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BTC Stabilises, Trump threatens China, FARTCOIN leads Crypto
Recorded: April 8, 2025 Duration: 0:53:30Space Recording
Short Summary
In a dynamic market landscape, crypto assets are experiencing a notable rebound, with significant movements in altcoins and meme tokens. Ripple's strategic acquisition of Hidden Road for $1.25 billion underscores the growing institutional interest in crypto, while discussions around potential tariff impacts and the evolving role of the dollar as a global reserve currency highlight the intricate connections between traditional finance and the crypto ecosystem.
Full Transcription
Good morning. Good morning, everyone. GMGN. And welcome to another episode of Promo Hour.
Today is Tuesday, April 8th, 2025.
It is not just any Tuesday.
It is turnaround Tuesday.
Stocks opening big green.
Crypto has rebounded across the board.
Several alts, some memes up double digits on the day
after Trump has seemingly come to the negotiation table on these tariffs.
The question now, is this a scam pump fakeout,
or is the worst actually behind us?
We're going to break it all
down on today's show still no faro but we've got mando here in the house mando gm how you doing
oh man it's still muted hello here we are um
oh sorry i'm just so busy man i am just so insanely busy today um i'm good man uh market is looking
okay today not looking so bad not so. We'll take it after what the
last, after how bad the last four days
have been. I'm curious, how are the
maybe you're just immune to it because you're
locked inside right now, but I was curious how the vibes
are in Portugal
as all this is happening around the globe
right now. Are people talking about it at the
cafes?
No one cares, as always, in Portugal.
No one cares at all um yeah very very
chilled place to place to be uh not mentioned once someone someone lightly mentioned that it
could increase prices but um but that's about it yeah i think sometimes we
we've those of us who are locked onto the screens for 16 hours a day sometimes can overreact or build
things up to be bigger, perhaps not realize that everyone around the world is not worried about
these things for 16 hours a day. And they're just going about living their lives. And perhaps that's
the easier route. Well, folks, we have a lot to talk about
on today's show. Markets are rebounding across the board. Stocks are up. Crypto's up to 10 years up
as well. Dollar is not getting weaker. The White House, they made a pretty big statement yesterday.
They said they don't want to be the global reserve. So does that open the door for Bitcoin?
We'll talk about that. Larry Fink says it's more of a time to buy than it is to sell. Meanwhile, Ray Dalio is warning this is much bigger than tariffs and signs of a changing
global order. In news, we got some blockbuster news out of Ripple, one of the largest crypto
acquisitions of all time, just broke this morning. And then MemeCoin is also showing some signs of
life, of course, led by Fartcoin, which continues to be one of the strongest tokens on the market.
So those are some of the headlines.
We'll get into those and a lot more.
Before we dive in, shout out to our partners, starting with Galaxis.
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All right, we love our partners as always
mando if you're ready let's get right into it
sorry i'm just not with you today um yeah crypto market we kind of reclaim the 80k
uh level pretty well here um or at least we've gone back up there we've seen solana go back
above 110 decent amount of um trench activity think, is coming back here. ETH is also catching up.
ETH is still underperforming.
Barcoin, still the best coin in the top 300 at 600 million.
I don't know.
I still don't feel we're out of the woods at all.
All the macro stuff doesn't seem to be resolved in any way to me.
So, yeah, i'm less bullish
so you're in the camp that it could just be a bit of a relief rally not not out of the woods
yet by any means uh yeah exactly so um i think we're kind of half out, like one foot in, one foot out here.
Like stocks, stocks didn't weren't lower yesterday.
They were like unchanged and they've they've opened a little bit higher today as of global stocks.
So like there's a bit of a relief rally. I don't think anyone really trusts it because it still feels like headline tennis.
So I, yeah, I don't I just don't really know like i'm not buying uh up
here i was buying yesterday but um i i've kind of just settled my buying for the last uh uh 10
minutes or so last a few hours or so i think that makes sense i feel like today feels like one of those kind of waiting days.
So April 9th is the day that the tariffs are supposed to go into place.
That's tomorrow.
There's this ongoing escalating feud between the U S and China right now.
I think Trump promised an additional 50% yesterday.
China responded that they're not going to back down
um so i think that everyone's saying that is one of the key key battles to watch there but at the
same time it does seem like rhetoric has changed a bit uh that that trump and the white house are
starting to come to the negotiation table but it seems like they're going to negotiate with japan
some news this morning south korea, they are looking to potentially negotiate with.
So it does feel like to me that we are starting to see a little bit of shift
in sentiment from this weekend where it was no negotiation,
tariffs are coming, prepare yourself, to now it's the tariffs are coming,
but maybe we will walk them back a little bit.
That's my read. Some are pointing to Besant visiting Trump
on Sunday night down at Mar-a-Lago as perhaps the driver
in that shift. I'm not sure if I totally buy that one
myself, but there has been a pretty clear shift. Maybe that's what's driving some of the rebound here.
