I've literally been talking to myself the whole time since the music stopped
I feel like such an idiot I'm trying to figure out why no one's listening to me
so literally I gave everyone an overview
I welcomed everyone to the stage I was talking about what we're going to talk about today
I said it was talking about Yago and the Satoshi VM drama
IDEOS I was talking about crypto title and this all by myself was such a great intro
because I explained also earlier why I'm fixing the title
but no one heard me so what I was saying to everybody is
today's space is going to be focused on two segments the first one is about
very briefly because they didn't request to join I know Yago would be great to
to talk about it we've got Mortaza coming up as well who's their advisor
just a quick recap but I want to focus less about Satoshi VM and more about
um the the opportunities and the risks when it comes to the IDO markets
and this is something that Kyle is very involved in Joe as well
uh Coach K I know you are and maybe other speakers on the panel
um you're involved in that but you know I'd love anyone on stage who got run from
a regulation perspective kind of give us a quick overview there
and we've got lawyers to help us form a legal aspect
um but we've got and I see some of the projects we're invested in sitting in the audience
so it's going to be a fun discussion about the future of IDEOS but let's kick it off first with uh
Satoshi VM and before going to Kyle
Kyle you're going to play a key role in the space because you're in the Satoshi VM drama
you've covered it heavily and you're deep in the IDO market
and of course you've got the uh the the launch pad
um that we're going to be announcing something about shortly
but Joe I want to go to you first
uh with Lunar Crush without talking about Lunar Crush
with what you guys do how involved were you how did you guys launch your token
how involved are you in um
uh in the idea have you invested in any IDEOS and and
maybe I'll explain explain to the audience what an IDO is
and then it'd be good to get your involvement in that space
sure quick quick mic check for me I got a new uh
new mic can you hear me all right yeah man yeah
awesome no um you know IDOs man it's
when you look back you know starting back in this space
and 2017 is when things started to really roll you know there were
IDOs because there was no uh like you know
initial exchange offerings that were out there
um and it's it's been interesting
especially you know in the last couple weeks here where you're seeing
a lot of meme tokens that are out there when there's a lull
here in the market with Bitcoin um you see a lot of people
you know offering on DEXs and launch pads
um and you know there are teams that are out there
you know promising to build something amazing
you know very similar to how any startup or project would start
but in such a much more decentralized manner
and the big difference here is
you know when you're trying to build community
you know you see a lot of you know even influencers like uh
you know a Mr. B saying you know he has a hard time
you know finding advertisers and
you know he doesn't want to go do the due diligence on everything
um you know so he just wants to launch his own brands
and he built a massive community first and
you know it's the kind of the same feel when these projects
are doing IDOs or they're just launching
um you know without even telling someone and then building community
it's it's all about the community
um I mean that's what we look at
you know at lunar project
did you go did you did you hear the Satoshi VM space we did
last week or the week before I think it was last week
you missed out let's give an overview to the audience for anyone that hasn't heard it
sorry from my perspective what I know about them
so I'm not as deep in crypto at least on a personal level like finding out
learning about every single piece of news as I was a year and a half ago
obviously with the show kind of expanding beyond just crypto
and my involvement with all the news
and all the drama is significantly lower
so what happened is Satoshi VM it's a project
now we'll be very brief we do have one of the advisors coming up to kind of
do a bit of back and forth
just for the team please make sure Mortaza joins
um he's the the advisor came on Satoshi VM did not want to join
so we invest heavily in projects we work with a lot of projects that are
launching and one thing we did a lot in the last bull market and we're doing on a bigger scale now is like
our goal is to make sure we speak to every single project about to launch
channel sounds like pretty far-fetched but that's that's kind of our rule
so we need to know about everything
um all the projects launching
and then work with them or invest in them
you know everyone who's been up on stage
we worked a lot together in the last bull market
so then I saw Satoshi VM launch
and pump I don't know how many percent it was like
two three hundred percent
didn't look at the market cap didn't look into it like guys
that we invested or working with it
everyone's like no we never even spoke to them
so I was surprised because we need to know about
all the projects launching
and then none of the VCs in my network
were invested and caught a lot of them by surprise
I was a bit annoyed that we missed it
and then we kind of looked internally on how we can fix the system to make sure we don't miss any future ones
and how that slipped through the cracks
we still didn't know really how it slipped through the cracks
we start looking into it or the team starts looking into it
like Mario's a lot of shady stuff about them
and then all the FUD starts about their idea and all that
kind of ignored it we got too much too many things to do
and then the FUD kind of started gaining traction
I wake up one day and teams like Mario Satoshi VM want to do a space with you
talking about all the FUD
I'm like sure no problem at all as long as they know that the
we're going to be objective you know
we're not invested in them etc so we have nothing to disclose
we're going to get people that criticize them
and Yago who's on stage now kind of led the charge
and we're going to have them say their piece
do it very fairly as we always do with any topic we cover
they're like cool that's exactly what we want
they come on they address the FUD and they do a pretty good job
and it turns out they're right
they were not as far as I understand
and Kylie could kind of fill the gaps
they were not involved in the allegations
when it came to the launch of their token
and not distributing tokens to the IDO investors
so that part they kind of checked
and then Yago who's on stage now comes out of nowhere
and starts questioning their tech
which wasn't part of the goal
the goal of the space was to talk about the FUD
which was all about the launch man
so when they addressed the FUD
I was watching their token price
it's actually a fascinating story
and kind of shows the power of spaces
so I'm going to open up now their chart
and when they addressed all the FUD it went up
it was like $10 something went up all the way to $11.50
the market is appreciate their response
we got bubble here, bubble maps
and another chain analyst on stage
and then they did a good job
and bubble maps kind of said yes
Satoshi VM was not involved
and the other guy said the same thing
then Yago comes out and starts questioning their tech
which I'll give him the mic to kind of tell us what Yago's concerns are
first I'll get Kyle to fill in the gaps
and then when Yago questions their tech
the price begins to plummet
I literally watch it go from $11 to $10
I'm like people are concerned
everyone was worried because Yago was making serious allegations
about things we didn't understand
but I understand Yago's credibility
and then when Yago goes all out
he plummets this one big red candle
you can see it from $10 all the way down to $7.70
so when Yago goes and starts questioning them
people weren't happy with their response
so it goes all the way from $10 to $7
and then goes again from $7 all the way to $4
I liked how the space went
because it shows how objective it was
I liked how the focus shifted from the IDO
which they were not in the wrong
which a lot of questions remain unanswered
I don't like the fact that they didn't want to come
and confront other speakers here on stage today
but they might have a good reason
maybe it just doesn't add any value to them
but Kyle before going to Yago
your thoughts on the space
and I know you've been following it closely
so what else happened since
and where do you stand on the whole
Satoshi VM launch from the IDO drama
to the criticism about their tech
and the whole influencer strategy
giving tokens to all the influencers
I forgot to talk about that
I haven't been paying too much attention
and it looks like I didn't really need to
as far as the actual Satoshi VM thing
it looks like the market pretty much figured it out
he kind of took what I had assumed
and put a lot of logic behind it
I went and did some due diligence on Satoshi VM
but first I saw a pretty ambitious play
I saw no code in the GitHub
and then Yago came out with that
we haven't done anything differently though
because there was a lot of criticism on the way that
Ape Terminal did their launch
with all of the influencers
to make sure that your IDO participants
and it's really a game of competition
amongst all the launchpads to see
it's like this launchpad got the most X's
literally no actual people got into that
we were never planning on doing any of this
this ballroom with paid ignition
so I think one thing after the last spaces
it was just regroup with the team
this actually perfectly played into the one concern I had
because everything that we've been doing
perfectly aligns to make sure that these kind of things don't happen
the one concern I had was
we're going to have a marketing
where every other launchpad is talking about 10, 20, 100, 200 X's
and paid ignition will not be doing that
because we're not focused on these ultra low
market cap, low circulating supply
where there is a lot of incentive to dump those tokens on launch
we are going to be focusing on fair priced
where there is not really much incentive for people to sell those tokens when they get them
I mean maybe if it does a 2 or 3 X
so anyway I don't want to talk too much about paid
this whole thing solved the one concern I had
was that every launchpad is going to be competing
and the whole space, because you saw the whole space
and that was my biggest concern and that's been alleviated
so no, I was looking forward to seeing
to actually giving the benefit of the doubt
to Satoshi VM to come here today
I was looking forward to seeing if they were going to
I did see that they, instead of doing that
they decided to publish a road map
I don't have any faith over there anymore
but I think we can move forward from that
yeah so we just got a disclaimer
I think you have the same disclaimer Kyle
I never received any Satoshi VM tokens
and we didn't invest since the space
mainly because I don't understand the tech enough to have a personal opinion
I don't know about you Kyle, I think you had concerns about the GitHub being empty
and of course Yago someone I respect
he's been on our stage of Crypto Town Hall with Ryan and Scott
and for Yago to have such significant concerns
was a pretty big red flag for me
and then if they came up on today's space
after what happened last time
there would have been a kind of a green flag for me
at least something impressive to the other space went
like in every legal blockbuster movies
best highlight of the film
he thought forever about how he could phrase this question
to figure out if these guys were full of shit or not
Yago you can take it away from here man
but that was brilliant man
as soon as I jumped in you're like yes
let me set the stage for the audience on what happened then
again we're going to do a small recap of Satoshi VM
and then dig into IDOs in general on the market
and what to expect in the school market
but what happened then is Yago put his hand up
like alright cool, what is Yago going to say
but I don't see Yago as an IDO investor
I could be as a VC type investor
I could be wrong, he'll clarify it now
cool, let's see what Yago has to say
and then I give the mic to Yago
and we'd be always watching the comments
so like for example right now if you're commenting in the bottom right corner
that's one thing I always have open
I look at it to get some feedback on the space
and the token price when we have a project on stage
and I was watching the token price in the comments
and Yago begins to speak and the token price starts to slowly drop
and then when he's setting them up
some people obviously guess what Yago is going to say in advance
and then when he just kind of lets it loose
the token just plummets 38% or something instantly
but Yago can you tell us more about what happened in that space
and then more importantly what was their response
I saw you guys go back and forth
and I think another person chipped in
someone they were using as a reference came in
and he disagreed with you I think Yago
but he criticized them anyway
and he was unimpressed with what they've done
so maybe you can give us a quick recap on what happened since
and maybe what are some learning lessons for others in the ecosystem
Sure thanks Mario that's quite the introduction
so last week I got a message from you a few minutes
before the space started asking me if I want to join
and telling me that it was going to be about this project
Satoshi VM that I basically didn't know anything about
and I was on the spaces for about
I don't know close to an hour before asking anything
and all I was doing during that period of time
was going through their website
going through their white paper
going through their yellow paper
going through their GitHub
trying to figure out what it all meant
and so I'll get to sort of what I asked them
and what has happened since in a moment
but it was a whole lot of drama
that I had no intention of creating
I was just asking the questions and trying to find the truth
and after last week's space
my DMs absolutely exploded with Satoshi VM token holders
some wanted to thank me for helping them to understand Bitcoin rollups
some wanted to shout at me for exposing their bags
and the most surprising part were
and other people at sovereign got a bunch of messages
from Satoshi VM influencers
who wanted to know if they could work with sovereigns
so now we're trying to figure out
how can you work with influencers in a transparent way
and that may tie back into the IDEO conversation
all right back to the space that happened last week
while I was going through the documents
one thing was very very clear to me
they kept on making a big big claim
they were going to build ZK zero knowledge rollups on Bitcoin
and I thought okay maybe they mean something else
maybe they're just confusing the language
but I wanted to be clear because this claim is completely impossible
anyone who knows how Bitcoin works
anyone who knows how rollups work
knows that the ZK rollup is the only kind of rollup
that you can't build on Bitcoin
so to make that claim is kind of
especially if you're kind of not a real project
but certainly if you are a real project
it sort of makes no sense
why would you make the one claim that is impossible
and I think the only reason anyone would do that
is because they think it sounds cool
but they have no understanding of the technology
and so that was what I asked them
I asked them all right there are three kinds of rollups
there's ZK rollups, there's optimistic rollups
and there's sovereign rollups
which kind are you building?
and I won't get into the technical differences
but they were very very clear
they said again and again and again
we're building ZK rollups
and that's just impossible
and since then they've doubled down on that claim
now I know that being an entrepreneur is very hard
I know that being a developer is very hard
anyone who has the courage to go out there
and try and build something real
and deal with all the difficulty of that
I have nothing but respect for
and I will try to do everything to help them
and if there are real developers behind Satoshi VM
I invite you guys to reach out to me
I don't want tokens from you
I will do everything I can to help you
because it's very possible that you guys
if you exist are getting really really bad advice right now
but the one thing that I did on your space
and I think that caused a lot of the drama
I said they were scammers
and I would never do that unless
there was unequivocal evidence of a clear cut lie
and it's so rare to get unequivocal evidence
usually you have to go on like circumstantial evidence
someone did this maybe he shouldn't have
there's gossip but in this particular case
it was just so black and white
and they've doubled down on this black and white lie
that they're building ZK rollups
and that is the only reason
I felt like it was not just ethically okay
but imperative to say this
that's a lie this is scam that's a fraud
have you been contacted by Satoshi VM directly
and whether through legal means
or collaborative means like
you know if I was them or as part of their team
and you come up and do what you did
first thing I do is seek your advice
and I'll try to address it at least privately
and maybe if you're impressed maybe try to get you as an advisor
assuming that they're trying to do the right thing
and maybe they could pivot
their roadmap to something more realistic
has there been anything any attempts at all?
the sort of influencers who are
you know behind them have also blocked me
what I do know because I see people
sending me screenshots every now and again
is that they are trying to
you know to their own community without me seeing
and they've been going through documents that I wrote over the years
they've been going through the documents
and the things related to sovereign
which is a project that I'm working on
to build rollups which has nothing to do with the spaces that we did
but you know they're trying any way they can
anything they seem to be unwilling to do
is actually come on the spaces
but alright you know fine
not impressive, not manly
so no, what they have done is a bunch of people from them
some of them with threats
I got a couple of death threats
mostly just ridiculous threats about
they're going to come from me and discredit me
my project or whatever but nothing real
yeah just for anyone listening
for all the influences in the space listening
there's a difference between
finding a project for the sake of it having an agenda in mind
versus just having a discussion and disagreement
someone else also came and supported
it was also criticizing Satoshi Viam
remember these comments that I also replied to or liked
do you remember those ones?
