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FOMO HOUR: Liberation Eve Jitters
Recorded: April 1, 2025 Duration: 0:59:19Space Recording
Short Summary
Significant developments include Circle's planned IPO, potential legislative changes with the Financial Freedom Act, and new partnerships and projects in the crypto space. Innovations in DeFi, such as interest-bearing stablecoins, and strategic moves by the Trump family into Bitcoin mining highlight ongoing trends and shifts in the industry.
Full Transcription
Thank you. GM, GM, everyone, thank you for joining us here this morning.
We're going to start the show in just a minute or so.
We're going to get our speakers up on stage while we do that.
A couple or so. We're going to get our speakers up on stage while we do that. A couple GMs.
Bongo.
Oxy.
Ibron.
Seaborg.
Froze.
Harry Krishna.
L.C.
Zanzibar.
Easy McNutt.
A couple grifters out there.
Love to see it.
Tyler Durden.
All right.
We've got Myriad up here.
We've got FOMO Hour up here.
Five minutes past the hour.
Sims, I think whenever you're ready, let's kick it. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, GM, GM, everyone.
Welcome to another episode of FOMO Hour.
Today is Tuesday, April 1st, 2025.
Finally, April.
Q2 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 were going to have Farouk with us.
We've got him live from Switzerland. Farouk how you doing good morning how you guys doing actually i'm in the
french part so it's uh bj over here you know i mean i'm good i'm vibing i'm somewhere uh on the
border of france and switzerland in the middle of the alps um with bad wi-fi and uh apparently i
have to pay a million dollars for everything and everywhere I want to go.
So it is what it is.
Revive it.
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
and what you're doing over there.
Yeah, we are here for Watches and Wonders.
It's like the biggest watch fair in the world. If you're a over there yeah we are here for watches and wonders um it's like a 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 don't know what Mando'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 just laughing at you and your watches.
For cutting out a little bit bit hopefully we can get you back
while we do that
Mando, Jim, how you doing?
I'm doing great man
back to our usual show
just me and you
you are definitely the MVP
it feels like
obviously I dip in and out
for the end of the shows
but the,
um, Farouk likes a holiday and you, you're, you're dependable.
You're often like the, the guy, uh, every day you're like the, you're like what I was
like a, like a few months ago when it was just me.
And then Ovi would turn up and say nothing for,
for the whole show.
Yeah.
I can,
there's nothing to trade on holiday.
We are overdue.
We skipped our,
spring travels this year with the moving into the new house and,
wifey let me know about it last night.
She said she is ready for a vacation.
So, uh, we'll see maybe early summer
uh yeah i'm ready but uh i'm all good though i know i still i still like showing up every day
i 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.
So I still 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 U.S. 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
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We love our partners.
As always, with that, Mando, if you're ready, let's get into it.
Who is the man, macro daddy of the man?
Can you dig it?
Hey, everyone.
So, yeah, we did have a good day yesterday. Bitcoin didn't go to zero. Can you dig it? market open um this is a a backdrop of u.s stocks having their worst quarter since 2022
on a relative to the world basis a 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 its best start to 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 this quarter this quarter at least just because tomorrow is the trump
tariff day um 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
on to its its uh its highs you saw some, some more like risk taking activity take place.
Farcoin went above 500 million again.
it's an SPX had a big move.
It looks like it's back down now,
just,
just,
just below actually,
but still one of the biggest gainers of the day again,
Farcoin.
So still a decent move there.
and the winners in the L ones 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
in 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 um a big benefit and then you just had larry
think being super bullish but but nothing um nothing crazy which is like getting getting
people bullish other than you know more stables being printed and it's just a the same sort of um
sort of trend uh 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 it 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
amazingly positively in public 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 um at a 300 billion dollar valuation i think that's the the highest funding round for
private company ever there um 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, um, agreeing on much.
So definitely, um,
definitely an interesting move there from like the geopolitical standpoint that
they, they would go and do that. Uh,
and probably points the idea that they're probably going to hold 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.
But, you know, weaker economies normally would mean more stimulus.
