Projects
![]()
No projects found
Investors
New
DAO Treasuries
DATs
Lend / Borrow APRs
Chains
Categories
Spaces
FOMO HOUR: Turnaround Tuesday
Recorded: April 8, 2025 Duration: 0:56:31Space Recording
Short Summary
In today's crypto market update, we witnessed a notable rebound with altcoins surging, Ripple's strategic acquisition of Hidden Road, and a significant statement from the White House regarding the dollar's status. As investors eye potential buying opportunities, Fartcoin's impressive holder growth further underscores the evolving landscape.
Full Transcription
Thank you. All right, GM, GM, everyone.
Thank you for joining us here this morning.
We're going to start the show in just a minute or two.
We're going to get our speakers up on stage.
While we wait, some shout outs to our listeners out there.
Meg, Ibra, Erkin, GM, GM.
Who else we got?
Suedro, Eric, DJ and Ty, Tyler Durden, GM, GM.
Thank you for joining us as always.
All right, let me get FOMO Hour up here as co-host.
That's done.
Who else we got?
A couple more shoutouts.
Michael, Bloodish, T-Block.
S-T McFly.
I think a fellow Chicagoan.
S-T.
G-M-G-M.
All right, Sims, if you're ready, let's kick it. Thank you. Good morning, good morning everyone, GM, GM and welcome to another episode of FOMO Hour. Today is Tuesday, April 8th, 2025.
And folks, it is not just any Tuesday.
It is Turnaround Tuesday.
Stocks opening big green.
Crypto has rebounded across the board.
Several alts, some memes up double digits on the day
after Trump has seemingly come to the
negotiation table on these tariffs. The question now, is this a scam pump fake out or is the worst
actually behind us? We're going to break it all down on today's show. Still no Farouk,
but we've got Mando here in the house. Mando, GM, how you doing? Oh, you're on mute.
Oh, man, it's still muted.
Hello.
There we are.
Sorry, I'm just so busy, man.
I am just so insanely busy today. I'm good man uh market is looking okay today not looking so bad not so bad we'll take it after what the the last after how bad
the last four days have been i'm curious how are the i mean maybe you're just immune to it because
you're locked inside right now but i was curious curious how the vibes are in Portugal as all this is happening
around the globe right now.
Are people talking about it at the cafes and streets?
No one cares, as always in Portugal.
No one cares at all.
Yeah, very, very chilled place to be.
Not mentioned once.
Someone lightly mentioned that it could increase prices,
but that's about it. Yeah. I think sometimes we,
we, we've, those of us who are locked onto the screens for 16 hours a day sometimes can,
can overreact or build things up to be bigger, perhaps not, uh, not realize that everyone around
the world is not worried about these things for 16 hours a day.
And they're just going about living their lives.
And perhaps that's the easier route.
Well, folks, we have a lot to talk about on today's show.
Markets are rebounding across the board.
Stocks are up.
Crypto is up to 10 years up as well.
Dollar is not getting weaker.
The White House, they made a pretty big statement yesterday.
They said they don't want to be the global reserve.
So does that open the door for Bitcoin?
We'll talk about that.
Larry Fink says it's more of a time to buy than it is to sell.
Meanwhile, Ray Dalio is warning this is much bigger than tariffs
and signs of a changing global order.
In news, we got some blockbuster news out of Ripple,
one of the largest crypto acquisitions of all time, just broke this morning.
And then MemeCoin is also showing some signs of life, of course, led by Fortcoin, which continues to be one of the strongest tokens on the market.
So those are some of the headlines. We'll get into those and a lot more.
Before we dive in, shout out to our partners, starting with Galaxis.
Galaxis is a Web3 platform empowering creators and brands to build unstoppable communities with full ownership and independence.
Trusted by icons like Donald Trump, Steve Aoki, Mike Tyson, and the NBA, shaping together the future of engagement.
And Wallet Connect is the connectivity network shaping the future of on-chain UX.
If you've connected to a Web3 app, you've seen Wallet Connect, that blue logo.
It's everywhere, an icon of trust in crypto as recognizable as Visa at the checkout.
If you want to learn more, follow at Wallet Connect
on X and Telegram to stay ahead of what's next.
All right, we love our partners as always.
Mando, if you're ready, let's get right into it.
Who is the man, macro daddy of the land?
Can you dig it?
Sorry. I'm just not with you today.
Yeah, crypto market, we kind of reclaim the ATK level pretty well here.
Or at least we've gone back up there.
We've seen Solana go back above 110.
Decent amount of trench activity, I think, is coming back here.
ETH is also catching up.
ETH's still underperforming.
Barcoin, still the best coin in the top 300 at 600 million.
I don't know.
I still don't feel I'm out of the woods at all.
All the macro stuff doesn't seem to be resolved in any way to me.
So, yeah, I'm less bullish.
So you're in the camp that it could just be a bit of a relief rally,
not out of the woods yet by any means.
Yeah, exactly.
So I think we're kind of half out, like one foot in, one foot out here.
Like stocks weren't lower yesterday.
They were like unchanged.
And they've opened a little bit higher today, as of global stocks.
So there's a bit of a relief rally.
I don't think anyone really trusts it because it still feels like headline tennis.
So, yeah, I just don't really know.