I saw something around the lines of China might respond with kind of
devaluing the yuan to a degree,
which historically has been a big catalyst for Bitcoin.
So Bitcoin specific, there could be a winner.
A few things that have jumped out to me like one so the 10 year
was going straight down
now it's
it's rebounding pretty fiercely
back to 4.25%
here
so I don't
know that that was
expected and there was
been a lot of talks.
Is Trump's plan actually to try to get the 10-year down to 3.5,
to continue chopping away at that?
So does this actually go against their plans?
And then what also muddies this all up is we got this statement
from the White House yesterday.
And I'm not sure if folks had a chance to digest this much at all,
but they effectively said that they no longer want the dollar to be the
global reserve. It's a fairly long essay.
They talked about effectively how the U S provides global goods,
security and finance for the world.
And that these roles are costly with military spending, tax burdens,
trade deficits, and they're tired of the rest of the world effectively free riding on the
U.S.'s coattails and that it's time to effectively fix that.
And they said the tariffs are effectively one of the ways to go about implementing this regime change.
And I think this did come as a surprise.
I don't think many have expected to see this.
I didn't expect to see this on the page.
I mean, it's in the second paragraph, second or third paragraph of the essay.
It's in the second paragraph, second or third paragraph of the essay.
On the financial side, the reserve function of the dollar has caused persistent currency distortions and contributed to unsustainable trade-offs.
So they're coming out here and calling it an active problem, which I didn't.
I thought this was maybe what was happening behind closed doors,
but I tweeted this yesterday.
It seems like they,
that they were saying the quiet part out loud now.
So that caught me a bit by surprise folks.
It looks like we've got a OSF on with us now in the studio.
What's up,
man.
Amanda had to urgently leave and I was just in the chat and everyone was panicking saying like
we need someone to come in and i was literally just sitting down staring into space so i thought
i'd come on perfect well uh i find myself doing that as well well i'm happy that you were able
to join us i actually i've been wanting to talk to you uh for a while because I think you are one of the louder bulls on the timeline who has been
catching knives and trying to buy the blood. So I want to talk to you about that before we maybe
dive into some of that. I'm curious for how you're feeling this high level on turnaround Tuesday here.
Were you surprised that we rebounded? Is this, do you feel like it's a fake out palm but kind of how you feel it's just i mean whether it's a fake up pump or not we'll find out in due course but i think this
price action is just classic it's just so textbook like you go out on friday this news
hits the timeline everyone's panicking and freaking out. Every single piece of media over the weekend is doom and gloom.
People suddenly think the world is going to end, even though it's not.
And people are already calling for Black Monday.
And obviously, you had this big crypto puke on Sunday night.
And I just think whenever people call for that, it never really happens.
And people are short.
People are short trying to push things lower on a global scale.
And coming Monday, things aren't as bad as people feared.
And you just have this great big short covering.
So I think everything that I expected in the last, I guess, 48 hours has happened the way I was foreseeing it to play out.
What happens next is the more difficult thing.
Do we bounce from here?
Do we just go sideways?
Do we fall lower?
I really, really, really, really believe that these tariffs are nowhere near as bad as people
think they are.
And I think a big problem, and I'm saying this as a non-American, as an outsider, the
big problem is so many people in America hate Trump, people who didn't vote for trump that they're saying oh this is the worst
thing ever trump's like the worst guy in the world and everything's gonna be bad like i don't
really care about trump or anything like i'm not i have zero political skin in the game here like
i'm literally not even american um but as an outsider it's very clear to me like there's this
now it's like oh trump's causing all
this stuff is bad and like yes like he's going a bit mental i don't disagree with that but i think
the subject of what's going on here these tariffs are nowhere near as bad as like things we've seen
in the past like covid like the great financial crisis um like the doc i've even seen people
compare it to the dot-com bubble i'm like seriously we're not on the brink of like a
meltdown here these tariffs aren't even like we don't even know if they're going to be fully implemented or not and we know
they're in negotiation so i think like there's definitely a bit of like narrative pushing by
people who i think have vested interest that has just reached a global scale which i think caused
the panic but i think now people are realizing it's not as bad as like the world isn't just going to end today or
tomorrow and like always people will work through this and find some sort of solution like every
single other bad thing we've happened just this isn't nowhere anywhere as near as bad as anything
that's happened in the last 20 years of financial markets in my opinion so um we'll see what happens
now like you know i agree like trump's a bit mental it's unpredictable he's unpredictable
we don't know what's going to happen. I personally don't think we're going to
see the full impact of these tariffs because I think whether or not he's a lunatic, there's
presumably a lot of pressure on him from large donators or people within his party who are like,
look, you can't just go out there and do this. Otherwise everything's going to nuke. So their
goal, I think, is to come to some sort of agreement. And I think in the end, if he has to back down, he will. But it'll be under the guise of, oh,
we achieved these better deals with these countries. And this is a win for America,
even though he de facto backs down on other stuff. I think that's how it will be presented.
