Projects
![]()
No projects found
Investors
New
DAO Treasuries
DATs
Lend / Borrow APRs
Chains
Categories
Spaces
FOMO HOUR: MARKETS + NEWS
Recorded: Jan. 8, 2026 Duration: 1:00:49Space Recording
Short Summary
In a dynamic discussion, crypto enthusiasts explored the evolving landscape of privacy protocols, the transition of Zcash to a more agile operational model, and the broader implications for the industry. The conversation highlighted emerging trends in governance structures and the potential for growth in privacy-focused solutions.
Full Transcription
Thank you. I got it.
All right.
Check, check.
All right, perfect.
Let's kick it, Charlie. Thank you.んんん
ん Yo, yo, yo, yo.
What up?
What up?
Good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning.
When's Thursday?
Oh, it's Thursday.
We're over that.
We got one news list. They have the week, it's Thursday. We're over that one useless day of the week.
What?
Thursday?
January 8th, 2026.
Look at that.
Another beautiful day to have a beautiful day.
I got my co-host in the house, Tyler Mando.
Good morning.
How are you guys doing today?
Why is it zoomed out uh i'm doing fantastic man
i'm doing fantastic market kind of died though didn't it it's your fault it's your fault you
don't want to align you know we need that you know like thanos and everybody else like tyler
is bullish i'm bullish we... We're three here.
We're triangle.
You know?
What's Bernie saying?
Bernie's...
Bernie's been...
Bernie was calling for 106K, bro.
What are you calling for 106K?
I mean, his line, his top line, the blue line, the Bernie power lines.
I had 100, 106.
He called Bernie's power line. I had 100, 106. Hey, Con.
Bernie's power line.
I had 100, 106, you know.
So there's that.
But anyways, a lot of stuff to talk about today, actually.
Jesus, yeah, the market did dump quite a bit.
So we'll talk about all this stuff.
Let's talk markets.
We're going to have to talk about privacy quite a bit here today. A lot of stuff around Zcash. What the hell's going on there? So I'll probably break that down for the audience. And then I'm sure Tyler's
got a few topics in store for us. There's a lot of stuff going on coming out of the
USA. So that uncertainty is still back, right?? Tyler, I saw your tweet and I was like, oh,
that makes sense.
Insanity.
Yeah.
Why is it so loud all
of a sudden? Okay, there you go. The echo is gone.
Yeah, I saw your tweet this morning, Tyler. I was like, oh,
I wonder why we're selling off.
And I'm seeing your tweet. I'm like, oh, well,
yeah, okay. I could
see why. Anyways.
And then the other show, of course, he gave away.
Shout out to Echolando.
I didn't realize.
Good thing we kept him on yesterday.
This guy is like single-handedly, like, cooking our big moments.
Like, he's like.
Yeah?
He's number.
Like, he is carrying the FOMO-R team.
We've got an insane amount of rewards coming through in the next week.
Well, Echolando is like...
If you haven't played Big Moments, it's the fucking week to do it, basically.
Yeah.
Echolando is cooking, cooking.
Like, cooking.
So, he's really the man.
So, I'm glad we kept this dub yesterday.
So, somebody else will come on the show today and win some money as well.
And with that being said, Mando, you tell us where the market's dumping, man.
Who is the man, black old daddy of the land?
Can you dig it?
Yo, GM, everyone.
Wait, that sounded nice. You should bring that mic up dude that did sound really good to be honest i really don't know why we're dumping like there's nothing
that tells me a macro i mean stocks dipped slightly from all-time highs does that mean a
three percent drop in bitcoin and every single alt gets decimated?
I don't know.
But big moves, to be honest.
Like, CCAS obviously had his own move on the back of this whole devs moving or are they not moving question.
But definitely all the stuff that was rallying in terms of the major memes,
they've all dipped around 10% now, maybe 15%.
XRP, we were talking about how strong that was,
down 10%, 20% looks like.
It's a decent move in that.
Just a classic butchering of another chop, essentially.
butchering of another chop, essentially.
I am still of the view that we are going to go to 100 here.
But increasingly, I think everyone kind of maybe has that view, maybe.
So I'm also a little bit wary.
I'm not buying into this.
So just to be very, very clear, I have not been buying any coin.
I bought some Monero.
That's the only thing I've bought in crypto over this sort of period.
But if you want to play this 100k move, I think it's going to happen.
That is my gut.
So now it's 12% to get there.
So I think you've got a decent little trade on if you want to do that.
I don't know what I'd own to do it, though, because XRP just died.
It's still looking okay-ish.
ETH died too, right?
Wow.
It's not pretty there.
Altcoins really did get rugged on this move.
Bitcoin dominance back up to 59, pushing on to 60%. So my recommendation to you is if you just want to do a quick trade,
I would still be buying stuff here, but have stock losses in case Bitcoin
dips back down to 88K, in which case I would be less destructive on the market
or maybe 87k
if not then it's it in your hands
there's not a lot going on in crypto right now
that too
this is remains to be
a difficult
market I think to make parabolic returns
on at this current standpoint and
you can just chill you can chill there you go dca if you want it well even the broader market
maybe we can get into it like the big day in washington like how do you how do you create
an outlook for 2026 with the amount of volatility that's coming out of D.C. right now?
So I tweeted this out, but just yesterday, right?
We had the Russian tankers, which we talked about on the day show, on yesterday's show.
Then Trump came out and he announced that he's going to ban institutions from buying houses.
Pretty significant headline for the U.S. housing market.
Then he came out and said U.S. defense contractors
aren't going to be able to pay themselves more than $5 million,
no dividends, unless they start building these new plants
and getting up to speed.
Then a few hours later, he came out and said,
but we are going to increase our defense spending.
