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BTC nears $85K, Fink Bullish on Crypto, US stocks have a Bad Q1
Recorded: April 1, 2025 Duration: 0:56:56Space Recording
Short Summary
Significant developments include Circle's upcoming IPO, OpenAI's major funding round, and the launch of American Bitcoin Corp. The Financial Freedom Act could allow retirement funds to invest in crypto, indicating a trend towards broader adoption. Shaw and AI-16Z are launching a token launchpad, and 6529 is using memes to test decentralized governance, showcasing innovation in the space.
Full Transcription
good morning good morning gm gm everyone welcome to another episode of homo power
that is who's that april 1st 2025 finally. Finally, April.
YouTube is here, a fresh month.
Feels like maybe a fresh start, depending how Liberation Day goes.
Tomorrow there's green on the board here this morning.
Now we're just hoping it is not an April Fool's joke.
We're going to break it all down on today's show.
Folks, we weren't sure if we're going to have Farouk with us.
We've got him.
Live from Switzerland.
Farouk, Jim, how are you doing?
Good morning. How are you guys doing? Actually, I'm in the French part, so it's BJ over here. You know what I mean? I'm good. I'm vibing. I'm somewhere on the border of France
and Switzerland in the middle of the Alps with bad Wi-Fi. And apparently, I have to pay a million
dollars for everything and everywhere I want to go.
So it is what it is.
We're vibing.
At least I'm not in fucking winter Montreal.
Yeah, we were just chatting before the show about your itinerary over the next five weeks.
Maybe give our listeners a quick glimpse
into what you're doing there.
Yeah, we are here for Watches and Wonders.
It's like the biggest watch fair in the world if you're
a watch enthusiast you've probably seen all the leaks this last couple of days of this and that
so it's pretty big um it's like what crypto conference would you compare it to i don't even
know but it's uh it's a big one and uh and so it's good we're here to meet a few of the folks
i don't know what mandel's laughing about, but he's laughing at me for sure.
And what are you laughing about?
Nothing.
Let me ask.
What are you laughing about?
I'm super happy to see you in your watches.
For us cutting out a little bit.
Hopefully we can get you back while we do that mando
jim how you doing i'm doing great man um back to our usual show just me and you
i i you are definitely the mvp it feels like like like i'll obviously i dip in and out for the end of the shows, but Farouk likes a holiday,
and you're
dependable. You're often like the guy
now every day.
You're like what I was
a few
months ago when it was just me,
and then Ovi would turn up and say nothing for the whole show.
and then Ovi would turn up and
say nothing for the
whole show.
We need to get the Tyler family on holiday.
We are overdue.
We skipped our spring travels this year, moving into the new house.
And Wifey let me know about it last night.
She said she's ready for a vacation.
So we'll see.
Maybe.
Yeah, I'm ready, but.
I mock it, though.
I know.
I still like showing up every day.
I still remember what my web2 job was like,
and I can tell all of our listeners without a doubt that I enjoy this substantially more.
I agree with that.
It's like showing up every day.
Folks, what are we talking about on today?
It is Liberation Eve.
Liberation Day is tomorrow.
We have no idea what that means.
I think uncertainty and volatility are at highs.
We're going to talk about that.
Crypto was rebounding.
It looks like it's selling off now.
We have Larry Fink warning the US about some competition from Bitcoin.
The Trumps are getting deeper into crypto.
Circle looking to IPO here at the end of this month.
The Financial Freedom Act may be letting folks use their 401ks to invest into crypto.
Brian Armstrong arguing for interest-bearing stables.
We had some big news out of Kaido and Noise.
The WIF funds, they're refunding them, folks.
It's not going on in the sphere.
We'll talk about that, what it might mean for the meme coin trenches
and a big day for AI with OpenAI dropping a major raise.
And we'll talk about some more meme coin NFT action as well.
Before we dive in,
shout out to our partners first, Galaxis. Galaxis is a Web3 platform empowering creators and brands to build unstoppable communities with full ownership and independence, trusted by icons
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As always, with that, Mando, if you're ready, let's get into it.
Hey, everyone.
So, yeah, we did have a good day yesterday.
Bitcoin didn't go to zero.
Actually went all the way up to nearly 85k.
It's in the last five minutes or so.
We're kind of back down to 82.8.
So not doing that well with the US stock market open.
This is a backdrop of US stocks having their worst quarter since 2022 on a relative
to the world basis.
So relative to the world, it's like the worst, worst first quarter in like 30 or 40 years.
Like it's, it's been a crazy, crazy underperformance versus everyone else.
Gold had a great quarter.
Gold again had best starts of the year in like 50 years it looks like
um so you have a lot of those sort of headlines just because it's the end of the quarter and
everyone taking stock a little bit here um it it looks like um yeah it doesn't it doesn't look
like we've started that well to the previous, this quarter at least, just because tomorrow is the Trump tariff day,
liberation day or whatever you want to call it. And we'll see how that like spooks markets. So
I expect things to still be volatile. You've seen Bitcoin dominance has obviously held onto its
highs. You saw some more like risk-taking activity take place.
