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Llama Party feat. Zack Guzman @ Coinage
Recorded: March 21, 2025 Duration: 0:54:46Space Recording
Short Summary
Coinage is pioneering community-owned media in Web3, with innovations like dividend-paying NFTs and strategic partnerships, including involvement from the co-founder of Netflix. The project has seen significant growth, crossing 100,000 YouTube subscribers and conducting a successful token launch. Regulatory trends are also highlighted by Hester Purse's role in the crypto task force, indicating evolving approaches to crypto regulation.
Full Transcription
I'm gonna be
GMGM fam today is Friday March 21st,
December, uh,
2025.
It's the first day of the rest of our lives.
And we are thrilled to be spending it with Zach Guzman as well as Rex.
Zach Guzman, you perhaps know from coinage.
Rex, you may know from other Leviathan live streams.
And me, you probably know from that guy who's like sleeping under the bridge.
But, um, we are...
No, we know you as the only guy in this industry who wears a suit.
Yeah.
I'm trying to put little phi back in defy.
No, no, no.
The suit's simple.
When I started wearing it, curve price is going up.
When I stopped wearing it, curve price went down.
So going back to the suit.
We'll see what happens.
We got some, a lot of cool stuff to talk about.
First, just wanted to plug last week's QR code here was Frax Finance,
but it might be going away because there was an auction that expired just this morning,
some heated bidding that went on.
We don't yet know who's going to get the QR code for next time,
but next week's Squid Pass has been transferred from IQ.AI to, I believe it was Figue,
probably from probably pushing rings.
He might be pushing, you know, it's his past so he can do whatever he wants with it.
He's a busy guy. He's also got Paladin. He's got a ton going on.
So just be on the lookout for that.
For the time being though, the guest of honor today is Zach Guzman.
Zach, for those who aren't aware, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Yeah, first off, thanks for having me on.
Good to be on with you guys. I am the founder of Coinage and Traceless Media.
trying to pioneer community-owned media in the world of Web 3.
And the idea of starting with the crypto show,
so that's what coinage is,
is anybody come into an NFT to co-own us
as a legal Dow co-op based in the U.S.
The first NFT project to pay
a distribution back to NFT holders
with a path towards patronage dividend.
So we're doing a lot of,
You know, a lot of people talk about read write own in Web 3,
but we're trying to pioneer read watch own in a way
where the own piece of that is legitimate and real.
And yeah, there's a lot we can get into,
but super stoked to be here with you guys.
Yeah, let's actually start with that because it's really close with what we've been trying to build with Leviathan.
This kind of like we're approaching it from different angles because we're like focusing on this like distributed consensus around like what is news.
But it's like very much the same thing. Like there's so many amazing people in Web3 and I feel like you're just trying to give like a bigger piece to the community, right?
Yeah, well, I also by the way shout out love what you guys are doing we we use Leviathan now and our in our own token gated telegram
Love the blast we've we've submitted some stories through you guys. I'm sure that gets distributed to y'all's members too and so it's kind of a cold it's cool to be working with you guys on it and honestly like just much I'd love to interview you on like kind of what you guys are working on too because you know
yes, with what we're trying to do is the same thing as consensus and bringing together differing views and opinions and biases to create more objective fact and also realign incentives.
My backgrounds in traditional media coming from CNBC and Yahoo and now to have the co-founder of Netflix be one of our backers and involved in coinage with us.
I think it's cool to create a new model where...
break down the wall between people reading content and people making content to let them co-own it together.
And that's what Cointage is trying to pioneer.
And we're on year three.
Just crossed 100,000 subscribers on YouTube.
We won our Play Button Award, as you said.
And then we immediately tokenized it with a meme coin.
And so we're throwing ourselves into the arena.
It's been a fun experiment that we just dropped this week.
And so yeah, every day is new at Coinage.
Every day is an experiment with all of our members.
And it's been fun.
Yeah, man. Well, first of all, congratulations on 100,000. I think we're only 999,000 behind you.
But, dude, that's huge. And I think earlier this week, we were having a discussion essentially around like the bullishness of like trying to figure out how to use crypto to actually.
use it as a tool to do something in the world as opposed to just like let's just create crypto and hope people want to speculate on it and because other people want to speculate like we can get rich off of it like I think that's kind of played out and has led us to this like slump that we're in but I'm just so bullish on like people that are saying like what can we do with these new like primitives and these new ideas around like decentralization and community ownership and that kind of stuff so I would love to hear just like a little bit of the detail like
What does this mean like community own ownership?
Like why how do you see this as like kind of like an actually new thing that somebody like the co-founder of Netflix of like want to advise or invest in versus just like kind of like doing news and then separately like in a not related way just like issuing tokens and NFTs and shit and then like calling it a day.
Well, it's a great question.
And I guess I need to remind myself, I'm speaking on a show that might be more technologically advanced than a lot of the other ones I talk to because they already know, like, how this stuff works.
But, yeah.
I don't know. For me, it's just been really fascinating because I've been covering crypto for years.
And at CNBC in 2018, I actually pitched the idea of doing a crypto show and got laughed out of the room.
Back then, they're like, it's not a thing. It's not going to be a thing. It's never going to be a thing.
And I was like, well, I think you might be wrong.
And so went to Yahoo and started going deeper, you know, interviewed a lot of the big names at the time.
And then saw NFTs blow up and saw a constitution doubt blow up and was like, okay, wait a minute.
It's not just like number go up anymore.
Like communities are being built that you can tokenize online.
And that's unlocking some pretty crazy things.
Like I don't think anyone ever thought that like.
friends could come together and raise $40 million to buy a replica constitution.
And I participated in that.
And it was like a really cool learning experiment for everybody at the time.
And we just interviewed the co-founder of that project, Constitution Dow and coined it just a little bit ago and like kind of got him to reflect to your point, Rex, on like, meme coins now.
And are they any better at community building than like what Constitution Dow did back then with a fair launch?
And it's a very interesting discussion.
But I think, you know,
technically with like the way that it works is my background and like having gone through
that experiment or experience you know basically being told no as a creator who had an idea
what we're trying to show is that like okay if you're a creator who does have an idea like
tapping into that like falling no matter how small it might be like to align interest and
be like hey look I need some funds to get off the ground like let's pool our resources and
like let's do this like that's where coinage started right like everyone who missed
All the money goes into the Dow Treasury.