We need to add half a trillion to our defense budget for 2027,
raise it to $1.5 trillion.
He also withdrew from 66 international orgs all in one day.
And this is also while the whole ice incident shooting was going on behind
the scenes.
But a few of those headlines are like decently large,
like impacts for market outlooks,
at least for those specific sectors, for housing and then defense.
We saw defense stocks trading like meme coins yesterday.
I think Lockheed sold off 10% and then fully rebounded,
and then now they're green today.
That's crazy.
The point being, I think, A, I think we have to unpack this a little bit.
Just because crypto is so tied in with macro right now.
I think I'm kind of getting to read that Trump's kind of getting back to basics a little bit.
He came out guns blazing in 2025, signed all those executive orders, then kind of drifted a little bit.
H2, his approval rating went to to shit and now it seems
like he's kind of going back to to some of the the promises and big big strut big moves
effectively that's my read on this and it feels like the his pace is accelerating um i don't have
a ton of insight into why.
I mean, my gut read is just like,
he wants to fix the approval rating.
They want to correct this ahead of the midterms
is my read on this.
Yeah.
Look, I think these are...
I mean, I agree with you.
I think these plays are pretty popular plays, I would say.
Other than the fiscal conservative, which has kind of gone out the window,
the idea of doing more surgical, let's say, interventions on foreign policy,
coupled with boosting spending while cutting basically profits to the fence.
These seem like interesting moves.
It does feel like I haven't heard anyone say that before.
Look, from afar, I don't really get into US domestic politics that much.
I just look at it from an international standpoint because that's where I'm based.
But I think some of these moves are interesting.
Like, I think the Greenland one's going to be the most interesting one.
I'm trying to think about, like, the next couple of decades,
essentially, of the US sort of policy.
And he went through like superpower, Cold War, kind of like the war on terror mixed with some other foreign policy.
But this just feels like a bit of a new Cold War with China and like him doing different things to kind of essentially get the upper hand.
And you can pitch that to the American people, I think.
You can pitch a lot of this sort of stuff to the American people.
So I think it is going to help his approval rating.
I haven't looked, but I can only imagine it's been up over the last week.
Yeah, I think it's too soon for this to be digested.
I think objectively, I agree
with you. I think a lot of these were good moves. I want us to increase defense manufacturing and
that capability. And then guess what? If we're in peacetime and we don't need it, we can pivot
to robots, drones, whatever else we need, right? We're seriously lagging behind there. So that was
a plus.
I think the institutional housing thing,
most folks would tend to agree with in a vacuum as well.
I feel like the U.S. being like the world's babysitter
is kind of going away a little bit.
And now this is this new multipolar world.
We're going to focus more on this hemisphere.
Seems to be more and more accurate.
Yeah, it doesn't feel like the US is
maybe a babysitter anymore.
I think it's more like they're protecting their own interests
and potentially
directing their own interests.
Really, actually, I kind of
called them a shot, which
is kind of what I was
speaking about on Monday.
They kind of can.
They kind of can.
There's no other
real superpower out there at the moment
who's really going to challenge them,
I think, on a lot of this sort of stuff.
And they've been the one spending on
all of this sort of military defense,
like more than every other country combined.
Yeah.
It feels like they're just kind of flexing it a little bit.
Yeah.
I think that's right.
This is the way they're running their country, right?
There's also a line.
I don't think the American people want us to go and invade Greenland.
Right.
But getting a deal done to acquire Greenland is a totally different thing.
Yeah.
Yeah, but Macron and Starmer are talking about what they'll do if the US does that.
You know, the dancing forces of France.
This is kind of my point.
Like everyone is being called on their bluff a little bit here after years and years of a lack of...
That's what it feels like.
It's not just a defense thing.
This is like an economic thing as well.
Look at US GDP over the last 20 years
versus pretty much every single one of the GA.
And it's like a joke.
US is just going up, up, up.
Everywhere else is just kind of sideways.
China's obviously gone up and India has gone up.
But it's like
those are rising from a lower base. All the other developed countries have just not really
grown either. They haven't lent into tech. They haven't lent into growing industries. They haven't
lent into even defense. And so now it's just like, well, you can push them around way more.
The UK, the classic example,
because obviously it was a real superpower
100 years ago, maybe slightly more.
But think about the world order 30 years ago
and the percentage of which was France, UK, Germany, Canada,
versus the US.
And the US and the US
is actually growing
a lot
this is true
I'm like
I'm gonna
I'm gonna grok it
right now
you should grok that
I'm curious about that
it's true
like when you look
at the countries
in general
the US
is continuously
grown
there's
there's that
chats are funny.
A lot of Americans want Greenland.
You can't, you can't think what you see on X at face value.
If we have, we have like, come on.
You guys, you guys are on the chat.
It's always something.
Anyway, I'm taking things of X at face value.
Should we debrief the Zeke situation?
Yeah.
Well, that's where I was going to go now.
It's like, this is the other thing.
I'm sure you have it in your topics,
but we may as well go.
I have not monitored that situation at all.
I was at the gym.
I just saw a mega dip
and everybody making fun of the founders again.
Saying, of course I work.
Like everybody,
that's one thing I have to say.
Everyone who had never bought Zeke
and was really annoyed about it started dunking on Zeke again. And I was like, hmm, this is interesting thing I have to say. Everyone who had never bought Zeke and was really annoyed about it
started dunking on Zeke again.
And I was like, hmm, this is interesting.
Something's going on.
But what exactly is going on?
So it appears that there was some sort of restructuring,
governance beef.
What's happening there?
I didn't even know Zeke Cash had a fucking foundation
until today.
I didn't know it was, can the devs do something
coy really until today?
But clearly it is
in a big way.