Fartcoin went above 500 million again.
And SPX had a big move.
It looks like it's back down now, just below actually,
but still one of the biggest gainers of the day again, Fartcoin.
So still a decent move there.
And the winners in the L1s were mainly the DeFi coins again.
So it's stuff like Sonic and Bearer Chain,
which have been probably the strongest over the last 24 hours.
Weaker things are,
I guess the weaker things are kind of some of the other memes,
if I'm honest.
But yeah, it definitely feels like the strongest stuff is in DeFi
and selected means as well. In terms of headlines, like you said, there's been some
more positive news coming out from the political side and that we're going to get some sort of bill
introduced called the Financial Freedom Act, which could allow people to invest their retirement
funds, their 401ks
in crypto, which would be another big benefit. And then you just had Larry Fink being super bullish.
But nothing crazy was just like getting people bullish other than more stables being printed.
And it's just the same sort of trend. We did see a good sign for the AI sector yesterday is that OpenAI
did a funding round which valued it at $300 billion. So there clearly still is a bid for
USAI. They raised $40 billion at that valuation. So I don't know if that's going to be taken
super positively in, like amazingly positively in public markets, but it's probably a good sign
for everyone that, you know, they're still able to raise tens of billions of dollars
at a $300 billion valuation. I think that's the highest funding round for a private company ever
there. It does feel as though Trump is going to follow through with these tariffs tomorrow, but is already kind of laying the ground for trade deals after that.
I think people like the UK will probably be first in line.
Interestingly, yesterday you saw that China, Japan and South Korea said they would jointly respond to the tariffs.
And you don't often see those three countries agreeing on much.
So definitely an interesting move there from the geopolitical standpoint
that they would go and do that and probably points to the idea
that they're probably going to hold true or strong against these tariffs.
true or strong against these tariffs.
There's been some larger military drills around Taiwan at the moment.
I don't know if that...
Taiwan, in my mind, is just kind of a time bomb at this stage
of when China might invade just after Ukraine and Greenland
and now this. It does feel like that could always
be something on the tip.
I don't know when it would happen, but let's see.
It looks like actually the sell-off that just happened may have just been some weaker ISM
PMI data, which basically points to manufacturing data.
And that's maybe indicating that we are in
a weaker economic zone than
people predict. So we've taken a bit
of a dump on the back of that.
You know, weaker
economies normally
would mean more stimulus. So hopefully
that's how people view it.
That's it, really.
It was just the same trend.
TradFi, more bullish than ct on crypto
more stable um some light outperformance from fart coin uh and then uh bit bit of just range
bound trading like we're still back at 83k now again straight straight back there for bitcoin
yeah it's it feels like we're just gonna chop until we figure out
the whole liberation day tariff news and how much was a bluff how much is real
where are the the chips all gonna fall i think that that's kind of my gut read
on all this right now the the larry fink news i thought was interesting, but I mean, this is kind of just the rhetoric that we've seen shopped around a bit over the last few years, basically just saying that if the U.S. doesn't chip away at the debt, that the U.S. dollar could lose its standing to digital assets like Bitcoin.
So I think if you're a Bitcoin fan, of course, you love seeing things like this. The Trump administration, notably going after
the debt. So I don't think this is anything necessarily that would be news to them. But
Larry continues on the press tour. I think another interesting headline, we didn't get a chance to
talk about this yesterday. It actually happened early Monday, is that the Trump family is going deeper
into crypto. And Mando, he said
when we were talking about how
how the US could potentially
operationalize a strategic Bitcoin
reserve via mining. And then here we get the news
yesterday. So the Trump sons have now
inked a deal to invest a large chunk in this Bitcoin mining firm. The quick TLDR. So HUD8,
it is a major digital infrastructure and Bitcoin mining firm. They've launched a new company called
American Bitcoin Corp. American Bitcoin. Home homegrown Bitcoin, folks, in partnership.
It's literally going to be homegrown Bitcoin.
Homemine.
Bitcoin.
So they're doing this in partnership with Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
This comes after they contributed the majority of their ASIC miners to American Data Centers,
which is a company led by Eric Trump in exchange for a majority stake.
Now, again, they rebranded it as American Bitcoin.
Their goal is to be the world's largest and most efficient pure play Bitcoin miner.
And they want to be publicly listed as both a miner
and then a strategic Bitcoin reserve development
company.
So I don't know exactly if that means they're planning to build their own
strategic reserve or perhaps contribute to the American strategic Bitcoin
reserve or both.
Well,
I think this is just the most natural move for the U S what the U S does have
is cheap energy and various different forms of it.
So I think getting into mining just makes sense. Does it surprise me that the Trump family
themselves are getting in the middle of that and probably scraping some off the top? No,
not at all. It seems par for the course of the Trumps in crypto. So yeah, they're probably going to do this. Maybe they'll get some beneficial government deal. Who knows? But I think this is how the strategic
Bitcoin reserve is most likely going to be built. Some form of partnership with state-backed or
positive subsidies for these sort of companies where they pay in Bitcoin or in return,
they pay their taxes in Bitcoin, something like that.
