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Surviving Crypto Cycles w @Zeneca
Recorded: March 19, 2025 Duration: 0:59:06Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, crypto enthusiasts explored the evolving landscape of blockchain technology, highlighting trends in AI integration, the impact of institutional partnerships, and the shifting dynamics of asset valuation. Key insights included the volatility of AI coins, the growing importance of narratives in investment decisions, and the potential for NFTs to reshape digital ownership.
Full Transcription
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Mae'r cyfle wedi'i ddod yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle wedi'i ddod yn ystod y cyfle. Thank you. music So I'm Okay. So So Okay. So All right.
Wood is good, everybody.
We are back with an afternoon show, man.
I think this is the first time I've done an afternoon show in...
What, Adam? It's been probably like a year or so. Back with an afternoon show, man. I think this is the first time it's an afternoon show and what Adam's
been probably like a year or so.
Yeah.
Well, we are here with the Zenica who's on stage with us.
He is here on the live stream as well, man.
Zenica bro, how are you doing?
And also dude, great to finally chat with you.
You've been in the space for a little while.
As a lot of us are, you've had a lot of success and it's great to finally talk with you in
person.
Yeah, it's great to probably connect.
Under a well, it's morning for me.
Just made my coffee, 8 a.m. over here.
Yeah, it's not a good thing to have.
Well, yeah, good to have you, man.
First and foremost, for those that are joining the show,
if you know a few people who have tested out our AI product
that we've been doing a live testing session with,
that'll be live tomorrow.
So please, no questions for that.
We are just going to talk about the crypto space.
So I'm sure we will get into AI.
As first and foremost, maybe we'll just dive in.
Dude, Zeneca, you posted a thread the other day
about losing eight figures on AI coins.
We talked a little bit on this show, man.
Have you ever seen a sector in crypto speed run to zeros
fast as AI coins did from the top to the bottom?
I don't think so. I just clarified, but I wasn't as strictly on AI coins did from the top to the bottom. I don't think so.
I just clarified, but I wasn't as strictly on AI coins.
It was on last cycle I lost, or round trip I think.
I also round tripped a month on AI coins.
I don't know if any of us did last in the system.
Yeah, it was crazy.
Even from the first one that launched,
it was a really tough goat. Everyone was like, yeah, it's the, it's gold, it's pop roads, it's gonna do so well. They hit a billion, just go over it and then it just bled. And then anyone came up and they all just bled.
I don't know. We'll see if any of them bounce back with a bigger or it's just like the hot potato gate where it's the whole thing that is interesting. I mean, Greg Guy was all over that one, right? It was just, you know, dude, it's go.
It literally is a thing.
Go to do.
How long could it possibly go?
It's gotta be 10 billion.
It might go to 100 billion, right?
Yeah, I remember that.
You do get sucked into these...
Look, this is the way everything works, right?
For crypto especially,
it's super set up.
But yeah, that's just the way it works.
Like it's a collective illusion.
But that's the way it works.
That's everything, right?
And sometimes it does work.
Sometimes it actually does go wrong.
And that's what we're here for.
How do you, as you're kind of looking at this sort of stuff, you know, for people who are maybe starting out, how do you look at things and try not to get something, but actually believe in something enough to be, but the majority of the price is based on narrative and perception and hype and momentum and all these kind of things.
So if I'm like trading, I separate the investment side of things from trading.
Investing is like buying whole things, like each long term, that's investing.
Trading is like buying in the shorter term And then look at it sell pretty quickly.
If I'm trading, then all I really care about is
it's not really how good is the thing,
or what do I think are the fundamentals or the team,
or all those things which are important for investing.
But it's what do I think other people are going to talk about this?
Is it something that's going to generate an uptension
that other people are going to be like,
oh yeah, is it the type of thing that's going to get a threat by many other people
on the spaces and be like, wow, this is so cool.
And AI is one of the narratives that,
I think over the last couple of years,
and going forward as well, will be one of the narratives
to be the biggest technology in the world,
everyone's talking about it.
So when you get that intersection with crypto,
and whenever there's something slightly interesting
on your website, I think it will get that narrative
and attention.
Other people think, hey, this is the next piece of this.
So that's just kind of the framing I go through.
But the difficulty is then no one wants to get out of it because other people are talking about it.
So it's just that's where having systems really helps.
I think it's like if it does a two or three, you have to take your initials out.
And then at the next new time, have a high stake, like five tenths
of a profit on the way out.
You're hailing out, you know,
you didn't round trip the whole bag,
but you usually wind up rounding up
when you get over the play.
So when you're evaluating tokens,
have you, are you using the same model
that you used last cycle?
You know, with NFTs, it's funny because the speculation was more focused around utility,
right?
The perception of can you token gate something?
Does this give you an event, et cetera?
Now this time it's purely just been is this token going to be released to either have
max hype or max attention through traditional channels, right,
or through Twitter, for example.
So what type of model did you use last cycle
that maybe helped you this,
and then what were the big differences?
The last cycle, it was all about a team.
I just wanted to say, it's a good team team. I just focused on, is it a good team behind this project?
Do they have experience in crypto, out of crypto, and other things?
Is there enough people in the team to have someone that's good at marketing, as well as product growth, all that kind of stuff.
And I think that's, again, incredibly important when you're investing in things for the longer term.
But it's less important when it comes to shorter term stuff.