And maybe he comes across as weaker, but at the end of the day, that's good for markets. So
as I've commentated on the timeline like i've been buying a lot of risk
just been averaging down catching knives as you say you know i'm down on a lot of prints but
i've kept on averaging lower and i think this is going to prove to be a really good dip to buy
so far we've had a bounce does it continue from here all the way up um i don't think we just gap
back to all-time highs from here i have a suspicion we've maybe seen the lows.
And I think we can range from here for a bit.
So I think you have time to deploy risk.
But the thing that I really would advise doing is don't just randomly get yourself bearish at the lows because of what you're reading out there.
And try and take a step back and think critically about what's going on here, I think.
Yeah, I think that's great advice and evergreen advice.
And I feel like a few thoughts in response.
One, the Trump derangement syndrome, TDS, is absolutely there.
I saw a clip from Schumer in 2017 being angry at Trump for not levying tariffs
against Chinese unfair trade
deals with the U S and now eight years later,
the tariffs are here and they're complaining because it's impacting the stock
market. So there is a lot of anger at the,
the messenger versus the message I think is absolutely playing out and the
media is amplifying it. And there's, there's a lot of scare porn, do porn.
It was consensus on Sunday that we were going to have a black Monday event.
Like that was consensus. And you're right.
Like whenever it's a consensus, it's probably not going to happen.
Now you've got folks like Ackman. I think he's been,
he's been over the top a bit over the last six months.
I think there's been times where he probably went,
he needed to get reined in a little bit.
But he's trying to apply some reason and say,
okay, 50% tariffs are going to wreck us.
He called it an economic nuclear winter.
But if we can come back 10%, we can move forward.
And it seems like perhaps that was,
maybe that was Trump's goal,
Trump and the team's goal.
And I don't know.
I think there's a school of thought
that Trump was just a bull in a China shop
and that maybe Besson corralled him
and maybe he's listening.
I don't know.
I find it also hard to believe personally,
this is my personal take,
that he had no plan
or just total bull in a China shop.
And then Scott Besson flies down to Mar-a-Lago on Sunday night and just
totally changes his mind. Like, I also don't believe that.
I feel like there was probably some kind of a plan here.
Like the simplest explanation was that it was all like art of the deal,
negotiation strategy.
And now I feel like it's starting to come to light that that's what that is.
Now with all that being said,
I do think there's going to be some economic impact to new tariffs.
Right. I think in folks who are in the manufacturing business and global,
like I've already started to see some of that.
So I think that's going to take a little bit of time to work through.
So I'm with you. It's hard to predict where we go from here,
but I mean, I think folks like Larry Fink are saying it's more of a buying opportunity than a selling opportunity, even if we dip 20% lower.
Yeah, I mean, we're off year to date, maybe before today, like at some point yesterday, we were down 20% on both NASDAQ and the S&P 500 year to date.
And yes, there's an argument to say we could fall
further, but what are you doing? Are you selling now to prevent yourself losing another 20%?
It just seems like you've missed the chance to sell. The chance to sell really was the beginning
of the year in January when everyone was the other
way to build up about Bitcoin reserve and all this kind of stuff. So it feels like you've missed the
chance to sell, in my opinion. And I'm not saying we can't fall lower. We absolutely can. We can
fall lower on stocks. We can fall lower on crypto. But how much lower are we going to go? Are we going
to go down 10%, 20%, 30%? Are we going to go down 90%? And what's the upside over the rest of this year, over the next two years, five years,
10 years? It's a lot bigger than any potential downside everyone is fearing. So to me, I think
this is a really good buying opportunity. I haven't owned equities in years and I have a bunch of
cash lying there from stuff that I sold last year.
And I was like, maybe I should put this into stocks and not be so risk-averse with the cash.
But I didn't want to buy stuff at all-time highs last year. And now we've had this 20% pullback.
And for me, it's like, okay, this is perfect. I can put cash into stocks where it's materially
less risky than crypto, but I still have good,
you know, market upside. And that's a really good buying opportunity for me. And I'm sure there's
plenty of other people who are thinking the same thing. So, you know, it's just like,
what do you want to do? Do you want to be the person that's like selling too late as things
are already quite low and then inevitably fomping back into it when things are better,
when the coast is clear and things are all resolved and prices are already higher and you end up buying back
higher again or do you want to take a chance and buy when stuff is low and things are less clear
but you know there's a chance that things get resolved this is the thing you can't just if you
wait for the good news you're going to miss the opportunity to buy low like by definition you end
up buying high because it gets priced in so you have to buy it when there is bad news and when it does feel like there's no hope
with the view of at some point it getting turned around. But if you don't buy on bad news,
when everyone is calling for doom and gloom, then you're never going to catch these low prices.
And I think if you're someone who hasn't made money in crypto in the last three to five years,
because you set everything when everything pukes, you you go away you hear it's doing well again you come back and you're just making
yourself like buy high and sell low every time so you have to just stick it out there and you know
take a chance i think you have to take a chance and knowing that you're going to get prints that
are going to be out the money straight away but you know don't blow your load in one go and keep
averaging down that's what i've been doing if it feels gross you know like the last
two or three days when i've been buying it's like oh fuck down another 25 great buy more down another
25 great so my first buys are down like 75 or 80 but that's how you average lower like that's why
you don't go all in on the first go and for me that's been a really successful way to make money. So yeah, I just think this is a really good entry point.