So I think that this to me seems the most obvious way
for them to build Bitcoin.
Can I ask as well, like taking apart the fact
that we all own Bitcoin, do you not think
that this is the best way for them
to build their Bitcoin reserve?
Like as an American taxpayer right set aside like a bag holder because i think that that is kind of the
question that could that get through congress like as an american taxpayer do you not think
them getting into money makes more sense than then selling gold to buy bitcoin yes Yes, 100%. I think anyone who's
logical and reasonable
would want them
to accumulate
a reserve in a budget neutral way
not just take taxpayer money and start
buying a risky asset even
though we all believe in it.
On paper or conceptually
I want them to do things that are as flood proof as possible.
And that make as most sense as possible.
And this is a very logical way to do it.
And we've talked about even long-term how you might need governments to help subsidize mining anyway,
as the incentives to run these operations start making less and less sense.
So I think this is something that probably may have needed to happen anyway.
And I'm happy to see the U.S. doing it.
I think my caveat to all of this.
So I think that's bullish, very bullish.
The bear side is I am getting very concerned about how deeply the Trump family is getting integrated with various crypto companies and the optics of that.
And like we applauded our crypto czar, David Sachs, for divesting all of his personal crypto assets ahead of taking that position.
Now the Trumps are doing the exact opposite.
We're on a weekly basis.
They're getting deeper and deeper into the game.
So just in the past week,
they announced they're going to launch the crypto ETFs,
crypto.com.
They have a stable coin now, USD1,
with World Liberty Financial,
which it kind of just came out
that they're now like the majority owner co-founders,
like the co-founders turned over to an entity
that is controlled largely by the Trump family in World Liberty Fives. now, like the majority owner co-founders, like the co-founders turned over to an entity that
is controlled largely by the Trump family in world Liberty Fives. So they're huge owners of that.
Now they're owning this Bitcoin mining firm and we're starting to see it in Congress, right? I,
I read decrypt stories every single day. Last week it was Elizabeth Warren chirping the stable
coin bill for trying to enrich Elon and Trump. Now we've got another person in Congress who's saying basically all these Trump family dealings
are making the regulation they're trying to put through more complicated.
And I agree.
I mean, I've been calling out since the start, right?
Like, I'm not a big fan of what Liberty Financial is.
Essentially a vehicle with which they're going to enrich themselves. calling out since the start right like i'm not a big fan of what liberty financial is essentially a
a vehicle with which they're going to enrich themselves um and this is after the trump
meme coin as well right god knows how much they were made on that so um yeah like this is if this
was happening in nigeria we'd probably call a spade a spade. But in America, and then obviously, you know, so divisive, the politics over there that
you call out this stuff is seen as being political.
But yeah, this is very, very clearly like sort of a kickback sort of organization here,
World Liberty Financial.
And I'd be very wary of what the Trumps are doing.
The Trump family, that is.
Yeah.
But I think this is one of
my biggest concerns right now yeah yeah it may come back and bite them and i think i think people
in crypto should maybe maybe see that too i think on ct the general feeling about world liberty
financial is calling a spade a spade like they don't it's not like super benefit beneficial
when they announce stuff it's always like oh, oh God, what's happened here?
But it does feel as though more broadly,
it's more broadly not being denounced.
And it's a shame because he came in
as like the first crypto president.
Of course, he's more than that to most people,
but at least to CT.
And then he did put forth these thoughtful executive orders
and it looked like they were trying
to make thoughtful policy.
And it still looks like they are doing that.
But-
Yeah, the policy is very different from this.
This is just the World Liberty Financial stuff
and what the Trump family, I think, is doing.
It's difficult to know
because US politics works like this, right?
It works for money.
Your political system is incredibly money-driven.
So to actually get things through,
even on a political basis, requires money.
Like any industry that needs to get anything done
has to lobby and spend money on politicians.
So maybe this is just exposing
what's happening for other industries anyway.
You know, I'm sure there's huge lobbying
that gets done by the oil industries
and the tobacco industries and the gun lobbies.
There's huge, huge lobbying by all sorts of organizations,
pharma, but it does feel as though the Trumps are going to benefit
the most from the lobbying, let's say, of crypto.
of crypto.
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
I agree.
I think it's one we just have to continue to monitor.
We've been seeing it
playing out. It looks like they're getting deeper
and deeper into it. Hopefully
the policy can be separated enough
and then we can make enough progress in the near future
that we won't have
to worry about this becoming an overly
partisan issue
and perhaps reversing in four years.
That is my biggest concern, but that's pretty far out.
We'll continue to monitor it.
A few other macro stories on the day.
We talked about the – you mentioned the Financial Freedom Act.
I don't have a clear understanding right now how easy it is for most Americans to invest in crypto via their 401ks.
I know via IRAs it's possible already.
My personal 401k at Vanguard, I cannot.
So this would be a big one.