So I started to put a little less weight in
strictly the team, because you've seen things
in the one person team or the no one owns team
very absolutely well.
And probably in the reverse, I've seen it even more.
Where it's like, this is a project
that has an absolute star-studded lineup,
but people that have worked at Google, Microsoft, Amazon,
and they just, they tout that, and then,
you know, they have success and it just goes nowhere,
and it just hypes up.
So I think it's important, but less important to me,
the cycle.
It's very heavily narrative-based now.
Again, where do I sense the attention right now,
but more importantly, where do I sense it going next?
So like, in the first, if you're like tapped into Twitter, and all the schools and telegrams, Right now
You get a sense for like what's the next better and like you know AI agents were taking off
And then it was like AI agents on base. I'd say the office who would pop them in the base and find the next thing. And before that it was me.
Pure me. I don't know what the English word for me is.
It's always going to be something
except in like a pure,
bearish style after you've done that many opportunities.
To me it's mostly about just like trying to find
what that narrative is and get a little bit ahead of it.
Do you think it's different from like 21 though?
Like in 21 it felt like, you know,
myself included, like there were a part of our leaders
in NFP, right?
It's still like, I still feel like ownership
of digital items could be a big deal.
But it's like, so we had that like core
game changing technology, even though tech
had been around since we got to 2017, it was like now we're that core, age-changing technology, even though tech had been around since whatever, 2017,
it was like, now it finally clicked for us.
And it doesn't feel like we have that now.
Anything in crypto that's new or we're finally
bringing it forward.
I guess there's a little bit of social fire
and stuff like that.
But there's not like a, just this like,
like we've completely lost the belief kind of mechanism
which would let you hold stuff for months or years.
So, you know, it feels like that,
we lost all that during the meme section.
Are you getting that sort of feel as well?
Yeah, definitely agree.
I think that's why a lot of people, myself included,
say 21ers is a lot more popular this time around
because there wasn't this deep of belief this is going to change the world.
This is everyone is going to use this technology. This is going to change everything, which I still very much believe for NFTs and for crypto blockchain in general, but not specifically for meme points.
I think that's led to people holding for shorter durations.
You don't have people holding for an age of multiple years
or 12 months before it really sticks.
You don't want to go actually parallel.
You have people holding for a week or a day or an hour
or a month is a long-term hold for the end point.
So it's definitely changed that element.
There are obviously some die-hard fans of certain meme coins, but it's just very different.
And it's a lot more mercenary where with meme coins, basically every single person is just there to make money.
With NFTs, everyone wanted to make money, pretty much.
But there was also this secondary and then there was a little bit of a layer where people were there to build community, have fun, change the world, be do products, do technology, all this kind of stuff.
And it was a big division too where it's like,
oh, it's, yeah, it's whatever, it's Doodles,
but it's the IP of Doodles, right?
We gave you this year or two, five year down the road vision
of why you would want to go to the office, right?
And so that's-
Yes, definitely.
And you have the artist behind it,
and the artist and the previous work,
and then you have like the team that
is the business and all these different
layers and elements and reasons to be bullish,
which have largely disappeared now
with Meanpoints. But I'll say that for like
the technology made us excited
in 2021,
the technology is even better now.
It just keeps getting better and better. And so like while it's not specifically
like a new one thing of entities,
things like the ability to now set up a wall
with an email address, that to me is super duper exciting
in the issue of that.
It's not to be really sexy or glamorous,
but it's what we need to really get a ton of people
to do that.
So, you know, looking where we are today, Bitcoin's around 85,000.
It's really only about 30% off.
It's all time high.
Pretty much everything else is down 90, 95, some even 99%, which is quite insane to where
you have this disparity between if you're holding Bitcoin, most people are pretty fine.
Like those in the Bitcoin ecosystem who have held ordinals, right? They've been holding their base currency in Bitcoin.
They've been pretty fine.
All the ordinals went to zero, ruins went to zero,
AI coins, meme coins, right?
L2 coins, pretty much everything.
So you get this giant reset, but it doesn't,
but on the macro scale, right?
Couldn't be more bullish on, you know, pro-reg scale, right? Couldn't be more bullish on you know, pro regulation
Right all these different institutions are now coming in first. Do you think that this cycle is over?
Do you think this is just one of those regular?
Kind of corrections where basically all the all coins just got over corrected and then you know
How do you decide really what comes next if meme coins are now just kind of something
that exists in crypto and that bubble has really popped?
Yeah, I actually wrote about this this week in my newsletter.
Like I think the bulldozer over
and how I think about this kind of question.
And obviously it's extraordinary for anyone to know
any level of that, you know, it's really going up.
But you'll see a lot of people complain to know exactly what's going to happen.
You always ignore those challenges.
You just sell them something or pick your phone or whatever.
I try to take into account as much information from reliable sources that I can,
like people I think have some idea what they're talking about,
and then use a balanced guide across my own experience and intuition and instinct like evaluate whether I think people might be over or not.
We're looking at things like all the regulatory changes, the ETFs, all these bullish narratives.
The four year cycle is an interesting one because it is something a lot of people talk about.
But when you look back and people say it's gospel, but then you look back and you're like, well,
we have a sample size of like two or three.
It's like, I can see why people want to believe that it's going to happen exactly the same way again,
but it's already kind of proven in some tracks in that model where we get an all-time high before the harvest.