So hopefully that's how people view it.
That's it, really.
It was, yeah, just 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 a3k now again straight straight back there for bitcoin
yeah it's it feels like we're just going to chop until
we figure out
the whole Liberation Day
tariff news and how much was a bluff,
how much is real,
where are the
chips all going to fall. I think that's kind of my
gut read on all this
right now.
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 US doesn't chip away at the debt, that the US 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 the U.S. could potentially operationalize a strategic Bitcoin reserve via mining.
a strategic Bitcoin reserve via mining.
And then here we get the news yesterday.
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 HUD eight,
it is a major digital infrastructure and Bitcoin mining firm.
They've launched a new company called American Bitcoin corp in partnership
American home, homegrown Bitcoin, folks.
In partnership.
It's literally going to be homegrown Bitcoin.
Homemined.
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 but well i think this is
just the most natural move for the u.s what US 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? Nope, not
at all. Seems par for the course with
Trump's in crypto.
So yeah, they're probably going to do
this maybe they'll get some beneficial government deal who knows um but i think this is how the
strategic victory reserve is most likely going to be built um some form of partnership with
state-backed or um you know 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?
As an American taxpayer,
set aside like a bag holder,
because I think that is kind of the question
that could that get through Congress?
As an American taxpayer,
do you not think them getting into money makes more sense
than selling gold to buy Bitcoin?
Yes, 100%.
I think anyone who's logical and reasonable, right,
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 conceptuallyually i want them to do things that are as flood proof as possible
and that make as most sense as possible yeah and this is a very logical way to 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 cryptos are david sacks 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
you know they are they're getting deeper and deeper into the games 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.
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 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.
It is more complicated.
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.
And this is after the Trump meme coin as well.
God knows how much they were made on that.
So, yeah, like this is, if this was happening in Nigeria,
we'd probably call a spade a spade.
But in America, and obviously, you know, so divisive, the politics over there that you call out this stuff, it's 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 Trumps family, that is.
Yeah.
So I think this is one of my biggest concerns right now.
Yeah.
But...
Yeah, and it may come back and bite them.
And I think people in crypto should maybe see that too.
I think on CT,
the general feeling about World of Liberty Financial
is calling a spade a spade.
It's not like super beneficial when they announce stuff.
It's always like, oh oh god what's happened here um but but it does feel as though more broadly um 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 thinks it still looks like
they are doing that but yeah the policy is very different from this yeah well this is just the
world liberty financial stuff and what the trump family i think is doing it's difficult to know
because u.s 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
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.
Yeah.
I agree.
And 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 because that is my biggest concern.
But that's pretty far out.
But 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 of 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 unlock, but that's a Vanguard. 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 oh yeah and larger assets forward here in the near future also 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
the pension funds that i have i can direct the funds that they're also going to invest in mutual funds. 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 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 invested the state pension funds in Bitcoin,
that can be a bit controversial.
So I don't know for the passively managed ones.
But I think they should be able to.
I think it'll happen.
They can invest in other things.
They should be able to invest in this.
Yeah.
Everyone still has the choice, right?
And he tried to put this forward in 2022.
2023, 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 evaluation between
four 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?
Betting on Circle's IPO. 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 bet number one.
It would have been like touted.
The other ones are
Ripple, Kraken,
potentially this American
Bitcoin Corp.
There's a
number of different ones that could look to IPO.
Only a stablecoin like Circle is just
an amazing role.
The other thing that you saw was a stable coin act,
which I think you pointed out part of that.
They're not allowing yield bearing stables in the U S.
So like they basically just said,
yeah,
circle,
you just keep the money.
So circle has got this incredible business model where the actual law stops
them from paying anyone.
No, I don't know if that could change in the future.
But yeah, 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 it may be.
They have a great business model.
They're clearly in the in-crowd versus Tether in the US.
They've got government regulation on the inside.
They've managed to get it so that the regulation literally forbids them
from paying anyone out on the money they're making.
It's great.
Great to be Jeremy Elliott.