But that's a Vanguard.
Vanguard. I think that's a Vanguard thing.
I think that's a Vanguard thing.
Yeah, it's a Vanguard thing.
So I don't know exactly what the impact of the Financial Freedom Act will be and exactly like which private 401k holders like this is going to change.
But in general, I've said this for a while that I think when we talk about bullish catalysts, the infinite twop from 401ks is a huge part of what drives bitcoin in larger assets
forward here in the near future i hadn't been paying attention to that you couldn't do this
with your retirement fund like i didn't know that you had separate regulation for 401ks versus
um generally being able to invest in mutual funds like like the pension funds that I have, I can direct the funds that they're also going to be in,
or at least there's normally a selection of funds.
So maybe I thought this was naturally happening anyway, but it will,
this will happen.
There's no doubt in my mind that this will get pushed through.
Like this is obvious that they should be able to do that as well.
So particularly for actively managed funds, I guess for some of the passive funds, you
can imagine if in like 20 years, Bitcoin goes to zero and everyone realizes that they've
missed the state pension funds in Bitcoin, that can be a bit controversial.
So I don't know for like the passively managed ones, but i think they should be able to i think it'll happen other things they should be able
to invest in this yeah and i get everyone still has the choice right um and he tried to put this
forward in 2022 2023 he got it failed under the more democratic controlled Congress. So we'll see if they're able
to push it through this time. I think another very interesting story, maybe I think this might
be the biggest story of April in crypto, it's going to be up there is the circle IPO. So it
hasn't been officially confirmed, but it looks like they're trying to IPO in late April.
They've got bankers now hired JP Morgan and Citi to lead this, targeting a valuation between $4 and $5 billion.
And why is this a big deal?
I feel like everyone on CT, probably broader, now permeating beyond CT
and into more mainstream. People acknowledge
stablecoins, huge use case
for crypto. They're rooting
for them as a way
of getting more digital asset adoption.
But the billion dollar question is
how do you make money on stablecoins? And no one
really has an answer for that
that I've seen.
Not a good answer, at least.
This could be one, right?
Yeah, I 100% think so.
I think if I'm to think about
the most likely firms to IPO in the US,
Circle was like their number one.
It would have been like touted.
The other ones are Ripple, Kraken,
potentially this American Bitcoin Corp.
You know, there's a number of different ones
that could look to IPO.
This is only a stable coin like Circle.
It's just an amazing role.
The other thing that you saw with the stable coin act,
which I think you pointed out that they're not allowing yield bearing
stables in the U S.
So like they've basically just said, yeah, circle,
you just keep the money.
So circles got this incredible business model where the actual law stops them
from paying anyone um
no i don't know if that could change in the future but yeah it's uh it's a it's a pretty
good thing to get involved in buying it would be really sad if the most bullish thing in crypto
this year was circle but but but it may be they have a great business model they're clearly in the in crowd versus tether
um in the us they've got government regulation on the inside they've managed to get it so the
regulation literally forbids them from paying anyone out on the money they're making it's great
great great to be jeremy ellier i i think i would be a buyer at a $4 to $5 billion IPO.
I mean, that can't be the market cap of Circle, is it?
Wow.
Okay, I'd be a buyer there.
Oh, 100%.
I'm a buyer of that.
Let me have a look.
So Circle's market cap is what exactly?
It's $60 billion now?
Well, that's the stablecoin market cap.
Yeah, and they're making 4%, right, on that roughly.
So now they're making $2.4 billion a year in free,
well, assuming an operating cash flow or gross profit,
and then it's just costs.
I mean, maybe they've got high high costs I don't know how much
Jeremy's paying himself but that seems cheap versus at least first on a revenue multiple
that seems very cheap yes I guess that the the variables there is it's basically a play on not only stablecoin size,
but also US bond yields.
So if you think US bond yields are about to collapse
down to like 1%, 2%,
then maybe Circle isn't the right play
because it'll have to like double its market cap,
that sort of valuation.
But-
This is interesting.
In private secondary markets, they were valued at roughly 5 billion in July. but in private
secondary markets they were valued at roughly
5 billion in July
it feels like they would
have to be you would have to raise
their valuation from July
like a lot has changed
since July 2024
oh okay well yeah
their market caps tripled
USDC I of USDC.
I think USDC was about 20 billion back in July.
We can check.
Yeah.
USDC market cap.
So this time last year.
This time last year.
Yeah, so Jan 2024.
Oh, sorry, we're not in January. We're in March.
$29 billion, so they've
2x'd it.
They've 2x'd it in a year.
So, yeah, you'd have to assume
that it's higher valuation than that.
Right.
Maybe we get a chart like Newsmax.
Did you see this Newsmax IPO yesterday?
Are we back?
Are we in the IPO?
Well, now I saw your tweets and I was like, oh, God, it's the depth of the bear.
We're tweeting about penny stocks.
Half of my tweets yesterday were about non-crypto things.
This was a wild time.
Apologies for the quick side.
This thing went up 100% on its opening day,
and then it's up another 70% today.