And so I think that eventually that police cycle
moral has to bring, which is not gonna be allowed
to every four years have a big point of
everyone knows it's a bad time, it's impossible.
Whether this is that time or not, I don't know.
And there's some negatives to it,
so obviously Trump and tariffs and macro
and there's a whole lot of uncertainty out there.
There's the argument that a lot of the bullish catalysts
are behind us.
We have the ETS.
We have the election.
We have the situation we've been preparing to announce.
And we know all these things are behind us.
What's coming next?
However, on the balance of the world, basically,
I think there's still like a 75 day chance that the bull market is going to continue.
Basically, we're going to be holding up on on Bitcoin sometime this year or maybe early 2025.
And what that means for altcoins, I don't know, but I'm sort of optimistic as well that we get a, not an alt season in the past where everything rises, but a kind of a good point in dominance and drops and naps, but at a certain point, we It doesn't really go the way that it used to. I think all of us on the show have also been here since the 2016 cycle to where it was
Bitcoin pumps, then Ethereum pumps, and then everything else kind of does.
But now, as you mentioned, the technology has grown, the ecosystems have grown.
There's 50 L2s, there's Bitcoin L2s, there's meta protocols.
And it seems like these ecosystems are starting to
niche down a little bit from generalized L1s and general purpose L2s to these like more
specific things, right?
Like like Apechain or like abstracts going in with streaming and etc.
How are you looking at that then as you know, kind of the as crypto grows and you're getting these like blockchains that are essentially
countries and housing it to where you get these like mini bull markets but they're really
contained to just like an ecosystem.
How do you like find what's next there? I have money on one, I want to get money on the other.
How do I do that? Wallets, like you know, Slana, ETH, Bitcoin, Sui, Zed, there's so many different chains out there, and it's always been one of the world's most cheap.
I always ask myself the question, like, how many player-wants-all-chains does the world really need?
Like, do we need 500, do we need 50, do we need 10? Is like 6 enough, is 3 enough?
I don't know what the answer is, but I think it's somewhere between like 5 and 20, perhaps, and then some player-tours on top of that.
I don't think we need 300 or 400 significant meaningful ones now.
But I think the silver lining is that the user experience is getting better.
Abstraction is real. You're getting wallets now that cover multiple chains.
You've found some wallet for so many different chains now.
Bridges are getting better and more seamless and faster,
gas fees are coming down.
And so eventually you can see the slide at the end of the tunnel
where the user just has an app on their phone with some money in it
and they don't know what chain they're using.
It's just if they want to buy something in the background,
perhaps using AI even, it just says,
hey, you have $100 in your wallet, you want to buy this coin.
It will bridge you to the right chain, you'll buy the, and by this point, we've reached the right chain.
We'll buy the coin, and we'll send it
and show it to the balance.
And if it's sold, we'll do that same thing.
And if you want to like re-work it back to $10,000,
we'll buy it, we'll sell it, possibly.
It won't happen in the background.
But that's totally gonna still take a few years from now.
So the drive rotation definitely helps us.
And we'll put it away.
It makes it fun for those who are trying to find the next 1000X.
Last cycle it was ordinals were kind of first to pop off, and then it was meme coins, and
then meme coins kind of just proliferated to every chain, but it was really Solana to
where the majority of the volume is.
It's like this idea that generally the first mover does have a lot of advantage,
especially when you're a blockchain, because it's kind of where the culture is cultivated,
which also builds this kind of idea of tribalism. But you know, you're a fan of AI, we're fans
of AI. Do you think that the next cycle or whatever this next trend is, do you think
it could be something considered like the intelligence cycle to where AI is making these decisions for you or everyone's kind of traded
with this AI assistant where it really levels the playing field between those who are the
market participants that are using quants or those who are using bots and then retail
who can also kind of have the same tooling that these people who have been, these developers who have been using bots and MEV for the
last 10 years.
Yeah, definitely. I think that as time goes on, it's going to be harder for individuals to find a significant edge on the market, because AI will level that place.
At the moment, you find an edge on the market by information, arbitrage, you find information for other people and you know something.
Whether it's inside information or you just find a bit of post from someone on the team that no one else has seen. You do your research and you find information.
Always technological arbitrage where you know how to code a bot or you know how to use snipiping tools or barl maps,
or you can just do your research quicker
because technology is helping you,
which the code is about the biggest advantage
for a long time, but AI is now making that easier
and easier to use for average persons use.
And then so on and so forth.
There's different ways to find an edge,
and AI is really one of those things that we're looking for,
which is kind of good for retail investors
in the sense that it's gonna be tougher
for the average person as they exploit it,
as they tend to be versus the sharks.
But it also means that edges are just going to drop across the board.
So this was with poker as well, and I was impressed with that, which it is.
And back in 2005, the best place in the world, a massive manager for everyone else,
because the game was so unsolvable,
no one knew what the hell we were doing.
And then as time went on, you got more bots,
you got more AI, you got machine learning,
people were solving and learning more and more and more.
The game got way tougher, the edges got way smaller,
it has to be reworked like 100 times harder
to make 100 times less money basically.
I think the same could happen for crypto.
And just all trading in general,
eventually you're talking about. People will say, I think the building is pretty tough. and just try all trading together.
People say that money building is pretty tough.
That's actually my belief.
I mean, as we're building our AI agent, everybody wants,
I just want to set it and forget it.
Like, yeah, make some money.