And I think you should have some risk on here.
And I think you should give yourself some room to add lower.
But just sitting here calling for doom and gloom and saying the world's going to end
and this is the worst thing since COVID or whatever, I just think that's really dumb.
I think you're just going to end up missing it once again.
Yeah.
I like that strategy.
I mean, look at a Bitcoin at $79,500 here.
I feel like the downside versus upside.
Like $72K downside.
Are we really going to see lower than that?
I feel like there's such a strong bid versus the upside. I think
if when Bitcoin
was over $100K, you had
FOMO that you didn't have enough.
You have to be asking yourself,
why aren't you starting to
buy here?
I've been in conversations with a few
folks who actually did sell
their Bitcoin on Monday.
What
are you going to buy?
Unless you need that cash for your personal life.
Okay, of course, put that off.
But are you trying to scalp it lower?
What other assets are you going to try to buy
if you're worried at Bitcoin when it's already 30% off highs?
So I think you and I are
fairly aligned, though I haven't been as
aggressively buying as you.
Mostly because I consolidate
into positions, but I never really
stable up too much.
I think
the point on stabling is a fair
point.
I feel like
when I am tweeting, buy the dip, you know, we should be buying
here, we should be buying here.
The general sentiment is I'm already all in, like with what money can I buy?
And it's almost like, you know, once you're in crypto, most people seem to just be all
in and maybe you're like rotating between different things, but people very rarely like
hold a large amount of stables and i think the lesson there is that you know if we do have
another 2024 year and you know that style of price action it's important to take chips off
and sell along the way and have some stables and even if you're like max bullish you should still
have some stables because you
want to have that fund for times like these where you can actually go and buy and like i sold a lot
last year but every time i sold i was like fuck i kind of regret selling and like it went higher
again i was like and then people around me and weren't selling anything and i was like am i just
like the only idiot here that's like selling stuff. And then now it's like when
things crash, it's like, Oh great. Like I'm able to actually put money back in, you know,
down 75, 80, even 90% from where I sold stuff last year and have another go at like multiplying
that wealth. So, um, you know, just as I'm advocating for buying the dip right now,
if things rip again and you have like another crazy thing,
I think it's important to not get so greedy where it's like,
I have to be all in because now we've hit a hundred K we're going to 500 K
and all that kind of stuff.
Like you should be taking chips off along the way,
even if you're max bullish,
like you should build up a portfolio of stables and you know,
you can have money on stables,
like on Coinbase you can have 12% right now on USDC,
which is just a Coinbase promotional thing. So it's not nothing um and then you want to save that for your rainy days so um
it's all easier said than done because you're always fighting with your
emotions and with the market narratives and coming reading ct every day can you know really
influence your mood and no one is safe to that like even i will come
on ct and be like like shit i shouldn't sell or am i an idiot buying and all that kind of stuff but
um yeah i just have to be really disciplined it's something i need to get better at
for sure oh we all do we're not yeah i mean i'm curious so i want to dive into some of the ai tokens that i know you've
been going after but i'm curious did did you ever were you ever involved in the hyper liquid trade
over the last three months no like i really mid-curved the whole thing because um i just
when it hyper liquid when people were farming hyper liquid i was just like it's just another
like perp decks like how is this why would this be any better than anything else out there
and trade higher than the other Dexers?
Obviously, they did a great job onboarding whales.
They've done a great job marketing, and they've generated a lot of fees,
and they've used that to buy back the token and support it.
So it was definitely a miss on my part.
But I've never really...
I don't really see... At these levels, I'm not really that interested.
And I haven't been even when it was that 25, 30 area, because I just don't really see what the story is from here.
Like, sure, they can continue to buy back tokens with good revenue, with fee generation.
But, you know, you have to assume that those revenues
are able to be maintained over a longer period of time right um so i don't really see why everyone
talks about this as if it's like the dog's bollocks like you know the best thing since
sliced bread i don't i don't know what i'm missing like it's just a perp decks and it's great their
marketing is great it's a really good product i get it And it's a good anti-sex, anti-establishment kind of like narrative.
And I completely get all that stuff.
And I think the team's great.
And I think it's a good product and a good token,
but I don't understand why people rave about it.
Like it's the best thing in the world,
but that's a credit to them for, you know,
fostering that sort of like cult like behavior around it.
And, you know, maybe that alone is the thing that can drive it but yeah it's not for me personally um but that's not to say it can't do well i think
yeah i think that's very fair so i've been in the trade and i've been trying to figure out
what to do from here i'll quickly pull up some of their their visuals so the the market share story has been one I think is pointed to quite a bit. So 65% of
purpose, but I don't think this is including finance. So I'll need to take a look at some
other data sources in this as well. But clearly the marketing materials have been strong. What I'm wondering is this a
momentum asset? So if things do turn around, is it going to be one of the tall movers,
rightfully or wrongfully? Because I think there's a narrative that folks will rally behind. We've
seen them rally behind it once already. It was one of the fastest movers in this past cycle,
but also on the downside.
