect.
So I would say my first.
My first thought would be like, so it doesn't seem like there's any leverage involved in this, which is pretty good.
But just as a general note, like if you are not comfortable about your liquidity position, like if there's anything in your life that you might need some of that like money for in the coming like months and such, I would strongly consider.
maybe potentially like taking a small loss.
And the reason being you never want to be in a position where you're forced to sell.
Because like when you're in that position, you will be selling at the worst possible prices that you could imagine.
Right.
And so like being forced to to sell because one, you had a leverage position that is getting liquidated or because you just need the money in real life and you have to
all from crypto, but actually, you know, the prices are not great right now is like the worst you can do.
So if you're in that situation, probably take some money off of the table of the table,
put it in like stable coins, farm something, reasonably safe. Like there's a bunch of like good opportunities,
like, you know, look at Morpho on Ethereum and look at some of the volts on Mars on Neutron.
There's there's, there's, you know, good opportunities for you in this space. I would say,
The there's kind of like
three things to dig into account when like looking at like portfolio constructions in crypto right like
the first thing to note is like uh rising tide lifts all boat right most of these assets
trade extremely correlate like in in extreme correlation with one another and so you're basically at
the whim of like is crypto doing good or not right and so build build basically your general outlook
based on that right now another point of context that is maybe useful is that like
We're likely in the last few innings of the ball market.
And it has been a brutal bull market for most alts.
Most alts have not seen a bit this cycle, but Bitcoin has.
And so, you know, if you have a Bitcoin position and such, I would probably keep like,
continue holding on to that.
more lower rank alts I would potentially like consider whether or not I have
conviction on them the other two things that that I would consider is basically
okay one is this project does this project have fundamentals that back the
valuation that it currently has right if a project is making a shit ton of money
because it has actual traction of like people purchasing a service and such
right then that is a much more comfortable hold
then a project that is just like, you know, there's a lot of speculation about future growth and perspective and usage and stuff, which the project has not grown into yet, right?
If it has fundamentals, I would probably just, and, you know, like, I would probably just hold on to that because, like, those fundamentals will, so, like, keep it afloat going forward and or, like, prompted for a recovery eventually.
And then the last thing is just how good is the team and community address engineering hype, right?
Was this whole like I've driven and such?
Like if they're really good, that's kind of like bullish in the sense that like they may be able to do it again, basically in like palm from here, right?
But if it's mostly hype driven and there seems to be like kind of like, you know, the momentum has been lost and stuff, like I would probably consolidate that.
If that makes sense.
As a general disclaimer, I'm not a professional trader.
So take everything that I say with like a massive grain of salt.
And I tend to be way more hands off than I used to be.
Like I used to be very DJ and like, you know, doing like arbitrage and leverage
looping on like a bunch of different assets and such.
I don't do that I just don't have the time anymore.
And so my portfolio right now is pretty bland.
It's kind of like a few majors, a bunch of stable coins farming like somewhere,
and then, you know, like a few assets that I think are like criminally intervalued
like in TRN and a couple of others basically.
And so yeah, that's that's pretty pretty much it for from my side.
So I don't have any comments on like the specific assets, unfortunately.
It was good. It's good stuff. And you're definitely among friends. I think all of us have relatively, as people, some people would say, bland portfolios.
Hey, I had another coin for a little bit yesterday and then sold it for a profit. Yeah, but it was Cardano, too. Yeah, it was Card Donald. Get out of here. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think an important thing is like, you kind of want to, you kind of want to make a
a clear distinction in your mind between like things you hold for the long term because you have
conviction on like this project like and and its ability to grow and such um and things you do because
you think like right now the market is kind of like you know well set up for it to have a pump right
like these short term kind of like trades like i think uh failing fast and accepting that maybe
your your short term thesis was wrong is probably a good thing just to preserve capital more so than like
you know
Yeah, that would be my approach.
Yeah, I don't think there's anything else I would necessarily add to that approach other than, because I look at this and there is that one question also, or it's like, hey, I have $1,000 in aerodrome, it's down 25% right now.
And the question, where should I take all of that and put it into plays?
Maybe I have more conviction in like Bitcoin, Chainlink, Solana and Ondo, or do you take half of that position?
Probably wouldn't buy Ondo.
Yeah, I'll just say you wouldn't.
I wouldn't.
I think they have a great business, but I don't understand why the valuation is where it is.
I think that is like it's pretty potentially.
It's crypto.
Right, exactly.
The valuation of these companies is kind of...
Yeah, but like your investment thesis being, it's crypto, it's probably not super solid hold long term, you know?
Exactly.
I would deep into that with Ando.
I'd be curious to know, so Ondo is like a $2 billion market cap, which is small for crypto, but big anywhere.
And, you know, or big-ish, enough to be considered.
But they've got, you know, the Biddle Fund that they are, you know, in tandem with. They're really in bed with Securitize. And I feel like if you did a quick back of the napkin math, I would say I would expect that the actual total assets that they're tokenizing are offering.
it's more than anybody else in the real world asset space in terms of proof in the pudding.
I'd be curious to know what your pushbacker, your thought is.
Is it just you still think it's way too overvalued in relation to the value they provide the market?
I will say, I picked up this one because, um,
I think there has been a lot of like excitement and such lately, which generally speaking I take as a
sign of caution with regards to valuations because like, you know, eventually the momentum kind
slows down and such. I think the main thing is like, okay, Wondo has like a billion dollar
of TVL right now, right? Like how much of that are they actually making in like revenue, right?
How much of that values like accrues to the token and such or could potentially accrue to the
token in the future, right?
My understanding is that like RWS, generally speaking, are not like super high yield.
And so like, you know, is that like, you know, a four belly, like a four percent like treasuries or maybe 10 percent in a good case, right?
Like how much of that is is like goes into like fees and stuff, right?
Like I'm saying that they probably have a really great business.
I think this is like a really solid like.
you know, like the sector to be in, especially at that scale and such, right?
But like, is it going to hold like $2 billion like valuation?
Like, it's always hard to tell, right?
Like, I think one of the trend that maybe is more interesting than my thought on like a specific project that I haven't looked deeply into is like,
what we see is like crypto overall as like, if you, if you calculate the multipliers between what the
protocols are making and what the valuation of the assets are,
you see all across the boards like absolutely insane multipliers, right?
Oh yeah.