I'm not buying up here. I was buying yesterday, but I've kind of just settled my buying for the last 10 minutes or so, or last few hours or so.
I think that makes sense.
I feel like today feels like one of those kind of waiting days.
So April 9th is the day that the tariffs are supposed to go into place.
That's tomorrow.
There's this ongoing escalating feud between the U S and China right now.
I think Trump promised an additional 50% yesterday.
And China responded that they're not going to back down.
So I think that everyone's saying that is one of the key,
key battles to watch there.
But at the same time,
it does seem like rhetoric has changed a bit that, that Trump and the White House are starting to come to the negotiation table.
But it seems like they're going to negotiate with Japan.
Some news this morning, South Korea, they are looking to potentially negotiate with. shift in sentiment from this weekend where it was no negotiation,
tariffs are coming, prepare yourself,
to now it's the tariffs are coming,
but maybe we will walk them back a little bit.
That's my read.
Some are pointing to Besant visiting Trump on Sunday night down at Mar-a-Lago
as perhaps the driver in that shift.
I'm not sure if I totally buy that one myself, but there has been a pretty clear shift.
Maybe that's what's driving some of the rebound here.
I saw something around the lines of China might respond with kind of devaluing the yuan
to a degree, which historically has been a big catalyst for Bitcoin.
So Bitcoin specific, there could be a winner.
A few things that are jumped out to me,
like one that said the 10 year was going straight down.
Now it's, it's rebounding pretty fiercely.
It's back to 4.25% here.
So I don't know that that was expected.
There's been a lot of talks.
Is Trump's plan actually to try to get the 10-year down to 3.5,
to continue chopping away at that?
So does this actually go against their plans?
And then what also muddies this all up is we got this statement from the White House yesterday.
And I'm not sure if folks had a chance to digest this much at all, but they effectively said that they no longer want the dollar to be the global reserve.
It's a fairly long essay. They talked about effectively how the U.S. provides global goods, security, and finance for the world,
and that these roles are costly with military spending, tax burdens, trade deficits,
and they're tired of the rest of the world effectively free riding on the U.S.'s coattails,
and that it's time to effectively fix that.
And they said the tariffs are effectively, you know,
one of the ways to go about implementing this regime change.
And I think this did come as a surprise.
I don't think many have expected to see this.
I didn't expect to see this on the page.
I mean, it's in the second paragraph, second or third paragraph of the essay.
On the financial side, the reserve function of the dollar has caused persistent currency distortions
and contributed to unsustainable trade deficits. So, so they're, they're coming out here and calling it an active problem,
which I didn't,
I thought this was maybe what was happening behind closed doors,
but I tweeted this yesterday. It seems like they,
that they were saying the quiet part out loud now.
So that caught me a bit by surprise folks. It looks like we've got a osf on with us now in the
studio what's up man how you had to urgently leave and i was just in the chat and everyone
was panicking saying like we need someone to come in and i was literally just sitting down staring
into space so i thought i'd come on perfect well, I find myself doing that as well. Well,
I'm happy that you were able to join us. I actually have been wanting to talk to you,
uh, for a while because I think you are one of the louder bulls on the timeline
who has been catching knives and, and, and trying to buy the blood. So I want to talk to you about
that before we maybe dive into some of that. I'm curious for how you're feeling, this high level on Turnaround Tuesday here.
Were you surprised that we rebounded?
Do you feel like it's a fake-out pump?
How do you feel?
It's just, I mean, whether it's a fake-out pump or not,
we'll find out in due course.
But I think this price action is just classic.
It's just so textbook.
You go out on Friday, this news hits the timeline.
Everyone's panicking and freaking out.
Every single piece of media over the weekend is doom and gloom.
People suddenly think the world is going to end, even though it's not.
And people are already calling for Black Monday.
And obviously you have this big crypto puke on Sunday night.
And I just think whenever people call for that,
it never really happens.
And people are short.
People are short trying to push things lower on a global scale.
And coming Monday, things aren't as bad as people feared,
and you just have this great big short covering.
So I think everything that I expected in the last i guess 48 hours um has happened the way i was foreseeing it to play out what happens
next is you know the more difficult thing like do we bounce from here do we just go sideways do we
fall lower um i really really really really believe that these tariffs are nowhere near as bad
as people think they are.
And I think the big problem,
and I'm saying this as a non-American,
as an outsider,
the big problem is so many people in America
hate Trump, people who didn't vote for Trump,
that they're saying,
oh, this is the worst thing ever.
Trump's like the worst guy in the world
and everything's going to be bad.
I don't really care about Trump or anything.
I have zero political skin in the game here. I don't really care about Trump or anything. I have zero political
skin in the game here.
I'm literally not even American.
But as an outsider, it's very clear
to me there's this, now it's like,
Trump's causing all this stuff as bad.
Yes, he's going a bit mental. I don't
disagree with that. But I think the
subject of what's going on here, these tariffs, are
nowhere near as bad as things we've seen in the past
like COVID, like the great financial crisis. I've even seen people compare it to the dot-com bubble.