And I had a decent position,
which I clipped out during the day that they were exploited right around $13.
So I've been,
I actually did stable that up and I've been thinking personally,
like, do I want to reenter this trade or not? And I haven't stable that up. And I've been thinking personally, like, do I want to reenter this trade or not?
And I haven't acted on it.
So I'm still working through that to a degree.
I think general, like where my gut is, if I could get it sub 10, I think that would be a very interesting price.
It'd be around 3 billion market cap or so. I think that would be a very interesting price.
It'd be around $3 billion market cap or so.
I think it could be a bit more attractive.
I think also if it starts to show more momentum here coming out the bottom,
I think that would be another sign.
So I don't know.
I haven't made up my mind.
So I appreciate your thoughts on that one.'s perhaps let's talk about some of the
tokens that you have been getting into if you don't mind yeah i think you shared them publicly
so i'm not i'm not uh exposing anything but i think you're revisiting some of the ai trades so
like what or maybe you never left it so kind of what's your what's your thesis or thought beyond that? I think the thing I would say about AI, just really top down, just forgetting these tokens,
is it's just such a big part of our everyday lives now.
I can't end the day without AI coming up in some sort of conversation, even outside of crypto,
even outside of crypto, like my parents or like my friends or, you know, like everyone talks about it. Right.
like my parents or my friends or everyone talks about it.
And it makes sense. I think people have said this for a while.
It makes sense for there to be something within crypto that is AI related that everyone will just pile onto.
And there's been some tokens in the past.
And I think with when you had the AI agent stuff come through at the back end of last year,
the difference here was that you actually had products that felt tangible,
that we saw stuff like AIXBT on the timeline.
You saw stuff like the Truth Terminal putting out meme-related stuff.
It was kind of something that was quite tangible that people could maybe explain to a normal person.
It's like, oh, hey, here's this thing called AIXBT,
and it just reads in all of crypto Twitter
and then spurts out views.
People could see, touch, and feel that sort of thing
compared to before when you're trying to explain
some of these other tokens like Fetch
and what was the other big one, like Tau, et cetera.
They're already hard to explain to a normie.
So I think that's why you had that big AI boom towards the end of
last year. And just like many things, when they have that initial big rally, they end up crashing
as everyone sells and everyone made a lot of money. And that's what's happened to the AI agent
space. That's not too dissimilar to what happened to meme coins in 2023 after you had that great
big Pepe run and then you had Turbo,
and you had a few other tokens that had this crazy run, and then they all just nuked 90%, 95%. And then it was dead in the water for a little bit. And then things ended up coming back.
So what my view here is, is that AI is just way too big a narrative for us to ignore. It's
definitely not going away. It's staying here. It's coming back as part of like our everyday lives,
not just within crypto, not just within markets.
All of this stuff in the meantime,
while everything's new, has been developed.
Like people have been working on stuff,
rolling out new products.
People are starting to use it.
And the third thing is like,
there is a lot of institutional investment
going into this stuff.
And I know we had this like anti-institutional behavior, but I'm sure people would love to
find out that the people behind some of their favorite meme coins are actually VCs anyway.
But there's been a lot of institutional investment going into this stuff.
Granted, it was from high levels, but that still goes into this stuff. So
people are buying and accumulating like all these tokens so i do think
we will have i really do believe we will have another ai run at some point this year and all
this stuff is down like 95 from highs and it's not like they're dead projects like they're still
doing stuff they're still developing these agents, developing the marketplaces, developing the
launch pads, et cetera. So I do think you will have another run in this stuff and maybe it's
like institutional led. I think the other thing that's important is some of the stuff like AI 16
Z gets compared to L1s. Imagine you had an L1 for AI agents. That means the ceiling for something
like that is much, much higher than just the meme
coin ceilings we used to which tend to be like oh if it gets a billion dollars or maybe five
billion dollars for the best ones that's where i'd sell whereas if you look at l1s they all
trade like multi you know tens of billions of dollars of ftv so there's that narrative which
i think could be pretty interesting as well so i don't know it's a it's it's a degen play like
it's people look at all these charts
and all of these coins look like they're dead.
Like this is a classic dead meme coin chart.
But I am pretty, you know,
the way that I'm managing my risk right now
is I have a lot of Bitcoin,
which I feel like is like pretty low risk way
within crypto.
And this is sort of like my degenerate play where like, if I get it
right, it's going to be 10, 20, 30 X. If I get it wrong, you know, it's going to be a zero.
But I just think we're going to have another AI agent run. And for me, the one that I've,
the one that I've gone the hardest on is AI 16Z, because I think that's the token within this
space that has the most mindshare, has all the GitHub stars and ratings, et cetera. And I think that's the token within this space that has the most mindshare,
has all the GitHub stars and ratings, et cetera.