We're doing pink slits.
We're doing pink slits on the side.
It's literally flashing pink,
which is probably a good warning sign to change topics you mentioned
on-chain interest
so you're right
this is not going to be in the first
round of stablecoin bills that are expected
to get pushed through Congress I think people
do expect it to be perhaps in the next wave
Brian Armstrong pinning an essay yesterday,
effectively starting to argue for it.
And the reason why they should,
he kind of goes through
how basically they aren't allowed,
banks and crypto companies
should be allowed to do this.
Currently, crypto companies
aren't allowed to while banks can,
but then they offer much lower rates
to consumers. So consumers are
going to be the ones who win here, global access, and then how it's going to be good for U.S.
Treasuries. So it seems like a pretty slam dunk case. It feels like one that would go over well
with this administration. So I think it's more a matter of time on this. I think they're going to
lay the foundation with the current stablecoin bills
in Congress now, and then round two will be interest-bearing.
But that could be...
That would be the best thing for everyone.
You can invest in treasuries.
Like Maple, for example, is a really good site that I've used
for investing in treasuries like maple for example is a really good site that i've used for investing in
treasuries before on chain um so you can't you can't sorry there's no impossible for you to do
that but stable coins that give you yield that would be ideal that would be ideal
so another one that's a longer a longer story line to watch but b but Brian Armstrong already raising his voice.
So I think you like to see that.
It kind of rounds out the big macro headlines.
We want to get down the risk curve a bit here.
Yeah, let's get down and dirty.
Let's find out what's going on with Fartcoin today.
Yeah, let's go straight to Fartcoin.
Why not?
Thank you for bringing that up.
The most beautiful
of the globe
is Fortcoins.
The leading
risk indicator
for all markets
right now
is painting the most beautiful
cup and handle setup
that we've seen
across markets right now.
So I woke up
to this thing
at 530 million.
It was up 30% on the day. It sold
off a bit. Still hanging out
at $500 million, which is kind of wild to think
about, given the
macro uncertainty and volatility.
So clearly people are betting on this thing.
And...
Yeah, Farouk even bought something he said.
Yes. I don't know if Farouk
is still with us on the spaces. If he wants to chime
in on his Fartcoin purchase, he's more than welcome to. But if we have a nice Liberation Day surprise, there's going to be an early beneficiary of that, 100%. And I think we're going to see this coin rip up quite a bit i can't tell you how much as a non-american i hate the term liberation day it's just and that's not just being british but like it is
just such an annoying term liberation day for tariffs it is some very interesting branding
especially against the global backdrop they're going to linger in our fourth point you know
he's there.
I'm in the shower, actually. I figured I'd
just take it to the shower and listen to you guys.
I just turned it off for a second.
Yeah, I have to go to dinner and
I have to say, you guys want a great
show. I'm listening for the
first time in my life to Twitter Spaces in the
shower, and I'm learning a lot
about Bonds and Yields and Circle
and Brian Armstrong and Farquhar.
I did buy Farquhar at $440 million, man.
Don't you be proud.
I was in the lounge last night.
It was at $440 million.
I'm like, this is going to be an expensive trip.
We're going to Switzerland.
Why don't I make a small trade?
Small.
It's really nothing significant.
But, you know, it paid for Vanessa's lower piano summer walks this morning.
So, not mad at that.
I think tomorrow could be a big day.
Tomorrow, big day.
Tomorrow's going to be a big day.
Sure, yeah.
Stop market.
Stop markets.
I have a genuine question for you, Mando.
Do you guys think this is a bluff and tomorrow's genuinely going to be some sort of relief?
this is a bluff and tomorrow's genuinely going to be some sort of relief or do we think this is
extended like not great you know i mean because tomorrow's actually big day right i think he's
going to follow through like just noticing him and his negotiating pattern like he's he's pulled
out at the last minute a number of times and i think he's actually going to follow through this
time i think he's going to be negotiating with people with the tariffs in place essentially and being like he's going to
walk them back so i think this might be the amongst the the highest amount of tariffs that
you start to see in the u.s um and then he'll walk them back with trading partners or ratchet them up potentially with people who continue to not play ball.
But this is going to be the starting position, I think.
The starting position is we're adding 25%.
And that, if it does play out like that, you can make a case that that would also line up with a bottom scenario with forward
looking markets who have priced in the worst we've pal came out and said it you know they're
pricing in like the worst case scenario with tariffs so trump comes out hard-hitting does
exactly what he said puts them all on the table, and then April 3rd,
okay, now we get the headlines from Bloomberg,
Trump and Mexico in negotiations to lower tariffs.
Yeah, look, I would agree with that,
that it's probably a bottom for certain stocks.
The reason why the US stock market is sold off,
in my opinion, is not because of
tariffs. Tariffs don't really affect NVIDIA that much. They helped Tesla. Tesla makes all those
cars in the US. I think the US stock market is sold off because of a deflation of the AI valuation, like perception evaluation
for these Magnificent Seven stocks.
This level is now at the back to where it was last year.