I think I would be a buyer at a $4 to $5 billion IPO.
I would need to take a little...
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 costs.
I don't know how much Jeremy's paying himself,
but that seems cheap versus,
at least on a revenue multiple, that seems very cheap.
Yes.
I guess the variables there is,
it's basically a play on not only stablecoin size,
but also U.S. bond yields.
So if you think U.S. 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.
This is interesting.
In private secondary markets, they were valued at roughly $5 billion in July. that sort of valuation. This is interesting.
In private secondary markets,
they were valued at roughly $5 billion in July.
It feels like they would be,
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.
Only their market caps tripled of USDC.
I think USDC was about $20 billion back in July.
We can check.
Yeah, so 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.
Got it.
They've 2X'd it in a year.
So, yeah, you'd have to assume there's higher valuation than that.
Right. Maybe we get the chart like Newsmax did you see this newsmax ipo yesterday are we back are we in the ipo
well now i'm back tweets and i was like oh god it's the depth of the bear
yeah between about penny stocks half of my uh half of my tweets yesterday were about non-crypto things. This was a wild.
Apologies for the quick side.
This thing went up 800% on its opening day,
and then it's up another 70% today.
We're doing pink slips.
We're doing pink slips 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 US 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...
Yeah, you think?
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 before on
chain.
So you can't,
you can't say there's no impossible for you to do that,
but stable coins that give you yields,
that would be ideal.
That would be ideal.
So another one that's,
that's a longer,
a longer story line to watch,
but Brian Armstrong already raising his voice.
So I think you like to see that.
It kind of rounds out the big macro headlines
and 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 Farcoin today.
Yeah, let's go straight to Farcoin.
Why not?
Thank you for bringing that up.
The most beautiful cup of handle. Yeah, let's go straight to Farcoin. Why not? Thank you for bringing that up.
The most beautiful cup and handle.
Of the globe is Farcoin.
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 that the macro uncertainty and
volatility.
So clearly people are betting on this thing.
And that's bad.
Yes.
Yeah.
Farouk even bought some,
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.
Yeah, it's –
Liberation Day for tariffs.
It is some very interesting branding, especially against the global backdrop.
They're going to land right in our front points, you know?
He's there. I'm in the shower, actually. especially against the global backdrop. They're going to liberate our Farpoint, 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 student, but I figure, no. I have to say, you guys run 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 though you'd 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.
I'm 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 I'm not mad at that.
I think tomorrow could be a big day.
Tomorrow, big day.
Big day for Funko.
Tomorrow could be a big day.
Sure.
Yeah.
Stop market.
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?
Do you guys think 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 what I mean?
Because tomorrow's actually a big thing, right?
I think he's going to follow through.
Like, just noticing him and his negotiating pattern.
Like, 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,
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,
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 and 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 um or like
perception evaluation for these magnificent seven stocks this this level is is now at the
back to where it was last year um it's officially down 20 which means it's entered a bear market
now the magnificent seven um 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 u.s stock market and that's
what's being challenged here in my opinion um more many of these are not necessarily a net
loser from tariffs right uh particularly some of the um like the ones i just mentioned so
i think um i think it's it's been more than that and 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
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 right like I thinkca's current model is like level two and there's like
level three and level four is like completely autonomous um so that china is coming after a
lot of these tech valuations in several different ways where it's self-driving cars it's robotics
there's been a ton of stories again again, about Chinese robotics. Also, with
the demand for
GPUs, which is
affecting NVIDIA because people are saying
these LLMs aren't going to cost as much to
train with things like DeepSeek.
So, it's actually been
more than that. It's not just like Tesla's
down because of tariffs.
Tesla went up when these tariffs
were announced because tariffs on US autos from abroad
would help Tesla
because they make more in the US.
So I don't think that this is just a tariff story.
I think that's kind of the politics being seen at all.
I actually think it's just a deeper story the politics being seen at all actually this is 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 we clearly saw like the carry trade sell off last year we then we we v-shaped
recovered is that another factor at play is that being overblown right now that's above my pay grade
yeah i think i think it's a it's a factor it's not a great sign um that you have to have
unwinding of those sort of trades. I think what really
caused the drama there 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.