And we use those funds to produce coinage and cover the space.
And I think it's really cool because, you know, I was kind of on an island covering the space.
No one, as I'm sure you guys know, like can be in kind of, I think, why you guys are doing what you're doing.
Like, no one can be.
an expert in everything in covering crypto.
And so, like, you might have a guy who knows stable coins.
You might know a guy that, like, knows NFTs or, like, you know, whatever it may be.
And so, like, what we're trying to build is, like, a hive mind of, like, anyone can own a piece of coinage.
And when I say own a piece, I mean, like, we are a registered cooperative for a reason.
So we became the first NFT project in the U.S. to pay a distribution back to NFT holders.
And I can say that we have a legal path to patronage dividends because we're a legal co-op based here in the U.S.
And so we've set this model up to where Mintech.
Mint your NFT, become a legal member, and entitle yourself to that.
And I think that that model is like real ownership in a way that's not like, to your point,
let's have a bunch of tokens that might go up and might go down.
And I could be wrong.
So like we also just launched our meme coin experiment with like, hey, is that what people?
on Solana? Maybe. Do they want real ownership on E? Maybe. Let's see how this plays out. And so
I don't pretend to have all the answers. I'm just a content creator who like had an idea for a show that
now like people seem to be putting their money into to like co-own with me. And I think that's been like
the most fun experience of doing this is that like you know,
content and like media online, I think everyone knows is broken.
Like traditional media is dying.
Yeah.
How can we help creators do what they're doing and doing better than like the old model?
And I think that's why I coined it is here.
Yeah.
I mean, I'll speak on behalf of Garrett here,
but like the founding story for Leviathan was essentially Garrett and I were in the like semi-private chat.
And I was just like, you know, if someone just like,
To summarize everything we're talking about and put it in a news service, like, that's something I'd pay for.
And like, that's not exactly what we're doing here, but it is kind of like the next evolution.
And I think, you know, the story for Leviathan is similar to what you just said, which is like, we don't really know what we're doing, but like we're trying.
And we're like throwing, you know, pasta at the wall to see what sticks.
And, um,
I guess it's just good to see someone like four years ahead that like, oh my God, stuff does stick.
I mean, I hope. I mean, you know, we are four years ahead. I don't know if like it's a tricky thing.
It's like how do you want to measure this stuff, right? It's like do you want to measure it by like a token price?
Do you want to measure it by like distribution? Like, and you guys have done a great job at that.
Like clearly we're putting our own stories into your guys as distribution now. And so it's like.
everyone kind of can tackle.
That's what I love about cryptos.
Like everyone's building transparently in the open.
And like everyone can tackle these things.
Like whatever model they think works best.
But I think like, you know, again, the real players in the space are all like,
coming from a place of belief like this this technology that web three can enable better outcomes for people and that's like something that i keep going back to as we like straddle eth and salon and now it's just like there's so much like tribalism in the space but it's like if you really like believe in it you just want to see it win right whatever that looks like i think and so
I just hope that someone figures it out.
If it's not us, hope it's you guys.
If it's not you guys, hope it's somebody else.
But, like, I think it's really fun to see all these Web3 media experiments, like, starting now.
Because, like, the space, to your point racks have been, like, so star for, like,
where's the real use cases?
And that was our main bet when we started three years ago.
It was, like, eventually there would come a time where people wanted this technology, like,
actually do something.
And I think, like, there have been examples along the way that have shown what can be done
around community building, around a shared mission.
And like, NFT projects in 21 were kind of like, I don't know, we raise a lot of money, but we don't really know what we're doing here.
We like the art.
But like now it's like, okay, now we're getting into chapter three, I think, of like, okay, let's build around a shared mission and community.
And that, that I think is where this gets very interesting.
Could you talk a bit about this legal structure that you put in place around coinage?
Because you mentioned that you're on a path or like, I think you said you're on a path.
So it's like a work in progress, but where you're going to be able to like share dividends legally with people who purchase the coinage NFT.
Like what does that look like? Did you have to register with the SEC?
Did you have to register with the CFTC?
I mean, like it's like it's so opaque that like huge kudos for actually walking that walk.
Well, you're waiting me into territory that my lawyers are always like, hey, be careful, whatever you say.
But I can speak directly to the experience.
I hear sirens in the background.
Yeah.
I mean, I can speak to the experience of like where the idea came from candidly, which was back in Yahoo.
I was talking with a bunch of people and was like, hey.
I think Web 3 is on to something in terms of it not just being like web 2 was all about like there's money and there's attention
But like those two things don't intersect and like in web three it's like
Clearly I think everyone now sees like no like with what meme coins for better for worse they've shown like
Attention is monetizable like in a different way on the internet and so it's not just money it's like attention and money interacting together
and so like
There are certainly like regulated securities offerings you can go to like fund things.
But like at the time I was like that doesn't really capture in the way that web three,
like it doesn't capture interoperability.
You can't launch something where your community can interact with like other communities or like build on top of other things.
And so like we didn't want to go that route because like that's not what I raised for.
And like there are still a lot of laws that like lock people out.
Like credit investor like take Trump's thing.
You can't participate in world liberty financial.
And it's like.
Why like is that fair? Like I don't think so and I think a lot of people in crypto would say no too and so like we didn't want to go the accredited investor route and so then it's like well what paths are there around what we might want to do in crypto and so
We explored a few, and this is the coolest part, I think, about having built what we've built.
It's like cooperatives have been around for a really long time.
Like REI is a cooperative, right?
You go there, you pay you in the store, you shop, and you get a dividend, like a check at the end of the year for being a member.
And people don't really understand that like when you have a cooperative, like it's a different structure.
And I think that that's really cool in terms of like, we chat with lawyers.
We wanted to build here.
A lot of people have like offshore entities to build tokens and stuff.
And like we just wanted to figure out like a way to build community here in the US.
And so the legal team that we set everything up with is actually like the same legal team that
Eat Denver uses.
And like they've all been pioneering this idea of like can we build, you know, the ability
to like have structure in place that like,
is not going to change from like one administration to the next,
which I think is another fear for like everybody building in the space.
So like I guess,
Garrett to your question,
it like took a really long time and a lot of effort to like figure out like,
where can we do this?
Like how will we set this up?
And so that's the way that we've structured it.