But what's been interesting to see is that
As the space matures and as more institutions and like folks who have this experience of like doing this kind of like
Analysis of like the financials of different like projects and protocols and teams and companies
Enter into the space we see a sort of like gradual normalization of these multipliers
towards probably what you know kind of like the broader financial system
Seas as kind of like averages and such right and so like
like that's not something that i would trade on in a short term but over the next like five
years or so that's something that i expect will play out basically i think a lot of the kind of like
extremely high valuations will sort of like start to normalize back down to like basically
based on like their actual performances as businesses and their outlooks right um and so yeah
like i would consider that mostly for your long-term holes basically
well said very well said uh will i kind of took it on a sidebar away from your you were you
were still making a point about getting back from air yeah the error position into something
with higher conviction yeah it's just remember you don't have to do anything you know whole hog
if you will if you don't understand that saying anybody and everybody who's not american um
you don't have to do go every like 100 percent and everything right if you if you're worried about something
odds are your emotions are tied into it.
Emotions tend to make financial investing mistakes.
So you can pull back a little bit here.
And one of the ideas was, you know,
if you have less conviction in aerodrome, for whatever reason,
you can put it into, you can take half of it and put it into a higher conviction play.
You can totally do that.
If you feel better about that, you feel like you're in a better emotional place to then
approach the market and continue to analyze, you're probably going to end up making yourself
more money, even if aerodrome ends up on paper on a chart having higher multiples.
But.
but you might not be in a great emotional, foundational place to be able to really execute your strategy and profit off of that because your emotions are ping ponging more and more.
But if you're in a more emotional stable place, you might be more likely to execute your strategy and therefore actually be in a position where at the end of the day, you made more money than if you had done the opposite.
That was just the advice that I wanted to give there.
And then going off of what Spade mentioned with, you know,
take a look at coins that have great fundamental strength.
Aerodrome's making a ton of money.
And their TVL growth is really, really good.
Their tokenomics aren't the great.
It's not the greatest.
It's a very inflationary coin.
So take that into account.
But if you look at Aerodrome and you're trying to look at coins that have good fundamental growth,
Aerodrome has very good fundamental growth.
And it's within base, which has...
It's TVL, the amount of money on chain is going up.
So definitely some things to consider.
Spade, one of the questions I always like to ask our guests is if you have any high signal resources or...
educational tools that you advocate for, that you think helped you or help other folks.
We talk about Coinbase Learn as a good kind of one-stop shop.
I'm a big fan of the Unchained podcast, for example.
But I feel like, you know, there's just so much good stuff out there.
For people who like to learn all kinds of different ways, what comes to mind?
Any thoughts?
That's a good question.
I don't think I have a great resource to recommend off the bat.
I think, okay, here's the alpha.
So I think, you know, kind of like a, and I think this is worth both for trading and
both for like getting into crypto actually.
Like you know how we were talking about like the fact that like compared to Web2, like
the industry is like less mature and stuff.
One of the things that doesn't happen for most people, which is so surprising, is most people don't even read books about what happened before, right?
Like, the industry has reinvented the wheel a number of times, and this is a symptom of people not actually doing research deeply into what existed before, right?
Similar in like trading and financial assessment of assets, right, there's a whole wealth of...
insight and alpha that you can get for yourselves simply by reading books.
It costs you $10.
You can get it on like, you know, whatever platform you like, and it'll take you a couple of hours
and you'll get like basically a massive advantage over whoever else is participating that is not putting that effort, right?
I think like that's probably like there's a bunch of like really great crypto resources out there.
I don't necessarily have like a great recommendation to give off the bat, but I would say like,
look at really good books that talk about these topics and just read them.
And the insight you will get there, I think,
will help propel you to a stage where you have way more insight
and some advantage on like the other players in the space.
Yeah.
I've got it on the shelf behind me right about here.
I don't think anybody's going to be able to see it.
But one of my favorite books for our space was by Chris Dixon.
He wrote read, write, own recently.
And it's meant to be a sort of brief history of the internet networks and computing in the context of,
What is Web 3?
You know, this internet thing is not different necessarily.
It's, well, it's, you know, the internet, but it's got some new features that will allow
you to own for the first time information that matters to you, like your money.
Good tip.
Good tip.
I just did a quick scan at my bookshelf to see if there was anything relevant.
And the first thing that I see is the zombie apocalypse survival handbook that Melbrook-
wrote.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I read that too.
Many years ago, he came to Northern Michigan when I was, that's a great one.
The hard thing about hard things is what Spade showed on screen there.
I haven't read that one, but I have heard enough people talk about it to where it's made it onto a short list.
We've also got a couple wrecks in the audience that say rich dad, poor dad, I will teach you to be rich, richest man in Babylon, history of money, and the creature from Jekyll Island.
Yeah.
That's a pretty good wrecks there.
Yeah.
I was just to put a cherry on top of the whole portfolio consolidation management kind of,
you know, reconstruction thing.
I think the warning I would give, I don't have, I think all the stuff you guys talked
about, the more kind of specifics and nitty gritty is great.
I don't want to rehash that.
I would simply say, if you're looking at your portfolio and it's down and you're like,
I should probably be doing something, but you're not quite sure what.
First of all.
You don't have to do anything.
Yeah, maybe just don't look at the portfolio.
Yeah. First, make sure you don't need the money.
And if you don't need the money and you have the luxury of waiting,
then maybe just stop looking at it.
Red my mind. That's exactly where I'm going.
It's don't feel pressured to do things just because you feel like you are in a uniquely bad position.
So just remember that there's only really a few reasons that I would ever pull money out of something at a loss.
One, I no longer have faith or conviction in the asset, not just because the price is down,
but because of other contributing factors. Something happened on the team. There was a massive shuffle.
Look at something like Gala is a great example. Overall, still bullish on Web3 gaming as a niche,
but Gala has just been full of drama, infighting, lawsuits,
What are you talking about?
They've been super stable as an organization.
And haven't added anything new to the space or the niche in a long-ass time.
So, like, conviction has dropped heavily.
That is one example.
So think about it that way.
So loss of conviction in the asset for more than just the price being down.
Two...
Like Spade said, do you need the money for living expenses?
Are you over invested and over leveraged?
Did you go in with more than you could actually afford to lose and now you're learning the hard way that shit, I actually could not afford to do that.
That's a painful lesson to learn.
And unfortunately, there's probably not a lot of ways out of that one if you need it, if you need that money.
So that might be a tough pill to swallow, but that would be another reason.
And then quick note, quick note on this like,
If you're playing around with money that you may need, like, you know, first, never invest in,
especially in crypto assets, which are extremely volatile, never invest money you can't afford to lose.
But if you have money that you can't like in between, like you probably don't need it, but actually
you might then go for like very stable, low risk, long term, like yield position, not like investments
into volatile assets. Like go for like, you know,
lend like stable coins on like a reputable platform that is like audited like secure and such.
Um, maybe consider some of the delta neutral positions and such.