I'm like, seriously, we're not on the brink of a meltdown here. These tariffs aren't even like,
we don't even know if they're going to be fully implemented or not, and we know they're in
negotiation. So I think there's definitely a bit of narrative pushing by people who I think have
vested interest that has just reached
a global scale, which I think caused the panic. But I think now people are realizing it's not as
bad as like the world isn't just going to end today or tomorrow. And like always, people will
work through this and find some sort of solution like every single other bad thing we've happened.
Just this isn't nowhere anywhere as near as bad as anything that's happened in the last 20 years
of financial markets, in my opinion.
So we'll see what happens now.
I agree, Trump's a bit mental.
He's unpredictable.
We don't know what's going to happen.
I personally don't think we're going to see
the full impact of these tariffs
because I think whether or not he's a lunatic,
there's presumably a lot of pressure on him
from large donators or people within his party who are like, look, you can't just go out there and do this. Otherwise, everything's going to nuke. So their goal, I think, is to come to some sort of agreement. And I think in the end, if he has to back down, he will. But it will be under the guise of, oh, we achieved these better deals with these countries. And this is a win for America, even though he de facto backs down on other stuff. I think that's how it will be presented.
And maybe he comes across as weaker,
but at the end of the day, that's good for markets.
So as I've commentated on the timeline,
I've been buying a lot of risk,
just been averaging down, catching knives, as you say.
I'm down on a lot of prints,
but I've kept on averaging lower.
And I think this is going to prove to be a really good dip to buy.
So far, we've had a bounce. Does it
continue from here all the way up?
I don't think we just gap back
to all-time highs from here.
I have a suspicion we've maybe seen the
lows,
and I think we can range from here for a bit.
So I think you have time to deploy
risk, but
the thing that I really would advise doing is
don't just randomly get yourself
bearish at the lows because of what you're reading out there and try and take a step
back and think critically about what's going on here, I think.
Yeah, I think that's great advice and evergreen advice. And I feel like a few thoughts in
response. One, the Trump derangement syndrome, TDS, is absolutely there. I saw a clip from
Schumer in 2017 being angry at Trump for not levying tariffs against Chinese unfair trade
deals with the US. And now, eight years later, the tariffs are here and they're complaining
because it's infecting the stock market. So there's a lot of anger at the messenger versus the message,
I think is absolutely playing out and the media is amplifying it.
And there's a lot of scare porn, do porn.
It was consensus on Sunday that we were going to have a black Monday event.
Like that was consensus. And you're right.
Like whenever it's uh consensus it's probably
not going to to happen now you've got folks like ackman and i think he's been he's been over the
top a bit over the last six months like i think there's been times where he probably went he
needed to get reined in a little bit um but he's trying to to apply some reason and saying okay
like 50 tariffs are going to wreck us he called it an economic nuclear winter but if we can come back to 10 we can we can move forward um and it seems like
perhaps that was maybe that was trump's goal trump and the team's goal and i don't know
um i think there's a school of thought that trump was just a bull in a china shop
and that maybe besant corralled him and maybe he's listening.
I don't know.
I find it also hard to believe personally.
This is my personal take that he had this.
He had no plan or just total bull in a China shop.
And then Scott Bessent flies down to Mar-a-Lago on Sunday night and just totally changes his mind.
I also don't believe that.
I feel like there was probably some kind of a plan here.
The simplest explanation was that it
was all like art of the deal negotiation strategy and now i feel like it's starting to come to light
that that's what that is now with all that being said i do think there's going to be some economic
impact to to new tariffs right i think yeah and folks who are in the manufacturing business and
global like i've already started to see some of that.
So I think that's going to take a little bit of time to work through.
So I'm with you.
It's hard to predict where we go from here.
But I think folks like Larry Fink are saying it's more of a buying opportunity
than a selling opportunity, even if we dip 20% lower.
Yeah, I mean, we're off year-to-date, maybe before
today, like at some point yesterday, we were
down 20%
on both NASDAQ and the S&P
100 year-to-date.
Yes, there's an argument to say we could fall further,
are you selling
now to prevent yourself
losing another 20%?
It just seems a bit...
It just seems like you've missed the chance to sell.
The chance to sell really was the beginning of the year in January
when everyone was the other way too balled up about Bitcoin Reserve
and all this kind of stuff.
So it feels like you've missed the chance to sell, in my opinion.
And I'm not saying we can't fall lower.
We absolutely can.
We can fall lower on stocks.
We can fall lower on crypto.
But how much lower are we going to go?
Are we going to go down 10%, 20%, 30%?
Are we going to go down 90%?
And what's the upside over the rest of this year,
over the next two years, five years, 10 years?
It's a lot bigger than any potential downside everyone is fearing.
So to me, I think this is a really good buying opportunity like i i haven't owned equities
in years and i have a bunch i have a bunch of cash lying there from stuff that i sold last year and
i was like maybe i should put this into stocks and you know not be so risk-averse with the cash but
um i didn't want to buy stuff you know at at all-time highs last year.
Now we've had this 20% pullback.
And for me, it's like, okay, this is perfect.
I can put cash into stocks where it's materially less risky than crypto,
but I still have good market upside.
And that's a really good buying opportunity for me.
And I'm sure there's plenty of other people who are thinking the same thing.
So it's just like, what do you want to do do you want to
be the person that's like selling too late as things are already quite low and then inevitably
fomping back into it when things are better when the coast is clear and things are all resolved
and prices are already higher and you end up buying back higher again or do you want to take
a chance and buy when stuff is low and things are less clear but you know there's a chance that
things get resolved.
