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NEAR ALPHA SHOW 🔮 RUG EDITION
Recorded: Jan. 22, 2025 Duration: 0:16:19Space Recording
Short Summary
The transcript discusses various topics in the crypto space, including the challenges and adaptations required for projects like Ton and Near Protocol. There is mention of Hot Wallet's upcoming mobile app and browser extension launch, and the potential impact of Telegram regulations on bots. The conversation highlights bullish sentiments towards Near Protocol, especially in relation to AI and potential partnerships with companies like Nvidia. There is also a mention of a meme campaign and scholarships for researchers in the Near ecosystem. Concerns about the performance of altcoins against Bitcoin are raised, with a focus on the potential for Bitcoin to be a major winner in the current cycle. The discussion also touches on the cost of launching chains and the innovative approaches being taken by projects like Aurora.
Full Transcription
Who rug? Who rog?
Some insider is from Ton.
Maybe Zach.
That was the keyword, right?
Instaband for tone.
That's a warning.
Good.
So, Zach, what do you think, man, about the topic since Kate is not here?
Uh, yeah, you know, as far as the, um, the tongue, uh, dilemma goes, you know, this is, we've seen, I think I see some similarities to this and, uh, like in, in retail and restaurants, like point of sale systems, um, and the way that they are, uh,
distributed around like with restaurants and retail providers because oftentimes they might open up the credit card processing where you can shop around and get different
rates that are favorable more or less to the merchants and then ultimately a lot of these point of sale systems are closing that off to where you have to use their payment processing and therefore you're kind of beholden to their rates so you know a little bit of a
I guess web two comparison of sorts in traditional finance and payments and processing.
But I think there's a lot of similarities there as far as ultimately what they're trying to do here.
I mean, there's a precedent for this type of thing happening.
It's unfortunate when you see things like this happen and what is supposed to be the open web.
But you know what?
I mean, it's still just kind of the nature of the way that these things are
tend to go yeah I agree with you kid is here I think but who was speaking the last
time about about ton well I think Jay was gonna was gonna leave a big big take
he had a huge opinion on this actually so someone was talking before the space
rocked maybe they want to finish the thing they were saying no that was me mate
that was me no like like I said right it's just
It's the platform and they have a token and of course they're going to push it to users.
So at the end of the day it was expected, right?
The issue, yeah, it hurts, yes, but I think it's just level up, right?
If you have users, then you put users front and center and you make the painful decision
to, well, adapt to the new framework, right?
But it's not an easy step, right?
It's not like going, it's like going from EVM to Rust space, right?
It's not, and I hear that building on Ton is not for the faint of heart.
It's like shoeing on glass, but anyhow, don't take my advice for it.
Yeah, I think I echo those sentiments, to be honest, and I think,
On the near side of things, it's going to be quite interesting to see kind of obviously two big players in the mini app scene on Nero, obviously media and Hot Wallet.
Both of those teams are going to have to make some pivots, I imagine, to what they have planned.
I know Hot announced yesterday that they're going to do a mobile app and a browser extension and then obviously comply with the telegram.
regulations that they need to comply with.
But I do think there was a lot of panic as well around kind of the TG bots,
so like Slimesbot, that I believe might be unaffected due to with being a bot and not a mini app.
So it's kind of not all bad, I guess. I think a lot of the bots are still going to be there.
But yeah, interested to kind of see the pivots that both hot and media make with kind of their two main telegram integrations.
If I may add, they are targeting also bots because we received the full disclaimer today and they were explicitly mentioned.
Damn. I mean, I should see one here, I was going to ask if they had any direct intel around that, because that directly impacts most of 10 bots trade in.
So it'll be interesting to see what slime does there too. Hopefully that kind of doesn't impact that too much because that's really good.
If you want, I can share you the full message that we received today in the AMS.
Yeah, yeah, that'd be perfect. I'd be definitely keen to read that.
Very nice, very nice. By the way, we are so back just for a few minutes though. But for anyone who's back in this space, if you could just help us get the word out there. We want to make sure that people catch this part of the recording as well for these final takes here. But yeah, I appreciate everything comes through. Be sure to follow. I was going to plug in the last space. Unfortunately, it's closed early, but please follow all the speakers up here as well. Definitely give near we can follow if you're trying to keep up to date with everything going on in your protocol.