And I think it has that L1 narrative.
And if people suddenly think,
oh, I need to get back into AI, what do I buy?
Well, the two things that got to the highest market cap were AI 16Z and virtuals.
And I think those are the two that people go for as like,
I don't want to say the safer place
but as like the more well-known plays so ai xbt could be another one as well like that's also down
massively so yeah it's a bit of a bit of a dgem play because these charts all look like they're
dead but my hunch and it's not really much more than a hunch my hunch is um that we see another
run this year and yeah like I see people with comments like,
you know, these are just rebranded chatbots.
And yeah, I don't disagree.
They absolutely are,
but it's not about what they are.
And it's not about necessarily thinking
the tech is going to be game-changing.
It's just about how big that narrative can get once again.
And I don't believe that this narrative got so big
that it went to a combined market cap of what, 17 bill,
all the way down to what, four or five bill now now that it won't retest that again at some point.
And I think this is the time to be accumulating in preparation for that rather
than waiting for it to start moving and then end up buying stuff higher.
So again,
it's not,
it's not a surefire bet,
but I think this is my,
my punt at like the 10 X plus kind of trade well i appreciate you walking
us through that it's an interesting one i'm in the camp i think 100 we're gonna get ai around too
i don't know exactly what it looks like i think one of the open questions is is it going to be
all new players versus the old guard or will some of the old guard, you know, still be around. I think,
I do think your thesis on AI 16 Z is like,
if there is going to be a rebound for existing players, they are at the top of the list, right? It's them in virtuals.
And I've always thought there was a little bit more coming out of the AI 16 Z
world than virtuals. That's not, no offense to the virtuals team.
Just because it felt like they had more folks working together you know the the get uh the launch pad i think i think
they've been fairly smart to be kind of managing expectations through this bear like they haven't
been kind of coming out with announcements every week because i don't know how those would have
been received anyway um It's clearly been building
behind the scenes.
I think you have to fade
them launching another token.
I've said that before on the show.
That is something that could happen.
I think it's a low probability.
I don't think it's
AXBT that comes back.
Maybe because it's got the mascot narrative,
but it feels like we've all kind of moved past that.
I will say it's no...
What jumps out to me every time I look at the cookie board
is we had this explosion in agents
and then it just totally leveled off.
No one's launching new agent tokens.
We went from 20 a day to stone zero.
And even in the meme coin game,
it's like, of course, like we fell,
new launches are down probably 60% or 70%,
but there's still new memes coming out every day.
Like the new agents have totally stopped.
So I do, it does make me wonder,
like, are we going to have like a,
is it going to be a different meta?
And I think it will be different to a degree.
I'm curious, have you been tracking
parallel and prompt because i think that could actually be a potential catalyst for an ai
wave too is if prompt comes out and strong out of the gate i'm curious if you've been following along
yeah i think so i think that could be i think that's definitely very interesting. It does feel like stuff like that, and I guess Way same tokens or is it a set of new tokens and that's i think the the risk you have to take i guess the risk that i have
being so concentrated in like a couple of coins um i haven't followed power and prompt that closely
but um i think it's definitely something to keep track of it's just a question of how i guess
it's just a question of how you want to play it if you're bullish do you spray across
a bunch of different things or do you focus on a couple um
it's a tough one it's a tough one yeah um my fear is I get my fear. The worst thing is you get it right,
but you own the wrong coins.
Always.
And that's your risk when you get so,
so concentrated.
Well,
I appreciate the bet.
I mean,
it's not too many folks out there are kind of being public about their
bigger bets.
So more power to you
on that one. I think the good news
is, I mean, we may find out
somewhat soon.
Prompt is going to TGE in the next
week, week and a half.
perhaps that is what
if we get a nice
little parlay here of some
tariff relief plus a good tge yeah prompt and wayfinder
into kicking off a new potential meta uh into the second half of april and may you know before the
summer months that's uh could be nice little parlay so yeah i'll uh i'll have my hopes up with that. I think Farouk would be mad at me
if I didn't ask you about Fartcoin's strength
and performance here.
I think I'm a Fartcoin convert now.
I do think it's tough to ignore the relative strength
it's had in the last couple of months or so, I think.
It got all the way down to what 250 ish and then never really moved lower with the market and I think you can't
you can't really ignore that because it just means people are buying this thing
so I think this coin will probably retest all-time highs I think um i don't own any yet i've sort of been toying with
buying my first bit of fart coin it's just a scary it just feels like a scary proposition that
the market cap it is sure um and you know with all these coins and all the meme coins
the main thing really is like how much supply is, who owns it, what the cabal plans are, what the whales are doing.
And without being privy to that information, it's hard to judge how much size to go into.
But the price action and charts do tell a story.
And the story here is that people have been accumulating and are giving it a go.
So I think it's just,
you just can't really ignore the price action.
You can't really ignore what's been going on.
So I'm constructive on this.