And I think, you know,
we've landed on something that has like given us the defense,
which by the way that the advice for people out there would be like
if you're trying to build in the space,
as we've seen with other projects,
like if you don't set things up,
properly from the beginning, you might find yourself in trouble, not just like from a regulatory
perspective, but like questions that you might not have been prepared for. And like, I take the
Libra token as a good example of like that kid who's like when he got asked by Dave Porter
and like, who's money is it? And he's like, I don't know. Maybe you should have just thought
about that. And so like, you know, be clear. I think he knew that it was his money. He just didn't
want to admit it. I never wanted to be in that position. So like when we launched, it was like,
okay, let's think about that.
this set this up and i mean i don't know how deep you guys want to go but like like when i raised
we raised like a production company like trust this media because like my whole idea is like okay
let's start with what we know i was a crypto reporter so we launched coinage as our first proof of
concept to show like how you could do this but we've launched other entities now too like best
as ever as a food show with food creators and their fans co-winning it and we want this model to win and i
think you know we've done the hard work to figure it out but
you know it's just one model to go with there's plenty of other experiments and there's plenty of
other ways to go but that's kind of like why we we went the way we did
Damn. Okay, I'm like so much more interested right now because I like it's one thing for like crypto native people who are doing crypto content to like have a crypto idea and like I don't know. Let's make a meme coin. Let's see if it works like great. Right. But like our brains are already broken by this. Like the fact that you're starting to say like, okay, there's something here that works for crypto people. Let's take the model that seems to be working and start to apply it outside of like this.
incredibly small group of people that are already like like man like I'm
I'm starting to think of what you're doing.
Like, if you really have like a cooking show where people can like buy NFTs to be co-owners of that because they believe in it, like maybe don't even really understand what an NFT is.
And like, man, you're onboarding for us.
Yeah.
Oh, I think, you know, again, you can, you can tackle these things from a lot of different directions.
And it's really just like the whole idea is like how do you want to realign incentives, I guess, is the idea.
That's why I like about three.
Like my background before I was a journalist was, was, was.
behavioral economics and like the idea of
Danny Raleigh, actually,
like one of the father of behavioral economics,
one of our one of our
coinage NFT holders as well.
And so like it's just kind of like,
it's a fun thing to think about.
And like as a creator who got laughed out of the room
in 2018, it was just like, I
I know this is a good idea.
I just don't have like the funds.
I don't have like the, at that time I had like way fewer followers.
And like I'm certainly not an A-Less celebrity by any means.
But like this is the idea.
Like look at what independent media has done.
Like look at substack.
And look at like look at the rise of Web 2 and like Instagram.
It's like you can amass a huge following.
But like the thousand fan theory and like web three is like really good at letting
creators like monetize in different ways and go deeper into their fan base and like share
interest.
even instagram knows they have a problem by the way like they've been experimenting with like
broadcast channels it's like you have all these people who follow you if you're a food creator
you've attracted a huge audience of people who love food but like there's no real way to interact with
them and no real way to co-own anything that like you're building together and so you're just a
passive subscriber you're kind of a simp just like click and like or you're subscribing but like
when we crossed 100 000
subscribers on YouTube and like where this new experiment we just launched came from was like
well if for community on Dow like we just won this thing but it's not mine it's like the coinage
DAOs and like well then how should we celebrate with our community and they kind of came organically
was like well maybe we should tokenize this moment
And like, what does I even mean to this moment?
And so, like, it's been fun to kind of play around with.
Yeah, that's the one, the play button token.
I guess if I'm, I'm supposed to be better at chilling these things.
But in the, in the episode, which now has become a series, we're walking through, like, how these things get launched.
And, you know, full disclaimer in episode one, I'm like, look, this is also an experiment.
I'm not going to tell anyone to buy this, but I can transparently say, like,
It's been really fun to show like how meme coins launch and like where the money goes and liquidity pool learning about all that stuff and like we can talk about.
I'm happy to talk fully transparently about everything and like that by itself like when people were like, oh, you're a docs team and you're launching a meme coin.
And like this should be this should be huge.
I'm like just because I said I am who I say I am.
Like that's the crazy bar that exists in meme coin land, I guess.
And like it's been it's been wild man.
So like happy to get into that too, but it's a ride.
Garrett, I'll let you out, like, kind of take the conversation where you think is appropriate.
But I just wanted to, like, cue back on one thing that you said, which is in Web 2, like, you have attention and you have money and those things are, like, different.
And I would just rephrase that to say in Web 2, like,
In life, attention is money, right?
But in Web 2, where that, how that dynamic works
is that your attention is monetized by someone else.
And like what we're trying to do is say like,
it's your attention, you're the one providing value.
Like there should be mechanisms for that value to flow back to you.
Yes. Yeah.
And I think again, it's just like kind of,
realigning incentives and shared passion.
I think that that's kind of like what we're trying to explore too
is like how can you unlock the shared passion of a community.
We actually had, I think it sounds like, based on the opening in the show, that you guys were talking about, like, ads that people can buy and, like, the ads spot.
Like, we floated that, too.
We're not as technically savvy as I think Leviathan is.
And so, like, I think it's a great idea.
It was, like, one that we, like, originally toyed around with and we're like, I don't know.
So it's cool to see it in the wild because, like, that was something that we thought about, too.
And, and yeah, I just think that, like,
To your point on like the platforms and stuff, it's just like that's a common theme.
The narrative of like people getting canceled, deplatformed or whatever is like,
how can you set these things up to where things like that doesn't happen?
How can you fix trust in media if it's at an all time low?
So like, again, I think it's really cool what you guys are doing.
I think it's cool anytime anyone in this space tries to do something real that's not just like,
buy low sell high like what we saw with game stop and like what happened in i think that was 21
like when a community came together like small little fish davids took on goliath in like meme
coin like meme stock at that point meme stock trading because they were in a reddit group like that
showed to me the power of community not just attention but community online to like build something around like hey
were powerful together.
And that was a moment that like as a traditional like markets journalist was like as eye
opening as constitution doubt was.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The narrative matters.
And if you own the narrative together, I think that that's a very powerful thing too.
So like that's what again, that's what coin is just trying to explore too.
For sure, for sure.
So I'll go ahead and bring it back to the community in just a second.
But first, I want to plug the community.
We got about 500 people watching this live on X, which is awesome.
But Zach already said we need to get to like a thousand true web three people.
So everyone take a second to retweet it, share it.