It's officially down 20%, which means it's entered a bear market now, the Magnificent
Seven. So I don't know if tariffs is what Trump has said he was going to go out there and do,
you know, like rebuild the manufacturing base of the US,
encourage foreign direct investment.
But that might like, as you may also know, like these seven stocks,
they make up a ludicrous proportion of the US stock market.
And that's what's being challenged here, in my opinion.
More, many of these are not necessarily a net loser from tariffs, right?
Particularly some of the, like the ones I just mentioned.
So I think, I think it's, it's been more than that.
And that story, I don't know if it's fully played out.
To put it in perspective, for example, Tesla, there's a story.
You might think it's all some political thing that's happening.
And part of it is, you know, like their sales in Europe are down something like 60% year
on year because Europe hates Elon at the moment.
Part of it is that.
But Tesla's valuation has never really been about being a car company.
It's valued than all the other car companies combined, right?
It's valued as an AI and robotics and potentially self-driving company.
Two months ago, Baidu and what's the other super famous China,
China, BYD, sorry.
They came out and said,
we are going to give self-driving tech for free
as standard in our cars, as standard.
And there are certain levels to this.
They have the ones where you don't even have to touch the wheel
as standard in China.
I think Tesla's current model is like level two
and there's like level three and level four is like completely autonomous.
So China is coming after a lot of these tech valuations
in several different ways where it's self-driving cars,
it's robotics.
There have been a ton of stories, again, about Chinese robotics.
Also with the demand
for gpus uh which is affecting nvidia because people are saying these llms aren't going to
cost as much to train with things like deep seek so it's actually been more than that it's not just
like testers down because of tariff tariffs tesla went up when these tariffs were announced because you know um you know tariffs on
tariffs on us uh autos from abroad would help Tesla because they make them more make more in
the US so I don't think that that just this is just a tariff story I think that's that's kind
of the politics being seen it all actually this actually think it's just a deeper story than that.
Yeah,
that would make sense.
The other aspect,
I've started to see some of the,
the bears,
the bear posters on the timeline calling out the,
the Japanese yen carry trade 2.0 as a part of this.
Have you been following that?
Like,
cause we clearly saw like the carry trade sell off last year.
We, then we, we be shape recovered carry trade sell-off last year. Then we B-shaped recovered.
Is that another factor at play?
Is that being overblown right now?
That's above my pay grade.
I think it's a factor.
It's not a great sign that you have to have unwinding of those sort of trades.
I think what really caused the drama there was this was a sudden move.
And now it's kind of like viewed that generally Japanese rates are going
higher.
I think there is an underlying worry globally that we could be in,
we were on the precipice of potentially a sovereign crisis at a non-small
economy um the the people like the uk is often mentioned japan is mentioned a lot um
and i think that's one of the persistent worries so like yeah if if japan japanese rates continue to rise it could
be it could be a problem for like global markets yeah so that's kind of yeah i don't know like
that that is partly a worry i actually just think this is more people are worried about this is a
dot-com style deflation than tariffs in my opinion. Tariffs are,
they're kind of uncertain,
but they do help certain US stocks arguably.
So it's arguably,
yeah,
like I don't think tariffs are the big thing here,
but yeah,
that is my view.
People might say different things.
Very fair. I want to respond in a second, folks real quick.'re listening in the spaces the rollbit code is april first day of april so we
will be doing our spins here in probably about 10 15 minutes or so for me personally i feel like one
of the differences between the dot-com bubble is that these are still like the max seven are very real companies
with very strong businesses and it's not like the pet.com of the world who are reaching crazy
valuations because of their website so i i don't know i haven't dug 100 i agree with 100 like these
are not these are not those sort of businesses in, they were already a huge bit of the stock market, right?
Like the FAANG stocks is what they used to be,
which had a bit more of a social media style edge to it, right?
They were still a huge bit of the cycle before.
And like Google has, or Alphabet has tons of different businesses.
You know, Amazon has tons of different businesses. Amazon has tons of different businesses.
That's why
I thought the open AI news was kind of interesting
today. They still got a $300 billion
valuation.
DeepSeek was made for what?
Who knows? But definitely nowhere close
to $300 billion.
So the fact that they got that
was kind of a bit eye-opening.
I mean, SoftBank were the ones leading the round, as per usual,
who are known for sometimes buying tops.
But, yeah, the main one here is NVIDIA.
NVIDIA is now comfortably dropped out of being the top three stocks.
Microsoft was another one, which is kind of, kind of was built up.
You know, Microsoft was a returning story on the back, on the back of it,
it being at the front of the AI trend and Microsoft had four negative months now.
I think it's like the first time in like 20 years. So right. Yeah.
Someone just put Amazon does a hundred billion. That's the point there.
Some of these, some of these stocks,
we've actually held up slightly better are a bit more diversified.
Facebook has great free cash flow.
Amazon has great free cash flow.
Apple, great free cash flow.
But some of the other ones
were really an AI story.
So I agree.
I do not think this is a dot-com
destruction or deflation.