I think if we have a drop on it,
I think I would consider buying it.
I think this, yeah,
I think this could be a pretty easy,
like if the market properly rebounds,
it's clear this has like one of the best betas to the market right now so if we go back to 100k bitcoin i think this thing is
through all-time highs really and you know it could be one of the stronger performing coins i
think this year so um i don't own any but i'm definitely definitely got my eye on it i would say
um you can't really you can't really ignore it right now. Too big to ignore.
Too big to ignore, yeah.
I think what jumps out to me,
and Dip Wheeler keeps pounding the table on this,
but the holder growth is wild.
There are like 1,000 to 2,000 new holders every week throughout this down period.
And now I think it might be even accelerating to a degree.
It looks like a little cup-and-handle breakout.
I think it's hard to be too bulled up
on any massive breakouts right now,
just with all the tariff uncertainty.
But if we get some positive news, I mean, this thing looks like it's primed to be a big winner.
I'm curious.
Did you see the ripple news this morning that broke right before the show?
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
So blockbuster acquisition, they acquired hidden Road, $1.25 billion.
So if folks don't know Hidden Road, they process $3 trillion in transactions every year.
As a part of this acquisition, Ripple's stablecoin RLUSD will become core collateral across the Hidden Road services.
Hidden Road's post-trade activity will move to the XRP ledger.
And now Ripple's going to offer custody, financing, and clearing to Hidden Road clients.
It's a pretty big deal, it feels like.
Ripple already had the army behind it.
It felt a little, to me, like fake it till you make it.
But did they just make it with this acquisition?
I mean, this feels like they have some real institutional power now.
Yeah, this is interesting.
It's also just another sign of how big crypto is becoming in the traditional world
in terms of infrastructure and rails
that are being created to get onboarded
and that kind of stuff.
In this backdrop, you see headlines like that
and then you think,
oh, maybe this is why crypto has outperformed
the last two or three days.
Because regardless of what's happened with tariffs,
you still had the biggest U-turn by the USA
in terms of crypto regulation.
And I think we got too bulled up about that in January,
but I think now everyone's forgotten about it.
And just because something doesn't happen overnight,
which is what people wanted,
which is what people wanted,
it doesn't mean progress isn't made
and things aren't good
for the industry going forward so headlines like this i think are a reminder of how constructive
the regulatory and infrastructure and traditional getting into crypto outlook is right now in the
us and a likelihood of other countries also following suit there it's really really bullish
i think longer term.
And just it's not to be faded.
Does this cause crypto to rally like tomorrow or the day after tomorrow?
Maybe not.
Maybe it just gets, you know, acknowledged, but not instant price action.
But all these things will, I think, should give people confidence that,
you know, if you buy Bitcoin today, in five years time,
it should be worth a lot more than what it is today.
Yeah.
It's almost like we ourselves,
we priced all this in,
in January,
December,
January.
And then everyone forgot,
like you mentioned,
and now it's not really priced in as much anymore.
And these are the types of acquisitions that this pro-crypto administration has enabled.
And again, we are in the early stages of that.
And that's a big announcement out of Ripple.
It doesn't look like we're sawing off a little bit here live on the show.
Have stocks turned around?
Stocks look like they're still up a decent amount. Maybe this is more
of a
crypto fall here.
I'm back.
Mando's back.
It's good to hear him talking.
He's carried the
lion's share of the show. He's been deep
on this. I know. Thank God.
I was turned up when Mando's not here.
I can't tell you how busy
i suddenly just was then um lots of different people shouting at me um but uh yeah look uh
it's a strange one because i think the thing that is scaring people here is the tenure i don't know
if you guys spoke about that or not not too much yeah well like the whole point of this was that you
know we're going to get retention down to refinance the debt and what what china did yesterday is they
sold 50 billion dollars of treasuries um reportedly and they still earn a few hundred billion billion so there is not an ace card but there's a card here where if the aim was to get down
the cost of borrowing in the US China can just single-handedly drive that higher
as can a few other different nations that have big holdings of US debt so
I think that's why the market is still a little bit like,
that's just not a good sign. Yesterday, stocks closed, basically unchanged, but the tenure was
higher. At least stocks have bounced today. But that tenure going back to 4.2%, I think it's
going to scare a lot of people here. It's going to point to the idea that this could go on for a, for longer.
If, if this, if the, if the, the, you know,
we're playing checkers and not chess now,
do that everyone keeps using? Like, well, I don't know.
Like if you wanted to get down to two and a half, 3%, we've, we've,
we've kind of just reversed all of the last few days on that.
So I think that's going to worry people.
I don't think macro is out of the woods at all here.
Yes.
We've seen – Bessett came out and said China's got a pair of twos,
and they already showed their cards too quickly.
It feels like there's just more financial games being played
as a part of this
escalating trade war situation
right now. And I would
intend to admit it doesn't
feel like we're out of the woods
on this just yet. I think there's a question of
is the goal really to bring the rates down or not?
I think there's some folks in the camp that
it's more than...