They're doing a great job so far.
The newsletter, hopefully a lot of video content and threads and all that stuff coming out from them more as well.
Yeah, definitely be sure to give them a follow and all the speakers up here.
But yeah, we got about two minutes left in the space.
I remember, I think it was Seuss originally who had the first take.
I was going to say either Zach or his Monsa.
Yeah, Monsa, what's up? I see your hands.
No, I was just going to say one thing that I wouldn't really mention today was Ilya and Erica being in D.C. for the inauguration and all of that.
So just one little thing to keep in mind is that they were in the U.S. for the inauguration and near is the U.S. coin.
So keep that in mind.
Yeah, a lot of the tech people, big time, big time tech people were invited to that, which is insane.
I've been saying it for a while.
If there's any AI crypto that Nvidia or someone like that would ever partner with, I feel like near protocol is pretty much on that list.
I don't know if anyone else really comes to mind.
There may be one or two, but...
The connection with that Ilya and Jensen Wong, I think, is way stronger than anything else.
I feel like he's very, I know he's very impressive in the AI space.
You don't get invited to something like that unless you're important, unless you matter.
And people say, okay, this guy's, this guy is a gigabrain.
There's something here that he's going to offer to the world that's going to really push us forward here in terms of innovation.
So I'm pretty bullish on near.
I actually, like I said, after the, actually, I don't know if I said this, but when, I don't know if you guys saw about the pastor who prayed over Trump's inauguration.
I had muted the whole thing.
Good Lord, I could not listen to that.
I just, I don't like that kind of prayer.
I think it's super, I think it's weird.
I think it's strange.
Feels mega churchy.
I'm not, this is not the biggest fan of that style.
He gave me grifter vibes.
And then wouldn't you believe it?
Literally 30 minutes later, my dude drops a mean coin.
Says, oh, yeah, like, people send me this token.
Like, I'm just going to farm the, the, you know, the fees.
And then the chart...
flies up and then it shoots down to zero.
I'm like, yeah, dude, okay, your team sent you the tokens that you guys created.
Then they lied and said, you have 20 million tokens, just sell 1% of it.
And then you crashed everything because there's only a million dollars of liquidity.
I was like, this can't keep happening.
You can't be serious right now.
And then he's like invoking the word of Jesus in the same post as a contract address.
I was like, oh, my gosh, we were so cooked.
But yeah, I ended up actually swapping on.
80% of my alt bags into USC right after that.
Cause I said, holy smokes, I gotta rethink everything.
That was, I did not like that at all.
I'm very bullish on Bitcoin. I almost put everything into Bitcoin at that moment, actually.
But I am willing to buy into all coins. They're all small coins I do believe in.
Near is, you know, there's probably two plays on AI that I, that I have that I still think are going to print.
It's in your protocol and Paul AI are the two AI coins that I think are kind of my bets.
I've got a couple deep in plays.
like one or two gaming and then everything else i may throw it back into bitcoin i'm very bullish
on this on this cycle and i think there's actually going to be there's going to be some all-season
stuff but
I think it's possible Bitcoin is the real winner in this cycle.
There are going to be other winners, but I mean, I don't know if you guys have seen the
Alts have performed very poorly against Bitcoin in the last year.
That should not be happening.
That's very strange behavior.
So I don't know, man.
I could see Nvidia partnering with your protocol in any capacity.
If there's even a whiff of that, near protocol will quite literally go to Valah.
Because.
If you guys have seen in the last few months, I try and clip it as often as I can.
People like Elio Trades, Alex Becker, they literally bring up near protocol every time they bring up AI.
It's on the radar.
A lot of people hold this thing.
If we start to see announcements, the FOMO train will be so crazy.
It'll be unlike anything we've ever seen before.
So just some bullish sentiment to head into the rest of the year.
Claudio, I see you got a hand and save with Armand, and then we'll probably wrap.
Anyone else, please throw up a hand for any final takes.
Yeah, just everybody, January 28th, right, we got this campaign going on with meme.com cooking.
So really exciting to support meme builders here on the near ecosystem.
If you are a meme builder, please reach out to us.
We'd like to support you as well.
This is not.
the last campaign we're going to be doing.
So again, it help us help you, right?
Keep on staking on MetaPool.
We'll putching all those protocol fees back into the ecosystem.