Like there's a bunch of options for you.
What does that mean delta neutral?
Will you define that?
Yeah.
Delta neutral is when you, um, when you achieve,
Basically, it's like if I buy one Bitcoin, I now have one X exposure to the price of Bitcoin, right?
Price of Bitcoin goes up, I make money.
Price of Bitcoin goes down and I lose money, right?
Now, maybe I want to hold that asset, but I actually don't want to be exposed to the price of that asset.
In that case, I can hedge that exposure by taking a one X short exposure to the price of Bitcoin.
In which case, because like,
you know, one X long, one X short, it so like cancels each other.
And so I achieve what's called delta neutrality, which means that I don't really care about the price in the markets anymore because regardless of whether they go up or down, my position is going to be worth the same, right?
So that's something you can consider for existing positions.
For example, if you have an asset that you're like not too sure about, but want to keep it, you can consider hedging it.
It tends to be expensive and complicated to do manually.
because you have to like adjust your position and such.
But there are good packaged strategies that basically offer this as like a part of it.
For example, they're probably familiar with Athena.
Athena is a protocol that does one such trade, right?
They hold a yield-bearing version of ETH, like you state ETH from Lido, and they short ETH on
perpetuals on centralized exchanges, right?
And so what they do is like they have one X long exposure to ETH, one X short exposure to
ETH, which means the overall delta neutral.
You don't expect the price to affect the value of your position, but they're collecting
yield on both sides of that trade, and that's what they sort of like distribute to
to their holders, right?
There's a bunch of projects and protocols
that sort of like automate that trade for you now.
So depending on which assets you're interested in
and what kind of yield and stuff,
like you can also look into this, right?
Marsh Protocol is an interesting one in that sense
because it's the only protocol in crypto
that allows you to do that trade
like within like basically in a fully decentralized manner
on chain within one protocol because like
Basically, Mars allows you to do two things, which is one, hold any amount, like any different
assets as collateral, like yield-bearing derivatives, like liquid-staking tokens and such, use them
as collateral, but also use that collateral to open perpetual's position, right?
So you can hold the asset.
This is March capital?
Mars, like the planet.
Oh, oh, okay, okay.
Mars capital, sorry.
It's a Mars underscore protocol on Twitter.
Mars underscore protocol.
And so what they do is like, you know, you can go in and let's say for example,
like you're bullish on Celeste, right?
You can take Tia, you can liquid stake it, for example, with drop protocol,
which is a liquid sticking protocol backed by Lido.
Now you're earning like 8% per year on sticking rewards on Tia, right?
You can then use that liquid sticking token and put it into Mars as collateral and open a short position on Celestia.
So now you have one X exposure to Tia long due to the fact that you're holding some.
You also have one X short exposure from your perpetual position, right?
So you're delta neutral, you're no longer earning or losing from the market price, but you're collecting one
the sticking rewards on your LST and you're collecting if like the funding rates on the
perpetual position as well.
Yeah, that's cool.
That's a great strategy.
Can I just go out a quick because I love it?
That Mars protocol on Twitter only follows one account and it's the official NASA account
for the planet Mars.
Oh, yeah.
No way.
That's fantastic.
Okay, and I see there on 12 markets including Neutron.
And really quick.
That was a tremendous explanation and breakdown, but it was about 99% jargon.
And I have absolutely no doubt that there is a significant handful of people.
Don't worry.
A handful of people who probably did not understand about 88% of the words that are in there.
So really quick.
One of the things Spade is describing here is what I would call
like generally the defy space as you start to level up beyond the entry level.
Probably level two, DeFi, level three.
We take it all the way to the beginning, you know, participating in DeFi at the chorus,
most simple level is holding the cryptocurrencies that are associated with defy protocols.
So, you know, if you enjoy AVE, you could just simply hold ABE,
and that would be probably the simplest way to get some exposure to something with the asset.
From there, it's all about getting more and more involved and leveling up by adding little
bits and little bits.
So the next step would probably be taking a stable coin and supplying it on Ave for a little
bit of interest.
So you're earning some yield on a stable asset and you're kind of able to, it's a very hands-off
kind of a thing, right?
Your two risks there are that the biggest defy protocol on Earth goes under and that
USDC depegs.
So as far as crypto goes, pretty low risk.
From there, there's just basically a never-ending amount of ways that you can continue to level that up.
And so as Spate's talking about stuff like Delta Neutral, a lot of jargon in there, that's basically just a way that you can hedge your position, meaning protect yourself from risk by...
basically doing two things at once so that price fluctuations in the market don't hit you as hard
as they would if you only had exposure to the one thing and then from there it just kind of continues
to go all sorts of different kinds of trading different sorts of platforms and protocols
that offer different sorts of things all with varying degrees of risk to be involved with
one of our friends on tictock here who i don't think creates content anymore unfortunately
is Jeff the Dunker, who is famous for talking about Ponziomics and Ponzi farming,
you know, basically ways that you can move quickly to take advantage of these super sketchy protocols
to take advantage of very high APYs and then get the hell out of that home, kids.
Don't do it that home, kids.
Yeah, or, or Michael was, you know, nine to Ponzi looping, you know, taking something out on curve,
then putting it in Lido, then taking it somewhere else.
I mean, it was, it was wild.
I don't know.
I just wish that he would have started like an online D-Gen toy store called Ponzi's R Us and just run it with like this constant roving cycle of like various pyramid schemes that you could get involved in.
But then like, you know, this big flashing like, you know, equivalent of the lunk alarm at Planet Fitness that would just like start flashing when the big red flagging or going under starts to go off.
Anyway.
This is all stuff inside of the space of Defi.
If you're interested in Defi, there's a never-ending amount of stuff that you can read about it.
You just got to kind of dive in.
As the comment said, jump backwards off the cliff and start learning the terms.
One, one, so you briefly had like integrated dyno on the screen there.
I would recommend following this guy.
He very frequently will, yeah, exactly.
He'll post threads about like, okay, how I'm constructing XYZ position.
That is very interesting because it has these rewards and limits these risks and stuff.
So if you want to play around with some of these more complex positions while having some more
complex on like how they're constructed and how to go about them, that's a good follow in my opinion.
I would say there's also like another point, like to your point about like there being levels in Defi.
I think there's kind of like a fundamental, like there's kind of like two broad path you can take when you're like dabbling into the space and looking for like a building wealth basically, right?
There's.
I would say buying and holding assets
is what I would generally put under the category of speculation.
You're making a bet that this asset is going to go up or down
and you're hoping to benefit from it, right?
This is completely fine.
Ideally, when you're doing that, you want to make sure that you're doing this on the best platforms and that you're actually, you know, putting as much efforts into making sure your bets are likely correct as possible, right?