But yeah, it looks like
the core dev team, which are part of
what seemingly is a non-profit
in the US
or were attached in some
way to a non-profit, have basically
decided, no, we want to make money from our technology
and are spinning themselves out, it sounds like.
I got the gist of it, but what did you get, Tyler?
That's the initial read.
And then I saw a few other takes.
Was there something to do with the way the foundation gives out grant money or tokens?
And it was somehow more difficult for this group to get that because of the way they were structured.
And are they spitting this out to be able to be more appropriately paid for their work?
That was one of my potential reads on this, and then that seems
to be somewhat like what Mert is
saying. So, again, this
all happened this morning. I do not
have my head wrapped around this.
It seems like every single dev from Zashi is
transitioning to new, leaner, non-bureaucar.
So they're just moving from foundation
to labs.
Right. And that would have been
a headline itself, right? Zcash,
because there was some talk about the whole
open AI thing had meant that there were much stricter
rules around this and that they now
had to make sure that if they were going to be for profit,
they were for profit.
But the initial tweet
from the lead dev was
a bit more personal.
Yes, I saw that.
It's a bit more like, these guys, you can read his tweet, right?
Over the past few weeks, it's clear that the majority of the board members of the nonprofit,
specifically Zachy, like names them, have moved into clear misalignment with admission of ZK.
That's not it.
Don't enter out your dirty laundry.
Right?
Yeah.
That is like, there's a dispute here between some of the major organizations so and i don't know how much of like where the power lies
maybe between the two of them like is that a board just a board or is it like is it somewhat
still aligned with zcash and and the maybe money to do with Zcash?
So, like, that's the bit I wasn't clear about.
I do not think this is bullish, just to get behind this.
I do think this is bearish.
I think the price action kind of did kind of tell you that.
That being said, like, I don't think this is, like,
Zcash to zero or anything like that.
I just don't think this is like
Merck came out since he
cast 10,000.
People are looking to Merck for that.
Right.
But maybe you don't say that.
I don't think
it's
bullish, but it's Polish broken is bears either
Like okay now they have a lab
And they're actually going to cook
It's not like Mertinko are going to
Naval's not just dropping
But if it was just that then yes
But it isn't
That statement is very much like
Fuck you guys
We're out
And it was so unclear from that initial statement
How much they're still in
If you read this guy's tweets he's a bit that initial statement how much they're still in if you read
this guy's tweets he's a bit like cryptic about what they're doing so i don't know if they're
building a broader privacy firm that will also do zcash or if they're just doing zcash um yeah
i sent one other post for oak in group chat. I think this is the one
that I saw that
was making me more
There you go
That's the one, right?
His interpretation is that
again, the team is not exiting
They're effectively just continuing
to build under a new
under a different
private entity.
So like,
if this is true,
and again,
we don't know,
right?
So like,
we're all trying to parse through this and say it honestly,
if this is the reality that they effectively had the same devs,
they're just in a new private entity because it,
for regulatory purposes or for it's easier for them to get paid and they're
still all building this protocol, then this is neutral to me.
Like it's not necessarily bullish or bearish. This was a FUD event.
But it's still the same people building towards the same mission and they're
just a different entity infrastructure effectively. If this is true,
if that's the case we just you just
got a nice entry with a 20 discount so i mean it's already it went from 380 to 426 right about
that's 80 line dude that's a solid 10 rebound i mean granted that was a big sell-off uh i'm sure
there's some liquidations in there right on cue dude, dude. Oh, yeah. Dude, who owns Zcash?
Just own the pups.
No one on Earth besides Naval and Mert own Spot shielded Zcash.
Or maybe like the devs.
I don't know, boys.
Sounds like someone's protecting.
I think so.
Like the problem with Mt and like i think
we need to have a longer conversation with murt he's like i don't he's clearly being very defensive
out there um but he kind of has to be because he's kind of been watching himself as the spokesman
of all this and i think now a lot of folks are like not necessarily trusting what he's saying
because right is he just bag holding as he he defending his bags? I don't know that we're going to really know the answer until the dust clears
on all this.
Or else we get more personal statements
from some of the key players.
But Mert has kind of become the bald CEO
of Zcash over time.
So at least...
I need to tweet that out today.
Zcash is down 25% of Mert vibe coding.
That was going to be a meme tweet.
I thought of my cash.
Whose Twitter account did you turn to when you saw the whole Zcash thing go down?
I just typed in Zcash.
Oh, I just went to Mert.
Right.
For the show, I've typed in Zcash.
Well, he said 10,000 coins.
But if I was a Zcash holder and I go to Mert's account and he's like, guys, chill, it's FUD, 10,000, I'm feeling better.
Yeah, you think?
You think when you buy it on a 10% dip and then it dips for 15, you feel good about it?
Now you can buy the dippity dip.
Guys, who cares about 500 versus 400 entry for a $10,000 token?
You're buying Bitcoin at 415, 380, 450.
It doesn't matter.
But where's Onsome today?
Is he comparing Zcash to Bitcoin today?
I don't think he's awake yet.
I haven't seen posts come out yet. So what about those?
This was a bull for Zcash.
All of them.
Actually, I'm curious because I didn't, like I said,
I did not monitor this situation.
How did XMR, I was thinking, so we talked about this.
So actually we should go there.
Zcash dies tomorrow, which by the way, that's not my opinion.
But let's say, hypothetically, where do people flock?
What do people flock to?
I said XMR thinking it's the most...
XMR, so...
There you go.
So I'm assuming the market...
But you brought up some other points, Tyler.
So what do you guys think?
I'm trying to load this.
To be fair, I don't want to overlay that
because it now sounds like I'm just like a massive XMR ball versus Zcash.
But the chart for those two,
bring up the Zcash chart
and then bring up the XMR chart.