Send it to your mom, send it to your dad, send it to your cousins, and anyone in your extended family.
Let's see if we can get that up to like 50,000, maybe 500,000 could be our stretch goal.
Okay.
And then, Zach, you're asking a bit about the auctions.
And I think what we should do is we should, after we get off,
we should talk about how we could host some on your behalf,
because we've been doing this with a few other content creators.
Last week, we auctioned off the Wajahat Mughal,
who was like an amazing content creator, a doctor-turned educator in the space.
And he sold it for 15,000 squids.
So he's producing a video on behalf of Yield Nest with them.
So it was like,
pretty fun experience for him.
And we've been just experimenting with weekly auctioning off our
auctioning off some of our ad inventory.
And this morning, there was a pretty furious bidding war.
As mentioned earlier, it was the great feed.
This is so sick to see actually in the wild, man.
This is cool.
Congrats.
Garrett, the bidding war was between me and myself.
It still counts, man.
Yeah, that's probably the way.
It's still a war.
I did not realize I was the last person to bid, so I bid again.
We were just...
We were just floating as a very, very similar idea to this.
So like, oh, maybe we could work together with you on this.
I think this is really sweet.
Yeah, I mean, the contracts are open source, so feel free to just take them and, like, run with it as you please.
Or we could just set it up on your behalf.
But we took the idea from the llama's auction.
So the llama's NFT project did this like really fun series a couple years ago where they auctioned off like one llama per hour for like a week.
And it was the most fun thing because at that time the bear market was just like one year old.
Now we're at year three of the bear market, so we needed some bit more juice.
So we turn this on and we've been having a lot of fun with it.
We should be releasing the next batch of auction contracts this week.
So based on the feedback from kind of the first round's been running,
we figured out some cool additional features we can build into it.
It's all extensible, it's all upgradable, and it's all decentralized.
Yeah, we're doing the walk in terms of like keeping Leviathan structured around like a multi-sig,
which we're eventually going to be pushing off to squid holders.
Lots of been going on there.
We'll point you all the articles about that.
But getting back to the community, the great defy advisor, who's like frequently on a lot of these shows and feel free to pop on if you are around and available, had to question.
Just asking, and I think you kind of covered this, but maybe just elucidate this a little bit more clearly for him.
Is coinage basically about allowing ownership versus Leviathan News, which is trying to go more for participation in ownership?
So I guess like the question would be if you're like watching coinage like you can do that passively, right?
You can just be like, hey, I like this.
I'm going to buy an NFT, get some revenue but or dividends or whatever it's called, but I'm not going to like have to like actually like sit there and like work to get these dividends.
That right.
Well, I mean, I guess it depends on which NFT you have.
So like when we launched, it was a question of, you know, again, let's use the Patreon example.
It's like our subscriber NFT, we launched when we did our first interview with Doe Kwan, which was like kind of what put coinage on the map.
It did two million views.
It won a Sabeau Award along with the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal that year.
So it's something we're like pretty proud of.
And it got a few.
Was this a pro-doquan or anti-doquan interview?
It was just a doquan interview.
So he hadn't talked about the collapse in, what was that?
I don't know if it was, it was in the summer,
but he hadn't talked about it since the collapse happened.
And so we wanted to highlight it.
And so it was just, I mean, it was cited in,
the case that was brought against him,
so I suppose if you could look at it from that perspective,
it was anti.
It was really just to get the facts out.
So anyways,
we launched that and,
And we could have just put it out on YouTube and, like, got a bunch of attention that way.
But we posted the trailer.
And then we launched an NFT that people could mint to watch first.
And we made it free.
And so I thought that was really cool because it was just like us committing to the idea of like, what's the value here really?
And like we made the bet that building a community on chain would be more valuable than like the money we could just bring in around this like piece that we produced.
And like that was a bad at the time because like we wanted a community that like would be decentralized and like start that way.
And now.
After that, we've continued to expand, and now we have close to 7,000 coinage NFT holders in our community.
And yeah, it's been super fun.
So, like, those ones are just to unlock the content, but then the other tiers, the way the coinage works is...
We've kind of copied the US, like the House of Congress and like the way that everything
work out of governance nerds.
But like there's only 5,000 caucus NFTs, which are like the lower ownership tier.
And then there's a thousand of the higher ownership tier.
And like that split 50-50.
And so like if you buy an NFT, you become a member in the co-op.
And like, that's the way that it's structured.
And there's, like, two ownership tiers.
But if you just want to be a passive subscriber and just, like, you know,
mint a subscriber, NFT to unlock the content, that money goes into the Dow,
just like the money from the other two ownership tiers go to the Dow.
And it's just, again, it's a really cool way to, like, meet your, like,
your fans, your watchers, your content, like, consumers, like, where they want to be.
Maybe you're a super fan.
Maybe you want to actually, like, be involved, then become a member.
Maybe you just want to watch, and that's probably fine, too.
But I think that, like, it's something that, like, Patreon right now doesn't offer.
It's mostly just, like, I want to support you by, like, paying you.
But I don't get any upside.
And, like, the cool thing about Web3 is, like, as we grow an audience, we can sell more ads,
we can do other things.
And, like, that way you grow with us rather than just, like, passively sitting there as a
as you know someone who it's a who someone who smashes a like button so it's a little bit so yeah go ahead
garret do you have something oh yeah i was just gonna double click a bit more on this doquan uh question
because this was before my time like i got uh started following coinage just about like six months ago
and really been a fan of everything you've been doing um is river who's a part of our community uh he has
like he oh when he heard of about coinage he was like
He felt it was inappropriate to be giving Doquan a platform.
And you kind of addressed this already with him in the chat,
but I'm curious for people who might have that critique
about this idea of platforming controversial people,
like what your take on that is.
Yeah, no, I mean, I...
It's a tricky thing and like I definitely would not platform certain people.
This was this is a case where it was like, okay, something happened.
There was a collapse and he hadn't spoken with anybody yet.
And so it was like a question of like, can we get his take on the record?
And I think there's incredible like journalistic value to that.
And again, it wouldn't just be like, hey.
Like, think about what happened, by the way, with Libra token, right?
Like, what happened when that all played out?
It was, like, the guy came on.
He posted his own video, and then he, like, went around.
And, like, the Coffee Zill interview was also pretty crazy.
But it's, like...
you know, these things played out on video.
And like, playing out on video is like a very different thing.