yeah so that's from Chainway
and I think that Chainway are
at least presenting a path towards their roll-up
I understand what they're building
I understand conceptually that it makes sense
from a technical perspective
and I know what they're trying to build
and they're trying to argue that it's a ZK roll-up
which it definitely isn't
just in case anyone on the call is interested
I'll give a very very brief explanation
about the difference between them
which is the finality of the transaction
in other words how quickly does the transaction
become a hundred percent secure
as soon as they are posted to the main chain
and with an optimistic roll-up
transactions have to go through a challenge
and response period which could take
in the worst case scenario
and so that's the big difference between
and I'm just going to mute you
there's a bit of echo on your head
Yaga I've just fixed the mic
so I've just fixed it now
so Yaga what you're saying is
Chainway came in and said
which you're saying is impossible to do
but they're also criticizing Satoshi VM
so maybe you can add on to what their criticism
so kind of their argument initially came
it seemed like coming in and support Satoshi VM
but they're also very critical of Satoshi VM
so maybe you can clarify that
I think what's happening with Chainway
I think they're really strong developers
and I know that they're working hard
and I think they for marketing reasons
want to make the biggest possible claim they can make
and so they're kind of finding a way to say
that what they're building is a ZK roll-up
I've publicly said to them
that I don't think they need to do that
I think that what they're working on if it works
and they really don't need to push further
they don't need to sort of like
because they don't have a pig
so they're claiming that it's
basically what they're doing is they're playing on a nuance
they're saying that into their optimistic roll-up
they're going to be putting fraud proofs
but definitely won't turn it into a ZK roll-up
everything that I said about ZK roll-ups
being impossible on Bitcoin without a fork
is very easy to understand
for anyone who understands how ZK roll-ups and Bitcoin work
just from my technical understanding
or my limited technical understanding
maybe just give me a quick overview as to
and why you can't do ZK roll-ups on Bitcoin
I know it's quite technical but it's just
it's one thing I don't understand in this discussion
sure I'd be happy to do that
and I'll try and keep it not boring
ZK proofs are a clever mathematical construct
where you can prove that something
happened on another chain
and they're very very powerful
but you need the miners of the chain that you're using
to know how to read and validate those proofs
so Ethereum, because it's Turing-complete
you can put it into a smart contract on Ethereum
and the miners will know how to validate that ZK proof
Bitcoin, I think everyone knows this
is much more limited than Ethereum
when it comes to these kinds of things
I think for very good reasons
but that's not here or there
it's just Bitcoin is more limited
to parse and to validate ZK proofs
and the only way that you could give them that ability
is to actually change Bitcoin itself
or just an improvement protocol
which would happen in the form of a fork, right?
there's no way to do it without a fork
and like under the assumption that
let's say that we decided it was a great idea
that we wanted the miners to be able to read ZK proofs
what's the minimum period that you believe
because Bitcoin improvement protocols
don't happen very regularly, right?
but these things can take years
three years, five years to do
what do you reckon is the quickest
if we decided that we wanted to implement the book
how long until we can get approval and get it done?
very, like, yeah, probably at least half a decade
I think it's very likely that it will never happen
there's not, we're not even close to
having any real code which could do that
or any even agreement amongst most Bitcoin core developers
over what particular ZK proof we would use
so I made a little video showing
trying to explain ZK proofs
and I used the analogy of a screwdriver, right?
there's lots of different screws
there's Phillips screws, there's flathead screws
and you need the right screwdriver
so we're not even at the stage
where we're trying to figure out which screwdriver to use
to screw the ZK proof into Bitcoin
that's how far away we are
from introducing ZK proof validation into Bitcoin
yep, and I just want to add to that
there's been so much development in the ZK side on Ethereum
that the proofs are constantly changing
and the technology that was kind of out there
even a year ago is getting outdated
so you have things like folding coming in
from some of the top researchers in the field
and with the fact that they don't want to change Bitcoin too often
and introduce too many things
and that's partly what makes it so ultrasound
it's going to be, the question is when do you actually come in
and put in the right kind of ZK proof
without really unsettling the system
taking a look at this even from just an investor standpoint
not so much the hardcore technical standpoint
it's tough for the average everyday investor
to really understand what a zero knowledge proof is
and if that's possible on Bitcoin
if you've got, there's a thriving Bitcoin community
that's building on Bitcoin
and there's a specific way that those people
are going to market with their products
and you look at an on-chain monkey
and you look at what they're doing over there
they're launching BRC-20 tokens
they're launching innovative strategies
when they're trying to get their marketing off the ground
and when you look at Satoshi VM
say you're just going to go look at that project
it's like, okay, a project that claims to be hardcore Bitcoin
the first thing they did is launch on Uniswap and MEXE
they're just not kind of holding true to what that community
is really trying to do on that side
and so I'd say just as an investor that's a red point
and I would have reached out to other players in that ecosystem
so before reaching out to influencers
and probably one thing I want to touch on that links it back to IDOs in general
is the whole influencer strategy
so obviously I'm pretty new in this game
we've got Coach K, Kyle, Ran, who's been in this game, Evan
he's been in this game for longer in terms of getting allocations as an influencer
so we were more behind the scenes in the last small market
but in this small market it's obviously different
I'm trying to learn more about it
where projects give those allocations to influencers
now I'm actually interested to get your stance guys
not sure who wants to jump in on this one first
maybe Evan or Ran or Coach
is how do you think it should be done?
so if a project wants influencer support
which I don't think is nothing wrong with it
I have another company I've had it for 12 years
you've got a lot of background
so I'll give you the mic as soon as I'm done with the question
so we use influencer marketing for my econ business that I've had for 12 years
it's one of our main marketing strategies
but I think the part that's missing is disclosing that that influencer
has been sponsored or invested or had an allocation of a project
I think that's the missing part
we've got two lawyers on stage who will comment on that afterwards
Ran where do you stand on this?
so you remember that I was the first one to call out the influencer strategy
on SatoshiVM on our other spaces
and I said this is a shit show
and the reason why I said it was a shit show is because
what I realised was that a lot of people on Twitter
were all of a sudden tweeting into Jackie the same narrative
and we actually were one of the influencers who invested in the project
but you know we as a business have a policy of
never ever ever accepting any investment that has any strings attached
so if anybody ever says to us
hey we'll let you in on this Ran back
you have to support us on Twitter
or you have to support us by making a dedicated video
the answer is absolutely not
in fact you can even make projects by documents
to say that they are aware that there's absolutely zero obligation on our side
the other thing is that I think that there's
so here's the problem with the influencer strategy
the influencers obviously incentivise very very very much
to get people to buy the token
and then the influencers don't have a real lock up
well specifically in this case they never had a lock up
and then they started dumping on the community
whilst still shilling the token
whilst still shilling the token they were dumping on communities
that's the point that I got upset
and I said like you know even people close to me
and I said like this is crazy
this project is being overshilled
retail is going to get destroyed here
because they think they're investing in a good project
so I'm just about to take off
but I think the answer for me is yeah
number one we've got to be very careful about the influencer marketing strategy
because you know if influencers are going to be shilling a token
because they're getting a token at a lower price
I suppose you can you can count the balances marketing fees
but then without if you're marketing a token
without disclosing that you have a commercial agreement
with that token to market that token
and even going maybe as far as disclosing exactly
what your commercial agreement is
in other words I got the tokens at this price with this lockup
then I think you're doing a disservice
now what we did when we do at banter
I apologize for the background noise
but what we do at banter is
if in any shape or form we receive
we call that a sponsorship
and that is clearly labeled as a sponsorship
and if we're offered to invest in a certain round
we only invest in artstrings attached
so I think for me the main thing is
if you're going to do a tweet about a project
because you have an allocation
or because you're paid or because it's part of an agreement
then that specific tweet must be labeled
if you're going to mention it in a video
then in that video it's going to be very very clear
like we mark out in red and it says sponsor
and at the bottom it's got a list of literally all our sponsors
that I'll mention on the show
and that is that there can be no shadow of a doubt that that is a sponsor
we never ever ever take any investment opportunity
with any kind of strings attached
that's just against our policy
we've been kicked out of rounds
I mean I'll give an example
when Star Atlas the project launched in the last market
we had a discussion with the CEO
he said I let you in with a $150,000 staff
I want a marketing plan and I said
but hold on I'm not your marketing company
I'm a credible media company
and I don't do any kind of promotions for anyone
he's like no we let you in on this round
because it was an influencer round
I said look I don't care how you let me into the round
we're not going to be bought
you cannot buy airtime on our channel
by giving us investment opportunities
what ended up happening is it ended up taking back the staff
and we effectively landed up giving up as much as
when it launched it was like a 100x launch
we probably ended up giving up as much as $10 million
just sorry unrelated to crypto
but I think it's good for anyone
there's just Qatar just announced four minutes ago
the team just posted that Israel has agreed to a ceasefire
we don't know the details
but there's Qatar says Israel agrees to a ceasefire proposal
I think anyone following the war
anyone involved in the war
anyone in Israel or Gaza or West Bank
or anywhere in the Middle East really I think that impacts you
so I thought I'd mention that
sorry to interrupt you Ran
but I thought it would be good news to mention some positives
so I'm just about to take off
to be honest we're sometimes categorised with influencers
I hate the word influencer
and I hate what the influencer community stands for
and I think we've got a clean up
I think the best thing that it influences we can do is
I thought you dropped out
because you cut out for a second
I know you're about to take off
and Yaga I'm going to go to you
and then go to the lawyers
Evan, Coach and Kylie can jump in at any time of course and Toby
but the question I had for the lawyers is
how is the same shit happening all over again
like the same stuff we saw on the last World Market
and the one before is happening here
and when it comes to cases like this
where is the DOJ when it comes to those instances?
They're not on top of the ball
but they're not going to be
I don't think you should want them to
and it's the same as it's always been
people have to have their wits about them
and there's influencers that
these are all individuals
are less willing to shill just for
because they were told to for an allocation
and people with their ear listening
these people have been in the space for a while
you can actually find out
if they're the kinds of people
who only shill projects they believe in
or shill something and then dump
so if people are just like
retail is going to retail
and they're going to follow each other into things
and I don't know that you can look at the
go ahead, sorry, go finish off
no and I think that people
when you have projects that are clearly shilled
by people with no belief in the project
people will quickly learn
that that's not someone to be followed
and maybe you get a couple strikes
I'm not sure, maybe they never learn
I think that the reality is
you should use all the information out to you
and in a world where the SCC
is just rubber stamping things
whereas here you can actually look into wallets
and look at past projects
Yeah, just one more thing
I'm trying to get Ryan back on
I'm not sure, oh he's coming back on
Ryan, if you want to come up for a second
there's one piece of news that we talked briefly
but I want to dig into it
because me and you are in the media game
and we're talking about influencers
so, Ryan, can you hear me
before your plane takes off?
Let's see if he has signal
so the question, try to unmute Ryan
and I'm going to go to AJ
it's kind of linked to the whole influencer game
so BitBoy is obviously one of the biggest influencers
again, Ryan, not sure if you heard about it
interesting he says he's facing $100,000 a month
he's spending $25k to produce his show
so maybe worth mentioning briefly
AJ, not sure if you know more about the whole
BitBoy story is one of a cold tube
so you put your hand up as well
and you probably know everything about everyone
but you guys have more insight on
how BitBoy couldn't have a business model
because he has a fair bit of views on YouTube
is it just advertisers shunning him
one of the guesses we had on the last show
is that advertisers were just not willing to invest on him
so he didn't have the revenue he had previously
because of some of the drama he's faced
does anyone have more insight on this?