This is the thing.
If you wait for the good news,
you're going to miss the opportunity to buy low.
By definition, you end up buying high because it gets priced in.
So you have to buy it when there is bad news and when it does feel like there's no hope
with the view of at some point it getting turned around.
But if you don't buy on bad news
when everyone is calling for doom and gloom, then you're never going to catch these low prices and i think
if you're someone who hasn't made money in crypto in the last three to five years because you know
you sell everything when everything pukes you go away you hear it's doing well again you come back
and you're just making yourself like buy high and sell low every time so you have to just stick it
out there and you know take a chance i think you
have to take a chance and knowing that you're going to get prints that are going to be out the
money straight away but you know don't blow your load in one go and keep averaging down that's what
i've been doing if it feels gross you know like the last two or three days you're buying say oh
down another 25 great buy more down another 25 great so my first wise are down like 75% or 80%, but that's how you average lower.
Like that's why you don't go all in on the first go.
And for me,
that's been a really successful way to make money.
yeah,
I just think,
I just think this is a really good entry point.
And I think you should have some risk on here.
And I think you should give yourself some room to add lower,
but you know But just sitting here
calling for doom and gloom and saying
the world's going to end and this is the worst thing
since COVID or whatever, I just think that's really dumb.
You're just going to end up missing it once again.
Yeah.
I like that strategy. I mean, look at a Bitcoin
at $79.5 here.
I feel like the downside
versus upside.
$72k downside. Are we really going to see lower than that i feel like there's such a strong bid like yeah versus the upside and
i think if you if when bitcoin was over 100k you had fomo that you didn't have enough like you have
to be asking yourself like okay like why aren't you starting to buy here and i
i've been in conversations with with a few folks who actually did sell their their bitcoin on monday
and like what what are you going to buy like unless you need that cash for for your personal
life okay of course put put that off but like are you trying to scalp and scalp it lower like what other assets are you
going to try to buy uh if you're worried at bitcoin when it's already 30 off highs um so i
think you and i are fairly aligned though i haven't been as aggressively buying as you
mostly because i i i console i consolidate into positions but not I never really stable up too much.
I think the point on stabling is a fair point.
I feel like when I am tweeting
buy the dip, we should be buying here, we should be buying here.
The general sentiment is I'm already all in
with what money can I buy?
It's almost like once you're in crypto, most people seem to just already all in, like with what money can I buy? And it's almost like, you know, once you're in crypto,
most people seem to just be all in
and maybe you're like rotating between different things,
but people very rarely like hold a large amount of stables.
And I think the lesson there is that, you know,
if we do have another 2024 year
and, you know, that style of price action,
it's important to take chips off and sell along
the way and have some stables and even if you're like max bullish you should still have some
stables because you want to have that fund for times like these where you can actually go and
buy and like i sold a lot last year but every time i sold i was like fuck i kind of regret selling
and like it went higher again as a car and then people around me and weren't selling anything and i was like am i just
like the only idiot here like it's like selling stuff and then now it's like when things crash
it's like oh great like i'm able to actually put money back in you know down 75 80 even 90
from where i sold stuff last year and have another go at like multiplying that wealth.
you know,
just as I'm advocating for buying the dip right now,
if things rip again and you have like another crazy thing,
I think it's important to not get so greedy where it's like,
I had to be all in because now we've hit a hundred K we're going to 500 K
and all that kind of stuff.
Like you should be taking chips off along the way,
even if you're max bullish,
like you should build up a portfolio of stables.
You can have money on stables.
On Coinbase, you can have 12% right now on USDC,
which is just a Coinbase commercial thing.
So it's not nothing.
And then you want to save that for your rainy days.
It's all easier said than done
because you're always fighting with your emotions
and with the market narratives and coming,
reading CT every day can,
you know,
really influence your mood and no one is safe to that.
Like even I will come in and CT and be like,
like shit,
I shouldn't sell or am I an idiot buying and all that kind of stuff.
But,
yeah,
I just had to be really disciplined.
It's something I need to get better at, for sure.
We all do.
I'm curious.
So I want to dive into some of the AI tokens
that I know you've been going after.
But I'm curious, were you ever involved
in the Hyperliquid trade over the last three months?
No, I really mid-curved the whole thing
because Hyperliquid trade, liquid trade over the last three months? No, I really mid-curved the whole thing because
I just
when people
were farming hyperliquid, I was just like,
it's just another perp dex.
Why would this be
any better than anything else out there
and trade higher than the
other dexes? Obviously, they did a great job
onboarding whales. They've done a great
job marketing and they've done a great job marketing,
and they've generated a lot of fees,
and they've used that to buy back the token and support it.
So it was definitely a miss on my part.
But I've never really... I don't really see...
Like, at these levels, I'm not really that interested,
and I haven't been even when it was that 25, 30 area,
because I just don't really see what the story is from here.
Like, sure, they can continue to buy back tokens with fee generation, but you have to
assume that those revenues are able to be maintained over a longer period of time.