But I think that's,
if NVIDIA does drop another 20% here,
that's going to cause some damage, I think.
Sure.
To the market.
Yeah.
I don't feel like it will,
but if you're on the Bob Lucas camper,
you think we're going to continue going down into Juneune i guess that's a real scenario on the table um so we'll certainly
see i appreciate your macro thoughts on this as always we may know more here uh in the days to
come we will certainly find out i i want to come back to a couple web 3 stories and but before we round
out the show here we did get a somewhat interesting new product launch out of kaido and this company
called noise so i think they they've been teasing this a bit i think brett actually mentioned this
so this is going to be a protocol on mega ETH noise. Their tagline is effectively trading attention.
They partnered with Kaido using Kaido's backend data to effectively stand up a platform where you can go long or short trends.
So the exact, those heat maps that Kaido shares, like Monad is leading an L1 mind share today. Now on noise,
you can go long or short that. So if you think Monad is going to be a big trender from an
attention standpoint over the next week and month, you can go long or the opposite. They just had a
big announcement. You think that is going to dissipate and slow down
over time. You can go short. It looks like this is in beta, somewhat of a limited set of ideas
and concepts that you can go long or short. Right now, it looks like it's just a handful of chains,
a handful of apps. So if you hate PumpFun, you can go short pump funds attention right now.
Similarly with, with OpenSea or Farcaster, there's a handful of infrastructure apps on here
as well. Like where this gets a little bit more interesting is if they get into some of the
broader trends. So like Kaido has those more category maps, like crypto AI, DeFi, meme coins,
where you could actually bet on what sectors of crypto you think might have the most attention.
So like a great trade in January was short crypto AI, long DeFi.
Now those have started to even out a bit.
So in theory, that's what you will be able to do on here.
It's a very interesting concept.
I think one of the challenges is,
can Kaido's data still be gamed?
So we've seen folks complaining on the timeline this week
about yappers who aren't creating good content
getting to the top of leaderboards by gaming it,
by 3-3, that type of thing.
Well, if there's real money on the line
on platforms like Noise,
are we going to see that tenfold?
And we've seen it
in Fancy Top. People
care enough about Fancy Top to bot their
heroes. And there was a point
in time where
you basically couldn't win without
being botted. And then, of course, the team came out to try to do some anti-bot measures,
but it seems like the folks who were botting are always a step ahead.
There's real capital on the line.
I think noise is going to have to figure that out,
but it's an interesting concept to be able to do this.
I think Mando's is something you would take a look at.
It just feels like another way to gamble
doesn't it um yeah like i guess i guess i'd have a look at it i i would be very much wary of what
you just said like i don't know if i'd i don't know if i trust yeah like i don't know if i trust
the i'd bit if the bigger the capital the more people will just game it right so it feels as though this is good when
it's not a huge amount of capital and then you can be like it's just some funny parlays between
people but if it's like millions of dollars on the line people will game it for sure yeah so
it's interesting gonna let them let the team cook here a bit. May try to even get them on, see if they can answer that question for us,
how they plan to put in controls for that.
We talked about Fartcoin already.
I think in the AI streets, so market cap $6 billion is kind of just chopping
around this $5 to $7 billion range.
We did get big news out of Shaw and AI-16Z yesterday.
Two pieces of news. They are going to launch their own token launchpad it's for ai tokens it's going to be called auto.fun
uh no code agent creator platform you can create your own uh i think what they're saying
sustainable tokenomics creators are going to get rewarded and more and also eliza os version 2
is going to be ready to launch so expect more announcements um on that front as well that
feels like the bigger announcement eliza was very arguably that the catalysts for this entire ai
meta at least the reply bots those were all built on eliza for the most part as i understood it
at least the reply bots,
those were all built on Eliza for the most part
as I understood it.
And now they've made an upgrade.
So maybe we'll have to get Ovi
on the show, see if he's still holding his
AI-16Z. He definitely
is. He definitely is.
I want to know about that too, actually.
I want to ask Ovi about the AI-XBT
and GOAT spread
with Fartcoin. Mandel,
do you mind asking
about goat and fart coin
spread for me? Please.
Feels like that's the only thing
you two talk about these days.
You touch his feelings. You know you've won
that battle and you just bring it up every five
minutes. You know, I don't
bring it up on purpose because I really know I hurt him.
Oh yeah, for sure. Because that one, O ov doesn't like to lose neither do i but that one he really
took the l and i don't bring it up because i love my boy you know yeah no he's uh that one's that
was a painful one for him for sure if he's still holding these i am very curious what his
what his plan is.
What his thought is, which is kind of what I think as well.
If we're going to have a second altcoin season this cycle,
I do think some of that stuff can move quite a lot.
But Fartcoin, it's been one of the best performers
out of all altcoins off the bottom.
It's still a very, very strong thing.
So I think
he's going to lose that battle.
But hopefully his trades still
do well, you know what I mean? I still think they can
come back towards the end of this year, potentially.
100%.
I was super bullish on all of these, right?