So like paying attention to like fees and which assets you're investing in or kind of the key things.
There's kind of like another path, which I actually think is better for most people, which is kind of like,
actually investing, which means like looking for minimized losses that allow you to build wealth gradually over time.
It doesn't sound sexy. Most people want to get that 10x because like the Dovun hit of doing that is just insane.
But consider the following.
Wealth compounds over time, right?
If you're earning like 10% this year and you're doing this again next year
Next year you're earning 10% on a larger amount of money, right?
So you're earning more interest, right?
And so your wealth over time goes like this, right?
Some have said that like compounding is the like eighth wonder of the world or something.
Yeah, it's a magical thing.
Yes, because over sufficiently large periods of time, it will completely outpace whatever you're able to do by, you know,
speculating and trying to get like that 10x, which you will generally like most often not get.
Because you know, imagine you're starting today in 60 years, how much, like how much interest
would you be getting those interests on top of it, right? Like the speed at which you're making
money at this point is just inside, right? And so for most people who aren't kind of like
professional traders who have the ability to be tapped into the latest information, the fastest
than anybody else in the market, because that is what it takes to win consistently, right?
If you don't have access to this, consider like investing and building positions in things that are way lower risk,
that you don't have the risk of losing your entire principle every five minutes,
but that you know that you're going to be making incremental gains over time because these will compound.
And over like, you know, the next five years, 10 years, you'll actually have achieved meaningful, like, meaningful gains, right?
One example, like, to use, like,
build an understanding of this is like so Warren Buffett is the richest like one of the richest
man on the planet right I believe he's been investing for like 60 something years
60 or 70 years now at this point yeah yeah and you know he's gotten there by achieving like
what was it like 20% like 15 20% yeah are yeah yeah eating the market but slightly
Exactly.
Now it gets you like eight or nine, but, you know, yeah, it was like 7% percent was good.
for the year yes but then consider the the guy who found the medallion fund right the medallion fund
is a hedge fund so like a fund that like specializes in very complex strategies to try and get like
as much as they can right they use a bunch of complicated math and stuff but it is kind of like a
legendary fund because it returns 60 percent year over year for for years right it's considered
the best head fund in the history of mankind basically but the guy you founded that
while he outperformed Warren Buffett like by 3x like every year he'd only been doing it for like
what like 20 30 years i don't i don't remember the exact same date and so he's like way
Like, he's not as rich, basically, as a result of this, just because he didn't have enough, like, nearly as much time in the game, basically, right?
Right.
If he had started around the same time as Warren Buffett, we these kinds of performance, the compounding games means that he wouldn't have billions of dollars.
He would have trillions of dollars.
This is the difference in compounding.
Like if you start to like look a bit further and consider compounding into your calculus, maybe you won't be rich tomorrow morning.
But you can build wealth for like your basically your whole life that will achieve like way more meaningful and way more predictable results for you basically.
And Warren Buffett himself says, you know, he made 99% of his wealth after 50 because of compounding.
So Spade, I know you got to go.
I would love to get a wrap up one more time of where people can find you.
Give us the tagline for what's coming up with Neutron.
And then if you've got a final thought, a question, suggestion, good joke, ask of our audience, a word of wisdom, something like that, then we'd love to hear it, man.
Sure. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, I guess like you can find me on Twitter like 0X Spade as well as, you know, Neutron underscore org on Twitter as well. Those are like great, great places to connect.
Feel free to like add us and or join the community channels as well to like have a chat. We're very open to that. We encourage it actually. And then about Neutron, you know, it's like what we're trying to do is like we're trying to enable developers to,
I like to put it as like building impossible, right?
Like there are so many constraints left on the space,
like on Ethereum, on Solana and whatever.
Like these things are like, they're good,
decentralized, they're secure.
The constraints that they impose on like developers
and the products that they can bring to users are insane.
And our job, what we do at Neutron is like,
we try to live these constraints to enable better applications,
better financial primitives for users, right?
And so if you're interested in like trying out those primitives,
which allow you to have
like consistent wealth building like you know these kinds of like positions that we talked about
like check out the ecosystem because that that that is what we focus on a lot basically like
creating these things that allow people to you know like actually manage their risk
build wealth over time and make it rather than just like be stuck in the in the red race if that
makes sense that that is what we we're trying to bring to the industry by enabling people
to build like fundamentally better designed
And so yeah, if that resonates with you, like check out the project, learn about it,
get engaged. We're always looking to like support folks who, you know, show up and like show
excitement about like helping us like deliver on that vision if that makes sense.
Yeah, absolutely. And we appreciate you making time to talk about it, to share so much with our
audience. If there's anything that we can do to help you, let us know. And hopefully we'll
have you back in a little while and see how things are going. Yeah.
That's not great. That's all great. And thanks for having me. I'll drop one last thing, which is there might be a really sick opportunity dropping in that ecosystem, like in the coming month. The keyword is Max BTC. And I'll just say this. It's the highest organic yield you can get on Bitcoin. It's not live yet, but, you know.
Max BTC.
Correct, yes. It's called Max BTT because it's the max yield on Bitcoin.
That makes sense.
Pretty straightforward, right?
The perfect paper. Okay, good.
On the nose, I like it.
Thank you for the alpha end and thank you again for making time to join us.
Ladies and gentlemen, our friend Spade.
Spade, have a great day.
A great night and we'll catch you soon.
Bye for now.
Take care, folks.
Yeah, great, great.
Got some alpha drop there, right then.
Max BTC earning yield on my Bitcoin.
So you're telling me there's a chance.
Well, I'm into you first from the rise of media company.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, what do you think about that?
What a lovely fellow.
And I've got to say, I have not seen anybody pull off blonde highlights quite like that with the swoop in a minute.
I also.
My 11 and 12 year old stuff would have been like so, I would have been like, this is the coolest guy in the world.
And he still is the coolest guy in the world.
As you're wearing your green day shirt.
Right, right.
My stud.
I was like, the heart hand grenade.
My hair was too curly to do that.
And all I wanted was the swoop.
All I wanted was the swoop.
All I wanted was the swoop.
That was almost, that was almost Evan.
That was almost Evan.
Oh my God.
You should have seen me in high school.
Don't come for me.
Yeah, I believe, I was going to say, I bet Alex had that game.
Christina, Linda, can we get some pictures of that?
Yeah, you're, please.
Yeah, and I could totally believe that you, you had that look.
We're going to have to do that.
I need those pictures.
Let's get some high school pictures.
Yeah.
Let's just say hair was straightened.
Eyes were blackened?
No, actually, never went that far.