So I don't really see why everyone talks about this as if it's like the dog's bollocks,
the best thing since sliced bread. I don't know what I'm missing. Like, it's just a perpdex and it's great. Their marketing is great. It's a really good product. I get it. And it's a good anti-sex, anti-establishment kind of like narrative. And I completely get all that stuff. And I think the team's great. And I think it's a good product and a good token. But I don't understand why people rave about it like it's the best thing in the world but that's a credit to them for you know fostering that sort of like cult like behavior
around it and you know maybe that alone is the thing that can drive it but yeah it's not for me
personally um but that's not to say it can't do well i think yeah i think that's very fair so i've
been in the trade and i've been trying to figure out what to do from here.
I'll quickly pull up some of their visuals.
So the market share story has been one I think is pointed to quite a bit.
So 65% of purpose, but I don't think this is including finance.
but I don't think this is including finance.
So I'll need to take a look at some other data sources in this as well.
But,
but clearly the marketing materials have been strong.
What I'm wondering is like,
is this a momentum asset?
So if things do turn around,
is it going to be one of the tall movers rightfully or wrongfully?
Cause I think there think there's a narrative
that folks
will rally behind. We've seen them rally
behind it once already.
It was one of the
fastest movers in this past cycle,
but also on the downside.
And I had a
decent position, which I clipped out during
the day that
they were exploited.
Right around $13.
So I've been, I actually did stable that up.
And I've been thinking personally, like, do I want to reenter this trade or not?
And I haven't acted on it.
So I'm still working through that to a degree.
I think general, like where my gut is, if I could get it sub 10,
I think that would be a very interesting price. It'd be around 3 billion market cap or so.
I think it could be a bit more attractive. I think also if it starts to show more momentum
here coming out the bottom, I think that would be another sign. So I don't know. I think also if it starts to show more momentum here coming out the bottom, I think that
would be another sign. So I don't know. I haven't made up my mind. So I appreciate your thoughts
on that one. Let's perhaps, let's talk about some of the tokens that you have been getting into,
if you don't mind. Yeah. I think you shared them publicly, so I'm not, I'm not exposing anything,
but I think you're revisiting some of the AI trades.
Or maybe you never left it.
So what's your thesis or thought about that?
I think the thing I would say about AI,
just really top down, just forgetting these tokens,
is it's just such a big part of our everyday lives now.
I can't end the day without ai coming up in
some sort of conversation even outside of crypto like my parents or like my friends or you know
like everyone talks about it right um and um it makes sense i think people have said this for a
while it makes sense for there to be something within crypto that is ai related that everyone will just pile onto and there's been some tokens in the past um and i think with
when you had the ai agent stuff come through at the back end of last year the difference here was
that you actually had products that felt tangible that we saw stuff like ai xbt on the timeline you
saw stuff like the truth terminalinal putting out meme-related
stuff. It was kind of something that was quite
tangible that people could maybe
explain to a normal person. It's like, oh, hey,
here's this thing called AIXBT,
and it just reads in all of crypto
Twitter and then spurts out views.
People could see, touch, and
feel that sort of thing compared to
before when you're trying to explain some of these other
tokens like Fetch and
what was the other big one, like
Tau, etc. They're really hard to
explain to a normie.
So I think
that's why you had that big AI boom
towards the end of last year.
Just like many things, when they have that
initial big rally, they end up
crashing as everyone sells and everyone made a lot of money.
That's what's happened to the AI agent space.
That's not too dissimilar to what happened
to meme coins in
2023 after you had
that great big Pepe run and you had Turbo
and you had a few other tokens that
had this crazy run and then they all
just nuked 90-95%.
And then it was dead in the water for a little
bit and then things ended up
coming back. So
what my view here is
is that AI is just way too big a narrative for us to ignore.
It's definitely not going away.
It's staying here.
It's coming back as part of our everyday lives,
not just within crypto, not just within markets.
All of this stuff, in the meantime,
while everything is new, has been developed.
People have been working on stuff, rolling out new products.
People are starting to use it.
And the third thing is there is a lot of institutional investment going into this stuff.
I know we have this anti-institutional behavior, but I'm sure people would love to find out
that the people behind some of their favorite meme coins are actually VCs anyway.
But there's been a lot of institutional investment going into this stuff.
Granted, it was from high levels, but that still goes into this stuff.
So people are buying and accumulating all these tokens.
So I do think we will have, I really do believe we will have another AI run at some point this year.
And all this stuff is down like 95% from highs and it's not like they're dead projects
like they're still doing stuff they're still developing these agents developing the marketplaces
developing the launch pads etc so I do think you will have another run in this stuff and maybe it's
like institutional led I think the other thing that's important is some of the stuff like ai16z gets compared to l1s like imagine you had an l1 for
ai agents that means the ceiling for something like that is much much higher than just the
meme coin ceilings we used to which tend to be like oh if it gets a billion dollars or maybe
five billion dollars for the best ones that's where i'd sell whereas if you look at l1s they
all try to like multi you know tens of billions of dollars of FTV.
So there's that narrative which I think could be pretty interesting
as well.
So I don't know.
It's a degen play.
People look at all these charts and all these
coins look like they're dead.
This is a classic dead meme coin chart.
But I
am pretty
the way that I'm managing my risk right now is I have a lot of Bitcoin,
which I feel like is like pretty low risk way within crypto.