And like we are mostly like a video production company at Trussles.
Like that's kind of like the ideas we focus on video.
My background's in video.
And so like with that, it was like, let's put out a piece.
You can put it on video.
Everyone can kind of like see everything and make their own call.
And like that was kind of the idea.
So it was less like.
platforming someone at a time where like the full details weren't out there yet.
And so like let's hear the details.
And like by the way, we spent like three days editing.
I like called all writers and like slept on the floor of our studio.
Like make sure we don't include anything that we already factually knew was not
the case and like that was part of like some of the controversy to you it sounds like by the way
might be pretty foreign to crypto people that maybe don't edit full like podcasts is that like the
editing process is also like partially needed to like take out bits that like aren't real or aren't
true and so like people attacked us for like hey there's so many cuts in this thing and it's like
yeah because like a lot of it is completely off
not actually part of the story.
And so, like, I don't know.
I think it was a very interesting.
I'm sure there's a lot of things I would do differently.
Like, I got attacked for smiling too much in that piece
because, like, a lot of people lost money.
I lost money.
So, like, I'm, I just generally smile.
It's, like, kind of the way that I interview people and, like, I was...
It was a wild experience.
It was in Singapore.
And so, like, there's a lot of different things.
But, like, I think the main point is that, like, again, it gets to this point of trust.
And what's been really fun as a journalist with this new model is that normally...
people will attack you for being biased and you have no recourse.
Like there's no way to defend your honor as a journalist to be like, I'm not biased.
And to be fair, everyone has biases.
And so like what's the solution?
The only solution is like build a community own show where anyone with their biases can co-own us and tell us like, no, that's wrong or this is right.
And you land somewhere on objective fact.
And like at the time, we hadn't even launched.
So like there was not that.
And it's been really cool to see the evolution of people who still might have an issue with like anything we put out and they critique us.
And then in the replies, it's like, hey, look, we're the only out you can co-own and like change if you want to vote on things.
And maybe now I would include you guys in that as well.
And like, I think it's like...
It's been cool to see like haters like that, then be like, oh, sorry, I didn't know.
And then they joined the DAF.
And now they're in the telegram, like, token-gated channels with us, like, weighing in on things.
And like, that I think is how you fix the trust problem in media, not saying, oh, I'm not biased because everyone is.
Yeah.
So we could buy the caucus NFT and pass an order to require you to smile less, right?
Yeah.
You could, but I don't know how many people would outvote you.
I like your smile, so.
Thank you, Gary.
Business idea.
Like, I would be very interested in buying a pass to, like,
I'm joining the Dow if that meant that I, like, had access to the unedited file.
Like, I want to see what Doquan has to say, like, for himself, right?
And I don't think that that should be platformed, like, publicly.
But, like, I think that is, like, one of the cool things about,
putting to your stuff behind a paywall is that like people already have context by crossing that
paywall and like who you are and what you're doing i think that's a good idea yeah it's something that we
floated to in terms of like okay should we just put everything like unedited because i mean we shot for two
full days and so like there is something there and like that's kind of what we followed up with in a second
piece right because like we weren't sure how many
like people were going to watch or how long they'd want to watch.
And so like after we put the first one out,
which again,
like Quintage was coming from like a perspective of trying to do this for a mainstream audience.
So we explained,
like we spent the first 10 minutes of that piece,
by the way,
just explaining like what terror was and how it worked.
Where at the time when we put it out,
there are people who like full well knew what it was and how it worked,
including myself.
And then like,
why are you wasting time on explaining this?
And it's like,
because we're trying to speak to everybody who had never heard of this project before.
Yeah.
And like in crypto,
people get so pigeonholed.
But sometimes it's like you need someone and a brand to like kind of bring them along.
And that's what Quinnage was originally trying to do is like if you are deep in the sauce,
become a co-owner and steer the narrative because that's like what's powerful.
And so like that's what's been cool to build.
Like I said, I'm not an expert in everything.
And I don't think anyone can be.
But if you like tokenize a community around it and everyone has incentive alignment to like,
make sure we're right on things like i don't think we can go wrong doing that so it's gotten like
super super it's gotten more interesting the longer we've built this and like now we have an independent
board that was elected which is mostly like people who have been in the community for the last
three years since we launched the dope one episode that's just been really fun and now i don't know
what happens next we got a meme coin we can talk about that as we already did it's just like
Salana is a whole other ecosystem that's floating around out there.
Yeah.
Well, here's what I'd like to talk about next.
Because so I have a theory that like part of the reason that we are in the situation that we're in,
which is part, like what I'm referring to is partially like this extremely aggressive,
weird turn into like straight up like gambling and fraud and what I'll just sum up as
meme coins and then also like everyone is so tribal and at each other's throats and whatever is
I believe that our community was organized around crypto Twitter and someone came in and like
fundamentally changed the character like at
at the code level of crypto Twitter.
And the types of things that got movement before
are not the things that got movement now.
And like in my time in crypto,
I've seen like a pretty huge transformation of just like everything.
But like vibes, the way people talk to each other,
the way people think about other projects in the last three years.
And I'm not asking you to make a judgment call on that,
but I am asking you,
Like, how do you see crypto community and content and just like our public square evolving?
Like, man, do you have eyes on TikTok?
Like, should we be there?
Like, how are you thinking about like what does it mean to be an effective member of the community and content creator in 2025?
Yeah, that's a really good question.
And I think that like that was partially like what was so cool about talking to the Constitution Dow co-founder Graham, by the way, who's also a Quenage member.
Like that's the difference between going for like quality over quantity.
And like that's also why like it's an arbitrary number.
All these NFT projects kind of pick an arbitrary number.
Originally we were like 10,000.
And we're like, no, let's shrink that down to five, five thousands of more manageable community.
And like, so we've essentially burned like half of the amount of like NFTs that coinage will ever have.
And now it's hard capped at 5,000 and 1,000.
And like scarcity is a thing that like Bitcoin proved out.
I think Bitcoin proved out like you need some level of scarcity to like march towards.
But you also need to give yourself a sustainable path to get there.
And so like I think what you're getting at is kind of like this idea of.
If a community gets too big or like two kind of like segmented, like can like the the fabric fall apart?
And like that's what we were discussing with like the Constitution Dow co-founder is like that was a really cool experiment back in the day because everyone was aligned.
They got the same price.