Well, Mario, you know AJ was BitBoy's friend
so he works in an office with him daily
I think if anybody has insight on him
it would be that man right there
AJ, maybe tell us how with his views
I keep calling him BitBoy
how Ben Armstrong was not able to build a profitable business
Well, definitely what the media said about it
compared to what is going on
two obviously very different stories from the inside here
the story is not that he has a profitable business
but the thing is that when you compare it to
the lawyer fees and everything
that's not something that's going to run forever and ever
and he's still putting out
I think at least two or three videos a day
minimum pre-recorded type videos
like a normal either teleprompter or freestyle
coin reviews, price predictions, stuff like that
that type of content is still coming
it's specifically just the live stream
that got the plug pulled on it
the amount of effort he's putting into it
the ROI on the live stream specifically
was not adding up to that
so he's still in business
he's just stopping the live stream
and I think that's probably
to be honest a temporary thing
I don't think it's done live stream forever
I think it's just done live stream for now
that's kind of what I gathered
how long that gap will be
but I did talk to Ben this morning
he was filming some video
just the whole lawsuit thing is a big headache
and it'll all be better off when it's over
yeah he did say he spends $25,000 a week
on the production of the content
which is a bigger number than I expected
are you still his writer by the way?
he did have a team of writers to be fair
were you writing the whole
the whole plan of him going to
all the stuff that he tweets
you wrote that whole story
this is the entertainment business
and he has definitely mastered the entertainment edge
as controversial as he is
he's the entertainment part of crypto
and I was there I went to the Bahamas
we got kicked out of the FTX compound together
I was there for the book tour and all the things
it's really more fun than people
he's having more fun with it than people think he is
people think it's like this really serious thing
but it's really basically all in good fun
Coach I want to go back to you
you just made the story in Godoyago as well
just going back to the discussion
and Kyle again you've been deep in that space
and Evan get your thoughts on the whole influencer strategy
it seems the game is the same
where influencers get early allocations
some disclose it, some don't
and they get a big unlock and dump it
are we just seeing the same shit all over again Coach?
well I think it depends on who the influencer is
because there's some people that are a lot more ethical than others
that don't dump on their communities
that definitely care about their communities
that care about the people that they're talking to
and then there are people that haven't really made it yet
and they can change their life with that money
and they will do whatever it takes to basically help themselves get ahead
and you know it's really sad that that's the way it is
but I mean it's not just crypto
it's pretty much every industry
it's just really about figuring out
who are the people that actually are there to be there for the long term
and you know if they're getting all these preferential deals
and you know they're shilling it too hard
and they're trying to fomo people in
and they're trying to get people to do things that themselves they wouldn't do
then there's like an ethical moral thing
and like for me personally you know
I've been called out by Zach and other people in the space
and I always prove them wrong
they're like you dumped on everybody
you did all this wrong stuff
and then when I show them
like I'm still holding all the tokens
they're like oops maybe you aren't such a bad person
and in reality like everyone's trying to make money
so like we have to be honest here that
you know influencers are providing free marketing and stuff
but they're not being really honest about it right
I'm connecting with the right people
I'm making sure that you know they're good talking to economic models
I'm making sure that you know the marketing companies that they're working with
and the PR firms they're working with
are going to make sure that there's actual like real utility
and that the project makes sense for the long term
and then there's guys who are shilling stuff like pork coin for example
which everyone knows like for the short term
bonk and pork and all these other coins
they might be great and like
yeah people might make some money
but the average person is not in early
they're in late and they get wrecked
so you know you have to really think about
who are you going to follow
and which influencers are actually there
to help the space grow so that we can move forward
and who's actually here to make on the short term
and you basically fuck over anyone that they possibly can
so that they can get ahead
I feel like you know web 2 is really a lot more like what I was just explaining
people who are really here for the long term
are going to be the ones that actually make it
but that's because I hear that every single time
that people are here for the long term
I see the same guys Yago, Evan
I'll let you guys chip in on this one
but I just see the same players doing it all over again
I assume their reputation will be hit
and kind of we're seeing some examples of this
but a lot of others are just doing the same
just saying guys different
Evan you've been through the both cycles
yeah I think really the main issue here is
I need to differentiate between influencers as investors
and then VCs as investors
a great example is the project.d.fry
I just listed a couple yesterday I think
and I did over 10x on listing
invested two years ago in the project
and the next thing on that ticket
is like 18 months of investing
as an influencer I invest in the same project
but with 25% unlock on TGE
but my whole ticket was under $20,000
right so I think what we really the issue here is that
people are starting to think that these influencers
are also investing as investors
like that is not how it is
when influencers are investing as influencers
they actually have requirements
like Rand said that they have to actually promote
they actually have to promote the project
at that point they are doing small tickets
and they are hoping to make a big ROI
but what really happening is it is a better form
of marketing for the project because at least
the influencer is not being paid
when he has no incentive to market it
investing he has at least a little bit more incentive
to make sure he is doing a better job
and he is responsible for what he is actually promoting
at OCVM what really happened was
it was structured in a way where it was
just benefiting the influencers and nobody else
that was wrong you need VCs
you need VCs so that project can actually
and then you need influencers so that the community
can hear about these projects
the community can be exposed to these projects
so I think it is more about understanding how to
find a structure that works for everybody
I am not going to say that influencers are bad
because I play both roles here
I have been investing since over 10 years ago
in companies in web 2 companies
where equity have not sold a single equity
in over 100 companies I bought equity in over
10 years ago and never sold a single share
because it is so hard to sell with web 3
it is interesting because you have liquidity quicker
but with influencers what is really happening
is the liquidity is coming very quicker
and people are thinking that influencers
are making a benefit for themselves
and while they are not but that is not true
Satoshi VM is an exception
this was not how it was meant to be done
and then they have structured it in a way just to benefit
most influencers didn't even get to invest in it
or even if they did they invested $500, $1000
so if you leave that aside
and if you really look at the problem here
the problem is the community is not aware
which projects influencers are being paid for
and which ones they are investing in
the responsibility comes to the influencers here
to actually explain to the community
I'm an advisor here, every project
that I'm advising I'm publicly saying
I'm an advising, if somebody is advising
they are mostly being paid for some tokens
against the effort that they are providing
and when they are investing
most of the time they need to be clear
that am I investing as a KOL round
their projects are defining
investor rounds so this information
is actually already public
for most of the community go and see
what KOL rounds, what investing they have
what the public cannot see is
when was this KOL round raised
most people listening to the spaces
you should think that the KOL round is being raised
a few days or a few weeks before
so I think that's the main issue here
is to explain to the community here
how to understand what is really happening
and what is really happening here is that
there are good projects that are raising VC rounds
and that they are actually building
those projects, they've been building over the last
many years, if you look at an example
of Bitcoin layer 2's where SAVM
and Solver and all these guys are from
is a project that has been building for over a year
I invested just a few weeks ago
but I was able to do only a $15,000
investment, that's a very small investment
I did commit to them that I'm going to promote them
that I'm going to talk to my community about them
because I believe that they're actually building
I believe in them, I put my own $15,000
on the project, yes I got a benefit
that I was able to invest close to the listing time
but I'm providing work against that
what's the other option, the other option
the project goes to marketing guys
and says here's $15,000 cash
you pay these guys and then they don't promote
so I think the main issue here is just like
the community needs to understand how this game is being played
what is actually happening
I think do your own research, that's what everybody says
I think that's what people need to focus on
just want to add one more thing
one strategy we do, Evan and Yaga
I know you've had your hand up for a while, go to your afterwards
but one strategy that we do, not sure if anyone else on stage
does the same thing, so obviously now
because of the shows that I do and all that we get
a lot of influencer offers
same as what you mentioned, influencer
deals, we used to invest a lot more
all our projects that we had earlier
in the last bull market were all investments
this time around we're getting offers
as influencer allocations
the way we do it is we go to them and we're like
so they give us a big unlock at the beginning, we're like cool
we're happy to get a bigger allocation
but at a smaller unlock or no unlock
so then the project feels
more comfortable, like oh cool, these guys don't really
want to dump as soon as they launch because most influencers
do, they have bills to pay or they're like
short term cash, most influencers don't put them all in one basket
so what we do is, because we're mainly
investors, the first thing we
say is like hey, we want a big allocation
we can offer you more stuff, we got one
a much bigger allocation instead of 20k one, 100k allocation
but no unlock, so the project will be
more comfortable and then
they offer out cool, we could do 80k
then we go to the next stage, we're like
alright cool, you give us an 80k allocation instead
of 20k, no unlock, perfect, seems fair
we'll do x, y, z, come on the
spaces, on the YouTube show and all the other stuff
we do some marketing for them, and then
we offer to write a check as well, and we've
done this recently with some of the projects launching now
and it's working really well, we're like cool, you give us an 80k
allocation, how about we write
a 50k check and get a 200k allocation
so then we're putting our
money where our mouth is, now the project is
treating us as a VC, which is what
we mainly started off as,
incubation, that's what we've done for
two years now, so then what we try
to do afterwards is say, we'll give you all
the media, if you work with us
and get incubated, and then we get a percentage of
tokens, we're no longer discussing a dollar figure,
we're like hey, give us 2, 4, 5, 6, 7%
of tokens, generally it's about 3-5
5% of tokens, for incubation
what price did you buy your token for?
at that point, that influencer
is liable to reply to you, this is
the price that he bought with what Westing
a lot of the time people tweet on my
posts like what did you buy, I'm always so happy to answer
because I'm not hiding, I know that I'm not
scamming anybody, I'm not running away from anything
coach is a public person, the problem
is coming when anonymous people
I've been hyped up, and they're shilling
projects by anonymous teams, and then
nobody knows where the money is going, it's going
in the pockets of few people, I think that's
where the problem really lies, and that's what we need to
fix, as a community here, and
that's what we need to focus on, that people like
Kyle, coach, everybody knows who people
are on the spaces, the anonymous people
who shills at those TBM, the anonymous team
they're nowhere to be found, where are they right now
they took all the money, and they can't do
on the spaces, so that's really the problem
is, Mario, nobody's questioning you, we know that you're providing
the value, guys remember once in crypto
what gets paid for, if you're able to bring
value to any project, you will be
able to get an allocation or be able to invest
a few days before listing on a
better term than somebody else, that's what really comes down
to what value you bring to the table
and I think when people are
people start trying to come into the
getting a call, I'm getting a call, so that's what
sorry, that's what the problem comes in, I think
is that we as a community need to
question these people that we look up to
and then ask them, what price did
you buy this token at, what are you getting
paid, and when Twitter is great for that
and I think, Congress to Mario for making this
stuff happen, Twitter is great to get
the real stuff out there, to get what's
the part of the facts out there
I think that's great for all influencers, they can't really
hide as long as the community members keep asking
them, and I think that's what as a
community here is that people need to ask the hard question
nobody wants to hide, I don't want to hide what I
mean, they come and rug the community and that's what
Yeah, I think there's a lot of people
on here listening and going, man
a lot of people are going to get rich
off this, but there's a lot of people that are like
what should I do, and my suggestion
it went to like 13 bucks, 11 and a half
Toka, that's another, all these
BRC20 tokens, so you have
a cent, a cent and a half, now it's
so if you're feeling helpless in
this space, and this is kind of
creating our YouTube channel and all that stuff is to
help the average person, not to really
does the average person do, because what's happening
in every bull market is that they get dumped on,
it's like all the VCs, all the influencers get the early
allocations, the token launches and then they
just dump the unlock, and who's buying
is that average investor?
are, yeah the average investor is probably
buying the top and then getting dumped on, so
my suggestion is that they
wait a little bit, wait until it decreases
probably going to be fine because the bull
market, you know, all season's going to
happen and then everything's going to pop up
looking at the unlock schedule of a project, Kyle
and then Yago, I'd love you to jump in on this one
but looking at the unlock schedule of a project
I think that's important as well
give it a project, anonymous or not
anonymous influencers really hold much clout
so their word doesn't really
and as Satoshi there was big ones
often times you'll look at this
you'll look at the different
fund raising rounds in a project
and you'll see that the one
that is typically right before the public
sale will be called the strategic round
and that is for bringing in strategic
called strategic partners
now, there should never be
look at any project that I'm involved with
comes into the project is always involved
has investing for at least
it's the only way to align
that they're going to do something and
that they don't get too many tokens up front
and that gives a lot of time for the product
to actually, for the team
to ship product, for them to actually get traction
there's nothing wrong with, I mean it's the most
effective PR, in this space
it's the most effective way to market a project
just saying with this pump, like crazy
it's artificial, you know
everything about Satoshi VM was just
market cap that they got, the
price they were able to buy in at
you know what, that was to make the launch
pad look good, like it was
going to be continuously putting out
so everyone should put their attention there
all of us who are launching projects on a public
what is the fair valuation
that we should be offering this to the public at
I mean this is, like I was saying at the beginning
of the show, this is going to be the most interesting
paid network versus every other launch pad
this full run, because we
will be looking to value projects
that it does is when people
do have big unlocks, or there is
it's not a race to see who
can dump first on each other
that's a horrible mentality
this is the very, it's day
to prove themselves to the world
staying power, the thing should
appreciate in time, especially this early
there's no problem with getting
influencers involved, the way that we
everybody can get involved
whitelisted, exclusive people who
have to win a whitelist spot
need to hide any names of people
who get into these things, because it's open to everybody
reasonable, investing terms are reasonable
and that's it, problem solved
something funny has happened, so
Satoshi BM who refused to come on your spaces
have launched what looks like
a coordinated campaign to
so I'm blocked for most of this
but I've been getting links from people
and they're spreading a whole bunch of
in a coordinated tent across a lot of different
threads, so this is the level of
integrity we're dealing with
what I can do is I can talk
about this topic from the perspective of a builder
we're in, anyone who's building
in crypto has a really difficult problem because
out of all of the traditional
ways that you would try to let
people know about what you're building
we can't advertise, we can't do standard
and so, you know, it's something we're very proud
that we've been building now for three years
protocol in the world, we've managed to get
thousands of users and do billions in trades
and we've done it without
advertising but also because
we were scared about exactly these things
Yeah, just a quick question, I did bring up
Mortaza who's an advisor and I think
investor and Mortaza will correct me if I'm
so Mortaza's from Maven Capital
in Satoshi VM, again, I could be
wrong, so he's just connecting now
but I'm curious, what type of coordinated
attack are you facing during all the space was going on?