I'm trying to.
When you think like, today,
which one do you want to buy?
Yeah, the XMR for sure.
I would want to buy the XMR chart.
So I think I was looking at the Zcash chart
and actually I think the better risk reward here
is probably unless the XMR desk
decided they want to create a
company. But like, this is just purely looking at like what could break
out to an all-time high and then it's just price discovery.
That would be XMR. And not to sound like an asshole, the people are trading
these and don't give a fuck about privacy. So I know, Tyler, I think you brought something up
like the cup of sleight of hands, cup of hands,
the tech behind XMR, this and that, right?
I think also Mert brought it up on the show at some point,
the difference between the two.
The people actually buying Zcash in leverage right now
don't really know the difference, I think,
between any of the privacy coins.
But what do you think, Tyler?
I know you may be aware of more narratives.
You brought Umbra up from MetaDAO,
which did pretty well over time. What do you think yeah a couple thoughts one three thoughts
i guess so one i think xmr monero is the clear immediate winner i think that's where folks who
want the privacy trade are going to flock rightfully or wrongfully um when we were talking
to mert what jumped out to me was i'm taking this at his word he kind of poked some holes in monero's privacy feature
that's he compared to this like 16 uh like the 16 cup slide of hand game effectively like that's
how their privacy model works um and it basically was saying that zcash's was better right so i i
have not you know gone through it it's a little bit over my head. I took him at his word on that.
I think the other threat to this whole
sector, and this was kind of my read over
Christmas break, is like,
are either of these going to be the winner?
What if there's a great
new privacy
protocol that comes out
on Solana?
Or a theory where you can do the same thing.
To be clear, I think that's probably the most likely scenario.
Yeah.
I think it's very clear explicitly
that Ethereum want to go down the route of privacy.
Very explicitly.
So you have to assume that privacy is coming
to these changes as well.
And then the story...
But again, are we in the world of playing eventualities
or are we in the world of playing a meta on a bounce?
Like, there's no new entrants buying Monero right now
or probably Zcash unless some Bitcoin whales are rotating.
So I think right now we are pitching
what is going to win the narrative war
in people who are still here right now
i don't see ethereum going bringing out privacy protocol happening anytime soon um maybe maybe
it happens i do think there's two trades to be made i think there's the immediate trade which
you just talked about but i think there's also like there's the growing consensus of folks like balaji
the ball who say like privacy is the next four or five years is the next crypto arc
oh yeah all these statistics for for centuries of gdp go see them we'll go there afterwards
i'm going to pause this conversation mert's coming on in 10 minutes
so i i just i was just talking to him Mert's coming on in 10 minutes.
So I was just talking to him.
So he's coming on the show and he asked for 10 minutes.
So why don't we pause this conversation?
I asked him in 10 minutes, by the way.
So, yeah.
You're going to miss the fucking conversation.
Classic Monero bull has to duck out.
Classic Monero bull. Didn't he say he had a tweet drafted about Mert?
And then he just like dodges Mert when he pulls up.
I dodged it because I was like, I like Bats.
I love Mert.
But that was a banger tweet, you know?
I went.
Why don't you leave in 15?
No, I'm kidding.
You probably have something important to do.
So why don't we, Tyler, go to something else for now,
run through your topics for 10 minutes.
Let's go to Amanda's stats.
Here we go.
Percentage of GDP.
Yeah.
Okay, fine.
Let's go through these statistics.
The prices, for the last 45 years, still about 25%.
France has fucking dropped by 75%,
or 60%.
Germany is basically nearly halved.
Canada's down.
Australia's actually slightly up.
Well done, Australia. And it's really just China.
It's gone up. Japan, down
30%, 40%.
Actually, more than that, right? 70%.
India's up. UK
is down 30%.
Gives you a good sense
that why the US,
because these are kind of,
let's say,
rough US main allies, right?
Japan included,
India less to an extent,
but like,
their percentage
has massively dropped
compared to the US over the last 40 years.
And it's just going to start flexing, I think, a bit more.
Why should a country that is 2.9% of global GDP in France
have as much sway as a country with 26%?
Like, what's Macron?
Macron and the UK are
5% of global GDP
and rely on
the US for so much.
I just think this is the next 20 years.
I don't see
those other countries turning it around
and winning a lot based on
exposure to some new industry
or exposure to massive
reserves.
If anything, they're becoming more reliant on the us um particularly after russia kind of did the whole ukraine thing
it's a real trend right this is a you could we could probably do a full hour just on this
We could probably do a full hour just on this table and its impacts.
But this does explain a lot.
And I don't think you can just ignore history because culture is a part of history.
But you also have to look at where things are now in decision making.
Right.
Like if the U.S. says it wants Greenland and france says no we're gonna don't you dare
like if it was france the uk and germany back in 1980 you see how that's basically
a similar sort of power and now it's not even half.
I see what you're saying.
Yeah, they can just do what they want
and kind of like don't care.
That's how it feels like, right?
I think Trump's just pushing the envelope slightly.
Just seeing, you know, why not?
We saw that with the terrorists, right?
Push, push, push, see what you can do.
Yeah. I feel like that's kind of like saw that with the terrorists, right? Push, push, push. See what you can do. Yeah.
I feel like that's kind of like the way he does business, right?
The art of the deal.
So it looks like this is how he runs his play.
We'll see what happens.
And we'll play the cover on here.
But it's going to be interesting.
Definitely understand why it's unstable, though, on the market front.
Not so unstable on trad, though,
because S&P is back to all-time high, guys.
At least yesterday,
hit an all-time high again.
Yeah, stocks are
actually markets, and I'm hating it.
We're rebounding a bit. We bounced off
90, at least. Nice to see.