The people like the UK is often mentioned,
Japan is mentioned a lot.
And I think that's one of the persistent worries.
So like, yeah, if Japan,
Japanese rates continue to rise,
it could be a problem for like global markets.
Yeah, so that's going to be another.
Yeah, I don't know. Like that is partly a worry.
I actually just think this is more people are worried about
this is a dot-com style inflation than tariffs in in my opinion tariffs are they're they're kind of
uncertain but they do help certain u.s 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 if you'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 super deep i agree with
100 like these are not these are not those sort
of businesses in fact they were already a huge bit of the stock market right like the the fang
stocks is what they used to be which had a bit more of a social media style edge to it right
um they were still a huge bit of the the cycle before and like google has
well alphabet has tons of different businesses you know amazon has tons
of different businesses um that's why i thought the open ai news was kind of interesting today
you know they still got 300 billion dollar valuation uh deep seek was made for what like
who knows but definitely nowhere close to 300 billion um so the fact that they got that
was 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 I
yeah the main one here is NVIDIA
NVIDIA is
now comfortably, it's dropped out of being the top
three stocks, Microsoft was another one
which kind of was built up.
Microsoft was a returning story on the back of 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 20 years.
So, right, yeah, someone just put Amazon does 100 billion.
That's the point.
Some of these stocks who have 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-style destruction or deflation.
dot com stop sell um destruction or deflation but i think that's if nvidia does drop another 20
percent here that's going to cause some damage i think sure to the to the market
yeah i don't feel like it will but and if if you're on the bob lucas camper you think
we're going to continue going down into June.
I guess that's a real scenario on the table.
So we'll certainly see.
I appreciate your macro thoughts on this.
As always, we may know more here in the days to come.
We will certainly find out.
I want to come back to a couple of Web3 stories.
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've been teasing this a bit.
I think Brett actually mentioned this.
So this is going to be a protocol on MegaEast.
Noise, their tagline is effectively
trading attention they partnered with kaido using kaido's back-end data to effectively stand up a
platform where you can go long or short trends so the exact uh 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 long or the opposite. They just had a big announcement. You think that it's 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. I'd 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. And 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. cappers who aren't creating good content into the top of leaderboards by gaming it by three three
that type of thing well 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?
Yeah.
Like,
I guess,
I guess I'd have a look at it.
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.
Yeah.
Like,
I don't know if I trust the,
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 parlay between people.
But if it's like millions of dollars on the line, people will game it.
For sure.
Yeah.
So it's interesting.
Going to let the team cook here a bit.
Maybe 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 in 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.
No code
agent creator platform. You
can create your own, I think
what they're saying, sustainable tokenomics.
Creators are going to get rewarded more. And then also
Eliza OS version 2 is going to get rewarded more and then also eliza os version
two is going to be ready to launch so expect more announcements on that front as well that feels
like the bigger announcement eliza was very arguably that the catalyst for this entire ai meta
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.
Yeah, I want to know about that too, actually.
I want to ask Ovi about the AI-BT
and GOAT spread
with Artcoin.
Mandel, do you mind
asking about GOAT and Artcoin spread for me, please? and goat spread with heart coin. Mandel, do you mind asking
goat and heart 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.
Because that one, Ovi doesn't bring it up on purpose because I really know I hurt him. Oh, yeah.
Oh, for sure.
Because that one, Ovi 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 a – that one's a painful one for him for sure.
If he's still holding these, I am very curious what his plan is.
What his thought is?
I think he thinks that, 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. it's been one of the best performers of all all coins off the bottom, right? Like it's, um,
it's still a very,
very strong thing.
So I think he's going to lose that battle,
but,
yeah,
but hopefully,
hopefully his trade still do well.
You know what I mean?
I still think they could,
they can come back towards the end of this year,
potentially.
100%.
I hope I was super bullish on all of these.
Right. Um, potentially. Well, a hundred percent. I hope I was super bullish on all of these. Right.