And it was a shared mission around like, hey, look, it's a simple goal.
We want to buy a replica of the Constitution.
And so let's pool $40 million and do it together.
But it was like together is like the main thing.
And I didn't care if the token went up or went down.
I put 250 bucks in because I just wanted to be a part of something.
And so like in our first episode of launching Armino, which is now turning this experiment inwards on ourselves, is like how can we replicate what they try to do in 21 today?
And like how broken is where we're at now that like would anyone even care?
And so, like, we launched this.
The play button token, like, our experiment was like, let's fair launch it the same way Constitution doubt did.
So, like, everyone can enter.
Everyone got the same price.
What I didn't necessarily consider is, and they had the same thing, is they raised $40 million.
We only raised, like, we set a soft cap of, like, six grand to, like, bring in a little.
And then totally retweeted it and it blew up.
And so it blew up in the way that like we didn't necessarily have like a hard cap in mind.
And so like it's an arbitrary call.
And even though like we crossed our soft cap, it was like, all right.
This is now 190K that has come into this fair launch.
And like we still have 13 hours to go.
Like we can collect more money or we can cap it here.
And so we decided to cap it there.
If you think about, again, going back to like GameStop and the idea of like IPOs and traditional markets and like what this all looks like.
And like you have the SEC saying meme coins aren't securities now.
And so like.
All right.
all right, if they're not securities, then like, what is this space?
And now there's like a real need for an experiment to show like, well, what is this space,
but talk about it transparently?
And so like that's what we're trying to do with the series is like walk through step by step,
which again is not me in the same way that like, it's been very weird to talk about like
devs and like trust and like everything that crypto is built because it's like essentially
essentially building tools to where you don't need to trust each other.
But as time and time again shows, including the DoQuan experiment, like everything else,
it's like it's still humans trusting each other at the end of the day.
It's humans using this technology either with each other together or against each other.
And I think that's the thing that's shifted since Constitution down is like the trading on the chart has become like, I'm trading against you.
It's me dumping earlier than you.
So like I make money and you lose.
And like, that's not how, at least this is the experiment and this is my, like, obviously we built coins the way we did on E community co-ownership.
So, like, that's kind of like my mentality.
But like, I can't say meme coins are wrong either because they've been able to, like, show like almost with stable coins and like Bitcoin.
Like, those are some of the top use cases, arguably even more so than Dows.
And so like.
We're sitting there now as an ETH Dow, which I think this is hilarious, by the way.
I would clip this.
But like, we built coinage as an ETH Dow, right?
Like one of the most, I don't know, we've been around for three years.
People are talking about us.
I'm on this show.
So like I'll give us some credit and say like, okay, maybe they're doing something right.
And so like this ETH DAO has been established and just launched the largest sole fair launch on Pink Sale in the last two months.
And so it's kind of funny to me to think about an ETHDAO steering one of the most recently successful Solana meme coins.
And so, I don't know, that's an interesting experiment.
And like, again, coinage has these tokens.
A lot of people are like, oh,
coinage has like a lot of the tokens in this thing which again we transparently said like 51
goes in the liquidity pool 49% is owned by us and like now the Dow is voting on like what do we
want to do with the money that we made in this fair launch and like transparently talking about that
but like coinage isn't sold I haven't sold and like this is an experiment that we're playing out
and so like the token prices come down because people who got in the fair launch stole because
they're like oh it's going to dump on me and I'm like I get that because like we're trying to build
something differently
And like, can you build a meme coin differently if like it's been ingrained in people that like, I'm going to get dumped on. I need to enter fast, exit fast. But like what community has ever been built online by exiting fast or entering fast and exiting fast?
And so that I think, hopefully that answers your question is that like,
I don't think you can build community that way.
And so, like, it's an interesting experiment because we tried it and we tried to put it in.
And, like, we've just started, by the way.
Like, I took the play button that we earned to the New York Stock Exchange on day two.
That hasn't come out on Yahoo Finance yet.
Like, we literally just started this thing.
And so I think it's pretty funny to, like, look at now that, like, the tokens out there in trading is, like, well, where is the real value around what we're trying to build?
And, like, can there be a meme coin?
And if you build the one that actually does work, maybe since...
the era of Dogecoin, like that would be pretty crazy.
And so we'll see what happens with it.
But it's an open experiment in the Dow's voting on like everything we're trying to do with it.
So it's been it's been pretty fun.
Yeah.
No, I'm I'm excited for you.
And I think like what you're doing is like great.
Like it's experimental.
Like who knows what value if any is going to come out of it.
And like I encourage that.
I just like I have.
You said, like, meme coins, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Like, I think we, I at least have to acknowledge, like, something wrong is happening with
pumped up fun, right?
And like, sure.
And to be clear, we didn't launch us on pump fun.
I will say that.
I would agree with you.
For me, like, the moment it clicked that, like, there's something, like, actually wrong
here was when the by bit hacker bridged over a ton of value over to Solana and just
yeeded it, hundreds of millions at pumped out fun coins.
And, like...
that first was like oh my god like what an interesting clever effective way to launder a ton of money
and then the next question is wait was this the whole point of pumped up fun from the beginning
interesting and so like i don't know man like i can't say well i know one guy who actually got rich
off of meme coins and like good for him man but like
All I see is just like devastation and like poor people who are desperate, who got rich, who want to get rich and like rich people who like just took advantage of them.
And now money laundering and like value extraction and like, dude, I'm sorry.
I'm anti-memecoin.
No, no, no.
I mean, I'm also anti-memecoin.
Look at the first sentence of our story and it says, you know, as a community owned outlet that has rallied against meme coin, damage like.
and naturally we're launching our own.
And it's like, we also hate meme coins, but it's like,
how else will you experiment with this?
And like,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
With where Tolly, like, totally was responding to someone else in the
East community and he was like, well, there's a difference between price and value.
And I'm like that.
What does that even mean?
And so, like, that kind of started in my head, like, something interesting in terms of like,
well, if you're entering the meme coin arena, you kind of know what you're getting into.
At least that's the stance that the SEC is now taken with their whole like,
memo on name coins, which is like, it's all fair game. It's not in our wheelhouse.
And I think it's pretty interesting to think about what that opens in terms of like,
okay, there's a call now for like experimentation in this space.
And like, I almost feel like, I don't know, there's there's definite flipping in the way that like,
the SEC now with Hester Purse, as we just interviewed her today,
like thinking about letting everyone kind of handle themselves, right?