And this is sort of like my degenerate play where like,
if I get it right,
it's going to be 10,
30 X.
If I get it wrong,
you know,
it's going to be a zero.
But I just think we're going to have another AI agent run.
And for me, the one that I've gone the hardest on is AI16Z
because I think that's the token within this space
that has the most mindshare,
has all the GitHub stars and ratings, et cetera.
And I think it has that L1 narrative.
And if people suddenly think,
oh, I need to get back into AI, what do I buy? Well, the two things that
got to the highest market cap were AI 16Z and virtuals. And I think those are the two that
people go for as like, I don't want to say the safer place, but as like the more well-known
place. So AI XBT could be another one as well. Like that's also down massively. So yeah, it's
a bit of a de-gem play because these charts all look like they're dead.
But my hunch, and it's not really much more than a hunch,
my hunch is that we see another run this year.
And yeah, I can see people with comments like,
you know, these are just rebranded chatbots.
And yeah, I don't disagree.
They absolutely are.
But it's not about what they are.
And it's not about necessarily thinking the tech is going to be game-changing. It's just about how big that narrative can get once again.
And I don't believe that
this narrative got so big that it went to
a combined market cap of, what,
17 bill, all the way down to, what,
4 or 5 bill now,
that it won't retest that again at some point.
And I think this is the time to be
accumulating in preparation for that
rather than waiting for it to
start moving and then end up buying stuff higher. So again, it's not,
it's not a surefire bet, but I think this is my,
my punt at like the 10 X plus kind of trade.
Well, I appreciate you walking us through that. It's an interesting one.
I'm in the camp. I think a hundred percent we're going to get AI round too.
I don't know exactly what it looks like.
I think one of the open questions is,
is it going to be all new players versus the old guard?
Or will some of the old guard still be around?
I think, I do think your thesis on AI-16Z is,
like if there is going to be a rebound for existing players,
they are at the top of the list, right?
It's them and virtuals.
And I've always thought there was a
little bit more coming
out of the AI-16Z world than virtuals.
That's no offense
to the virtuals team.
Just because it felt like they had
more folks working together,
the GitHub,
the Launchpad.
I think they've been fairly smart
to be managing expectations through this bear. They haven't been coming out with announcements every week. I think, I think they've been fairly smart to be kind of managing expectations through
this bear. Like they haven't been kind of coming out with announcements every
week. So I don't know how those would have been received anyway. Um,
so it's, it's clear they've been building behind the scenes. Um,
I think you have to fade another to them launching another token.
I think I've said that before on the show. So that is something that could
happen. I think it's a, it's a low probability um but i don't i don't think it's a xbt that comes back
like maybe because it's got the mascot narrative but it feels like we've all kind of moved past
that i will say it's no what jumps out to me every time i look at the cookie board is we had this explosion in agents
and then it just totally leveled off like no one's launching new agent tokens we went from
20 a day to stone zero and even in the meme coin game it's like of course like we fell
like new launches are down probably 60 or 70 but there's still new memes coming out every day
like the new agents that have totally stopped. So I do,
it does make me wonder like, are we going to have like a,
is it going to be a different meta?
And I think it will be different to a degree. I'm curious,
have you been tracking parallel and prompt?
Because I think that could actually be a potential catalyst for an AI wave
to is if prompt comes out and it's strong out of the gate.
I'm curious if you've been following along.
Yeah,
I think so.
I think that could be,
I think that's definitely very interesting.
It does feel like you have stuff like that.
And I guess wayfinder as well,
like it presents potential competition to the tokens that did well last
time. So
I agree with your commentary that
the risk here is that
yes, we have another AI run,
but is it the same tokens
or is it a set of new tokens? And that's, I think,
the risk you have to take.
I guess the risk that I have in being so concentrated
in a couple of coins.
I haven't
followed parallel and prompt
that closely,
I think it's definitely something to keep track of.
It's just a question of how
you want to play it if you're bullish.
Do you spray across a bunch of different things?
Or do you focus on a couple?
It's a tough one.
It is.
Yeah.
My fear is that I get,
my fear,
the worst thing is you get it right,
but you own the wrong coins.
Yes,
always.
And that's your risk when you get so,
so concentrated.
well, I appreciate the bet. I mean, it's not too many folks out there are kind of, And that's your risk when you get so concentrated.
Well, I appreciate the bet.
I mean, it's not too many folks out there are kind of being public about their bigger bets.
So more power to you on that one.
I think the good news is, I mean, we may find out somewhat soon.
it prompts is going to tge in the next week week and a half um so perhaps that is what you know if
It prompts us going to TGE in the next week, week and a half.
we get a nice little parlay here of some tariff relief plus a good tge out of prompt and wayfinder
into kicking off a new potential meta uh into the second half of apr and May, before the summer months.
That could be a nice little parlor.
So I'll have my hopes up for that.
I think Farrokh would be mad at me
if I didn't ask you about Fartcoin's strength
and outperformance here.
I think I'm a Fartcoin convert now. I do think
it's tough to
ignore the relative strength
it's had in the last
couple of months or so, I think.
It got all the way down to, what,
$250-ish and then never really
moved lower with the market. And I think you can't
really ignore that because
it just means people are buying this thing.
So I think this coin will probably retest all-time highs, I think.
I don't own any yet.