And then after,
after Libra and,
and Trump,
well,
mainly Melania,
actually,
I had to rethink,
rethink that all now.
And it now feels as though the time it had a window,
right.
Where it was just dominating. And now it feels like that time it's
gonna have to come back when everyone's healed because everyone just got so wrecked after
millennia that this takes a long time for that stuff to heal it does i mean i became an ai 16
partner ai 16z partner at like a dollar 40 and took 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.
With their new launch pad
with tokenomics
that they are able to design and control,
I think that is a very
non-zero possibility.
Oh, 100%. He is very vocal
about that. I think you've hit the net.
Whoever that was, smart person.
He was calling that when it was well over a billion so i gotta give him credit right for that um 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 once you're mute or someone else but they were saying it's good to mute. Yeah. Okay. So, so they clearly just sold off huge chunks of bags.
Act had been a top three AI token.
So I run these every day and they fell 50%.
It was still in the top three.
Yes.
Man,
the crime of that token will be a,
there'll be a Harvard business school study on that one.
I have a question on that.
When we see the wintermute wallet selling,
is that usually Wintermute themselves
or can it be people through Wintermute?
It can be people through Wintermute, yeah.
Because you can use their services as buy-in, right?
Yeah, so it may have not been them.
There's clearly some crime going on.
I mean, the hack thing was crime from A to Z, yeah.
People have said anecd anecdotally,
that Justin Sun
was linked to the act
meme coin.
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 dollar 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 a lot of folks off guard.
But still, no one
on my timeline talks about act. So this is
a very... I have never met anyone that actually owns
that token.
Same. Yeah. Same.
Yeah.
I never met anyone.
There was one guy, wasn't there, who made a ton of money from it.
I mean, if anyone was in it before I got that listing,
it was one of the single biggest winners of the cycle.
It went 10x in a day, maybe 20x or more.
So we'll see how the AI board continues to shake up.
Eliza B2 is going to be something to watch.
I think my gut is we just continue to chop and arrange for a while
until we get some bigger catalysts.
Interestingly, OpenAI raising $40 billion in a $300 billion valuation
didn't really
move the needle for anything. So it seems pretty disconnected from macro AI at this point.
Yeah, I think that mostly goes through the topics I wanted to hit here. There was some news out of
6529. I think that's a longer story. So maybe we'll save that one basically he's using the memes by 6529 as a
kind of a testing pad for his long-term vision of launching a decentralized nation state
which i didn't 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 we've been buying those up for a while i didn't really know why and now it
kind of makes sense yeah one tier specifically 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 community is going to choose
all of the memes for this season.
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 Rollbet. If we've got our Rollbet crew
here, I think let's get on stage and let's get into it.
All right, we're doing the draw.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Parkour, baby.
Up and to the right.
Who won?
Here's a rec guy up and to the right.
Ooh, another rec guy, huh?
I think rec guys win 40% of our spends.
Holy shit.
That's like 40% of our listeners.
I love that.
Up and to the right.
Go ahead and request.
The clock is ticking, my friend.
You know how it works.
Another red guy.
And we've got a nice little box here.
Oh, there it is.
Requesting all raised. Okay. All right've got a nice little box. There he is. Requesting all race.
Okay.
All right.
Let's go, baby.
They are up on stage.
Up to the right.
How you doing, GM?
You won.
All right.
Well, they're up here with us.
It doesn't look like they've gotten off mute yet.
No worries.
They're here.
I see them.
I see them on the stage.
Let's, uh...
Oh, there they are.
Up to the right.
How you doing?
Doing good.
Awesome.
He cannot contain his excitement here this morning.
Oh, he won.
We were spinning.
I didn't even see it.
He won a rec guy.
How about that?
That was a fast spin.
That's a nice one.
He's got the stripes.
So up and to the right.
Proud owner of another rec guy.
You won. Another $1,000.
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'll be back tomorrow
at 10 a.m. Eastern.
Until then, go make it a great day.
Goodbye. Thank you.