Like there is no nanny state and so forth.
If you're buying a meme coin,
you're getting into it because you know the risks
and you're getting into it yourself.
And I would kind of disagree.
And like I challenge you on the stance of a little bit of that because it's like,
well, you can't still have all the games that happen in meme coins.
And like now we're going through this ourselves where it's like, well,
what do we want to do with the funds?
And normally a lot of it, to your point, Rex, is like shenanigans that you're like trying
to trick people and they're like buying this thing because number grow up and then you
rug pull everybody.
It's like, okay, then how do you do it differently?
And that's kind of what we're inviting everybody to be involved in.
It's like, okay, can we do it differently in a line community around the token at the very beginning to avoid this?
And I think it'll be funny if like,
Everyone, and we've seen these experiments before, remember like the little kid dove that flipped everybody off and rugged them and then the community like came in and like tried to pump the token well above like where it was like things like that are kind of funny to see play out in meme coin land and like with this we had a lot of people come in buy the token in the fair launch game it themselves by the way and like tried a new card chart and like there was some shenanigans that happened from like people before we even launched for trading and
It's funny to think about them coming in off of a totally tweet and then exiting and now like potentially if we actually build this thing the way we want to build it to be to be like well above where they eat it out of it.
I don't know.
Again, I make no promises with this.
Yeah.
It is an experiment.
Coinage is liquidity in that liquidity pool.
We've been transparent and locked for 100 days.
And like.
now the Dow's voting on where we go. But I hear your point. Like I would agree with you.
Meme coins, I would not have gone. And certainly coinage didn't build on the meme coin mentality of like,
that's the way we're going to do our ownership. I am curious about like now that you guys have
your own squid token too, though, it's like similar. It's like how do you,
how do you use like a token to value accrue to users like the tokenomics of all these projects
are also very interesting like i would ask the question there too is like how do you guys think
about the tokenomics because i think you do need like two levers to pull in terms of like
value accrual and like a thing that you use for payments and even bitcoin learn this in el salvador it's
like okay which way do you want to go it's these are tricky questions for project yeah i mean gary
do you have any thoughts on that or
Yeah, well, we could probably do a whole episode times two or three about like our thoughts for what we can do with the squid token.
And also like, you know, to Zach's earlier point, like I also want to be careful before doing that episode, talk to the lawyers, make sure they'm not going to say anything that's going to land me in prison.
But the way that we think about it is a lot just in terms of like I follow like MEV a lot, right?
Like, and this question of like, how do you like decide who gets to go into what block is one of the most interesting questions in all of crypto?
And I think it's the same problem we're trying to solve with news, which is like,
There's a million stories that are coming across the radar.
How does anyone get to decide what is it the kind of tip of the, tip of the news blockchain, so to speak?
It's an incredibly complicated problem and whoever is able to solve it.
is going like generate tremendous value um so i see squid is the token that kind of lubricates
this pipeline and i think that's where it gets its value accrual from is the ability to kind of
control that kind of like m evi battle of attention that goes on at the tip of like um
what's happening in the world of crypto
So yeah, and I just need to sing Garrett's praises for a second because I really wasn't involved in the squid token.
I mean, two years ago that people were like, let's do points back during the point meta.
We had we were joking around about squid points and then that turned into a token.
And then it was just like, okay, like there's a smart contract on some blockchain.
Like what do we do with it?
And then it's like, okay, well, what if we like issue it to people based on their participation, right?
And like, okay.
Okay, that's cool, right?
Like, we're not asking anybody to put a single dollar in.
Like, we're just giving it away.
And then the question is like, okay, how do you provide value to something that you're giving away?
And like, what I love about the direction that Garrett's taken this is less like about like,
let's like build a narrative and like get people hyped up about it and just try to like draw new cash in so that there's cash to take out.
And it's much more about like let us per like.
let us do useful things in like, whether it's like advertising here or like, you know,
facilitate like a spot on someone else's show or whatever, but like, let us put real utility
behind Squid so that like people need to buy it in order to like,
do things on our show and like that's where the value comes from it's not like hyping people up it's
like people actually need to grab it you know and so i think like to me that's like kind of why
i'm like every day like showing up excited to talk to garret and be on podcasts and stuff is because
like again to where we kind of start this conversation is the squid token is like how do we
solve a real problem which is like
you know, how do we choose the news or how do we find the right advertisers or how do we capture value from the advertisers and like using it at a tool to facilitate that and not like the end in itself.
Well, it's a good full circle kind of moment from where we started because it's like it's the same thing that Quinn is trying to do.
Right?
Yeah.
And again, coming from like journalism myself is like.
trust in media being in an all-time low. Clearly the model's broken. Everyone knows the model's
broken, but very few people have landed on a solution. So, again, I give credit to you guys. I give
credit. It's like anyone trying to solve this. And for us, too, it's like the same thing. It's like,
okay, let's start with the ownership layer on Eath in terms of like anyone buying an FD and join our
community. Similar with what you guys are trying to do. Like, can we have a token that also like is
used more for like the payments piece, which is why we,
we launched play button in terms of yes it was to celebrate with our community but now there's a
currency that can be used like yeah footage ecosystem and kind of the same way and so like
I think there's a lot of crossover here anyway it's like immediately once we finish this I'm
going to ask you about like the whole auction thing because that's pretty cool like integrate that way
and like where did which by the way if you back up and you think about like even launching a token like
did you guys launch on like I didn't see what chain it was on before but like that's always like
It's on Fraxtal, but we were a fan of Fraxtol. Check out the QR code, winner of last week's
auction. Got the right to that. Big fan of Fraxtel, but we're also working on getting it on
multiple chains. But we don't want to waste our time talking about Squid when we got like,
because I can talk about that like the other 23 hours of the day. We got to coinage here and just a few
minutes left. I did want to like get your high level takeaways. You talked about it a bit,
but you just interviewed Hester Purse.
and she's fantastic.
I haven't got a chance to watch the interview yet,
but what were some of the takeaways you had from that?
And I think you've had a few other interviews with her too.
Yeah, I've been interviewing her.
I just reflected, I've been interviewing it since like 21
when she came on my show at Yahoo.
Back then it was in the pandemic.
And I think she took that interview in a car.