And then after after libra and and trump well mainly milania actually um had to rethink rethink that all now and it now feels as though
the time it had a window right where it just dominating. And now it feels like that time
is going to have to come back
when everyone's healed
because everyone just got so wrecked
after Melania that it takes a long time
for that stuff to heal.
It does.
I mean, I became an AI-16 partner,
AI-16Z partner at like $1.40
and took quite a loss on that trade.
One of my concerns with this coin very specifically
is a buddy put it into my head that he thought,
Shaw put the writing on the wall,
that they didn't like the low amount of tokens they owned
and controlled for AI-16Z,
and that they would initially soft rug it and launch
a new token and with their new launch pad with tokenomics that they are able to design and
control i think that is a very non-zero oh 100 he is very vocal about that i i think i think
you've hit the net whoever that was smart smart person uh he was telling that when it was well over
a billion so I gotta give him credit
for that
again folks that's speculation
I have no idea what Shaw's plans are
but it became apparent
when the price started going lower that he wasn't happy about
that so yeah
we'll see we'll see what Eliza
V2 is the rest of the board
so ACT was the other story i don't know
folks saw the kobe tweet but there was like nine tokens on binance that all fell 50 today
seems like one market maker was tied in i actually hadn't had a chance to dig in i don't know if that
was winter me or someone else but he was saying yeah okay so so they clearly just sold off huge chunks of bags
act had been a top three yeah i took them so i run these every day and they it was still in the top
three yes man the crime of that token will be uh there'll be a harvard business school study on
that one i have a question on that when we see the winter mute
wallet selling is that usually winter mute themselves or can it be people through winter
mute it can be people through winter mute yeah because you can use their services as buy and
sell right yeah so it may have not been them but there's clearly some crime going on i think that
the range of tokens... People have said
anecdotally
that Justin Sun was linked to the Act
meme coin.
So maybe
this is Justin Sun dumping them all
through WinterMute.
What's interesting
about Act specifically,
it held...
They kept it at this 18 cents,
$180 million level for two and a half months,
basically just straight sideways while everything else bled out.
Like if you've been following this market,
I think,
you know what happened to the crypto AI space from January 20th to March 20th.
Somehow this act stayed perfectly even
until today where it fell 50%.
So I think that caught all the folks off guard.
But still, no one in my timeline talks about act.
So this is a very...
I have never met anyone that actually owns that token.
Same. Same.
Yeah.
I never met anyone.
There was one guy, wasn't there, who made a ton of money from it.
But, yeah, it's...
I mean, if anyone was in it before I got that listing,
it was one of the single biggest winners.
Right.
In the cycle.
It went 10x in a in today maybe 20x or more
um so we'll see how the ai board continues to shake up but eliza b2 is going to be something
to watch i think my gut is we just continue to chop and range for a while until we get some
bigger catalysts interestingly open ai raising 40 billion and 300 billion valuation didn't really move the needle for anything so it seems pretty disconnected from macro ai at this point um yeah i think that that
mostly goes through through the topics i wanted to hit here there was some news out of 6529 i think
that's a that's a longer story so maybe we'll save. Basically, he's using the memes by 6529 as kind of a testing pad
for his long-term vision of launching a decentralized nation state,
which I hadn't put that together.
So that was eye-opening to me, but that's a longer discussion.
So maybe we'll talk about that tomorrow.
People have been buying those up for a while.
I didn't really know why and now it kind
of makes sense um dgmd he put up a big bid wall he bought like 1300 and that kind of revitalized
the collection and now because the news is for this new season it's going to be decentralized so
they're they're launching effectively a voting token where based on how many memes you've held,
how long you've held them, what memes you hold, you get voting power.
And then you can choose the communities and choose all of the memes for this
season. So,
and he's running it as an experiment to see if a group of people can
decentralize it.
And this is going to make this a success or a failure as kind of a test of,
all right, so what,
what else can a decentralized group of people do in a community slash society?
So that's the idea.
So it's a big vision, 6529.
If anyone can pull it off, he's on the short list of folks who could do it.
Folks, that code again is April for RollBit.
If we've got our RollBit crew here, I think let's get on stage
and let's get into it
here it goes let's go let's go
right
what guys All right. correct them they are up on stage up and to the right how you doing gm you want
all right well they're up here with us doesn't look like they've gotten off mute yet no worries
they're here i see them i see them on the stage's, uh, there they are up into the right. How you doing?
Awesome. He
cannot contain his excitement here
this morning. Oh, he won. We were spinning.
I didn't even see it. You want a rec guy?
How about that? That was a
fast spin. That's a nice one.
It's got the stripes. So up into the right
proud owner of another rec guy.
You won.
Let's fucking go.
$9,000.
We will coordinate with you after the show to get you over that NFT.
Well, folks, that's going to be it.
That is our show.
I want to thank our listeners for tuning in today.
I want to thank my co-host.
I want to thank our partners.
We will be back tomorrow at 10 a.m. Eastern. Until then, go make it a great day. Goodbye. We'll be right back.