And I'm like, bro, that's not going to happen.
Like, that's because it immediately goes,
like it runs, it's a race to zero.
Yeah.
The margin or the edge goes to zero
I was actually chatting with the founder of AIXPT
Which is a great product and we filled this back end which supposedly has fantastic data
And I was like are you guys gonna keep it proprietary?
He's like no, we're gonna release it to a dashboard. And I'm like, that's cool.
But there's no way anybody's going to have any edge.
Once that dashboard is more than one person,
once it's five people, it's over.
You're like, the edge goes to zero.
But yeah, I think we're looking at a lot of us, or not us,
maybe, but a lot of people in the space
are thinking AI's are going to just trade for that and make
money.
It just seems very unlikely.
There'll be a brief moment in time, I think, where I know people already, they are using
AI and it is making good money.
But everyone wants to run an AI to make money.
And when everyone's running the AI to make money, they're all playing against each other.
And like you said, we all want to make good money.
That's the separation why I think we want to make it.
Does this then, you know, maybe give some credence to the return of the builder
where, you know, you have Wall Street coming in. We talked about this on the show a lot about this
ICO 2.0 era. You have things like Echo and Legion that are kind of leading the charge. Obviously,
then once you have, you know, this market structure bill in America and then wherever else it follows in different countries, you're going to have these different portals and
ways to bring in literally trillions of dollars of expenditure to the market.
That's going to mostly go into new projects, these ICOs or just the equivalent IPO and that's kind of
what Wall Street's gonna be familiar with, you know, doing fundamental analysis,
doing these things that they feel like they have an edge and maybe less likely
trying to trade these kind of like meme coins. So with AI, you know, there is this
fear that it could replace developers but from what I've seen it's actually
enhancing the
skills of the developer. So maybe the market then just has to be more creative moving forward
from a product standpoint. And everyone always says it's not AI that's going to replace it, it's going to be humans using AI that will replace you.
And for a very long time I think that's still never been true.
Because it's the first we come up with ideas.
The first we can think about, alright, there's all these AI agents out there now.
Maybe, can I build something that the agents are going to use?
Can I build like, things that actually the world where they have more time because AI
is really important.
I think the creativity element is kind of what makes me very focused on the future because
I think AI will unlock all these creativities in humanity in general and hopefully that
will tell us a whole lot about the team.
You have the Zen Academy and you're an investor
and you do different types of content.
So you've really been in the kind of attention
space for a little while.
Have you ever considered getting into getting your hands dirty,
getting into product development, building a protocol,
building a note to getting in with the VCs,
or doing anything of that nature?
Not really.
I, like, the closest, yeah, in terms of like a fixed-signature product, not yet, but like
even just last weekend, we noticed some fine coding stuff going around.
I was like, no, let me just try it.
I did a little bit of coding, you know, when I was a teenager.
I haven't, I've never graded it, I haven't done it in a long time, but now anyone can
typically use AI and stick with it.
So, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to try it.
I'm going to try it.
I'm going to try it.
I'm going to try it.
I'm going to try it.
I'm going to try it. I'm going to try it. I'm going to try it. I'm going to a teenager. I've never graded and I haven't done it in a long time,
but now anyone can use AI and work and get better and better and better.
And so I'm like open to the idea where, again, if I have a good idea
and I think, hey, this is something that I think a lot of people want
and it's simple enough to build, then I think I'd give it a real go
in trying to build it myself.
I hesitate to really want to get into something as significant as an L2 or a protocol that requires a bunch of people working on it.
I've always been a bit of an lone wolf and I think I tend to be better at just focusing on getting myself going in my own place.
That could change in a year or two or five or six months.
But right now, I think I'd only build something
that could do it myself today.
One of the things I think you're really strong at,
just watching you over the years,
is kind of maintaining a community of people,
which is very difficult.
I mean, we all know they tend to turn on you
if price goes wrong or whatever,
or you tell them the wrong thing
and they buy something that doesn't work out.
What's your kind of just overall,
the way you look at it,
they call it community management,
but just how do you look at that from that perspective,
because I think you're one of the best at it.
Like, what do you, how do you view that
and bring that to your side?
Yeah, I think it's not rocket science.
I think it just, it's, you try and deliver value to people, you try and be a good human, you just try and be honest with people and manage expectations.
And I think that's basically it. And you turn up regularly. So many people in this space and in the world, they hype things up, they set way too high expectations. They extractively, so it's not like,
how can I add value to my community?
It's like, hey, we're doing a token launch,
and we want to take money out of it.
How can we get attention and build a community around that?
They aren't always honest with the community.
They say one thing, they do another.
They have different motivations, and they hide information.
Not everyone, there's always just fantastic communities and community builders out there, but I've just always thought people would be one person at a time and if you just sort of be a good person and be honest with people, people would resonate with that.
And as long as you have something of value that you're offering that will keep people coming back. People want a place to call home. People are craving belonging to the world we have today.
The rules are isolated.
I think probably why NFTs took off so much
was because you're in a world where you're not
a part of the world.
You just want a friend's world and hanging out and have fun.
That's the world even today, even without the rules.
So people want a place to call home and have a community.
You really just have to give it to them
and then just not screw it up.
And that's just the approach that I've taken.
It's definitely well and I'm very honored to have the caliber of people turning up to
the academy every day.
It's a lot more than I've ever seen.
Yeah, it is pretty exciting.