I don't know exactly because
most of which I can't see
I've been on this space so I don't
being said but I do know that they're claiming
that we've been trying to organize
coordinated attack against them or something
but without any real evidence
but one thing that they've latched
onto which is really interesting is this
three years that we've been building, we've
never used influencers, Pomp has come in
and there was a vote in the community
we do everything transparently to let him
come in and make an investment, CryptoDog
they're both still holding their tokens
and there was no obligation on them
Lost Week happened, suddenly we got
this huge influx of influencers
reaching out to us, many of whom
were actually Satoshi VM influencers
now maybe there was some kind of
scooby-doo sting that they were trying to organize
oh yeah, sure, we'll work with us and then
say hi, you see they work
with influencers but we actually don't think there's any
problem with working with influencers
so long as it's done transparently
so what we're trying to do now
exactly is figure out what is the most
transparent way to do this, we need to be able to vet
yeah, Murtaza can you request again, it's just glitching
because I had a couple of questions for you
if you can come up, but yeah, sorry go ahead
decided is the following, first of all
we turned it into a debate inside of our
community, our community decided to approve
trying some experiments with
including some of the influences from Satoshi VM
was not getting the right information
made the transparent thing of making
the decision with our own community
as soon as next week we can
campaign which is transparent
where it needs to be transparent in two ways
first of all we will say who we're working with and they need
to say they're working with us and what they got
and then the third thing is
going to be reaching out colds to anyone
we're only going to work with people
who seem to already know about the project
are interested in the project and within
that the species was not going to happen
so I'm not actually at home
I appreciate it coming on, yeah we can
I was planning not to talk at all
about Satoshi VM because they couldn't join but I thought
we'll give a quick update and we kind of moved on
from it until Yago brought it up and I saw in the audience
an advisor to Satoshi VM?
brought on for a small advisory role
considering they wanted some help
with marketing so like being totally
transparent about this and I have already disclosed
this a lot of times so once again if everyone
doesn't know that so I am
one of the major investors
in Satoshi VM if you're going to say it like that even though
the allocation was not as much
but yeah, so basically I'm an investor
and a small advisory role
which I had for Satoshi VM
what's your allocation and what
was your unlock and then we'd love to know
the allocations that unlocks given
allocation was similar to literally
everyone, everyone had the same
like unlocks so I basically
had the same vesting for as like
what was that, what was that vesting
I think it was like 50% unlock
it was like 5000 something
oh it was a very small allocation
so you had 5000 allocation and was it a 50%
influencers get a 5000 allocation
it was not like that for every influencer
it was like depending on how
much value they're earning and basis of their socials
so yeah, being totally transparent about this
you can literally ask me anything
I'm more than happy to answer everything
yeah I appreciate it, did all the influencers
were they required to disclose
they were investors or no
the first thing everyone was told was
like if you're marketing a product
is if you're getting influencers in
any project, you want them
to drive users to the product
so since day one, the first thing
was you have to actually just
disclose that you are investors
in the project and the first
thing was the easiest thing to actually get people
on is like driving them to test
net is with an airdrop which is actually
planned and that's actually something
that's going to happen, every
influencer was only tasked
one thing which was to bring test net users
so how much did you invest total, $5,000
yeah, okay, I'm just writing
much of that did you sell on day
one, what percentage of the allocation sold on day
it was actually mentioned on that post
as well and I actually went ahead and
literally even asked him, the whole
allocation was basically like 15%
of what I had and I sold it over
6 hours, again being totally transparent about
yeah, so you are going to ask me what
I did with my allocation, the first thing was
allocation which is quite
kind of obvious because the multiples was so
like 1,000 tokens to Zatch
as well for his work and I literally told
him that you have my address now and you always
had it so if you are just going to find anything
about it you can more than
happy to mention that but I'm not
going to apologize for taking profit on
15% of my total allocation
I know some people disagree, I think my
position is if you disclose it there is nothing wrong
and how much was that worth, that 15%
unlock, how much did you sell it for?
quite remember, it should be like 70,
75 something, I'm not really sure
exact number, I sold it and eat so
nice, so about 70, 75,000
Evan what do you think, go ahead
Mario, listen to what we're
even saying, it's like Murtaza
it's like people need to get paid for their work
and you know some of these
checks that do fair launches, they don't have
they're just paying in their token
which is fine, you know imagine
going like if you're like Nike
and you went to an influencer and that influencer
got paid and now they have to like validate
their position for selling their USD
and they're like well I donated some too
I'm really sorry, I did not donate to him because
I was feeling bad, that's the first thing I
told that as well, if Murtaza
did me, do it, I don't care
you did say it, right, so it's like
in some way it's like people do cover off
and I'm not pointing you out, there's a lot of people that do this
but like I think the big problem
here before like in this bull
market versus the last one Mario is that we didn't
have the tooling, right, you'd have
like some sort of Excel spreadsheet
with the influencers like Kyle was saying
that we're part of like a strategic round
or a creator influencer round
and then there would be, you know, you would
send an allocation or like if you're a big influencer
you would have, you know, like
something that could unlock or invest
over certain time periods, now there's other tools
out there, like even like
Sableer, like it's not unlocking
each month, it's like you can stream
the tokens in a very small percentage over
a certain amount of time, but I
would always expect as an investor to say
hey anything that's unlocked is going to get
I want to ask you on radar, like what is
from what Murtaza's steadfast funds done so far
what would you disagree with
because it's like, for me it looks more like
hate the game not the player
he has the right to sell all of his tokens
like he was paid for his services
he has the right to sell everything
Sorry, I just want to add one thing, I'm sorry
if people are selling tokens
they need to be clear that they are not
these tokens are not being paid to them because they are investing
at no point, let's be clear
none of the influencers at those TVM are actually
investing, the problem comes
is when they say they are actually investing
Murtaza here is not being paid those tokens
it was structured in a way where it made it seem
like that, nobody invests
Murtaza, when did you invest this? You invested less than a
month before you sold them, nobody
invests with a month long horizon
they don't think I want to invest, I want to sell the tokens
in less than a month away
so I think that's the main issue that's really coming up
I do agree with the last point
you know, I face this from
every single angle, from a project
founder, from an influencer
and in the early days I understand how people
were like, what they sold their tokens
who decided when they were
and they have no obligation, you don't know
what, we don't know what their
and you don't know what their strategy is
projects need to take careful
consideration into these vesting
schedules because they should
and I tell them, I say guys
we do KOL strategies in seasons
when we bring on KOLs for
paid network or commonwealth or whatever
we figure out ways to recycle
and then after their job is done
that's up to them, but if they've sold
all of theirs along the way
that's also up to them, I've never gotten mad
who sold their tokens when
they did, right? I mean, how can I
get mad at someone for selling paid when it was at
four bucks or something like that and then it went
all the way down to a penny?
Sorry to interrupt there, but do you know why?
Because when the projects, when they're desperate
to raise money, particularly in the bear market
or particularly when it's not well known
projects that are not known that they're going to do
extremely well, they're desperate for
that kind of investment to come in.
really desperate for that kind of seed money, private
investment series, whatever you want to call it, Strategic
give that kind of initial strong
I've heard even some crazy numbers
why? Because they want to make it as enticing as
people that you could de-risk on
day one, right? So that's what happens
all the time. So they try to make it as enticing.
So the problem is, the minute they raise
and the minute they close the raise, they start
backing up on their claims and they start
really panicking about all
on day one, we're going to have a major unlock
and we don't have enough liquidity to back it
and now there is a problem. I see that
as total, and I agree with Kyle, I see
that as total mismanagement
lack of knowledge from the project founders.
I agree. I think, would you
or would you blame the, so if the project
goes in and offers an investor a great deal
and the investor comes, takes the deal
discloses it and does exactly
what, like hey, we're going to sell out tokens at launch
because the multiples are too high
and it's only a small unlock and the rest can be
locked over a two year period. That's what the project offered
us. Do you blame the investor
for accepting an investor influence, whatever you want to call
them, for accepting the allocation and selling it
or do you blame the project for playing the game
the project. It's definitely the project in this situation.
It's definitely not the influencer. I think
what really happened here was one or two influencers
bought other influencers onboarded
and that's where the value of VCs come in.
How long has Satoshi VM been building for?
I mean, the get up started 2024.
So that's the main issue here.
Satoshi VM had no VCs who did any due diligence.
bought on a bunch of other influencers
and they all started shitting the scam.
And that's what really happened here.
There's actual protocols trying to build a layer two
on Bitcoin. There's products that
I've been out there for a long time.
And I think that's the main issue that we're seeing with
Satoshi VM was that influencers didn't understand
I don't claim I'm a technical guy. I actually
depend on VCs to do the technical due
diligence and they have structures.
They have people set up in their companies to do all this.
Right? I mean, we are dependent on
them and that's where the value for VCs come in.
On the last basis, Matt was like
what's the value for VCs? That's the value.
They actually tell you what is the value.
We were just meeting a project today.
Exactly. We depend on them to
check if that team is actually building.
We can go and bring that's why
every player plays a role in this situation.
They were selling on a few hundred dollar allocation.
They were selling tens of thousands of dollars
Sorry for interrupting. It was just two days ago.
I don't know. Maybe a week ago,
a week before launch, did you not DM me
asking that you wanted to invest in Satoshi VM?
Yeah, because I thought it was a project.
I'm just asking you one thing.
DM me that you wanted to invest in it.
Yes, because I thought it was a real project.
okay, Murtaza, based on your link,
I also deployed 1.7 million dollars
I put 1.7 million on Manta.
What I'm saying is you didn't know.
I'm just asking for yes or no, girl.
Yes, I did because I have invested in every project
that people promote. I invested in 500 companies.
The problem here is you promoted a project
and you're still standing by on something that's already a scam
How is it a scam? Just give me one. No, no.
You're saying that influencers dump everyone.
We have at least one on three in evidence for this.
There was liquidity for around 12 million.
If you give me one on three in evidence,
this was influential. There was also liquidity in pork
and all these other meme coins launching.
Do we want to support these shit coins
or do we want to support projects
actually dealing with a lump of vision?
Do you have any on-chain evidence
that any influencer is the reason why
this token dumped from $14 to $2
The evidence is that the fact that only people standing up
for Satoshi VM are the people who are getting paid.
or somebody who has not been paid, somebody credible
saying that this is a legit project.
Why do only people like you, who actually got paid
tens of thousands of dollars, are saying
this is a legit project? Show me somebody with credibility.
How am I just standing up for it?
Show me one person with credibility
that I can trust, that I have faith in,
that I have said the right thing,
saying that this is a project you can stand up for.
Show me one person because I'm waiting.
No one's going to stand up for him, right?
I'm waiting to find that one person with actual credibility.
Bro, just let me finish. You're not letting me talk.
Yes, yesterday I was contacted by a sovereign team member
asking me to do paid tweets
That's okay because you're influencers.
They're building for a long time.
They're players of a track record.
They have two years of a track.
The first thing they told me, like their narrative was
to call Satoshi VM a scam
and tell that sovereign is a real product.
This was the first thing they told me.
So you're telling me someone's tactic is...
No, no, so this could be very well a message
from Satoshi VM's own team sending you.
Did this come from sovereign profiles?
And if I give you proof that this was not them, then what will you do?
This is literally the admin of their group chat on Telegram doing this.
So they are having a Satoshi VM guy
and he somehow became an admin
and he has been undercover for two years
I'm not denying your credibility as an influencer.
I'm not denying that. I literally told you
I invested 1.7 million of my own money
on a referral link that was shared by you.
What I'm saying is, the problem here is
VCs need to be involved in the process.
Matt BDC, who is the founder of Satoshi VM
came on the spaces and like, fuck the VCs.
Like, what the hell? This whole issue is like
people like, you're removing the VCs
but you cannot decide if a project
What was the first time Satoshi VM
actually committed something to their GitHub?
When was the first time they actually showed
that they had been building? What was the first time
there was a commit? What was the date?
Can you tell me, was it 2024 or 2023?
If you're telling me they are a scam, right?
You're implying that people are a scam.
I'm not saying it's a scam. I'm not saying it's a scam.
When was the first time they showed
they built something? Just ask me one question.
When was the first time Satoshi VM
actually committed something to their GitHub?
When was the first time they committed
something to their GitHub that shows
that they had actually been building something?
So, I will tell you that. That's the point.
You showed them that you don't even know what they actually
have been building. Let me complete.
They started building in 2024
and it came out of nowhere.
There are projects like TAP Protocol,
like they've been building for two years.
And you're telling me that they're the ones scamming?
I'm not scamming them. I'm literally asking you.
You tell me that influencers are bad
and I'm telling you, you cannot build a layer 2 for $200,000.
And the founder is retweeting and disclosed sales.
You cannot raise $200,000 from a group of your friends
and then once you're going to build a layer 2
and then if you're going to successfully build it all the while
at the same time, you're dumping $75,000 of tokens
that you've created $5,000 for.
That is the problem with the space.
This is the problem we need to fix.
They're not going to be built for $200,000.
She needs solid VCs to come in.
Why did BigGit freeze your account, by the way?
Was it because you were selling your tokens on day one?
It was like $200,000, right?
That was a reason, right?
Listen, what happened? They paid $1.4 million
They paid $1.4 million to me.
Did BigGit freeze your account
for selling tokens on day one or not?
She ended up paying me a lot more.
Are you going to pay the community that you sold $75,000?
Are you going to pay seven times to the community
BigGit did. BigGit paid me.
They paid me a lot more than what they froze.
I won the case in the end.
That's why I'm asking you now.
If you want to bring up that case...
Zach, just from a legal perspective,
I'll kind of move on from this,
but, Bubble, I know you've looked at on-trend analysis,
so maybe getting your thoughts on this.
And, Zach, legal perspective on influencers
shilling and not disclosing,
I think these are the two final points
I'm really interested to learn about.
Maybe, Bubble, you can kind of dip in
on the back and forth they've had
on the way the influencers were handled with SatoshiVM.
You've been looking at the project for a while.
You were on the last space, as well.
And then I've got to, Zach,
to give us his legal perspective.
Thank you for having us again.
So what I can say regarding this very,
very interesting back and forth
is that from the on-chain perspective,
I can back up Mortaz as claims.
So he was indeed the biggest recipient of the airdrop.
I think he received 26k of SAP VM tokens,
which were worth 260k at launch.
So that was a significant amount.
How much were they worth on launch?
I'm not sure about how much he invested,
He invested 5k at a 2 million,
I suppose, a 2 million euro valuation,
which was the strategic round for the KOL.
But the price jumped so much
that it was worth way more at launch.
Are you saying that 5k was worth 250,000 at launch?
I'm not sure he invested 5k.
Let me go back to my notes.
Let me go back to my notes.
I think based on my notes, he said...
but I think only 15% of it got unlocked, right?
Literally $750 got unlocked.
You had half of it unlocked,
So essentially, which is half,
it's half of what was unlocked, correct?
15% of the whole allocation was sold.
How much percentage did I get my math wrong?
How much of the percentage was unlocked?
How much of that was sold?
That was something like...
That was 10 hours after launch or something.
So about 30% of what was unlocked was sold.
I want to be clear on this point.
Mortaza disclosed everything on his Twitter.
So credit on him, credits on him.
So 25k, I say VM tokens worth 250,000,
and he sold around 70k, data with data on change.
So 250k was actually the unlocked amount, correct?
So that means the 5k was worth 500k
and half of it was unlocked at 250k, correct?
It's not a surprise to anyone.
The token, 100x, compared to the strategic round,
So for a 5k investment, this is 500k.
But the main issue also comes, Mortaza.
You're asking a lot of questions here.