Wow.
Nails were purple.
I had some real skinny jeans.
Didn't do that either.
Of course you did.
Could have.
But it was the skinniest of jeans and a whole host of vibrant colors.
It was, you know, the neon studded.
Wait, you wore a whole host of vibrant colors like gray and off gray.
Like just slightly different from the black you're typically I was wearing.
It was literally either.
like aggressive neon or black and nothing in between.
Wow, that would be an interesting sight to see.
Yeah.
Yeah, we'll have pictures. We'll have receipts. If you've got a high school memory,
a defy discovery, a crypto question to share, this is the place for you. And hey,
while we're talking about it, if you are thinking you'd like to have more time with us,
then I've got good news. We're live Monday through Thursday at 7 a.m. Central Standard
time on all the places where you're watching, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, even,
and of course, on TikTok, we're live online.
Wednesdays at 7 p.m. Central for Rise Up after dark, and we are live 24-7 in the Discord. The Rise Up
Discord is a free community for learners at all levels of experience. If you've got a question,
if you've got a suggestion, a good joke, word of wisdom, or you just need a second opinion,
that's the place to go to meet your future co-founder, your best friend, people across the world.
And I promise you, if you go in there and you ask a question, it may not be immediately, but
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We would love to see you there.
And guys, we got about 30 minutes before we take our dogs and ponies.
Well, here's something that everybody's going to like.
Black Rock has expanded their blockchain-based money market to, can you get a drum roll?
Yeah.
I almost gave you an oohie.
Solana.
Wow, congratulations.
Black Rock.
Congratulations, Salana.
This is, didn't this, didn't they open some sort of money market the other day and the trading was underwhelming?
I don't know.
There's another one.
When did this?
Is this breaking?
Yeah, this is breaking news.
Okay, there was a...
A handful of minutes ago.
There was something that Solana did that Bitcoin has done and Ethereum has done.
Maybe it was an ETF style product.
I don't know.
Are you talking about the futures Solana ETF that dropped?
I am.
It did like 12 million in volume in its first day, which was...
Who cares about a futures ETF for Solana?
For those of you who don't know, if you're like, wait, I thought ETFs were like these cool,
great grand things and isn't it always bullish?
There are two types of ETFs.
There's a futures ETF, which no one cares about.
And there's a spot ETF.
A futures ETF is you getting a little piece of paper that says,
hey, you have Solana, smiley face.
You have Solana smiley face.
And you are either placing a bet that it's going to go up or it's going to go down.
And that's all you have.
You don't have any exposure to the actual asset itself.
A spot ETF, however, you go and you get a little piece of paper,
and it says this is your share of the, in this case, Solana Spot ETF.
And then in this case, let's just say BlackRock then goes and acquires some Solana to hold.
So a spot ETF actually affects supply and demand, whereas a futures contract doesn't.
It's just a useless paper contract that does nothing for the markets.
But here's why we're still excited about...
the futures ETF for Solana,
because if you have a futures
ETF for Solana,
you will one day absolutely have a spot
ETF for Solana, assuming of course,
The futures ETF does not get the plug pulled on it early because of an extreme lack of interest.
So you're telling me there's a chance.
I'm telling you there's a chance.
But the futures ETF for Solana does mean the odds of getting a spot ETF for Solana are stronger.
Will, where did you get that piece of news?
And generally speaking guys-
I was like my notebook.
Yeah, that piece of paper.
How much can I buy that piece of paper for us?
How much can I buy that piece of paper?
Where do you get your news?
The Will Watson drew SOL smiley face on it.
My God.
It's an NFT.
Mint it for the show.
No, just your breaking news.
Where do you like to go for it?
What sites do you guys use when you're looking for crypto news?
Oh, I mean, you know, the first thing I peruse is the Twitter.
I mean, you know, if you're looking for crypto news, there's no place better than Twitter,
even though it's a bit of a cesspool, but, you know, so is all social media.
Um...
And yeah, I mean, you could literally start by like how I started building my Twitter was I just went into Google and I said, what are the biggest crypto?
personalities on Twitter. I went and followed all of them and then eventually you start finding other things.
So I go and I follow all the projects I'm interested in to get the latest updates.
And you just over time slowly start to refine your Twitter as people repost and comment on stuff and you
you kind of figure it out. And then over the years I have found other influencers, other people, all that kind of stuff.
You know, you can just start building and it takes time to really refine your crypto Twitter news feed.
Alex, what is it you've got pulled up here?
This is Crypto Panic.
It is a crypto-related news aggregator that collects stories from all over the place, including Twitter and other social media posts and then a whole host of different various crypto news outlets and stuff.
They have different rating system.
The rating system is kind of, you know, it's a little bit trolly.
It's very DJ.
But it's like a social, you know, rating system.
And I'm not sharing it on the screen because it's such, it's small, it's basically just a text feed headlines.
That's it.
Yeah.
It's great.
It's fantastic.
They've not updated the way that it looks in many years and it's perfect.
The way it is, I look at it.
every single day, two to three times a day,
just to get a quick scan of everything.
So they have a constant feed on one side
that is literally everything.
You can sort by keyword if you're looking for
Solana related news or XRP related news
or Bitcoin related news, whatever.
And then on the other side, there's a trending section, which has to hit a certain threshold of engagement.
And we always joke that Charles is constantly paying for at least one Cardano story to be featured in the trending section at all times because it seems like...
And it was me!
It seems like there's always something.
And today, yeah, today it's expert analysts watch Cardano Whale make massive buy.
And that was Will.
Surprise.
Surprise.
Yeah.
Generally speaking, there are other websites too, like CoinDesk, Coin Telegraph, but a lot of these, you know, be careful when you're reading news on crypto sites because a lot of these sites will not very clearly distinguish between what is like a press release that somebody paid to put there and what is their journalistic coverage.
You know, they'll put those articles next to each other.
The other thing, too, they like to jump the gun because breaking news is where you get all the clicks if you're first.
Yeah.
Everyone in crypto, and this is just a news thing, it's not just a crypto thing, but everyone will jump the gun with the headline, and then you'll see that headline.
And if you go, that's too good to be true.
You should probably see if anybody is talking about it out there in the news section of Google.
And if no one is, well, it might not be true.
Well, and just, yeah, grain of salt always.
I am.
reminded of the most recent, most notorious example of a breaking news story that Coin Telegraph wrote about,
which turned out to be sourced exclusively from AIXBT, which was embarrassing for them.
Oh, did you also see everybody on Twitter being like,
Donald Trump put up the white paper for Bitcoin in the Oval Office?
And it was the same exact video where he unveils that they took the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
and put it up on the wall.