Kristi, any questions?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it seems like
at this stage of crypto
we have the most
progress that we've ever made
in terms of just general acceptance
but it seems like
the communities are smaller than they've ever been.
So it's such like
it's dislocated like it's almost never been before
It's hard not to think that when you look at it.
I remember last cycle 21, but certainly even before that, one of the sort of dammit things
hanging over our head was governments, you can shut us down, You want no on-ramping, off-ramping of crypto.
And it wouldn't destroy crypto.
We can't. But it would set us back 10 years, 20 years in the universe, the industry.
And that's why I like what nations like China would ban crypto.
Initially it was a big deal.
Then they did it every six months and it's not been a big deal.
But that's just a big announcement.
One of the biggest existential risks to crypto is gone. Another risk was no one's going to care.
It's just a group of nerds that there's 10,000 or 150,000 of us on the internet that care about this.
The rest of the world is not going to care. And both of those have disappeared. You have, you have ETS, you have, I think like six to seven hundred million people who are
really not on the computer, which is an percentage, it must be ten percent, but that's a crazy
number of people still.
So it's like we've made it to where we're there, it's not going to die, it's not going to
disappear, it's always going to be around, I think.
And adoption is much higher.
However, there's still a massive negative connotation towards crypto.
You step outside a bubble and talk to normal people, or you go to different parts of the internet.
And everyone still hates crypto. Certainly people still hate crypto, and what we stand for.
That is a challenge that I think people will ask.
The industry has to change its reputation and perception issue.
But I think that's happening.
That time was on where basically the best way to do that is building products and things that make people's lives better.
And the best example of that I can think of is stablecoins and like this massive increase in stablecoin usage and adoption.
The ability to send money from one country to the other side of the world in like three seconds and cost less than one cent.
It's like, at your judicial model, that's a great side by side comparison.
They used to be like thousands of times cheaper and hundreds of times quicker.
There's so many people that want to send money back to their family in another part of the world.
But your business is so long, right, and you're from a different country and the traditional would take a day to send money,
and $10, $20, $, and a percentage of fee or whatever,
it's just way better.
And so, yeah, I could not be more bolder,
but basically remains the same.
And in terms of where the opportunities are,
again, it goes back to the fragmentation of it all.
It just goes up within crypto,
that it's hard to really focus on
or too many specific areas without,
like for the medium term.
I think that short term, you can find those pockets of
analysts and community points, AI agents,
silly ecosystem, ABACs, it's always one thing
that people are paying attention to,
entities, ordinals, but a lot of them looks like
a little bit of pockets of attention that the hot potato game
has taken away.
So I think most people should decide what kind of strategy they want to take if it's
long term investing and just buy a whole Bitcoin, maybe even sell a couple of others.
If it's trading, then realize that you're playing a difficult game.
It's not easy to make money trading crypto.
And most people probably fail. I think it's not easy to make money from trading crypto. I must believe in the real estate market. And then Wall Street finally ended up coming in as they just kind of came in swiftly over
the last couple of years.
And now it seems like actually the entire industry is mostly Wall Street driven already.
It's like we were so afraid to give it up.
It's kind of hard to see where the crypto-natives went, where they got disposed to.
No one that's actually a crypto-native is really completely thriving in any type of
meaningful way.
I would say so.
Just think that that's kind of like a weird dynamic.
What do you think is the most important thing to do? It's actually like a crypto medium is really like thriving in any type of meaningful way.
I would say so. Just think of that as kind of like a weird dynamic.
What do you think is, what do you think happened?
Yeah, so there's this brilliant internet article that's called Geeks, Mops, and Sociopaths.
I recommend everyone read this, you can google Geeks, M how basically anything that starts out, any sort of new thing,
it starts out niche, it starts out with a core community of believers, and that's what I'm encrypted at the site,
ethos, core builders, anti-establishment, people that hate Wall Street, hate government, all that kind of stuff. That's what we started out.
But in order for anything to grow and gain bigger and bigger adoption, it will be making money.
People will flood to it for one reason or another, and you just can't possibly have something with 700 more people in the world,
or something that you want billions of people to interact with without it going mainstream. This is a modulating the end of mainstream. It all becomes somewhat civil, it all becomes tainted by Wall Street and markets and all that kind of stuff.
And so it is, it's Ad Hoc's dichotomy of juxtaposition where with. But on the other hand, it's like, do you want everyone in the world
to be using crypto or not?
You can't have both.
Too easy you have to give up some of the original morals
or values, or you just can't have everyone
in the world using it.
And so I think it's kind of like a necessary equal.
It's not, I don't know,
too many super crypto natives that are ecstatic that, you know,
it's not as mainstream as a black rock group that's not getting selling it, and governments
are getting so involved.
But again, if you want it to go, if you want everyone to be super-proper, you just have
to accept that.
Yeah, I mean, this is, you know, this is what we had talked about since I joined the space almost nine years
ago about ETFs and different types of institutions.
The institutions are coming is something that was said literally ad nauseam forever and now
that it actually is here, Chris, are you know, maybe crypto is getting to this point now where, you know, instead
of maybe we maybe speculation becomes secondary at some point, right?
And like the actual use case comes in.
I think this is what we're why stable coins seem to be kind of front and center centers
that there is no speculation early for stable coins, right? It's all kind of about utility. Do you think crypto can actually ever get past that?