You're saying, you got the largest allocation.
You got this allocation because you decided which influencers came.
You didn't get this because you're an influencer yourself.
That's the whole problem with this space.
You are bringing on people to a project to promote it.
The reason I message you for allocation, because everybody said,
you're the one who's leading this, who gets what allocation?
The biggest YouTuber in India, he messaged me, said,
you should talk to Mortaza because he's deciding
who's getting what allocation.
You're deciding who's getting to invest what.
You're getting the biggest allocation.
Did you at no point think, if they were VCs here,
they would have told me that this project is not actually what they're showing.
They came out of nowhere.
Nobody knows who the founder is.
Nobody knows who the team is.
The team is completely anonymous.
But you are the one responsible for bringing on other influencers
to the project and promoting it.
Once again, I just speculate everything that this is true and this is false.
I do not decide who gets how much.
You don't know who the team is.
You got the biggest allocation.
You got the biggest allocation to help onboard other influencers.
At that point, you knew that there were no VCs.
You're telling that I was deciding everyone's allocation, bro.
I am saying that you got the biggest allocation.
You literally said it and now you're saying you don't say it.
I don't understand what you're talking about.
Okay, why did you get the biggest allocation?
You didn't get the allocation because you were the biggest influencer.
You have 40,000 followers.
Why did you get the biggest allocation?
Because I was helping them manage things.
Can you explain what you're helping them manage?
The finances and everything, I literally helped them with that.
And Mac was literally doing that for me.
Okay, what I'm saying is I was told by multiple people to message you if I want to invest in the project.
I would have that point if there were actually VCs.
I didn't know much about the project.
I invested in 600 projects in the last five years.
So I'm basically people who are trust, like the biggest YouTubers.
They're telling me to message somebody.
Do you know what happened?
Do you want me to say what happened when he DM'd me?
Do you want to tell me what happened when he DM'd me?
He told, okay, I went to Mac and told him that Ivan Lutra wants to invest in Satoshi VM.
And his reply was, Ivan has zero volume.
He brings literally nothing on the table.
This is why we cannot have it.
This was the thing he told me.
I talked about Mac saying he's a scammer.
So the problem, that's why I've already said...
Because if he's a scammer, how is he a scammer?
What's the president who's calling him a scammer?
He's just the one who's called the most Satoshi VM token.
If Mac is on a scammer, tell him to show you, come up with a face.
Zach, just quickly going to...
I can use the mute all button, guys.
I didn't use it, but just for the co-host, I can use it.
But Zach, just from a legal perspective...
Yeah, so I think there are two behaviors here we've been talking about that have legal ramifications.
One is the unlock schedule and the other is like the activity of shilling.
And the liability goes one way on one and the other way on the other.
So in terms of the unlock schedule, if your project has any US nexus,
there really shouldn't be any insider tokens being unlocked at TGE or launched.
Really, the best thing to do is have at least a year for tokens that were sold before the TGE to influencers, to team members, to VCs.
Those really need to have a one-year unlock and it's on the project if they screw that up, right?
It's not on the influencer if they sell early.
If someone doesn't enforce that and you're an investor, you're an influencer,
I guess might as well get early liquidity.
It's generally speaking not on you, but that's pretty dangerous for the project.
However, the activity of actually shilling these coins and saying that this is a good investment
and trust my credibility as an influencer, you should buy this thing,
that is very legally dangerous for the influencer.
And that is one of the most common areas in all of crypto where people get in trouble.
And like if you're an influencer who did that,
I would definitely save the money you made from the project because you might have to get back.
Even if they disclose it?
If you're promoting an investment.
There's a reason why Mac is a scag guy behind the anonymous,
because these guys are scabbing, they know that.
They know that, that's why they're anonymous.
Just quickly, so even if they disclose it's still legally liable?
Yeah, I mean you should disclose it.
There are separate rules under the FTC about basically doing an advertisement
that you need to say that it's an advertisement that you're being compensated.
So that is table stakes you definitely should disclose.
But really, shilling a token as an investment is a very legally risky activity period,
even if you disclose that you have the time.
Just one question on my end, by the way.
If a founder is asking another influencer to tell some other project is a scam
and just for promoting your own project,
is there any repercussions for that?
I don't really know the situation you're talking about.
There's still a lot of crisis for people promoting their own project.
If someone is asking others to call something a scam,
to promote their own project.
There's a difference between hiring someone to talk about
the benefits of a protocol you're creating, right?
I'm creating this DEX, it's going to have lower fees,
it's going to have deeper liquidity,
and hiring someone to promote an actual token.
And when you're hiring someone to promote an actual token as an investment,
that's where you're probably promoting a registered securities offering
and you got to be super careful.
Exactly. And if the founder is literally telling them that,
just go out there and tell everyone that this other project is a scam
and use that to promote my own project, then what it is?
Then that project has to file a deformation lawsuit.
That project has to file a deformation lawsuit.
That's what the legal proceeding is.
For that, they need to speak up who they are.
You can't file a deformation lawsuit if your team is anonymous
and the influencer's promoting is anonymous.
Let me put a question out there, because I mean,
looking at traditional ways that influencers are paid,
would it make more sense, just a question for everybody,
would it make more sense for influencers just to be paid in USDT
and disclose that they're promoting this project,
and whether they're advertising or they're promoting it,
that they like this project, here's why.
I'm being paid USDT, I don't get benefits from the project,
Would that make things a little bit better for our entire space,
if they were not, for example, investing,
and if they were, they were limited to how much they could invest
based off of getting some type of preferential treatment?
I'm just curious what everyone thinks about that.
They could do that today, but I think a market is a market,
and when you have this, the way the market is today,
you're going to have influencers that are going to be anonymous,
they're going to be shilling projects, they're going to be paid out of the table,
you're going to be having those things happen,
and an investor doesn't know the difference,
and I think that's the hard part.
Put me from wrong here, but the advice that you gave before
about the legal side of things,
you said that an influencer would be essentially paid to promote a project,
but when there's an opportunity...
Let's talk about promoting a token.
Promoting a token, correct.
But when there's a strategic round
and somebody who happens to have an audience
makes an investment in a strategic round
and then talks about the investment that they...
Like for me, for example, I do due diligence in the...
So if I'm offered a KOL round, I do due diligence,
and then if I like the project, then I invest into it,
and then I talk about the thing that I invested into,
and then I tell people that I invested into this thing, right?
And so there's no expectations from the project.
There's a difference between doing a research report
and promoting a project, right?
And that's definitely something that if you do that type of activity,
you want to talk to your lawyers about,
are you stepping over the line into active promotion?
But I think here we've mostly been talking about specifically
people who are being paid to act as influencers
and actively promote a token,
and that is definitely legally risky.
So once again, bro, I'm just going back to think that
if some influencers are like selling a token and disclose
and getting paid tokens for this
and the founders are actually retweeting those posts.
So is only the influencer in this
who is actually going to be like, you know, help for this?
Oh, no, I mean like if the team is hiring an influencer
to promote their unregistered securities offering, right?
And the very fact of hiring an influencer to promote something
to make the price go up is like a factor that could turn
an otherwise like legal meme coin launch
into something that's an unregistered securities offering,
that could absolutely blow back on the project.
And founders are actually retweeting those posts like regularly.
Smart projects who have strategic investors
or people who have tokens who might have an influence
generally have something in the contract that prevents
that person from doing promotion or solicitation.
And so if that person does it, the company can say,
listen, we told the person not to.
They said they wouldn't and this is not on us.
Okay, once again, okay, there are two scenarios in mind.
The first scenario is the project is like actually getting investment
from these influencers and they're literally investing
in the strategic ground, okay?
And this is the reason why they are speaking about the project.
This is the first scenario.
And the second scenario is project is actually like paying influencers
in tokens and they are undisclosed really shelling the project
while the founder is retweeting all those tweets.
So once again, I'm simply asking you,
is the first scenario actually legit here where influencers
are actually like, you know, investing in the project
and also disclosing that he's invested while in the second scenario
he's not disclosing this, the founder is actually retweeting those posts
and telling all the influencers to actually like, you know,
call the other project a scam.
So in this scenario, which one is actually like, you know, the right,
I mean, like morally right in a way.
Zach can't talk about morals.
I think he could talk about legal, from a legal aspect.
I think you've kind of answered that.
Okay, Zach, I'll let you.
Yeah, I mean, look, I don't really have a moral view
other than to say probably both legally and morally,
it is worse if you don't disclose that you have a financial interest
in something you're promoting.
And it can be, there can be additional legal trouble with not disclosing,
but the issue of promoting a token that is an unregistered securities offering,
that really doesn't matter whether you disclose or not.
You can totally disclose and still be like.
We do have, let me just jump in more Taza.
I do have to jump on pure smoke in an hour.
So I have, I haven't prepped at all for that or even other topics.
So I want to finish the last, you know, maybe 20 minutes.
We've got three shark tank sessions with three projects,
but right now you've had your hand up for a while.
You've got to be a bit more rude, get that British,
British personality out of your system on these spaces to be able to speak.
No, well, first of all, very quickly, I just wanted to thank more Taza
for being completely honest and transparent with us in terms of what happened.
But also he shared that his wallet is on, you know, his,
his own chain and his public and he's been confirmed by bubble.
And I think as well, I think the fact that he received 50% of his token
being unlocked and only sold 15% of it,
that showed a little bit of responsibility from his behalf,
because he could have very easily sold, you know, the volume.
The volume was then allowed to sell it all.
So he almost walked away from $150,000, if not more,
to show a little bit of ethics, a little bit of responsibility as well, etc.
You've asked me earlier, Mario, what do you think about that?
Obviously, the blame very quickly goes to the projects, to the founders.
They have the soul and the initial responsibility to make sure that the unlock is fair.
The unlock is not catered in a way that's going to benefit certain individuals, etc.
So the question is, if Mortaza obviously just went and invested
and he was purely an investor, he's got no problem,
because that's what they've given him.
They've pre-agreed on the terms of the unlock.
They pre-agreed on what he's going to be receiving on day one
and it's well within his rights to go and sell.
For me, where it becomes a little bit grey is when there is advisory to it.
Because for me as a VC, I like to see advisory, particularly the advisory tokens,
being unlocked as well as the team tokens.
And we're talking about a longer unlock period.
So probably a cliff of one to two years
and then we're talking about an unlock of four to five years.
You're leaning an unlock after that.
Because it gives me that level of confidence
that the team are trustworthy,
the team they cannot believe in their long-term vision,
they don't want to dump on day one,
they want to build the fully viable products down the road.
For me as a VC, it just gives me that extra thumbs up.
Having said that, and this is kind of I'm going to dumb it down for the audience, right?
Sometimes you invest not because the product is going to be great.
Sometimes the investment is because you know you could make a buck of it
and you know it's going to be a great investment decision.
Why? Because maybe it's the hype in the market.
Why? Because the narrative in the market is right.
Why? Maybe because you're timing the bull market perfectly.
So perhaps you know in three, four, five years time,
they're not going to invest the cure to cancer.
But probably over the next two years, this is going to be a great investment
that's going to get you multiple X's.
So sometimes people shouldn't focus too much on the end product
as much as they should focus on ask themselves first,
am I invested because of the tech on this one?
Or am I invested because I want a good return on this one, right?
And at the same time, you could lose money investing on Tesla
if you buy the wrong time and sell out the wrong time.
So for me, the most important point is the timing
in terms of when you're going to invest and when you're going to exit, right?
Another problem as well, and I've seen it, I've been around
and I've seen it being done in so many different ways, right?
We're talking about strategic rounds, we're talking about allocation,
we're talking about unlocks.
We're going to be really careful with people that are keen to get KOLs very early
because KOLs normally would want them to be towards the end of it.
And as Carl, I think mentioned it towards the strategic round.
But also you want to be careful when you see KOLs having different unlocks, right?
So one KOL is getting 50%, the other one getting 40%.
That tells me there isn't a preset rules that's going to be applicable to everybody
and therefore there is a little bit of a whooshy-washy kind of process in the background.
I'm not too comfortable with that.
The other thing as well that you want to be completely, completely aware of
The unlock schedule and the big events that are taking place.
And I'm talking, you know, I think the panelists here, they're fully aware of it.
But the audience, you want to know what's the unlock schedule,
what's kind of the admission is like, what's the unlock schedule is like,
how does the unlock schedule align with the big events taking place,
i.e. exchanges, i.e. delivery of product, i.e. market makers getting involved, etc.
Because that could give you an indication,
is there going to be enough liquidity in the market to be able to bear the unlock schedule?
When you're just dumping everything on day one and then hyping a lot out of it,
it is kind of a recipe for disaster and you should try to step away from that.
You know, somebody mentioned, you know, VCs, you know, when you see a big VC involved,
and including me, when we see big names involved,
we know a tremendous amount of kind of due diligence being done
and it gives us kind of a blanket of comfort, you know, to invest in this project.
I mean, we do our own due diligence and we have a team of panelists that do that.
But still, having a big name involved in the project gives us that comfort.
So when you see a project with no VC, it's a big red flag.
Yeah, let me go through some of that comment.
What do you think of Jupiter by there?
I know exactly where you're going with this.
So we got here, I'm going through the comments.
But one good comment here from a pretty respected person in the space.
The problem with these influences, not Murtaza,
but some of the influences were literally saying this is a great project
and they made it seem like they found a gem and they were investing.
Instead, they were dumping on retail.
So essentially what he's saying is that Murtaza at least disclosed.
Murtaza didn't dump his entire allocation.
Others just dumped everything.
And then we're going to go to one of our partners today to kick off the Shark Tank segment.
But he says, pathetic debate.
How dare only influences dump on retail.
And as a VC, and obviously now you can call me an influencer if you like,
It's a perfect comment because these are the VCs.
You can't put all of them in the same basket.
Some of them do big lockups.
But VCs have played the same game in the last bull market.
They're playing the same game now.
They asked for a big unlock at the beginning,
especially ones with a reputation, and they dump.
Those ones generally lose credibility.
But at the same time, Kyle, we've had this discussion before.