We can talk about
this. I know we have just a few minutes
before Merck joins we gotta talk
white whale first hundred million dollar meme
runner
what a whiff what a whiff by us collective
whiff like saw this talked
about it I know
it was Bible for two or three million
for days
now it's at a hundred
I was trying to think,
what is the last... You can use a Bible,
like a Zuma.
What is the last $100 million runner?
Bible.
Bible.
I don't know.
Bible.
We had like eight weeks
to buy this, by the way.
I think Troll,
I think Troll's
the last $100 million runner runner and i went back to
its target hit 100 million on august 4th i don't think we've had i don't think so either
well jack since i'm tough to 50 60 same four six seven um wow congrats man this is this is how you
do it talking supply constraint the fuck out of it and there's a leader and then just go right
i did not expect this to be the one but
there really hasn't there there hasn't been much of a follow-on effect i think when when bitcoin
is pumping hit 94 like there was a lot of means moving that they all gave it back right kind of
how mando said there at the beginning of his report so it's it's pretty red out there
so wild did you see financeance added TradFi trading today?
Yeah, they sure did.
That's going to be big.
I don't know why that wasn't a bit more of a headline,
but I do think that they're the biggest trading house,
and we've all been talking about perps for TradFi.
I don't know what it's going to be yet,
but they're saying 24-7 markets.
And you can imagine it's going to be a lot of stocks,
a lot of commodities.
This could be huge for trading, at least.
I do think that this is,
I thought maybe that was the reason why alt sold off again today.
So question on that.
How important is stock trading,
trade-fired trading and stuff out East, Mando?
I'm not as aware.
Like I know for crypto,
like obviously most of the trading is done in Asia.
How important is out there?
Because you know Coinbase just announced that too when they're doing it. Obviously, Hyperliquid, HIP3, Robinhood. It's tough because you're
competing with Robinhood in the West. In the East, I don't know who you're competing with.
Like, how important is the Asian market to like…
All the big US banks essentially are the biggest trading houses in Hong Kong and Singapore,
generally. So like, it's the same people. That being said, like, the trading volume is much less than European hours
and then, not much less, but less than European hours
and then much less than U.S. hours.
So, but what I think this opens it up to is Asian people buying U.S. stocks,
of which it is much more difficult to do.
Like, you can do it offshore, particularly in China via Hong Kong,
but there's often capital controls or controls about access to those sort of markets. So
the ability to now do this, I think will be quite big for Asian crypto, let's say.
Okay.
I was so curious because I don't know how much,
like I know the Hong Kong stock market
and all that aren't that significant,
right?
Compared to...
Well,
in general,
they have fewer
fully private style companies,
fully public style companies.
Okay.
But just think about like
you're in Turkey,
for example,
and now you can just trade US stocks.
There are some Bitcoin world out there.
Like,
yeah,
you might get involved.
Yeah.
You wouldn't be able to,
at least not in the same sort of scale.
It's interesting because the hours kind of don't really overlap that well
either,
right?
Like US stock market opens and it's like
9 p.m out there yeah 24 7 though it doesn't really matter now they're just gonna trade 24 7
it's true they're gonna trade 24 7 so that'll uh that'll be a that'll be a that'll be a big one
anyways any other larger topics i think we're gonna be there in a minute. New airdrop. Solana Mobile.
Sorry, Saga owners.
Myself included.
You bought the first phone.
No one cares.
No way.
They just continued support and you're not getting any tokens.
This one is just going to go to the secret phone holders.
Solana Mobile.
It's going to be their SKR token airdrop.
This is going to be 20% of this reply. It's a 2 billion token their skr token airdrop uh they're gonna this is gonna be 20%
of this reply it's a 2 billion token so so pretty big airdrop there um i don't know if we have okay
it's gonna occur on january 21st early a.m so in the utc time zone um 30% overall the tokens are set aside for air drops but 20 percent coming on the gun and
i think in this line eco i think this is probably one of the bigger tokens and it's kind of like
this wasn't really on a whole lot of the lists i saw uh so not necessarily a surprise but i don't
think one that folks have been planning for necessarily but also probably a lot of us aren't
going to get it unless you had the
phone.
And I made the mistake of buying the first phone and not second.
Although I'm,
this is tongue in cheek.
The first phone got like $3,500 in airdrops.
So like it was actually,
it was like 10 X the cost of the phone.
So they did just fine.
I bought my saga phone on eBay for $ thousand dollars uh and missed a lot of those
story for another day looks like we got with us i love the name so sorry breaking news everybody
here we have a last second guest it's not mert it's murderous prime here uh on the on fomo hour
this morning mert good morning i think you're having quite a quite a busy
one yeah I just I mean good morning it's 6 40 p.m here but I usually go to bed at like 8 a.m in
Dubai and so when I woke up I was like what the fuck but uh I'm up now that's definitely something
wild to to wake up to so thanks for coming in so quick. Look, we were talking about this on the show,
and we were reading your tweets on air.
Like, dude, may as well just tweet at the guy and have him come on.
So thanks for making it on such short notice.
Let's just go right into it.
What happened?
What's going on?
What happened with Zeke this morning?
Maybe take us through that.
Well, I'm still, you know, catching up with all the random posts and shit um i think like the
first source of truth is um you want to look at josh who is uh also bald guy um he's the head of
zashi wallet um and etc and whatnot and he he put out a post saying that basically they're going to transition
from this foundation entity.
If you're not familiar, the way it works today is there's a company behind ECC.
Obviously, you need a legal structure or whatnot.
And basically, literally 100% of the employees there thought they were
being held back by the foundation entity, right?
Because you can't scale a technology platform, right?
You can't get funding.