Obviously, people love trading shit coins and meme coins, but as the technology progresses and new
people come in to the space, right, they're probably going to be onboarded through AI. AI has like five or ten times you know the amount of
users per month than crypto does. They know about speculation but as you
said the edges will eventually be taken away through all of this different type
of tooling to where maybe speculation becomes less and people start using
stuff for gaming and different types of aspects. Do you think something like that
can happen? And yes, there are some rare people who don't care about money at all.
But most people in crypto, especially the people in trading, are trying to get every day.
It's like, yeah, this is really cool and awesome.
I also like to make a bit of money. I like to trade with the gear.
I like to find good alt.
But we are by far the exception.
Most people in the world, they find the stock market risky.
They find a 2% drop in their stock portfolio.
And it can be anxiety-inducing.
So that's who will be joining the space eventually.
They care about fundamentals, they care about stability, and don't care about fluctuations as crazy as us, media seems to care about.
I think it's inevitable that we get back to a point where fundamental matter a lot more, and speculation is
that there's a much smaller profit of the world.
Like it is today, we're still in this more
popular profit of the world.
Yeah, I do want to talk something specifically,
I'm just curious.
We all thought NFTs were more fun, right?
Maybe it was just like, there's a little bit more
accountability with NFTs, with meme coins,
it's so easy to just basically dump everything and move on.
Whereas NFTs, right, there's an image attached.
People are able to associate you with that type of identity.
Do you think NFTs ever come back?
And if so, do you think what type of reshaping or different type of tooling do you think
is needed for people to become interested in again?
Yeah, I mean, I don't think NFTs come back in the same way they interested in again. But also, NFC has never went anywhere either. There was still a core group of communities that stuck around. Some projects in 2021, even earlier, like speaking around with driving today, I think it's more of a...
NFC is just technology. You can build anything on top of the token centers. And I think we'll continue to see more of a flight to quality. I think a lot of the people that got burned in 2021, and now like, we've learned our lesson, we're not just going to give a bunch of money and make a collection to a random anonymous team, at least not as frequently as in the past.
But when people come along their PFPs and their communities
forming around it.
Or you have like the masks by Sam Spratt, like this art, culture, community and movement
is forming around that.
We will have gaming entities that really take off.
We'll have a lot of entities that people don't even know that they're engaging, interacting
with entities.
It's just like they're playing a video game and then it just sort of happens to entities
that are really out there.
So, we're going to have a lot of people that are going to be involved in the game.
We're going to have a lot of people that are going to be involved in the game.
We're going to have a lot of people that are going to be involved in the game.
We're going to have a lot of people that are going to be involved in the game.
We're going to have a lot of people that are going to be involved in the game.
We're going to have a lot of people that are going to be involved in the game.
We're going to have a lot of people that are going to be involved in the game.
We're going to have a lot of people that are going to be involved in the game.
We're going to have a lot of people that are going to be involved in the game.
We're going to have a lot of people that are going to be involved in the game. We're going to have a lot of people that are going to be involved in the game. We're going to have a lot of people that are going to be involved in the game. We're going to have a lot of people that are going to be involved in the game. We're going to have a lot of people that people don't even know that they're engaging, interacting with entities.
They're playing a video game and then just sort of happens to entities in the background.
So, entities, I still believe what I told everybody, they are the future.
Like, you spend so much time on the internet, you'll be underpinned by entities at some point,
whether or not people know it or care about it or avoid it or something,
knowing you're running the background.
I'll leave it at that.
So I mean, we've seen it with,
you mentioned two of them this past week.
We've seen it with the RWAs with the Port Yard
and now we've tracked that with Pokemon cards, right?
Oh yeah.
And it's, for Pokemon, it's like this perfect mix of a collectible,
but people love to, you know, get a rare or open a pack
and, you know, price goes up, they feel rich for a moment in time.
And it's actually a better tech. It's like you can trade it, open it,
trade it, and then collect the physical if you want to.
It's like this is what we talked about in 2021 and it's here, right?
And it feels like gaging is one of those two where it's like we know it's inevitable.
But it's just like when? It's like when it's on the pack. You know what I mean? It's just like when it's like, we know it's inevitable, but it's just like when?
It's like when's it gonna happen?
You know what I mean?
It's just like when it's just waiting game.
And I think to your point, a lot of it has to do with
the kind of pure speculation which turns people off.
It excites us, but for the average person,
the pure speculation, people just think it's a scam, right?
And so they don't want that.
Do you see anything like that on your radar?
Or anything that's kind of, I don't know, just normie-friendly?
Have you caught anything like that?
Just vibes like the normies that maybe you're missing out on?
Um...
Thanks.
I saw one today which was like a travel thing.
Like you know, your favorite travel is crypto and then you know, you do it to like you know, it's an NFT but it's just like, it's mellow. Yeah, I mean I think we see like
Coming out and I was very skeptical
Actually less than
some magic of stablecoins and king of rails
Some magic of stable going to be rails
to give you a bit of a kickback as well.
Things like that, that and stablecoins and general auto variants
is what will appeal to most people.
I don't think that's too crazy.
I love those new credit cards.
Friends with Ron, this guy who's a parcel owner for an exchange, and they have this card available.
And he's like, it's amazing, because that thing you have to check out, you have it on your phone or whatever, and you can select,
like, actually I want to pay with my pep app, or I want to pay with my phone, whatever, you know?