What's sad is that the VCs, even the credible ones that have respect that don't end up dumping,
they end up losing because everyone else dumps and they're holding the bags
and the token drops 99% and they've got LPs they're responsible for.
So what is a legitimate, credible, ethical VC meant to do
when everyone else is dumping, hurting them and their LPs?
That's what I keep trying to say.
It applies to influencers.
So projects need to lock up their tokens.
And I think retail investors need to punish projects that don't have lockups at the beginning
unless there's enough demand and there's enough hype,
there's enough retail demand to be able to absorb some of that initial sell-off for a project not to dump.
Now you understand since the day that I've met you why I've been obsessed with token economics.
They're quite complicated, my friend.
Let me just explain to these people.
The reason that vesting schedules exist in tokens and in equity
is to give time for the project or the company to get off the ground
and start generating revenue and adoption.
And the idea is that there's a lot of sell pressure either in the stocks or in the tokens in the early days
before there's enough adoption of the actual usage of the product.
Then that's going to have a negative price action on that asset.
But if you can foresee or try to foreshadow the rate of growth
or demand for a token or a stock, for example,
and try to find equilibrium with the unlock schedule,
that is the sweet spot of what you want to try to look for.
And that is what we look for when we try to do these kind of formulas.
And of course, that's very, very hard to do.
And market cycles play a big role in that.
But as we mature as a space, that would become more significant.
And just after Joe, we're going to kick off the Shark Tank segment,
just considering what we're discussing now.
As always, every project that's on the Shark Tank segment, I think all of them,
we mainly have allocations in.
So we take allocations and then they come and they come on the show if you can't connect the dots.
So we have three projects coming on today.
One of them, I think the first one, we're pretty heavily invested in.
But, Joe, they're a public company, so we don't have any talk as publicly listed shares as far as I'm aware.
Yeah, VCs get scammed also, right?
So, you know, Delphi is a great VC. They got scammed.
You can't hold an influencer to a different standard than you do a VC who's doing due diligence
and put their own money in and lost their money.
I think people need to realize VCs, influencers, they're putting a spotlight,
they're giving your opinion, you still need to do your research.
I 100% agree with what Kyle said.
I always look at the tokenomics.
Very famous L1 that launched last year had an unlock for the VCs in the first year.
I said, forget it. I'm not going anywhere near this thing.
And, you know, the project didn't really go anywhere.
You can't take an influencer's advice as gospel and throw your money in.
You need to do your own research.
You can come up with 1,000 different solutions for what influencers must do
and put that it's sponsored or not sponsored.
It doesn't matter. They're going to get scammed themselves.
Some of these people use their platform to push no influencer wants to push a scam
because it hurts their future income.
So I don't think many of these people are out there just to make money off of people
and be scammy. They won't be around.
They'll be pushed to the side if that's what they're doing.
You need to do your own research.
You need to look. Do not take people's word as gospel.
You need to look. And if you do anything like Kyle, I look at tokenomics.
Yeah. And it's kind of before before going to Shaddan and David to kick off the show
and Shaddan, I want to get your thoughts on all this before for talking about Fogonal
is the credibility of a VC.
I think credibility in this space is very underrated.
We talked some of us and we're giving a lot of information of things that happened behind the scenes.
They kind of heard an argument between Evan and Murtaza.
This is what happens behind the scenes.
We are the people that come in early on those projects.
You see some of us doing it well, others not doing it too well.
The ones not doing it well are usually not on this stage.
They don't want to be exposed publicly to it because they get in trouble.
But some things to look out for is do these investors use multiple wallets
because only just use one wallet or maybe a handful now.
But in the early days, just one wallet for all transactions.
It was very visible. But the credibility aspect of it.
So when you have credibility in the space, it's extremely valuable.
VCs that have credibility to get such great terms, Anamoka, even now,
but in the early days, they were a lot more selective with their investments.
Any project that Anamoka invested in, all VCs will try to get an allocation,
like a requirement. We don't even do DD.
Anamoka invested immediately get an allocation.
They do DD later. That's how much trust we had in VCs like Anamoka.
And obviously, it backfires sometimes.
Alameda is being a good example of three hours capital.
Number two example where credibility is so important is Binance.
So again, today we're talking to a project that came to see us
that we're investing in, incredible project.
They raised multiple A figures, and we're talking to them about their
whole strategy to have one goal in mind.
They've been around for many years. They've raised, again, tens of millions
of dollars, built some incredible games.
And they had one objective in mind, list on Binance. That's it.
That's because the credibility that Binance has built in being selective
of the projects that they launch.
So it gives you an idea of the value of credibility.
And I'm talking on a big scale here, three hours capital, sorry,
Anamoka Brands, and Binance are the two examples that I've used.
But that applies to influencers as well.
We've got Ryan coming up again. Let me get him up.
Zach, I'll bring you down just because we stopped the legal talk.
But that credibility is extremely valuable because once you talk about
a project, you don't have to have a lot of followers.
But if you have a small amount of followers that know you won't
show the project you don't believe in or won't put your name as an advisor.
So that's really, I'm very careful.
A lot of projects we invested in and they give us good terms.
They put my name as an advisor without asking for permission.
We take that extremely seriously because I know that could harm credibility.
So once you build that credibility, even for a small number of followers,
and that's for everyone in the audience, try to do that.
And you're careful on which projects you're back, who you talk about publicly.
And Ryan, I saw your request on that particular part,
which I know you're careful of.
I'm not sure if it's working for you. I know you're on a plane.
So I'm not sure how the hell you're getting on.
If you're using plane internet, it's not going to work.
You can listen, but you can't speak.
But yeah, I just wanted to kind of talk about that credibility.
I remember when we were investigating this token,
we had quite a hard time finding the tokenomics.
And when I say tokenomics, I don't mean the allocation,
because the contributors getting 15% was quite clear.
But I mean the vesting and the cliff was quite hard to find
at the very beginning of the token.
And Mortadza, I have to say, he did everything very transparently.
But what we found is that many of these influencers,
they were quite aggressively selling these tokens.
And to be precise, we have 250 influencers.
There were 90 of them who sold everything at launch.
And Mortadza, we can hold you responsible for that,
because you said earlier you helped him get influences.
So if he actually helped him get influences, took care of allocation.
Once again, that was a speculation.
I did not follow anything.
I thought you said it. I apologize. I thought you did.
But didn't you get him influences?
The thing is, people de-end me about this.
I'm giving you more credit than constructive feedback.
I think constructive feedback is the whole strategy of having,
if you're an advisor, then telling...
But one thing, if something is factual, I'm totally fine with it.
If there's something speculative that you're just assuming this is true
because you think so, that's wrong.
Once again, if everyone just keeps on saying,
Satoshi VM is a scam. So why is their team still here?
Mortadza, again, I want to jump off.
I'm not going to move on from Satoshi VM.
But all I was saying is, if or whoever...
Let me just keep it broad, because I don't want to make it specific on you.
Whoever got them influences, I think, should have been careful on the unlock.
But again, it was a very small volume relative to...
I don't know if they're a scam.
I haven't looked into their tech. I'm not an investor.
I don't have time to look into them, and I've never made the allegation.
All I'm saying is that I think the unlocks are a bit of a...
It's one thing I would critique.
But I've given you credit for disclosing your unlock,
even though you made a fair bit of money,
and for not selling all your tokens at launch.
There's like two points of credit that I've given you on a personal level.
One thing I'm going to say, one thing I'm going to say,
that amount of money was not worth the drama.
Almost no amount of money is worth the drama that you just faced.
And I appreciate coming up on stage.
Satoshi VM didn't come on.
And maybe they've got good reasons, but you did.
So I appreciate you doing that.
Shadan, your thoughts on the discussion so far,
and then Gudin idea will kick off the stock tank section.
So this is a space that's very interesting to me,
and my partner David is on as well.
And we're actually significant investors
in bringing Web3 and DeFi to Bitcoin,
using some of the technologies these guys are purporting to use.
We don't go to a forum or Twitter to find our investments.
We go to the best universities and the best cryptographers,
people that are doing ZK research.
And we ask them, who do you recommend for us to speak to?
And that's the stage of the game that this space is at.
This project looks very much like a scam to me,
because all they've done is copy the actual white paper
and discovered that you could build L2s on Bitcoin.
And that was the VM white paper.
Then you look at their code.
They have nothing about that at all.
They have some kind of bridge that they're building
for bridging Bitcoin to Ethereum.
So that would tell anybody who does diligence in the space
and research from a technical perspective
that this project is not what it claims to be.
The fact that they're copying an actual white paper that's legitimate,
the fact that their code doesn't even match to that,
it's just a bridge for Bitcoin shows you that it's not correct.
But the more important thing is that Bitcoin,
as a platform for Web3 and DeFi, is becoming real.
And the first L2 on Bitcoin,
that is a ZK roll-up like how these guys claim that they're going to do it,
will be many, many times bigger than any L2 on Ethereum,
just by virtue that there's a lot more capital on the Bitcoin blockchain.
So investing in this is a good idea,
but unfortunately this project was nowhere near being what the real deal would be,
which is actually something that...
Shidane, can I speak a bit?
Whenever you see something like this, this is a very big deal.
You're cutting out more Tesla.
The Satoshi VN team is calling you and cutting out the space.
If you're going to ask me, even the travel is going to be well.
You just cut out for a bit.
I think put your phone on.
The Satoshi VN team is calling you.
You're cutting out again.
Tell the Satoshi VN guys to not cut you off and say,
Let me see what their token is doing as you speak.
If maybe you're doing harm or good.
Yeah, it should be better now.
Everything was going well.
The test net was smooth and everything.
When you're seeing something like Zika roll up on a Bitcoin L2,
you just get four more in a way.
What if they deliver this?
Yeah, there's no way these guys would have delivered that.
But once again, it's all about delivery.
The thing is, when Yago came on here and said that Zika roll up,
it was literally building the same thing.
So that's the issue I have over here.
Like if you're coming on here and just like announcing something is a scam
and then going out to show that, okay,
Zika roll ups are not possible,
but also I'm going to show the project which actually is building the same
Honestly speaking, you cannot do that.
Zika roll ups are possible,
but it takes real scientists to make that happen.
And it's not at the stage that it's promotable like this yet.
But you've seen what I've seen,
and probably everybody else on this platform,
including Mario, that getting Web3 on Bitcoin
and getting L2s on Bitcoin that use these technologies
and everything that's wonderful about DeFi on Bitcoin
would just make this whole space explode
incredibly more than it really has.
When you just listen that Zika roll ups on Bitcoin,
if you have one bit of knowledge about crypto,
you're going to feel formal.
Maybe they can achieve it.
Maybe they cannot achieve it.
But the thing is someone came on here
and blatantly lied that Zika roll ups are not possible.
And then he went on to promote it.
Because that's market manipulation if you're asking me.
That's direct market manipulation.
There's one person on this chat I'm just noticing, RGB Brad.
He's another person who's actually
investing in a lot of the leading projects in this space.
I would recommend that everybody in this community
learns more about what you can do with Bitcoin
and follow him, follow me, follow David.
And there's a tremendous amount of excitement around this space.
Now, you're going to have scams like this.
This has been part of crypto since day one.
But there is something very real about these technologies.
And where they're going is extremely important for the space,
Yeah, I would like to get the audience's thoughts as well
First, your thoughts on Satoshi VM.
I know a lot of Satoshi VM fans and investors on the audience
should probably be attacking some of the panelists.
But also, people listening to this back and forth and debate
and us, we all feel like this is a call.
So we're having a frank conversation,
a lot of people behind the scenes,
when all these projects are launching,
giving you an insight into what happens behind the scenes.
I'm genuinely curious to get your thoughts on these spaces.
Was that whether I should do more of them,
whether you have some of these quote-unquote insiders
having a debate about different projects?
I think it would be good to do more spaces,
bringing more transparency for the audience,
and then you can make up your own mind.
Do you think Evan made some good points?
Do you think Umar Taza didn't do the wrong thing,
did the right thing in disclosing and not selling all his tokens?
Do you think the influencer strategy by Satoshi VM was right?
I'm keen to know your thoughts.
I was going through the comments.
I was going to read a few more.
But actually, I've got David here,
who's on stage going to be talking in a second.
He says, it's called death spiral financing.
David, what do you mean by death spiral financing?
I mean, exactly what it means, Mario, death spiral financing.
I mean, the famous words of my co-founder 25 years ago is,
how you do anything is how you do everything.
He's a securities lawyer.
And basically, in Tri-Fi,
you can go out and raise money from people
that are going to essentially sell your shares and short them.
And there's no difference in this space.
And I think that anybody you bring in is a frequency of energy.
And if you're going to steward capital
and you're going to raise money,
you better know what you're doing
and you better know what a vesting schedule is.
I'm not saying this in any egotistical way,
but a lot of this is like kindergarten.
So you shouldn't even be in the game
if you don't understand these types of verbiage and boundaries.
And candidly, if this space is going to go anywhere,
I'm with one of your partners here on the Palm tonight,
we envision this industry to be a multi-hundred trillion dollar industry.
It's not for kindergarten children.
This is for people that want to build something
that can elevate consciousness.
We talked about quantum money tonight.
And this is supposed to be about the last free market in the world.
And in order to do that, these bad actors need to go.
I think it's a good summary of your thoughts there, David.
And I think it's as good a time as any,
especially with that take to transition into the next section.
And we're going to hear from orthogonal and their founders, David and Shadon.
And you just heard a little bit of takes from them.
They've had some amazing ones, honestly, in the group chat
while we've been listening to this and the show as a whole is amazing.
Just want a quick housekeeping reminder.
We have a telegram chat and a newsletter that you guys can subscribe to
and follow for all updates on the show when we are not live.
And if you've never been to one of our Shark Tank sections,
we run it kind of like the TV show Shark Tank.
Projects get 90 seconds to pitch
and then 15 minutes of AMA with the rest of the panel.
So David, Shadon, whichever one of you wants to take it away,
that 90 seconds, you're free to start whenever.