But they just like green screened it and put the Bitcoin white paper and everyone on Twitter was running.
Oh my God, he put up the Bitcoin white paper.
He's a Bitcoin bull and Maxi and all that kind of stuff.
And everyone was like, no, no, no, relax.
Oh my God.
That was the last one that people ran with.
That was a fake story.
I just have to read this comment.
My dad sent me a text this morning about the crypto.
So I sold all of it.
Yeah.
I thought that was fantastic.
We actually had another really quick question too about, do you guys think OTC trading is happening?
And I wanted to answer this person's question with absolutely.
OTC for people who don't know stands for over the counter.
And what it is is like peer to peer off the market.
It's like if I called Alex and was like, hey, Alex.
Do you, can I buy one of your Bitcoin?
Can I buy it for like, you know, 90,000 bucks?
And he'll be like 90.
Try 91, pal.
You know, you negotiate a price.
Sometimes it's intermediated by a company like Winter Mute that facilitates the service.
And, you know,
Large buyers often buy this way because if they just bought at what we call spot, meaning if they went to like Binance or Coinbase and paid market price to buy a lot or a, you know, a whatever asset, they could print a really big candle and move the market and, you know, cause FOMO or fear, essentially wrecking their trade.
Yeah.
So that's why they buy it over the counter.
It changes hands, doesn't impact the market because Alex isn't like reporting, you know, to Coinbase.
Hey, my trade went in.
It moved, you know, whatever.
And according to Wintermute, oh, go ahead.
I was just going to say, I find it to be funny.
personally that OTC trading of cryptocurrency is like widely looked at as a lot by a lot of people
is being sketchy when in fact it is the purest form. Yeah exactly.
Satoshi's vision. It's literally the way it was meant to be transacted and people are
people like get salty and sussed out when things happen like off of the centralized exchange.
Isn't that sketchy? Well, no, it's just one person selling directly to one person.
It is as Satoshi intended.
Um, somewhere he's looking down on us and smiling.
Yeah.
But OTC trading.
Or he's looking down and looking at meme coins and going, God, what do you buy out of the
East?
Yeah.
Far coin.
Wintermeet reports.
He's screaming up at us in anger.
Wintermute reports that year over year, OTC trading has grown significantly.
In 2024, it was up about 164% on their markets over 2023.
And in 2025, it's projected to grow 313%.
So it's absolutely picking up steam and it's probably a good indicator of adoption.
adoption by institutional or larger clients specifically.
Good question.
Yeah.
Guys, I got about five more minutes or so.
And then I do have to run.
Just FYI.
Then tell me.
Do you have a final thought?
Do you have a parting word of wisdom?
I still have five or so minutes.
You know,
I don't have to do a final thought just yet.
I don't have to do it.
You don't have to kick me out of here.
Yeah.
Yeah, out of here.
Fine.
I'll go.
I'll leave.
I'm not trying to.
I'm not trying to kick you, man.
I'm not trying to kick you.
I just,
you know,
wanted to make sure you had plenty of time.
Here,
let's do this.
Because there was a question at the very beginning.
I know we lightly touched on it with,
with Spade when he was here.
It was a hell of a question to kick off,
you know,
everything basically just,
what does all of this, what does all of this gobbledygook?
Yeah.
All this Web3, Defi, blockchain, crypto, et cetera, et cetera.
How is it going to impact the future for everyone?
You know, everyday people, everybody, regardless of who you are and what you do.
And I don't think all of us gave our bumper sticker answer to that.
And I'd be curious what you guys think, because I have a very specific
answer about it, I think.
Well, then, Will, why don't you go first?
And we can banter a bit, and then
you get out, and we'll answer a bit more.
I'd love to go first.
Alex, I wasn't listening.
Can you repeat the question?
I am serious, though.
I will absolutely die on this hill.
About some...
Well, anyway...
The question is, what are the key ways?
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
I was going to troll him.
What are the key ways, Will, that the world will be different after, you know, Web 3 at scale?
How is it actually going to change the world for everyday people?
What are some of the ways?
Oh, sure. Well, let's try to, let's look at some real world examples here. Remitant payments. And Spade mentioned this too. He lives in Thailand. He has family in France. He does cross-border payments all the time. And he gave the great example where if he goes through the traditional financial system, he gets hit with fees of $70 as opposed to just paying maybe like a couple of cents, right, using crypto. So now imagine.
You're not the CEO of a crypto company, but you are a blue collar working immigrant from one part of the world, working in another part of the world because they offer a much higher salary.
Your family's back in your home country.
You're not earning a ton of money, but the money you're sending back is worth way more in your home country than where you currently are, which is why you're doing what you're doing to help provide for your family.
$70 out of that is a very large chunk.
of money out of what could be, you know, maybe just a thousand bucks, you know, something like that.
And you want that money to go back to your family.
So crypto helps provide an environment where you keep money within your hands and within the hands of the people you're trying to get money to as opposed to middlemen.
and service people, right? And you can use that in a whole bunch of different examples.
Another example I gave, that's very finance specific, but I gave it earlier, so I'll retouch upon it,
is you create a much more fair financial environment that is also far more accessible to people.
If you are in...
Africa, you might not have access to traditional financial markets.
If you're somewhere in Southeast Asia, you might not have access to traditional Western
financial markets.
If you are in Latin America, you may not have access to traditional banking and loans.
But if you have an internet connection, you can get a loan through crypto.
at a far better rate than you would have before.
Because if you have less money,
you get hit with higher rates on your loans.
If you have more money, you get given more money for free.
Essentially, not for free, but less expensive at lower rates, right?
Crypto helps level that playing field.
It makes it more accessible for you to get money
and to build for your family and your community
at a fair rate, even if you are not rich, right?
Crypto can also help too.
I'll give another perfect example in someone's life.
You go on Ticketmaster and you go and you buy a ticket for a concert or sports, a sports event, a sporting event.
And the ticket prices have been jacked up because it's something very high demand.
Think of a Taylor Swift concert or think of like the Super Bowl or something like that.
Instead of having these predatory markets where you can then, A, like, yes, the price of those assets can go up based on market demand, but on top of that, you're going to hit with all these hidden fees, right?
So maybe you're already spending a bunch of money on something and you get hit with a whole bunch of hidden fees on top at the end.
Say goodbye to that.
I'm talking about NFT technology right now.
So what if that ticket was an NFT?
Yeah, you can buy that on the secondary market
and demand and supply will cause the price to go up and down,
but you won't get hit with an additional,
you know, some of the, we've seen headlines of egregious fees
from Ticketmaster.
Get rid of those, you know?
Enjoy life with less expensive.
So many things are expensive.
and only becoming more so.