I think it's sort of like this weird standoff where Trump thinks,
let me just go crazy on these tariffs and stuff
and then force the Fed to cut rates.
Powell's like, no, we're not going to do that.
And Trump's like, oh, fuck.
And now it's sort of like this standoff thing
where who's going to be the bad guy that's going to like not fold to let things get worse. Ultimately, I think between them, there is some sort of implied put where one of them has to give in. And the markets at one point were second guessing Powell's comments like, you know, I think we have more rate cuts predicted for this year than previously. Now it seems like it's going the other way.
predicted for this year than than previously now it seems like it's going the other way um
well it may make a rate cut but like china's got 750 billion dollars more yeah exactly of
u.s treasuries they can sell 750 billion so if they want to drive this higher they can um
the bond yields higher they can i think the other thing is that i had a look at like
local chinese news on the back of this like um like xi jinping is seen as a is a strong man too
like very like very much has been authoritarian on china for a long time his ego is very high
it's not there is less like bombastic as trump like this is a guy
who thinks he's building a dynasty um whether you agree with that or not i don't think this
is just one of these things where it's like oh we can strong arm like strong arming another strong
man like that they could go at this for a while here like
she could just turn around um there was a really good post yesterday if you saw but it was like
this was literally the storyline to um uh i think it was call of duty like modern warfare 2 or
something like that like there's a lot of stuff that they could do here. They could invade Taiwan. They could do a big cyber attack.
They could steal tons of IP.
I think this doesn't necessarily just lead to...
And those sort of comments...
Imagine just they have their version of Trump right now,
and then they see that being fired at them.
It's not like they go,
oh, yeah, we'll come to the negotiating table.
I think it's a slightly different scenario.
I think the other countries, I think there's, you know,
because obviously the U.S. protects half of Europe.
It protects most of Canada as well.
Basically, it's huge trading partners.
But China and the U.S, they don't need to become friends
and they can hurt each other for a long time.
So that's the foundation for an outlook
of extended, perhaps deeper recession.
I just don't think,
I don't think the China thing,
the China situation may not be resolved
like 10 years now.
Do you know what I mean?
It's not like, oh, next week they're going to come to a deal.
China could just decide, hey, we've decided this is our moment.
It could be years before a China deal, genuinely.
It feels like everyone's waiting for some resolution.
And I would agree there's not going to be resolution on that specific
matter for a while.
I think there's a question of,
can we reach resolution with 50 other 50 to 70 other countries over the next
quarter and get to a better spot of a new potentially multipolar global world
order.
So I think that's,
that's what we can watch for,
but we'll certainly see.
There's no shortage of daily headlines.
Walter Bloomer's account blown up.
we're in the show here in a couple of minutes,
but I want to give you a chance.
Anything,
Rex,
any wreck drinks,
anything?
Oh yeah,
we have,
man,
I've,
not too dissimilar to Mando and all the stuff going on with you, but I've just been really swamped and wrecked stuff, yeah, we have, man, I've, um, not too dissimilar to Mando and all the stuff going on with Yeet, but I've just been really swamped and wrecked stuff, but nothing to say right now.
But I think we've been working on a lot of stuff at the beginning of this year.
We should have our new drinks launch, hopefully at some time this month.
So keep an eye out for that.
I think put some teasers and stuff out about it but it's not
stopping there like we have um a lot of stuff planned for the rest of this year that will be
coming um it's just it feels like one of those points where because we don't really build in
public every day i'm like oh wow this is really good or this is like really amazing and we've done
this but no one else really sees it until it comes to fruition and
i don't really like to be one of those guys who just hypes up things all the time and you know
i fall guilty to it sometimes but i don't want to be one of the guys every day's like oh this is
going to be the next big thing this big thing and then i don't want to like over promise and
under deliver but um the next few weeks a month for ret will be pretty exciting i think nice well good to hear
and i i enjoyed the the teasers we got for the for the new drink flavor so i'm excited it's good
the new favorite is good like i'm not just saying it to say it um i actually a lot better than the
first one even though the first one is our flagship drink but um it's really good like i went through
the entire thing in like two days and now i don't have any for like marketing stuff but um it is really good how does it mix with
tequila so i don't think this one will mix that well with tequila it will probably mix well quite
well with gin and vodka um it's less of a like the original liquidated lime is really good with
tequila um and it's a really good mixer i think this one is maybe less of a good like the original liquidated lime is really good with tequila.
And that's a really good mixer.
I think this one is maybe less of a good mixer, but it is just a really good standalone drink, I would say.
Nice. Well, I will be bringing it to my new North Shore Chicago neighborhood
and infiltrating.
Nice.
Love it.
Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Oh, Seth, this was a great combo.
Mando, thanks for popping back on. Folks, I think we're going to go ahead and wrap up the show here that's it want to
thank our listeners as always want to thank my co-hosts thank our partners we'll be back tomorrow
at 10 a.m eastern until then go make it a great day goodbye Thank you. I We'll be right back.