You can't pay cryptographers top money and all this with a foundation nonprofit structure
and a startup and a tech company, you know, some, some better structure for that is going to allow for people to, one, you know, rely less on nonprofit donation type stuff, but then, two, just make money and ship and be judged by the market.
And so all that happened was that all those people just said, yeah, we're going to do this other structure because the board won't let us go from this weird political foundation structure. And that's it. I mean, the only people that are
left, so to speak, is the existing board of like three political people. Now they just don't have
a company to manage. And now the devs actually have their own structure where they can raise funds
and hire and all this stuff. So how much, I guess the real question then is like,
what, although they don't have a
company to manage, how much of like, was there a treasury here that they were managing somewhat
or like surely the foundation had some capital? I can not speak on everything here. There will
be more news soon, but I will guarantee you that the money is non-negligible. So there will not be any problems with money funding.
In fact, this scales them much better for future shipping,
hiring, all that sort of stuff.
Okay. So they basically got funding for the new vehicle,
it sounds like.
Okay.
So, and then there are no,
but there's no devs left at the old foundation it's just
a board with access to some sort of foundation funds yeah like i mean um if you know and i might
butcher some of this because i'm not like you know on the board or anything like this but like
fundamentally every company has some board of direct you might have seen this with chat gpt
you know uh when uh chat gpt board tried to like take Sam Altman out and then all the employees were like, no, like, fuck you.
We want Sam Altman. And then the board was like, OK, OK, fine.
This is like a similar situation in that the board was basically trying to decide what's best for the employees and stuff.
And the employees are like, actually, no, including the CEO, Josh himself.
And, you know
sometimes with a non-profit board like you won't have full control of the board and so you're at
the whims of like political people so like the short tldr is that the all the employees all the
developers all the people actually building the things just have their let's say they're unburdened
by the few board members that aren't actually doing
anything and now like you know the simplest way to think of this is a startup or a tech company
can actually work and ship and scale but a non-profit necessarily cannot are they going to
ship exclusively for zcash or just more broadly in the oh no it's, it's just Zcash. It's absolutely, nothing has changed in terms of that.
It's a fully committed Zcash team.
Yeah, I think that was the pending question that we had
because we read Josh's tweet, right?
Obviously, as you said, he's the main person of interest here,
but we weren't sure, like, what does that mean?
Like, is it being forked?
Are they going to do something else?
Are they focused on different private money?
Okay, so it's just Zcash.
Yeah, it's just Zcash. The only forking is the company name in some sense like before
you know it's called like zashi wallet maybe now the name will change to like some other wallet name um but that's literally it everything is the exact same interesting got you and so it's fake
news just want to reiterate this on here it's fake news. Just want to reiterate this on here. It's fake news that because obviously, you know, the Twitter payouts are good these days.
So when people go out and say the entire ZEC deaf team just resigned, I just want you to be because I know people clip that up.
And I think it's a good thing for people.
It's fake news, right?
This did not happen.
Absolutely fake news.
I mean, like, look, it's one of those things where, like, you can take something that is technically true because they resigned from the foundation entity, but then they're all under the new entity.
So, like, they just literally changed the name and the legal doc, but nobody, like, the net number of people working on the same problems has remained unchanged.
Yeah. It's crazy, man. Number of people working on the same problems has remained unchanged.
Yeah.
It's crazy, man.
All these foundations, dude.
Like all the governance problems we've had in crypto.
I saw you share the A6NZ crypto article a few minutes ago as well. Like the end of the foundation era in crypto and everyone moving to labs.
I mean, I think this is something that's happening.
A phenomenon that's happening across crypto in general.
Another question for you is you came in strong.
You said this is better for Zcash.
In other words, $10,000.
So reiterating your price targets here.
So staying bullish.
And I was telling the boys, I said,
I'm assuming every single Zcash bag holder
woke up this morning and went to Merck's Twitter account, right?
Just to make sure that daddy was still home.
Even though obviously like you don't represent the board,
you don't represent the team,
but like I feel like you're kind of the main poster
at this stage and you know that.
And so obviously it's reinforcing that you say that,
but what makes you so confident
in saying that reiterating your $10,000,
you know, target, et cetera.
So why are you still so bullish on this Labs team?
Sure, well, I mean, like, look, any serious
founder or operator will know that a foundation structure or a nonprofit structure is just,
it just bogs you down. It slows you down. It gets political. It gets bureaucratic.
What you as a shipper and a founder want to do is you want, you want capital to scale,
you want to ship things. And then you also want a war chest for like, you know, especially in
privacy, if regulatory crackdown happens, you don't want some like weird political foundation thing doing
your negotiating. You want like serious people actually helping you. Right. And so, you know,
nothing about Zcash has changed except for the fact that now the people who are doing the shipping,
who are market driven, right, who wear, you know,
Zashi wallet, the reason people use it is because it actually works and it solves their problem.
And, like, that didn't exist for many years in the existing, like, corporate structures, right? So this is a new thing. And so now you'll just see more of that. You'll see more shipping,
better bridging, better wallets, better core dev um so i mean like
um i mean the reason i'm bullish is because now there's left barriers for the shippers to actually
build things and improve things versus getting in like weird oh you know uh according to such and
such bisection uh we must do this process let Let's go by the process here, guys.
None of this care and shit.
Yeah, no, this is great.
Tyler, do you have anything else?
Marin, I feel like you addressed the primary.
I think we'll call it FUD.
You addressed the FUD.
I'm going to ask a slightly tangential question,
but still related to Zcash.
So I think there is clearly,
like this has spawned a privacy.
Meta is not the right word.
It could be like era of crypto, right?
It could be very well like-
Renaissance.
Of the next three to five years.
My direct question is, if someone builds a privacy protocol on Solana or Ethereum that
effectively handles the privacy problem,
what does that mean for Zcash?