I don't know why my screen here is fuzzy,
but are only becoming more so expensive.
So let's make them cheaper, right?
And then the last thing I'll provide,
I'll provide you an example from video gaming.
Today, you download a video game and it's software.
You don't actually own that game.
The game servers get turned off and it's just gone, it's gone, it's kaput.
That game doesn't exist.
You spent 60, maybe even $70 on that game.
But if you had digital ownership via NFT, you still own it.
Right.
If you can play it on your console, like there's a story mode for the game, not like multiplayer, which would have service.
You can still play the campaign.
You know, you can still have a good time.
You own that, even though it's a digital version.
Right.
So it's about ownership.
It's about...
lowering the barrier to entry on things.
It's about protecting people from predatory services.
It's about reducing fees.
It's about giving people control and ownership over their money to protect themselves,
their families, their loved ones, and their communities.
And that's what crypto is all about.
Ladies and gentlemen, there he is.
William, time to do my face routine.
Watson.
That's not what I'm about to do actually.
That was a comment from Robbie.
He said, I think he's got to go do his...
No, I already did that.
I did that way earlier.
I can tell, man.
You were glowing.
You were glowing this morning.
Thanks.
Yeah.
But I think that's a good final thought.
I don't think I can top that at all.
But I was curious to hear your answer, Evan.
So I'll stick around and Alex's and then I'll pop off.
Oh, you really?
Okay.
Well, then I'll be brief and let Alex go last.
I would just say that any job...
We rely on a computer to do, or excuse me, any job, damn it, rogue myself, any job we currently rely on a human to do that a computer could do better, more fairly, more accurately, is a good opportunity for Web 3 this technology to innovate and help us improve.
The grocer who takes your money at the checkout, the banker who counts out the notes and might make a sloppy mistake at your till.
Any person who is doing a job that a machine could do better can be displaced by that machine.
And the value the machine creates because it doesn't need to eat, because it doesn't need to sleep,
because it doesn't take holidays off.
It can't be bribed.
It can't make a silly mistake when it is a decentralized computer that we can all see.
We can all verify.
And all trust.
That's going to give us a tremendous amount of efficiency and freedom.
Right.
Not just in the ways we'll talk about practically these transactional ways of increasing our freedom with these tools, but freedom of our time, freedom of resources.
And I think it'll be one step towards experiencing more fully the goodness of life.
Alex, hopefully we didn't rug you with all we've given four different things.
What do you got?
So first, just to comment on Will's thoughts about remittance payments, because that's a really big one.
I just wanted to share a couple numbers that we'll put this in, I think, better perspective if you've never crunched them or looked at it.
Okay. Western Union processes on average between 250 million and 950 million transactions every year.
Damn.
Their revenue last year was over $4.5 billion.
transaction fee of between like $16 and $4 and kind of ranging in and around there.
So they made billions off of processing less than a billion transactions.
Their numbers are going up year over year because the need of people to send money to other people around the world is a big one.
Take your average high speed, high throughput, low fee blockchain.
and accounting for average gas fees for a single one person to one person raw fungible token transfer transaction fee.
So that would be like,
me sending one soul to Evan from my wallet to Evan's wallet.
Or one, I mean, pick anything.
One, whatever.
One, P-O-L, one, whatever.
Not ETH.
ETH, obviously, we know, has higher gas fees.
Interestingly, still on average, not as bad as Western Union, but more.
You could make all of those transactions for the year that cost well into the billions of dollars for Western Union to do.
for less than five grand.
We pay an unbelievable amount of money every year for a service that does not need to exist anymore
by people who are overcharging you to do something that a protocol can handle cheaper, faster,
more efficiently, and just overall better, more trusted.
Western Union processes transactions at 30 TPS on average, 30 transactions per second.
even your lamest blockchains that have never been tested at volume are doing more than that.
Then you take the bigger ones that are being tested at more and more and more volume,
and they absolutely dust it.
We don't need Western Union.
It's a scam.
It's a straight rip-off.
It's a straight drift.
And the problem is that with stuff like that, there's no...
There's no transparency into how these fees are calculated.
They just up rates to make more money to protect margins, to increase revenue, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
With a protocol, you don't need to guess.
You can check and see exactly what these things are charging.
You can opt out of it. There are tons of options.
And you can send it some other way that's cheaper.
There are plenty that offer gasless transactions now for various types and various methods and all this kind of stuff.
That's for me, like that really drives home the single biggest level up in using this stuff that I see every day.
As we talk about how can people make notable improvements to their financial situation, their financial status?
I hear all the time that, you know, okay.
One option is to set aside little bits of extra money to invest.
Right? That's a go-to piece of advice.
It's really easy to look at that and say, well, I don't have any extra money.
I paycheck to paycheck.
I spend everything on basic survivals.
And that's fair.
The reason that I bring it up is because I guarantee...
that if you look at the things that you're spending money on that are required,
you know, not fun.
You're not having fun.
Just paying for shit you need to pay for.
I guarantee someone's taking advantage of you.
I guarantee that in some way you're overpaying for something.
That's the reason that this system is the way that it is because we get locked into it
and forced to stay there, which means if you're paying for things of necessity,
you can be taken advantage of and you won't leave when the experience is bad because you can't.
Right. Like you can't just opt out of the grocery store. You have the options that you have
available to you that are within reasonable travel distance from your home and that's how it is.
Same is true for the dollar system and all things it's attached to it. You are, you're confined.
by whatever banking options you have, by whoever you can get approved for, you know,
a credit card or a charge card through, wherever you can get approved for a loan for,
whatever rate you can get approved for, you're locked into all that stuff.
And it's very hard to escape trouble you've ever had with any of those finances.
That's how this shit's going to change the world.
Because the bigger these protocols get, the more user-friendly they get, the more accessible
they get, the easier it becomes for somebody to opt out.
of this predatory extractive system of payments, locking people into being bled dry constantly just to survive.
And every ounce that you're able to inch forward, someone's there to raise the rate on some necessary service that you are required to pay for and squeeze that last little bit of bonus you've ever been able to get.
away from you. That's that's why I'm such a defy maxi. That's why I am here doing this all the time,
because I truly believe that the escape for lots of people who are struggling is to be able to
get away from the predatory middle people who just milk them for every penny they have at every chance they get.
Well, and there's a lot of, there's a lot of Fugazi stuff happening in crypto.
That's like really that way still too.
Like somebody asked, do crypto credit cards have better rates?
You might think that, but mostly they're offered by Visa and MasterCard.
And the feature of crypto is just that you earn some interest back and crypto.com gets a slice for selling it to you kind of thing.