And she said,
It's been fun. She joked around. She was like, well, yeah, I took the first interview with you in the back seat, and now I'm in the driver's seat.
As she's like, now had to work in the past.
And I was like, all right, Commissioner Perth. Well done. And so, yeah, so like, I think it's been great to get to know her over the years, first of all.
Like, she's, you know, most of our interviews have been when she's, like, not in power. And so it's always been like, hey, how wrong is it?
how wrong is this going on right now and now it's kind of fun because this is the first
interview that we've gotten to have with her in the seat as the head of the crypto task
course but again now it's weird because like you know as a journalist you kind of always play
devil's advocate and we were kind of like playing the same team of like hey how wrong is like gary
gensler's anti-crypto approach right
But now that she's at the crypto task course, and, you know, Rex, you and I just had this conversation around meme coins.
It's like, what are the potential unintended consequences of what's happening now, which is now you have an administration that is taking most of the lead from like the crypto industry itself, which means Coinbase is leading the charge on like writing policy and like, does that help retail?
Does potentially the SEC saying meme coins are all good?
Like, does that help retail?
If like...
i don't know and so like we we got into a little bit of this now that she's more in charge
like does that change the way that even we at quinnage should be covering these and like the
interview got somewhat spicy so i would say check it out you can check it out it's going to be up on
the youtube channel as soon as i jump off but right now it's on quinnage dot media for people to watch
ad free with a subscription token um but but yeah it's it's it's been cool to like get her take
on all these things and i think
based on where the interview ended i again we're trying to do this transparently here in the
us we started this project in 22 as a colorado co-op so like
I think, you know, we made a bet that eventually the U.S. would come around to like, hey, maybe we should help people instead of suing them every five minutes.
And like, stoner cats got sued right when we were kicking off.
And like, again, I understand where a lot of the issues were.
Like, it's a hot take, but like Gary Gensler wasn't completely wrong all the time.
He was wrong most the time, sure.
And like certainly lied about a lot of things about crypto.
But like.
there are necessary consumer protections in this space.
And like we're learning that even with the meme coin now is like,
people do some shady shit.
And like,
we don't want to do that.
And so it's a tricky thing.
And everyone likes to be very like,
hey,
one way or the other,
but like nothing is that easy.
And so it was fun to get her thoughts.
So I would say if people are interested in going deep,
has to personally a great guest to have on.
Yeah.
No, man.
I feel you.
And honestly,
I'm probably,
I'm not pro Gary.
Like,
But I'm not against him.
And like, maybe I like could quibble with some tactics.
Maybe I don't know about like some actually like very illegal thing he did, whatever.
But like the idea that someone came in and was like, this is a fucking mess.
And I'm not actually sure if there's any value here that is not scams and money laundering.
Like that doesn't make you evil.
That makes you like a rational thinker when you actually like look around, you know.
And like.
he came aggressive and it was our job to like show him that he was wrong you know and like i think
on the flip side there are a lot of pieces of things where definitely like in congress as coinage
flag this one blew up too and like he he along with some others were like it was crypto that brought
down silicon valley there silicon valley bank it was like crypto that was the problem with like
signature and like all this stuff and it's like
we're learning more now that it's definitely not that case.
And it's like, for him to say that in a congressional hearing is like pretty crazy.
Because it's like the day after the New York state financial regulator came out and was like,
literally the next day in Congress said everything that Gary Gensler just said yesterday is
factually incorrect.
And it was like kind of an eye-opening moment for us to be like, whoa.
And so like things like that on the margin, there are certainly some things that were like,
again, this is politics.
And I'm learning that too.
Yeah.
It's like people are loose and goosing with the facts sometimes.
And like they got their own agendas.
And so like, no.
And I don't mean to quibble with you on like who's a good guy or who's not.
But the idea that like Gary Gensler was like the ogre who was coming to like crush like our beautiful shining city on a hill is just like.
not coming to terms with like what is happening in our industry.
I'll give you an example to prove your point too because like that's what we asked
Hester about is like, okay, look at what's happened with the meme coins, right?
Like as the shenanigans have progressed and like again,
it's not too dissimilar from what happened with Gary Gensler because he essentially like,
said meme coins are fine.
Yeah, man.
And then he had a proliferation of meme coins because there's the only thing that was like
fine to do because he wasn't going after meme coin projects.
And so then you get pump on.
And so like, and like it's very interesting to think about now the SEC has come out
and basically said essentially just like codified the same thing that Gary Gensler was already
doing.
But like look at what's happened with the with the projects on meme coin land.
Like,
liquidity is dried up.
Like no one wants to participate.
Like investor confidence has fallen apart.
And so my challenge to Hester Perth was like, okay, look, like you're kind of continuing
the same thing.
Is there a fear that unintended consequences here could potentially like,
Gary Gensler was very strict about keeping crypto over here and not letting it touch the financial system.
But like now we're in that arena.
Like Trump is connecting the dots and like we're all mixed in now or we're going to be very quickly.
And it's like what happens to capital formation in the US if you have the same thing that just played out in meme coins were like all the rules and regulations are gone and scams galore.
Like if that happens in traditional markets, there's a huge problem for me.
And so like.
It's not easy and I don't envy Hesterpers now to be in charge and potentially like there for some of this stuff because these are hard questions.
But like that's what I worry about as like a journalist who's covered the space from both sides from traditional markets now in crypto.
It's like, oh.
And like we saw it with blockfire.
We saw it with Celsius and like we didn't get bailed out then.
But like what happens when you plug in a system that is all about don't bail us out into a system that loves taking risk and getting bailed out?
Like.
Do you want that?
And you put the president's name on a coin too, right?
Like,
like,
If anyone's going to get bailed out, he will.
So anyway.
I'm just saying it.
I'm worried.
I'm worried sometimes.
We know you got a hard stop.
So I just want to thank you.
And thank you for leaving us on like the perfect teaser.
I'm literally adding that episode, that interview with Hester Purse on my playlist right now
because I need to know her answer to that question.
You just put.
Yeah.
Thank you guys.
And thank you for having me on.
And congrats on everything you're building.
We're loving the Leviathan stuff in our telegram as well.
And love sharing stories and getting imposed it through your guys' channels too.
So thank you for having me on.
And congrats again, Garrett Rex, thank you guys for the time.
Appreciate you having me on.
Of course, man.
All right, squids.
Thank you.
Thank you all.
We'll catch you all in the next tide.