Okay, sure. So David has had a big passion
and has been a patron of various projects
bringing VR to mental health.
Timothy Leary was working on with the Cybernetic Society.
He's helped those guys a lot as far as realizing that vision.
And we both shared that vision.
So we've been looking to build a metaverse around that concept
And again, just going back with some of these innovations in Bitcoin
and how we're both very excited about that,
we've decided to actually build this metaverse centered around Bitcoin.
And I believe it will be the first of its kind.
So that's what four worlds really is.
We're bringing some great people at the forefront of mental health
and bringing that forward.
And we're also basing this on the most stable, secure blockchain
that exists in the world.
And this is something that's a lot easier than doing a ZK roll-up.
And it's on Bitcoin completely.
So let's take the steps to get to that space
of Bitcoin being completely Web3.
And as far as I know, four worlds will be the first
significant project as far as funding goes
to actually see an application
that takes advantage of these technologies.
Both for the mind and for the blockchain side.
So very excited about that.
I think that's 90 seconds.
Yeah, we can kick it off.
First question, I have just the basics.
How much have you guys raised so far?
Well, we're using our own funds right now for four worlds.
So, you know, it's David and I who've kick started it really.
But, you know, we're going to begin fundraising for it very, very soon.
Do you have any influence allocations whatsoever?
Mario, I've got influence allocation for you.
Keep in mind now, I want an influence allocation.
I'll play my little card.
Okay, I'll take influence allocation, but I don't want any unlocks.
Give me the highest number.
And then what I'm going to do is offer to invest and give me an even higher number.
That's my strategy out in the open.
But yeah, I was just joking with that question.
And it's just a metaverse itself.
And I'm going to AJ, Joe and Joe.
I'm sure I have a lot of questions about just the metaverse itself.
So we said a metaverse focus on mental health.
So the utility is clear, but how would it work?
Like just from a practical sense, when you enter your metaverse,
why is it built on Bitcoin?
Why doesn't it need to be decentralized?
And where does the mental health aspect come in?
Unless I'm misunderstood.
No, no, those are great questions.
So, you know, building a metaverse, actually, a digital environment for augmenting conscious states
is a lot easier than, you know, building a fortnight.
Because, you know, let's say, for example, you're taking some therapeutic substance,
you know, certain patterns, certain, you know, environments, certain groups being together
and being able to communicate in easy ways is all it really takes to expand that greatly, right?
And as you know, David's a major investor in the psychedelic space.
He was a pioneer in that space.
And, you know, with the healthcare companies and some of these other types of companies
that we have connections with, it just made a lot of sense, again, to build this as a metaverse.
Because now you can have worlds created by independent developers and artists
and, you know, healthcare practitioners, and you can link these worlds together
very much like a fortnight, but in a very open environment.
And you can use, actually, as the communications layer, you know, tools that already exist.
One of those tools that we've decided to use is Noster.
Because Noster is getting very popular in the Bitcoin community.
You know, I was a very early investor in, you know, decentralized social media.
I was one of the major investors in projects like Steemit
and helped kick-start a bunch of stuff in that space.
So it's always been very close to me as far as, you know, a passion goes.
And Noster is actually working.
It's learned from the mistakes of previous projects and made it actually a lot simpler.
It's not blockchain-based.
It's a very simplified system.
And that's why it works, right?
So we're using that as the communications layer.
You know, just through the investments we've done in the past in the gaming space
and, again, the healthcare VR space, we have great teams to work with there.
And why do we choose Bitcoin?
That's really why, right?
Because before, you know, when I lost interest in Bitcoin for many years,
after the block-sized wars, I was like, you know, this thing is going nowhere, really.
And, you know, was focused on other things.
I was a very early entrance into the blockchain space.
Like, I got into this around 2010.
And then I became a merchant banker and, you know, helped fund public companies
And I've been doing that really more since about 2018.
So, you know, we – but, again, with these advancements in Bitcoin,
that excitement has come back for me.
You know, and I can really see stuff being built here.
It is the most decentralized, you know, blockchain in the world.
It is the most decentralized network in the world, period.
And, you know, now that these innovations have happened
where you can build applications on top of it
and treat it as a database, you know, as the final judge for any arguments, right?
That's the way to look at it.
It's become very exciting again.
And that's why we're using it, right?
So why Ethereum, I'd say, right?
Because, well, I just said why I like Bitcoin more.
And now that you can build DOPs on it, why not?
Can I ask you a question?
A lot of – this is actually an area I kind of looked into
because I found it interesting on the mental health space.
And there's a lot of behavioral economics
that's behind a lot of the good apps, let's say.
One of them is like Dan Nearley is very well known
and helped out two of these projects, I think.
Are there things that you could do in VR that you can't do in a normal app?
And have you done any, like, in the behavioral economics model
to, like, nudge people and things like that that's behind it?
Well, I'm going to step in one second.
I think that, you know, first of all, between Shadan, myself, and Jason,
we come from multiple decades of capital markets experience
with a definitive, what I would say, focus in quantum physics
and quantum chemistry, which is really the background
behind anything like plant medicine or crypto or digital assets.
If you look at our portfolio today, which we've probably invested
in north of 500 companies, we manage over 100 companies today,
some being some of the first companies that will be on the Apple Visor ARVR
We actually have a clinical trial with Harvard University.
This really comes back to, you know, this whole conversation today.
If you're going to build anything longitudinal,
you have to bring the right frequency of people together
and also bring people from different genres
that are actually looking at these spaces in multi-decades.
So I just, you know, want to give you a little background
about how we look at it and the different economics
and different focuses we're bringing together here.
Shidan, do you want to add anything?
Okay, Fiti, I will get to you in just a second,
but guys, I have, go ahead, Shidan, go ahead, go ahead.
You know, just everything that David said,
we've had a lot of experience in this space
and bringing these two worlds together makes a lot of sense, right?
So I, you know, very excited about this project.
For sure, Fiti, I will get to you in one second,
but David and Shidan, I remember, you know,
I've interviewed you guys on the roundtable before.
We had a very interesting conversation over there
about a month ago, and I remember, you know,
what you guys meant about UAC,
that you're building a utopian asset class.
Can you elaborate, like, to the audience what that means?
I'll let David speak about that.
I mean, a utopian asset class comes down
to the basic premise of frequency exchange or neutrality.
I talk a lot about neutral density.
I think that you go into investments,
and it can't just be about making money.
How do you make money and actually do good for the world?
And I'm not talking about, like, bullshit ESG.
I'm talking about actually doing something,
looking at something longitudinal,
and realizing that if there's, obviously,
everybody wants to make money.
Money's a frequency of energy,
but how do you actually do something
that's worthwhile in this world?
And I will tell you, just with AI and longevity
and where the planet's consciousness is going,
this idea of a utopian asset class is,
it's already something that we're hearing
much larger investors like Sequoia and Andriessen Horowitz
and other people look at and say,
okay, this is the next generation of investing.
It's bringing consciousness to the forefront
of how we make decisions and how we invest money.
50, you got your hand up.
Yeah, I'll jump in since he's having problems with the mic.
David, you mentioned before that you're getting things
into Apple's vision, I think it's called.
Is this one of the projects that's going in there?
We're using, so Orthogonal Global Group,
which is our public company, it's an investment issuer.
So we own a family office called Orthogonal Thinker.
That family office has a public company.
That public company incubated and invested
in a company called NovoBeing.
We technically own 25% of that company.
That company has been in stealth for the last couple years,
working with Harvard University and Boston College
on actual psychedelics and meditation.
So that product is available in the MetaStore now,
but we will be one of the first projects launching
Maybe getting into a little bit of trouble here,
I'm not supposed to say everything that we're working on,
but again, when you're managing almost 100
and some assets, we're basically taking the best
of whatever assets we own and bringing them
into this project called Four Worlds.
Didi, are you back with us?
Didi, you want to try now?
I'm sorry, I'm just at the gym, but I was listening.
I missed my turn, but I wanted to go back
to a conversation you guys were having like 20 minutes ago,
We wanted to keep the focus on the conversation
Will you circle back later?
I don't want to just change it, but I wanted to talk
about something that was really interesting said.
So let me know when I can jump in.
I've got a question for Shana and David.
So you guys have mentioned like building a metaverse
Shana and David, are you guys thinking about using RGB
to use like Taproot to issue some of your metaverse land
How do you use Bitcoin in this?
Yeah, so initially we're just going to use Bitcoin
We want this to be a very democratic metaverse
and owned by, you know, really the network, right?
So initially we're not using RGB.
As you know, I've been really following Taproot
and we're doing it with Taproot and really just for voting
as far as the governance goes.
It will be the first large scale DAO
on the Bitcoin blockchain outside
of the mining network, of course, right?
So that's what we're doing.
We don't need RGB for that.
However, partially because of you,
I've become more interested in RGB after just seeing
And, you know, as you know, I've mentioned before that,
you know, there's no reason to have two separate standards.
They should combine those two.
And the community should really push for that.
Well, thank you, Orthogonal Group.
I really appreciate your time.
Appreciate your contribution.
But I do want, we have to pivot to Lunar Crush.
Lunar Crush is a site I used before.
It has a lot of really good, like, social metrics,
not only for blockchains, but for influencers as well.
Joe, am I speaking to you or the Lunar Crush account?
And then at the end of the 90 seconds,
we'll have speakers ask you questions.
Lunar Crush, we've been around since 2018 when we launched
with a mission of creating transparency for crypto.
So unlike traditional finance in crypto,
there were no earnings reports or 10Ks.
And so we have a phrase that says,
without a community, there is no crypto.
And so what we do is we aggregate all the world's data
across X, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, and all the news.
And we distill that data down and make sense of it
by letting you know what the communities look like
around all the different projects that are out there.
And in the last five years, we've also added things like NFTs.
You know, even if you're building on Bitcoin,
we also expanded this last year to include 32 other categories
because we know that people that like crypto
also like things like the NFL or fashion brands.
And so we're really a market intelligence and analytics firm.
You know, we've got a couple of different pricing models.
You can come to Litter Crush and sign up.
So less than a cup of coffee a month.
And what we're trying to do there is democratize
the opportunity for the everyday investor
and give them institutional tools that normally
these massive hedge funds and Wall Street have had.
And they can use them on their own.
And then we also have an API for if you're a developer
and the API right now is used by big customers
so if you're a hobbyist and you're out there and you want to try it,
you get, you know, a little bit of API calls with $5 a month.
And yeah, my 90 seconds is off and I appreciate you guys.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, first of all, I want to say that
this is a website I've actually used on several occasions
because, you know, I'm a big trader, right?
And I love doing technical analysis.
But I also feel that, you know, social metrics specifically,
like, get slept on by people.
There could be a project that, you know, has some buzz going on,
but when you really look at, like, the social metrics,
it's sort of like looking at a trading indicator, in my opinion.
Could you, like, kind of speak on, like, the power of social metrics
and why it's so important for people to stay, like, plugged in
to, like, what a project is doing in terms of their social numbers?
Sure, yeah. And if you've been listening to this space
for a long time, you know, we're aggregating, you know,
20 to 30 million post an hour that are out there.
I mean, you as a human cannot possibly see all of that.
So you're trying to get a snapshot and a very clear view
of what a project looks like before, you know, you invest in that project.
And another big piece that we're launching here soon,
which is called Lunar Crush Earn, which also directly affects
what we've been talking about here is getting paid to be a creator
and how do you create the transparency and the tool set needs to be there.
And so we're building a tool called Lunar Crush Earn.
We have all this awesome analytics data around social media.
We know how many interactions everyone is driving out there.
We also know who all the top influencers and creators are
for all these topics and all these projects.
We rank those things. We've been looking at that for five years.
We're going to let brands actually allocate budgets.
And if you want to allocate, you know, growth to your brand or your project,
and that's why people hire these influencers, you know,
you want to target more specifically, you know,
than just have an awareness campaign and throw some token at someone.
So you can create a budget and then you select the people that can get paid.
I mean, those people get paid based on how many interactions
they actually drive back to the content that you're putting out there.
And so that's something that we're releasing soon.
It's part of the launch, you know, with Lunar Token.
And so creators can get paid, but it's also in Fiat.
So, you know, we're really, you know,
we started as a Web 2 company that's that adjacent to Web 3.
And now we've kind of transformed into this kind of like hybrid Web 2,
And we think that could solve a huge issue
with a lot of stuff we've been talking about today.
Joey, you got your hand up. Go ahead.
Yeah, I was on the last space.
How long ago was it that you guys were on, Joe?
Was it like a month ago or two months ago?
Yeah, I think maybe a month ago.
I've hopped down a couple interim ones as well.
So I was a huge fan of you guys early on.
I first found you guys because Zilliq had approached me to take a CMO role.
And since then I started using you guys.
And then I hadn't used you and you're on the show.
And I was like, oh, wow, this thing has updated a lot.
And now it's been a month or two.
And again, you guys have updated.
Like you guys keep pushing like crazy.
And I'm wondering, because I before doing crypto full time,
my previous job, I was CMO,
a founding team of probably the world's best brand tracking software.
And it seems like you guys are moving into what's called the Martek space,
right, with brand measurements and things like that.
How far are you guys going to take this thing?
Because now I see celebrities, which is actually really, really good
because projects that want to partner up or get a spokesperson,
it's really important to understand like what these celebrities have
and who we should be picking and things of that nature.
And it seems like you guys are headed that way.
And if you're shipping as fast as you are, like what's ahead?
Because I see you guys going full steam.
And yeah, I know that the team has their heads down
and we've been shipping like that for five years.
You know, we've been in the space a really long time
This the user type that we have, you know, being so deep into crypto
and, you know, we're still like hardcore degens.
You know, we're, you know, the team's buying NFTs
and we're in all the chats and that's who we are, like I think at our heart.
But we also wanted to, you know, when you're going through a bear market
and building through that bear market like we just did,
it's really difficult, you know, to drive traffic to, you know,
crypto specific pages only.