So the level up would be more, you know, like small local business that sells something that you need.
could choose to instead of processing payments through MasterCCC
and charging that 3% upcharge for the credit card fee, whatever,
starts accepting USDC and you have the option to simply pay the base network transaction fee
to send them stable coins, for example, that you don't need to pay, you know,
the 3.5% or whatever to Visa MasterCard, PayPal, Venmosel, cash app, whoever the middle person is.
That's what I mean. I don't mean the credit cards because yeah, like heaven said, those are all super centralized. Those are just gimmicks. I mean, the rewards can be good if you're into using a credit card and you're in a position where that's fine and it works for you. It can be nice to earn the rewards that way.
Not the same thing. That's not Defi.
Speaking of That's Not Defi, did you just see Moist Mike gave us this comment?
World Liberty Financial is to launch USD1, an institution-grade stable coin fully backed by U.S. treasuries and cash equivalence.
I would be interested to see more.
One commenter said, why did they always say institutional grade?
Institutional grade in crypto is quickly becoming the same thing as something in the consumer market for products being labeled as millspec or military grade.
I have literally never seen military grade.
Military grade, yeah. Milspec I've never seen, but military grade all the time.
It looks like it's going to.
Milspec and military grade are the same thing.
And basically, what's funny is that
millspec often just means
the cheapest contract available,
so it's not even that great.
But it's the same thing.
Everything's got to be institutional grade
because it just sounds good.
It's marketing stuff.
Well, and according to
The Cryptonomist and Fortune, I went with Cryptonomist because Fortune had a paywall.
They've launched on B&B chain and Ethereum, a current supply of $3.5 million, and the token is not currently tradable.
I'm not sure when it will become tradable, but the smart contract has been deployed.
And Binance CEO, CZ, Shang Pen Zhao has confirmed the news.
Interesting.
I can't.
I'm not surprised at all, though.
If I was a DeFi protocol, I would want a stable coin to get a piece of that pie.
I think Music Man is just in the comments constantly trying to play the world's biggest game of Made You Look.
I think so too.
I was going to say that.
Random ticker and just saying rocket and nothing's doing anything.
Hit me with the screen share, Alex, real quick.
So I can I can show people every time.
Every time Music Man post that, I go to Coin Gecko and I look.
The first one I saw him say was Lightcoin and I looked and Lightcoin is rocketing.
It's up.
1.2% on the hour, 1.3% on the day.
And like many things, is up between 8% and 10% on the week.
You know, Sol has gone up.
Avax has had a 20% week.
Chainling's had a 20% week.
But what else was rocketing?
I think he said GRX.
I think he said, I don't know, maybe Cardano.
I don't know.
0.2%.
Everything's rocketing.
Thank you, music, man.
Also, really quick, speaking of rockets and things that were making us look, what's up with this new polka dot logo?
You see this?
Look at this little waiting for it to do it again.
Woo, look at that.
Do you want to guess how many years it's been like that?
Has it really been like that for a long time and I've never noticed?
Oh, yeah.
Or maybe I was on like low, low-fi Wi-Fi before.
Maybe your computer is just so bad that it couldn't process that tiny animation, but it's been like that for years.
Oh, my gosh.
Speaking of things that have been like this for years, we're coming up on, what is it, like two years, two and a half years of doing this show in its current format?
December 14th is the anniversary and we just passed it.
Sorry, I didn't get you anything.
It was six months ago.
or wow i can't count it was three three and a half months ago oh man well uh thank you for for sticking
it with me and and everybody thank you for sticking it with us this is about that time when we're
going to give some final thoughts we're going to ride our dogs and ponies off into the sunset so
if you've got a last minute question suggestion good joke what was a mug i know even a mug i
saw that you get me anything
Yeah, sorry, man.
Tell me why.
If you've got a question for us, then leave it in the comments or jump into the Discord
at Discord.g.g slash Rise Up.
Check out the premium memberships if you're interested in classes, coaching, or you just
want faster responses from us or to get into that group of people who are the most involved
in our community.
Excuse me, everybody there is great, but those people are exceptional and they're beautiful.
You know, if you join the premium plus membership, you get a rise up morning show mug for free, unlike Alex.
So, do you have a, do you have a final thought for us?
Just if you guys are still here and you're still learning and you're still paying attention and you're not checked out,
give yourself a round of applause and a pat on the back because...
Now, this is the important time. Whether this is just, you know, natural market tumult before a bull market continues or it's the start of a bear or it's something in between. When prices are what we would call boring, it's the most critical time to pay attention. And you guys are anyone listening, anyone paying attention, anyone continuing to learn and ask hard questions and be critical and all that sort of stuff.
you're setting yourself up to be the person that, you know, exit liquidity is envious of
the next time this shit runs because you've been here the whole time and well done.
Well done. My final thought is we have booked our stay in Toronto with a special shout
out and thank you to Joe for the recommendation. She was absolutely on top of it.
We would not have found a place so quickly or so comfortably without her.
We're going to be there for consensus the 12th through the 16th of May.
So the next task, Joe, is get your brain puzzling about the places that we could host a rise-up meetup.
a brewery, a dog park, a restaurant that doesn't mind people talking loudly.
I'm not sure, but we would really love to do something.
The trifect of...
things.
I threw the dogs in for you, man.
Just in case you missed home, you know.
We would love to see you there.
We're going to be there and we'll get all the good coverage.
Thanks to our friends at Polygon and we'll keep you posted.
That's obviously a lot of time, but make your plans now.
We'll be back tomorrow.
Same time, same place, 7 a.m. Central Standard time and we'll be in the Discord.
We'll post some links from Spade and Neutron there.
And, uh,
That's it, man. That's it. I don't have a good line to end on.
Sorry about it. Oh, here's my good line to end on is I have no idea. You know that's seen in
Willy Wonka when he gets in the elevator, the original one at the end, and he says, I've pressed
all these buttons except for this one. I don't know what this button does. I was recording some
new sounds for the soundboard, and I was taking him from our fun video that we did with Will.
And so I don't have these buttons labeled yet. The sounds aren't clipped yet, but
uh stay tuned for some new sounds coming to the show like hey there normies i have a brand
hey there normies oh yeah no at least a 10x yeah and remember if you sell you're a loser
loser i'm gonna clip you're a loser i think i've got i don't know how to sell this thing too
and uh maybe a couple of other fun sounds coming to the board but uh we're
We'll show them to you next time.
You got it also just my request would be,
ah, shit, he rugged us.
Ah, shit, he rugged us.
Okay, you got it.
And when it happens, we'll tell you about it right here on the Rise Up Morning Show.
Until then, my friends, everybody, stay safe.
Be well.
Rise up.