Is it still as useful or as needed?
Yeah, this is actually a good question.
And so let me preface by saying I've invested in tons of Solana projects
that do privacy and I've tried to help them get PMF.
You might have seen, for example, just added privacy.
And it's like I invested in the privacy cash team help connect them and then you know like so i'm
really trying to help spin up privacy all around i've invested in celestia and like ethereum
privacy teams as well so the way to think about this is simply like um you know will solana
displays bitcoin type of thing right like it's like look they have the same
similar characteristics in that they're both coins and their blockchains however what they aim to do
and as a result their structure and everything around them is quite different right like bitcoin
is the pet rock it's a store of value solana is a place where you trade um and it's the same thing
with like a zcash versus some other privacy protocol on a FastL1 or Ethereum, which is to say, I don't want to get too technical, but like Zcash, or here's a better framing.
So like what is privacy, right?
Privacy, you can teleologically kind of describe as the minimization of information leaks, right?
The more information you're leaking, the less private you are.
So it's like the spectrum.
Now, if you have something like a fast L1 and then you have a privacy protocol on top
of it, that L1 is not maximized for minimizing privacy leaks, right?
So for example, let's say you go on, interact with a mixer on solana well guess what the wallet
you're using the validators the rpcs everything that around it is not structured to minimize all
those leaks right and um you also have like smart contract risk um you have validator like uh let's
say sanction list which we've seen on ethereum all these different things. And so like they're useful tools for those chains.
But if you want max, like if you're a serious person, right, like you want to put a few
million on something, you want the strongest privacy pool, the largest privacy pool with
the strongest guarantees from a vertically integrated standpoint.
And so privacy is also has this network effect where like a shielded pool, right? Zcash is like a few billion. You cannot just fork it, right? You can fork smart contracts and code. You can fork tornado cash and all this stuff. You cannot fork the amount of money that's shielded within the ZEC protocol.
And much more importantly, and this will be important in a few years, let's say five to six, seven, ten.
The path to where you got that privacy, like let's say you shielded some funds on Solana and whatnot, that is not quantum proof.
Which means, for example, on something like a Monero, you can actually, once quantum computers arrive, you can see who actually encrypted what and what the data was and all this stuff.
who actually encrypted what and what the data was and all this stuff.
But if you have something like Zcash, which with Tachyon will have quantum post privacy,
you cannot retroactively see, okay, this person deposited funds here eight years ago.
Now I know who they are, right?
So it's like a different order of magnitude and privacy guarantees.
Now, they should be used in conjunction.
Like, so for example example let's say you're
bridging from zcash to solana and whatnot you now have more tools but like for solana it's going to
be mostly around trading and fast velocity use cases versus for zcash it's more like a swiss
vault right you just store your there you're now safe right as long as you don't do crazy
opsec like you know depositing exactly 6..9 billion and then taking that exact amount out the next week, in which case no privacy protocol would work.
So that's the main difference.
But the thing to emphasize is that what we really want to do is increase the amount of privacy that exists within the entirety of crypto because that's how you minimize the leaks.
So Solana or Ethereum's privacy pools
will never be as private as Zcash's,
but they will be private.
And as long as you...
And you're normalizing it now, right?
So people don't think it's like some weird, sketchy thing
to have your money encrypted.
Makes sense. So it's actually a good thing that there's privacy across chains and you're just
normalizing privacy now, which is a good thing for the crypto in general. So that makes total
sense. Mert or Murderous Prime, shall I say. Thank you for coming in so quick. I appreciate
you for making it on and making it clear. I'm coming out of this conversation thinking this
is actually a really good thing for Zcash.
But I think that, and I'm not talking as a bag holder because I'm actually not a bag holder.
I just, you know, I trade it here and there.
But I think this is a, maybe people got a good opportunity here at Zcash one more time. I also can't say everything but expect much better news soon that aren't uh marketed by engineers but actually uh um um let's say
like it's not that nobody's gonna just be like look all we did was change the name in the legal
structure right like that's that's not super bullish news it's just confusing but like
obviously we must think we must think there's something better to transition to. Oh, wow. A little alpha drop.
I... Damn.
All right.
There you go.
That's a good way to leave that off, Bert.
Thank you so much for coming, man.
Appreciate it.
It was great.
Thanks for joining us.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Did he just drop a bomb before leaving?
Yeah.
I'm mentally going through my holdings to figure out what I need to cut
for more,
for more seek right now.
That's where my head is.
And I bought some before the show.
Cause I had been personally,
and I,
I've been,
I feel like I've been pretty objective.
I shared like some of my concerns about it,
but I was also a token.
I was eyeing over Christmas break and I missed the run to 500.
And I'm like,
it's like, it's tough to buy after this. And I'm like, oh, it's like,
it's tough to buy after this.
We got a gift,
right?
Like if you,
if you are bullish on it,
the token,
it's potential upside.
It's 20% cheaper
than it was yesterday.
Dude,
there is like,
there's like,
even like there's other team members,
like I shared in the chat,
but like saying how excited they are about this change and how There's even other team members, I shared in the chat,
but saying how excited they are about this change and how now the former team at ECC will be regrouped
under Josh's excellent leadership for the same reason.
Shed these users' corporate structures whenever they hold you back.
I don't think people understand.
These foundations don't work.
There's a reason why crypto was only speculation,
memes and stuff for the longest time.
There was nothing being actually like action
and built for the longest time
because these foundations are stupid.
Like it just doesn't, it does not move the needle, right?
And so the move from foundation to labs,
and again, Mert shared an article about 10 minutes ago,
20 minutes ago from A16Z about that, right?
The end of the foundation to the labs,
like it's a really big deal.