And so, you know, we still want to be as hardcore as we can be on crypto,
but we also wanted to bring in some new audience
that is interested in NCAA football or UFC or PGA Tour,
even VC firms and we're ranking all that data.
And so we spent a lot of the bear market just broadening out the back end
to be able to aggregate that data.
And so what you're seeing in the last probably three months
is just a lot of, you know, front end implementation
of visualizing that data that we've been spending the last year on
and we're going to continue to broaden out.
Yeah, it's just like, you know, I'm on the political spaces a lot too.
And for example, I'm looking at US election on your site
and I'm looking at Donald Trump versus Biden and Donald Trump.
Oh, actually, while I'm watching it, it changed.
Donald Trump was ahead, but now all of a sudden,
Biden has a lot more interactions than Trump.
Like, how do I read this thing?
Because this could be really useful for like people
who are political commentators, news, things like that to understand.
Like, for example, in terms of creators, you have more,
there's more creators pushing out Donald Trump than Biden, for example.
Like, how do I read this thing and how do I see it
so I can speak intelligently on it?
Because I think it's useful for a lot of people.
Yeah, I'm glad you saw that the data changed there.
A lot of times people don't realize this isn't just like a snapshot
or a daily thing or like I remember Cointelegraph used to do.
You know, who are the top influencers of 2024?
And basically, their staff picked it, right?
This is, this data is real time.
And so what you're seeing is real time posts coming in.
Who are the top creators?
How many posts are they creating?
You know, we have our own large language model that we're using.
We also cross-reference like the top five that are out there
with chat GPT and Llama 2 on every single post that comes in
And there's a variety of ways that you can look at that.
You know, like, you know, you can see the lunar crush handle
as a speaker here and give it a follow.
Everyone, you know, John's on there.
He's been posting a lot about just the Super Bowl, right?
And even the NFC and AFC Championship games for the NFL.
And believe it or not, the last couple of games,
the teams that had more social activity were the teams that won.
You know, and so it's basically people out there.
And we kind of always say it, lunar crush.
It's like the consensus of everyone tends to be accurate,
but the, you know, the idea of one doesn't.
And so when you can kind of pull in the entire social sphere
of where do people think things are going?
You know, you could see what we were watching,
Nikki Haley move up this poll and this, you know,
this graph for U.S. election over the last couple of months.
Lo and behold, she's the last one in the race.
Interesting, interesting.
Andrew, I will get to you in a moment,
but I have one question for you, Joe.
I'm already on the waiting list actually for lunar crush grow.
And basically you're going to save time and gain followers.
You know, it's an AI thought starter on how, when, and what to post.
I find that very interesting.
Can you just give us a little bit on lunar crush grow
and maybe a timeline on what?
Yeah, like Joe referenced, we're moving at the speed of light
and, you know, you're actually going to see a change at the top there.
And lunar crush burn has been put ahead of measuring grow on the roadmap.
You know, we've gotten a lot of great feedback.
You can even see, you know, the signups and you can go connect your account right now.
There's, you know, the people that have signed up for the wait list,
it's over, they drive over 50 million interactions a month.
And so we've kind of noticed from our community that that's what they want first
and then measure and grow.
Like Joe was saying, we're kind of, you know, more focused on the creator economy.
And so those got pushed back a little bit in reference for lunar crush earn.
But when they do come around, you know, imagine you're a creator.
And, you know, our idea there was, you know, if we can save you, you know,
15 minutes on every post and you're posting, you know, 10 times a day,
like what is that worth to you?
Right. You know, by giving you prompts and so all of our data,
when we combine it, we know all the different topics out there.
So you would say something like, hey, I want to be influential, you know,
And so what we would do is basically pull all your data in.
We pull all the influential posts across Solana and help creators save time
by giving them kind of thought starters.
We didn't want to actually like write the post for you.
We think that, you know, AI is not there.
It like loses the human element a little bit,
but we wanted to just help people kind of get pushed down that path.
Andrew, amazing Kanpai Band of BFP, man.
Just for context, I'm the CMO of a Dexon aggregator.
And then before that, I was a CMO of an L2.
And I come from Amazon headquarters.
It's the first time I've seen the product.
I'm actually on it right now.
I am quite interested in it because I've done,
I've done a lot of studies around influencers in this space.
And what's been interesting to me is like some of the research findings
that I've had on the back of using different analytics tools,
give me some kind of questionable results.
And also, you know, I think kind of contradicts some assumptions.
Like one question I have for you is like,
and apologies if you talked about this already,
but when I'm looking at things like, you know,
how deep are you going against this stuff?
You know, we've spent the last five years, you know,
looking at, you know, all the posts that come through.
We've trained our own algorithms to look at things like spam,
And I think that's a really good question.
I think that's a really good question.
I think that's a really good question.
I think that's a really good question.
I think that's a really good question.
And I think that's a really good question.
I think that's a really good question.
And I think that's a really good question.
I think that's a really good question.
three things that are unrelated, you know,
even crypto specific language, you know, for, you know,
I got wrecked on Dogecoin yesterday and they spell wrecked are EKT.
You know, that's not an Azure natural language processing library,
in. It's gotten more and more accurate and it's something that you continue to work on every day.
You know, obviously the last year has been awesome with the new tools that have come out
with the different large language models. It's gotten like incredibly accurate to look at
these different categories, how they relate. You know, if you're an influencer and, you know,
you're really, you talk about altcoins a lot, but then also, you know, you're really, you know,
into NASCAR, you know, we know to kind of collate those things and bring that together.
But the big thing here is, you know, we've really kind of hand tailored all the terms and the
keywords that we pull in. And it's not really something that you could code out. It's also the
reason that we don't actually have any competitors is because it's really impossible. And we've spent
years and years looking at this data and really, you know, understanding the way that all of these
communities talk about themselves. And so we're constantly trying to stay ahead of the language.
But yes, like if you log in and sign up, you're not going to get exact geographic data, but you're
going to understand a heck of a lot more about the topics that you're interested in and who the
influencers are or what we like to call just creators, who the creators are that are driving
the most traffic for those topics. That's awesome, man. I'd love a free trial if you have one.
You get seven days free. There you go. There you go. Seven days free at Lunar Crush. Joe,
really, really appreciate your time. I mean, I use Lunar Crush all the time. Social metrics as a
trader is something you really want to be plugged into, especially if you want to take it seriously.
So everybody, everyone in the audience, I do want to point your attention to the tweets in the nest.
Definitely give some love to OrthoGG who did their Shark Tank bit before Lunar Crush and Lunar
Crush's page as well at Lunar Crush and at OrthoGG. Thank you guys so much for being here. We are
going to pivot to our third and final Shark Tank appearance. We have SugarVerse at real underscore
SugarVerse. SugarVerse, you have 90 seconds, and then we'll ask you questions from the panelists.
Go ahead. Hi, everyone. Very interesting space, and I'm glad to be here. My name is Nico and I'm
CEO of SugarVerse. We are a gaming studio with 20 years of experience, developed 10 Web 2 games,
and they're played by over 60 million players. Our next big title release is in the Web 3 space
called the SugarVerse. We are building an ecosystem of five casual Web 3 mobile games.
With experience in both crypto and gaming, we have identified two reasons why Web 3 games can still
achieve mass adoption. Their economy is not sustainable, and many of the Web 3 games are
too complex for normal gamers. With our games, we are trying to solve both. Our study implements
different game panics, which make our economy sustainable, and we are creating games with
simple gameplay. We are looking to reach one million players in the next two years. We are
close to finish with our art team, the cutest ever NFT collection, the SugarVerse. So our NFTs,
our Terps, are unlocking the play and turn part of the games. Cool boosters are awaiting the NFT
holders and many more surprises as they are drop of our token. The minting event is going to happen
in April. We have received, we have recently become part of the Tezos ecosystem, and we are
building our first game on their chain. SugarMatch is a very cool PVP match trick game with a unique
matchmaking algorithm for three players. Our alpha is ready, and the global launch is scheduled for
Q3. Awesome. Very, very well done. I'm checking out the website right now.
Very colorful, very vibrant, looks like fun. So can people already get involved right now?
Yeah, absolutely. Currently, they can come in our waiting list. Our alpha is currently in test
fight, but I think next month it will be already on the app stores and people could try it.
Amazing. Can you tell me about, I know you said that there will be a mint coming for a coin.
What is the roadmap on the project and the tokenomics involved?
Yeah, I heard that tokenomics is everything for you guys.
Yes, so I have previously experienced many ICOs, IDOs as an investor, because personally,
I'm very interested in the space. So also for us, tokenomics should be fine and reasonable for all
the parties. And we think that early investors, they should be benefited because they back up
the projects early at the start, and they're waiting sometimes years to list the token and
to see the product. But we're looking like a minting event of our NFTs to be around April,
and we're looking to have our TG event of the token in Q2, maybe May or June.
Wow, so coming this year sounds really good. Can you tell me about some of the partners
that you guys have involved in the process of building Sugarverse?
Yeah, so XS Software is the studio that is involved. I already said that
it's created in 2006, and I have a lot of experience in the space with Web2 Games.
And from other from that, we have recently have a partnership with Tezos, and they're
helping us a lot and bringing all the efforts to bring our game to their community.
We're not going to be only on single chain, we're going to be on a multi chain.
We're partnering also with BNB Chain, so we even won their game jam competition back
last year. So we're making a lot of partnerships with different launch paths, with different
guilds in the space, also with a lot of platforms, because nowadays there are a lot of
Web3 platforms, and I wish them all the success. And those are pretty much all the
partnerships we are doing now. Awesome, awesome. Can you tell me more about the game itself,
Sugar Match? Looking at it right here on your website, it looks like a pretty fun interactive
game. Can you tell me what the experience is like playing the game? Yeah, there are different types
of game modes, and there's a single player which is more likely to be tutorial. There's going to
be a brown mode where you can endlessly farm your items, like new NFTs, farm for more candies,
for more tokens, etc. And also, but the most important, is our multiplayer, which we have
made it with a non-zerosome game mechanic, which enables us to make profit from the multiplayer,
because they are not only winners, but they are also losers. And this way we are doing our game
economy more sustainable, and our rewards to be more sustainable in time, because this is one of
the problems that we saw, and we hated the user experience in the past Web3 games that we have
tried. Awesome, well thank you. I really appreciate it. I do want to open it up for a minute for some
of the other panelists to ask you some questions. Andrew, do you have anything? Yeah, no, just to go
back, and hopefully I heard you right. I think you said you're launching on Tezos, and I think,
you know, having been the CMO of a blockchain, I'm always curious, like, what drove you to that
decision? Was it, you know, grants and funding? Did it have to do with, you know, the target user
base or kind of consumer that's on there? Like, just walk me through your kind of thought process
behind that. Yeah, it's a complex decision. Yeah, of course, we have received a grant from them, but
this was, this wasn't our final, like, I think that we were thinking about when we wanted to
become a Tezos partner. They get us a lot of partners from their investors' network, and also
they're bringing us a lot of marketing effort with us, etc. So I think this community is going to
help us a lot and bring us our initial goals to reality. Andrew, anything else? You good?
No, just wanted to better understand the choice. Yeah, thanks.
Yeah, no problem. Fiddy, do you have any questions for Sugarverse?
I do actually, I'm glad you called. So I was actually looking at your timeline. Looks really
interesting. Could you kind of give me a comparison, like what kind of games this would
be comparing to, like the gaming, like if we're compared to some of the AAA games?
You're meaning about Web3 games or Web2 games? Yeah, like Web3 games, like what this would
compare to or compete with? Yeah, of course. So I think we're very similar to arcade,
if you know them. So they have a lot of other casual games in their app, but they differentiate
that they're doing all their games in one single app. We are making more like different apps for
the different games, but the NFTs and accounts are interconnected via one identification layer.
So we think that they're very similar to our project. Cool, thank you. I'll check it out and
I'll be following you. I'm excited. I'll definitely be looking at you guys in April.
Awesome, thank you, 50. Joe, you got your hand up. What do you got, bro?
Yeah, hey, Sugarverse. I'm always curious when it comes to the game, the first question I always
have and I'll ask you is, where's the demand coming for the token? Right? Did a lot of play
and earn? That's always the one problem. How are you solving that? Yeah, so we think a lot about
it and how to fix this demand and buying pressure equilibrium. And we're making our multiplayer,
we're making a lot of demand because there is like a buying lobby. So it's like you play a poker
game. And to enter this game and to play against other players, you must either buy our tokens or
you must farm a lot in our single player. So many people are going to go the short way and
they're just going to buy our token. And after they buy our token, then we take 7% from all the
binds. They're going to our community treasury. And this community treasury is going to be filled
like multiple other income streams, like smaller income streams. And then also there is another
utility for our token, which is going to be like a governance. And it's not be just like them,
some stupid things that doesn't matter, but they're going to decide how this community treasury is
where the money are going to go. So how it is going to be distributed among future rewards,
among burning mechanism, among company revenue. So this is another initiative for the token
investors to buy our token. What's the difference between because when you said community treasury,
I thought, okay, that's money that's going to staking, but apparently they're not the same,
right? They're different. So what's, what's the staking? Where's that coming from?
So they're not going to stake it. If you, if you're a holder of our token,
you can vote on our, on our, about, about the community treasury. There is going to be a stake
and the percentage is going to come from the community treasury, but to vote, it won't be
necessary to stake your tokens.
Ammar, you had your hand up there for a second. You have a question?
No. Do you have a question for me?
No, we're asking Sugarverse questions.
Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you, man. Well, that is about time here for the rest of the Shark Tank
show. I do really appreciate everybody who came up and gave their pitch for their, for their teams
and for everyone on the panel and everyone in the audience. Thank you guys so much for being here.
I will point your attention to the tweets up top there in the nest for orthogonal at ortho gg
at real Sugarverse. It's at real underscore Sugarverse and at lunar crush. Thank you guys
so much for your participation today. We really appreciate it. My name is AJ Wright Scripto.
Thanks so much for being here on the Shark Tank here today on the space, Mario space.
Had a really good time. Hope you have a safe rest of your day and get rich or get wrecked later.