I've sort of been toying with buying my first bit of fart coin.
It's just a scary...
It just feels like a scary proposition at the market cap it is.
And with all these coins and all the meme coins,
the main thing really is like how much supply is controlled,
who owns it, what the cabal plans are, you know, what the whales are doing.
And without like being privy to that information,
it's hard to judge how much size to go into.
But the price action and charts do tell a story.
And the story here is that people have been accumulating
and are giving it a go.
So I think it's just you can't really ignore the price action.
You can't really ignore what's been going on.
So I'm constructive on this.
I think if we have a drop on it,
I think I would consider buying it.
I think this could be a pretty easy... If the market properly rebounds, it's clear this has
one of the best bases to the market right now. So if we go back to 100k Bitcoin, I think this
thing is through all-time highs really. And it could be one of the stronger performing coins,
I think, this year. So I don't own any, but I've definitely got my eye on it, I would say.
You can't really ignore it right now.
Too big to ignore.
Too big to ignore, yeah.
I think what jumps out to me,
and Dip Wheeler keeps pounding the table on this,
but the holder growth is wild.
There are like 1,000 to 2,000 new holders every week
throughout this down period.
And now I think it might be even accelerating to a degree.
It looks like a little cup and handle breakout.
I think it's hard to be too bold up on any massive breakouts right now,
just with all the tariff uncertainty. But if we get some positive news,
I mean, this thing looks like it's primed to be a big winner. I'm curious.
Did you see the ripple news this morning that broke right before the show?
Oh, wow.
Yeah, so Blockbuster acquisition,
they acquired Hidden Road, $1.25 billion.
So if folks don't know Hidden Road,
they process $3 trillion in transactions every year.
As a part of this acquisition, Ripple stablecoin RLUSD will become core collateral across the Hidden Road services.
Hidden Road's post-trade activity will move to the XRP ledger.
And now Ripple's going to offer custody, financing, and clearing to Hidden Road clients.
It's a pretty big deal, it feels like.
Ripple already had the army behind it.
It felt a little, to me, like,
fake it till you make it.
But did they just make it with this acquisition?
I mean, this feels like they have
some real institutional power now.
Yeah, this is interesting.
It's also just another sign of how big crypto is becoming
in the traditional world in terms of infrastructure and rails
that are being created to get on board and that kind of stuff.
In this backdrop, you see headlines like that,
and then you think, oh, maybe this is why crypto
has outperformed the last two or three days.
Because regardless of what's happened with tariffs,
you still had the biggest U-turn
by the USA in terms of crypto regulation.
And I think we got too bulled up about that in January,
but I think now everyone's forgotten about it.
And just because something doesn't happen overnight,
which is what people wanted,
it doesn't mean progress isn't made
and things aren't good for the industry going forward.
So headlines like this, I think,
are a reminder of how constructive
the regulatory and infrastructure
and traditional getting into crypto outlook is right now in the US
and the likelihood of other countries also following suit there.
It's really, really bullish, I think, longer term.
And just it's not to be faded.
Does this cause crypto to rally like tomorrow or the day after tomorrow?
Maybe not.
Maybe it just gets, you know, acknowledged, but not instant price action.
But all these things will, I think,
should give people confidence that, you know,
if you buy Bitcoin today, in five years' time,
it should be worth a lot more than what it is today.
Yeah.
It's almost like we got ahead of ourselves.
We priced all this in, in January,
December,
January.
And then everyone forgot,
like you mentioned.
And now it's not really priced in as much anymore.
And like,
these are the types of acquisitions that this,
but this pro crypto administration has enabled.
And again,
like we are in the early stages of that.
And that's a big announcement out
of ripple it does look like we're sawing off a little bit here live on the show have stocks
turned around stocks look like they're still up a decent amount so maybe this is more of a
crypto fall here but the man is back he he had to jump in. He had to hear over talking. Yeah.
He's carried the lion's share of the show.
He's been deep on this.
I know.
Thank God.
I was turned up when Mando's not here.
I can't tell you how busy I suddenly just was then.
Lots of different people shouting at me.
But, yeah, look, it's a strange one because I think the thing that is scaring people here
is the tenure.
I don't know if you guys spoke about that or not.
Not too much.
Yeah, it's a question.
Well, the whole point of this was that
we're going to get the tenure down to refinance the debt.
And what China did yesterday
is they sold $50 billion of treasuries,
reportedly.
And they still earn a few hundred billion.
So there is not an ace card,
but there's a card here where if the,
if the aim was to get down the cost of borrowing in the U S China can just
single-handedly drive that higher.
Sure.
As can a few other different nations that have big holdings of US debt.
So I think that's why the market
is still a little bit like,
that's just not a good sign.
Yesterday, stocks closed basically unchanged,
but the tenure was higher.
At least stocks have bounced today.
But that tenure going back to 4.2%,
I think it's going to scare a lot of people here.
It's going to point to the idea that this could go on for longer.
If the, you know, we're playing checkers and not chess analogy
that everyone keeps using, like, well, I don't know.
Like, if you wanted to get down to 2.5%, 3%,
we've kind of just reversed all of the last few days on that.
So I think that's going to worry people.
I don't think macro is out of the woods at all here.
Yes.