A lot of people that are on the founder end of the foundation to the labs, like, it's a really big deal. A lot of people that are
on the founder side
of crypto don't really see that.
I got to see a little bit of it and get a taste
of it from the DAO perspective. Like,
you can't get shit done. You can't.
Like, it just doesn't. Businesses
don't move based on what
imagine NVIDIA
had to ask all their employees what they thought
about a proposal or how things should move
or like some just the group of
executives sometimes or less than managers
doesn't work you know
you know sometimes you got to make moves
like this I like this Tyler
I think we want confirmation that this is what it was
we want confirmation that
it's basically just a change in
name and like how they're going to be able to work and want confirmation that it's basically just a change in name and like how
they're going to be able to work and move forward.
And it's basically.
And they're not going to fork it.
They're not working.
Like,
cause that was,
maybe he tried to make it clear in his tweet,
but it wasn't so clear.
And I think we,
I feel like we clarified that they're not leaving to work on something else.
They're leaving the foundation and the entire team is building on the labs
to work on something,
the same thing. And when he said at the end it's not going to be the news are not going to be marketed by devs i
see what he means because when devs market news is usually pretty bearish because devs are a little
too nerdy for the marketing side of crypto right and this is why some people are really good at
what they do right some posters like mart's a great poster he just happens to be good at both
but uh but i think
um it's gonna be headline driven dude and he does know it's like what folks may not remember this
it kind of got buried in q4 but like mert kobe these other guys they they like spun up this like
shark tank for for privacy builders for zcash right so they're very plugged in to who's building like what's happening with the
overall organization it sounds like there's a little bit more to come there's more to come
for sure i mean look there's not that many organizations that you can bet on the space
that you know are going to actually build some shit um and again like i said i'm speaking as
a non-backholder i own zero zcash so i And I own no Monero either. I own no privacy right now.
Maybe I'm stupid for that.
But this is like, I like this.
I think this is a very bullish news
and it's still at a certain discount.
Look, from a trading perspective,
maybe some people who have not listened to Merit yet
or woken up and tweeted will see the pump
sell off into that again.
So don't hold us accountable to this trading price, this and that.
But over midterm, Tyler, I think this was pretty good.
And if you were short Zcash, which totally get that on that news,
shoring Zcash is probably the best thing to do.
Maybe just take your profit.
Maybe take your shekels.
Good job.
I have a friend who shorted it
as soon as he saw a notification,
but he was on at the right time,
right place, right?
And that's that.
So look, I think we managed to do news,
everything, Mert.
Let's give some money away.
That was great.
I'm really happy we did that.
You have to hold Zcash.
I agree, Dr. Porny.
I think you're right.
I'm going to look at my portfolio now
and see what to do like Tyler did.
See where I'm taking money from and getting some Zcash.
We need to launch a new market on the area.
Zcash in Maryland.
What?
Have they won?
What team? Look at that. Look at that. What? What's his own here? Have they won? He won.
What a heck.
Look at that.
He did win not long ago.
Let's see if he fit the 30-day thing
before we get too excited
about a really cool listener listening.
So many reasons.
Let's see.
But that is an awesome winner.
Yeah, I think he may have.
Exactly.
I think he may have won the last 30.
By the way, guys,
we're working on something with DJ and Ty
to see if we can just put people on ice for the 30-day period
so we don't have to deal with this again.
Oh, he said November.
I kind of believe him.
But don't worry.
We have all the – we got the back end.
He's good.
All right.
Bruce Charlie says he's clear.
No, he did not win in December.
He did not win in December.
Well, congratulations.
Congratulations. Y'all remember him December. Well, congratulations. Congratulations.
Y'all remember him winning because y'all like him.
He's the lamb chop goat.
Was he the one who made the barn run?
Yeah.
Oh, he did.
Wait.
Didn't he hit the barn?
I forget who won.
Well, wait.
We have to play lamb chop.
They're calling him.
Is he here? I haven't're calling him. Is he here?
I haven't seen him chat.
Is he here?
Oh, Luke's.
Oh, don't tell me.
Yeah.
Oh, he is.
He said, whoa.
There he is.
Yeah, he's here.
You can see my name on the tree.
That's right.
All right.
All right, Luke's.
We're playing Lamb Chop.
How do you want to run things?
Oh, yeah.
His name is right here, dude.
That's actually sick.
They put his name in the game.
It literally says looks 13.
Yeah, it's true.
Barn, the first one.
Okay.
250.
Will we make it past the first base?
We haven't so far yet this week.
Oh, we will.
All right.
Oh, yeah. Good right. Oh, yeah.
Let's start.
Oh, yeah.
Already bullish.
That's such a rare spot to lose on.
I feel like I rarely see the fourth.
Mando had to leave, huh?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's behind the scenes.
Mando had to leave.
That was very weird.
All right.
How do you want to run this one, looks?
Mando had to leave.
Shutting him that. I'm going to have, Lux? Mando had to leave. Shutting that.
I'm going to have a conversation with Mando in the back.
I love ways of wag.
Bar in the second.
He's a gambler.
You got to give it to him, man.
Come on, Lamb Chop gods.
You got to give it.
Those are two of the worst runs of the world.
Oh, no.
We could have had some fun
with those tracks, but
Nando wasn't having it.
We got somebody who wants to actually
go to the barn two times.
And then you're like...
That's the best I've seen.
God damn it.
Oh, man. Well, it. God damn it. Oh,
man.
Well,
it is what it is.
Sorry,
Lux.
Looks like today's not the day.
With that being said,
we will see you all tomorrow morning,
10 a.m.
Eastern Standard Time.
For the episode of FOMO Hour on Rogue Radio.
Let's go.んんん
ん Thank you.
Insights
P