And it's actually, the reason it kind of saves money or can, is because for a moment like me, I got to access my portfolio to do some cracking,
and then I got to exchange it, and then I got to transfer it, and it's like they like to layer on me.
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, that's what it means.
You know, I'm going to pay for my pet.
I'm going to have to buy my own.
You think maybe NFTs need something like a pump fund, right?
Because meme coins had been around for a long time and it really,
all it took was this pump fun style kind of bonding curve,
gamification people feeling like they're getting early or feel like all they got
to do is put in a few dollars and you know,
that maybe one in a million chance that they become a millionaire,
but it's better than, you know, the lottery style thing.
You think something like that? Do you think NFTs
because you have a limited supply.
Usually, I think they just fundamentally
have different value proposition.
People do want to make money.
Maybe I'm wrong.
People can just gamble and NFT will be the next thing.
I think people have already seen it now
with all these drop-in pump funds. people are kind of sick with that attractive model.
So I think, yeah, I think it would be something else, something different to really re-invigorate the NFTs space.
I wouldn't love to see, I wouldn't love if we get a pump on going for the NFTs unless we, the next big thing in crypto is like, that's not very exciting. Yeah, it's almost like NFTs have this like, what we call plunge protection, right?
Because you couldn't just get out, right?
Yeah, it was all on the floor and then it was a slow process, right?
Which actually, like, the workmen, to a large extent, have benefited from, right?
It's like, really, it took 20 minutes to sell more.
So people have to buy more.
I've bought a bunch.
I've just never sold it.
I'll bag all of them.
Hopefully they come back one day.
It's the built-in mempool.
It's between chains.
There's a lot of quickies that you can sell.
Bitcoin, one of the collectors,
is a long series. It's never turned back on time. It's easy to hold. Bitcoin more for collectors, obviously slow transaction time is easier to hold,
and then Ethereum in the middle.
Just like logic would say that
Ordinal's ecosystem would be on fire,
but it's not the case at all.
What do you want to get out?
It's double their source, Lana quick and easy to sell,
it's also quick and easy to buy.
Buying on a Bitcoin Ordinal is slower and expensive
and it takes time as well.
So it goes both ways.
Yeah, so I definitely understand the value problem
of ordnance.
I think it's fascinating technology.
It's very, very, very interesting.
But I think that until the user experience gets better,
I think people are still just kind of turned off by it.
And it's quite different from my contract change,
how it operates and how it works.
I had a friend who's been in crypto for a long time,
done a lot of stuff on the chain.
He was panicking when he bought or did something on Bitcoin
because he was like, oh my Bitcoin is gone,
where did it go?
And then he didn't realize,
like did it have to be?
That's how the chain works.
He was like, yeah, my whole wallet got drained, man.
Honestly, you kind of get to reach out to like, you know,
strangers and help people.
It's just fun when we get there.
And so I think the, yeah, what we want to do is sort of
do the other way.
What about, what about you take on just kind of
the different formations of culture on blockchains?
Bitcoin, I make this joke a lot, Bitcoin has become almost like the boomer chain, right?
The people who...
That's XRP.
No, XRP is the dads and Uber drivers.
Man, they absolutely love that.
When you look at Bitcoin, right, it has 10 minute block times and
obviously you have this institutional Wall Street individuals who really enjoy it. It's become more
of a collector's chain, so it moves a little bit slower. Whereas something like Ethereum
seems to be a lot more based around millennials and infrastructure and kind of builders. And then Gen X is kind of like this, like the VCs who fund it.
And then you have Solana that was really all about zoomers, right?
It was all about the attention cycle in and out as fast as possible.
But we're starting to run out of generations for, you know, communities to go
on in different types of formations.
So just curious if you've thought about something like that and just about you know different types of cultures cultivating on a blockchain and maybe
how important the social layer is for for these things.
Yeah, I haven't seen this for about like a generation and blockchains in two months, but I definitely thought a lot about how the meme coin casino was doomed as a teenager in the early 20s,
dominated by them, whereas NNTs, I'm 36,
and there seems to be more people around my age,
I'm 30, people in their 40s,
people who grew up in the 90s collecting personal cars
and things like that, that's really gravitated towards NNTs.
I definitely recognize that difference.
I like to say, if we're running out of generation,
we're quickly going to eat, sell, and then triple.
Again, do we need another 50 bucks?
Maybe it's probably not, but that's enough.
Yeah.
Can we make it a little bit stocked
without making black people?
Honestly, yeah.
You know, with all this conversation all the time, I'm just, the problem is the incentive is so great. Right, yeah.
It's just the incentive.
That is a VCs that give you money because it's good for them and you think it's great
for you and you just think they can make money by being an LED and testing it.
It's just this vicious cycle that, you know, after a little while it's a great.
What's your take on VCs in this space?
It seems like they've been changing a little bit.
For a while, VCs, they come in.
They're actual capital allocators going into actual projects.
Seems recently they've become more about liquid funds
or even just kind of like a pseudo hedge fund who's
just trying to come in and not really providing
much value.
Whereas now you have people like Kobe and Legion and some of these other
ones that are trying to give that back or even pump fund to a degree,
trying to give it back right to the community to put in your hands.
So we're seeing this battle going on.
What's your thoughts on like where this is today?
Yeah, I think, um, no, equals. There's definitely been a lot of predatory VC practices
where they're just maximally extracted
and just care about making money.