We've seen – Besson came out and said china's got a pair of twos and they they already
showed their cards too quickly it feels like there's just more financial games being played
as a part of this escalating trade war situation right now and i would tend to agree that it
doesn't uh it doesn't feel like we're out of the woods on this just yet.
I think there's a question of, is their goal really to bring the rates down or not?
I think there's some folks in the camp that it's more than that.
I think it's sort of like this weird standoff where Trump thinks,
let me just go crazy on these tariffs and stuff and then force the Fed to cut rates.
Powell's like, no, we're not going to do that.
And Trump's like, oh, fuck.
And now it's sort of like this standoff thing where who's going to be the bad guy that's
going to not fold to let things get worse.
Ultimately, I think between them, there is some sort of implied put where one of them
has to give in.
And the markets at one point were second-guessing Powell's comments.
Like, you know, I think we have more rate cuts predicted for this year
than previously.
Now it seems like it's going the other way.
Well, they may still rate cut, but like China's got $750 billion more
of US treasuries they can sell.
$750 billion. So if they want to drive
this higher they can um the bond yields higher they can i think the other thing is that i had
a look at like local chinese news on the back of this like um like xi jinping is seen as a
is a strong man too like very like very much has been
authoritarian on china for a long time his ego is very high it's not there is less like bombastic
as trump like this is a guy who thinks he's building a dynasty um whether you agree with
that or not i don't think this is just one of these things where it's like,
oh, we can strong arm.
Like, strong arming another strong man,
like, they could go at this for a while here.
Like, she could just turn around.
There was a really good post yesterday, I don't know if you saw,
but it was like, this was literally the storyline to,
I think it was Call of Duty, the storyline to um black i think it's
call of duty like modern warfare 2 or something like that like there's a lot of stuff that they
could do here they could invade they could invade uh taiwan they could do a big cyber attack they
could steal steal tons of um ip like i think this this doesn't necessarily just lead to, and those sort of comments,
like imagine just they have their version of Trump right now and then they see that being fired at them.
It's not like they go, oh yeah,
it'll come to the negotiating table.
I think it's a slightly different scenario.
I think the other countries,
I think there's, you know,
because obviously US protects, you know,
half of Europe. It has protection, protects most of Canada as well. Basically, huge trading partners, but China and the US, they don't need to become friends and they can hurt each other for a long time.
So that's the foundation for an outlook of extended chop, perhaps deeper recession?
I just
don't think the China
situation may not be
resolved like 10 years now.
Do you know what I mean? It's not like, oh, next week
they can come to a deal. China could just
decide, hey,
we've decided this is our moment.
It could be years before a China deal, genuinely.
It feels like everyone's waiting for some resolution.
And I would agree that there's not going to be resolution on that specific matter for a while.
I think there's a question of, can we reach resolution with 50 to 70 other countries over the next quarter and get to a better spot of
a new potentially multi-polar global world order so i think that's that's what we can watch for
but we'll certainly see there's no shortage of daily headlines walter bloomberg's account
blown up um oh steph we're in the show here in a couple minutes but i want to give you
a chance anything uh wrecked any wrecked drinks anything you want to show yeah we have man i've
um not too dissimilar to mando and all the stuff going on with you but i've just been
really swamped and wrecked stuff but nothing to say right now but i think we've been
working a lot of stuff the beginning of this year.
We should have our new drinks launch,
hopefully at some time this month,
so keep an eye out for that, I think.
Put some teasers and stuff out about it,
but it's not stopping there.
We have a lot of stuff planned for the rest of this year
that will be coming.
It feels like we're one of those points where,
because we don't really build in public, every day I'm oh wow this is really good or this is like really amazing and
we've done this but no one else really sees it until it comes to fruition and i don't really
like to be one of those guys who just hypes up things all the time and you know i fall guilty
to it sometimes but i don't want to be one of the guys every day's like oh this is going to be like
next big thing next big thing and then i don't want to be one of the guys that every day is like, oh, this is going to be the next big thing. And then I don't want to over-promise and under-deliver.
But the next few weeks and months for Retro
will be pretty exciting, I think.
Nice. Well, good to hear.
And I enjoyed the teasers we got for the new drink flavor.
So I'm excited.
It's good. The new favorite is good.
I'm not just saying it to say it.
I actually did a lot better than the first one,
even though the first one is our flagship drink.
But it's really good.
Like I went through the entire thing in like two days
and now I don't have any for like marketing stuff.
But it is really good.
How does it mix with tequila?
So I don't think this one will mix that well with tequila.
It will probably mix quite well with tequila. It will probably mix
quite well with gin and vodka.
It's less of a...
The original liquidated lime
is really good with tequila
and it's a really good mixer. I think
this one is maybe less of a good mixer
but it is just a really good standalone drink, I would
say. Nice. Well, I will be
bringing it to my new North Shore
Chicago neighborhood and infiltrating
and trying to spread the good word
this summer. Love it.
Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Oh, Seth, this was a great combo.
Mando, thanks for popping back on.
Folks, I think we're going to go ahead and wrap up the show
here. That's it. I want to thank our listeners
as always. I want to thank my co-hosts.
Thank our partners. We'll be back tomorrow
at 10 a.m. Eastern.
Until then,
go make it a great day.
Goodbye. I'm I'm I'm
I'm so