In this case, it's going to be a campaign for memes.
Also scholarships for researchers.
Again, reach out to us.
We're here to support.
We're here to build.
And let's fucking go, man.
Is it going to be only a BTC season?
I don't know, but definitely it is a season for the crypto industry.
So let's fucking go, man.
Let's build and ready for it.
Yeah, I was going to say, if you think it's not going to be a year for crypto, by the way,
if you think I'm bearish from my take,
Bro, we just saw Trump drama meme coin.
It's going to be an insane cycle.
1,000% is going to be an insane cycle.
I just don't know who the winners are going to be.
I don't think all of them are going to win.
I think 90% of all coins aren't going to play out the way people think.
I think 10% will.
I hope near protocols in that boat.
I think they will be.
They're the top AI coin.
I mean, there's not, there's not many safer plays than that in my thoughts, in my opinion, at least.
So anyways, let me throw it over to Armand.
Yeah, I just wanted to say on the AI,
Intents is actually, like, will play a huge part,
because intents are basically the best way for agents
to interact, to do anything on chain, and everything is happening on the year.
So if agents starts using intents to do anything and we position intents as the primary way for agents to interact with blockchain,
not only near, but any blockchain supported by intents, that's also a game changer on.
All the AI activity done agents will happen in here.
Absolutely. Look, I think we're coming up here on the top of the hour.
Zach, if there's any other thoughts from you or anything you want to leave the audience with while we're here,
I'll throw it back over to you. Otherwise, we can wrap.
Yeah, you know, I was just going to say there was a really interesting comment that I heard yesterday in a space.
I think it was maybe Wagmead was hosting it, and Alex from Aurora was speaking, and among many other speakers from other chains as well.
And, you know, some of them, it was just kind of funny hearing some of them talk about how...
well, there's so many costs associated with launching chains.
And there's this and you know, they're talking about all these things.
And I mean, I'm sitting there kind of thinking, oh man, like he's got to be licking his chops right now.
You know, just kind of read where it's like, oh, well, guess what?
We're willing to go, we're willing to do this for free.
We're doing this.
We, you know, this we can do this in one day for free.
Like that's what I'm thinking in my head.
you know, while yes, that was the case and ultimately that message got conveyed,
there was something that, because obviously the next question's become, well, how? How is this possible?
How can you do something like this and offer this for free? And he compared it to the way that you can use Gmail for free,
where, yes, there are costs associated with maintaining Gmail and running those servers,
but ultimately for the users,
it is a free service.
And they find ways to kind of, you know, ultimately like they get, they recoup those costs
elsewhere, but not necessarily to the detriment of the user.
And I just found that as a fascinating comparison and really, really, you know, really, I mean, if
If you could be more bullish, I guess, on some of the things that Aurora was doing with the virtual chain.
And, you know, ironically, I didn't know that I was going to be running into Armand for a second time here today.
So happy to revisit the conversation.
Yeah, you know, just really, really exciting stuff.
I think some really cool things that are going on between both, you know, Aurora and what they are kind of utilizing the near tech to be able to facilitate for a lot of different founders and projects out there.
So just wanted to kind of share that as an interesting aside, I guess, on some of the things we covered today.
Absolutely love it, bro.
By the way, shout out to all the people who came through.
We rugged about 10 minutes ago, so I'm glad we filled the room a little bit back up here.
Definitely catch the recording for the last few minutes as well as the prior like 45 minutes or so from the first space link.
Appreciate everyone who comes through these spaces.
Shout out Jared.
I see Jerry from your foundation down there.
Shout out Crypto Cracker down there or Crack Skrack.
Crack crack.
Yeah.
Okay.
Oh, I'm gonna stop.
Shout to Francisco, Mr. Potato, all the people down there.
I appreciate all of you.
See a bunch of familiar faces and new faces as well.
Shout out to every single one of you.
Please give a fall to all these speakers up here and retweet the space if you enjoyed the conversation.
Definitely be sure you're following your week and subscribe to the newsletter,
subscribe to everything they've got going on.
A lot of content's going to be coming out from them, I think.
and they are the main hub for all things coming out from near in terms of alpha.
So you're going to want to make sure you're super tuned in and turn on their notifications on.
We run the show every single Wednesday, 1 p.m. Eastern.
We'll see you here next week, fam. Take care.
Let's go.