But we have also definitely some that
care about building in the space,
and they will support you, and they will give you money,
but then also let you tap into the network
and give you advice and all that kind of stuff.
And then you have everything in between.
But I think that it's just the state of the network and give you advice and all that kind of stuff. And then you have everything in between. But I think that it's just the state of the world.
But some are going to be great.
Some are going to be not.
But I think the addition of like echo and leadership
to the market is just a net positive.
Because it now gives people options.
Now you can go to VCs and fund that way,
which is an arduous, grueling process.
And then basically no one will know who's fundraising instead of enjoying the experience.
Or you can go to the community and you know what, we want to raise much money. We don't want to do a token right now or do it that way. We just want to sell some equity in the company because they have a bunch of supporters now that are like stakeholders and they want to invest in the company.
And it is good for the people because a lot of the average person probably wouldn't have invested in Solana back in 2020 or in the city, all these kind of things, and now all of a sudden you have MegaEath where anyone
could admit that if you were clicking fast enough
that I'm not speaking lazy like me
and I started to think, yeah, the option was there at least.
You were lucky enough to get the right one.
Did you get a white list on that one?
Oh, that rabbit thing?
For MegaEath, yeah, I got in on that, yeah.
That was all from, that was all from Kaido.
I was in the raffles with that or whatever, but I was...
generation.
On the Nexel, too.
On the next cell, too.
Every other day, you're just going to be
in the mindset of, you know, just with the new size.
Yeah, I got really just one final question from my side,
is just kind of the broader picture here.
How are you positioning yourself over the next six months?
This market structure bill is supposed to come
in the next four or five months.
Sentiments at an all-time low.
Are you just kind of chilling?
Are you looking for projects and yeah, what's the evaluation strategy?
Yeah, I'm like, I'm, I'm easy. I'm just hoping that he comes back around.
I have a hype in between.
It's been going fast.
I'll tell you.
Yeah, that's a good break from the board.
Yeah, that's me. I'm positioned mostly in each denominator, entities, and pure things.
I'm a bit of Sol, I'm mostly just sitting on my hands and waiting in that person. How do you think of, this has been my last question to you, the way ETH is approaching it.
I actually kind of like it. They're approaching it from an ETH perspective, but they're not collecting any fees.
It's like none of the value is coming back to the L1, right? How do you view it?
Give me the sales pitch for why this is happening.
Honestly, it's confusing, right?
Because the in-foundation is sending mixed messages.
People want one thing, the community is clamoring for one thing,
and the community is sort of pregnant.
I think what we need is some more clarity and alignment to get people on the same page.
You've got this theme now where the foundation is doing one thing, Talek wants one thing,
and then you have all these backholders who want another thing.
They're like, you should charge more and get the value back to layer one.
There's all these different parties, and I think that's really what's hurting the kids a lot at the moment.
I don't necessarily think it's bad
what they're doing and I think that it's kind of
like the longer term period and building in that direction
which again might hurt the price short term
because X, Y, and Z but at the end of the day,
we, the biggest thing that will make the price go up
I think and for any change is just having actual real users
and that would buy apps and like, you, the reason Slana did so well,
one of the reasons Slana did so well is
pump fun, pump Slana.
It's had so much volume, so much attention,
so much activity, so many feeds.
Yeah, and that's probably why NFTs did so well in 2021.
Ethics did so well in 2021 because of NFTs.
And so I think that having more layer 2s,
having people build, having a lot of devs,
is just increasing that large surface area for one breakout app to take one breakout
section and take off and then all of a sudden everyone's using ease again because of whatever reason.
I guess the last one for me, let's see, it's 2020, 2021, you're up like eight figures,
Euphoria's running high, what are some signs
and mindset that you're like, all right,
that was kind of something.
You're going to hold on to me.
Yeah, so many, I mean, I think it's so delusional
at that point that you can't see those signs at the time,
it's so hard to see at that point. you can't see those signs at the time. It's so hard to see at that point.
One of the things for me that was just such a massive floor in thinking was thinking that I was diversified because in reality everything is so heavily correlated within crypto through Bitcoin. I have some people in the e-disposure, I have NFT exposure, but I have like art NFTs and PFPs and gaming NFTs and all these other NFTs and like, alright, maybe if art NFTs go down, PFPs will go up.
And it worked that way for quite a while and then eventually the entire marketing flow that he delusional was like, you know, super psycho theory.
And it's just going to keep going up and then he just gets a lazy chain of events of 2022 that prove that was all wrong.
So now it's more about recognizing that you will be delusional. It's inevitable. It's a human condition.
And so try and set up some systems in place ahead of time that kind of you try and stick to that force you to take the problems,
like take screenshots and sell. And then don't just keep it in your wallet. They can send you like a whole pile of all
that you don't have access to
or you don't have to be back to count.
But make it difficult for people
to bring most of that money back in.
Most people would just intend it to be back in.
To me, it's about setting up systems
and processes to kind of avoid the delusion
that I know is going to send me.
Yeah, the amount of times I haven't sold anything
is just sitting in a hardware wallet. It saved is going to sell me. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. We lost you. building together for a while so dude just finally great to connect and finance conversation appreciate it for those that are listening you know we
host a show Tuesday through Thursday at 1130 a.m. Eastern Time covering everything
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Thank you. Yn ystod y cyfle hwn, mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn. Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
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