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THE GREAT MEMECOIN DEBATE - Dirty Side Of Crypto?
Recorded: May 26, 2023 Duration: 4:24:33Space Recording
Short Summary
The discussion covered various aspects of the crypto industry, including project and token launches, regulatory challenges, and emerging trends like meme coins and NFTs. Innovations in blockchain technology, such as tokenization and decentralized finance, were highlighted, alongside concerns about regulation and market volatility. The potential for growth in adoption and market value was discussed, with a focus on Bitcoin's stability and the role of regulation in shaping the industry's future.
Full Transcription
Hey guys, we'll be kicking this off shortly. Let's wait for the panel to join us
give us a couple of minutes and I don't put some shitty music. We'll just wait with silence.
Barrowe, do you put music when you run your space?
Yeah, so Twitter spaces has default music. It's not that bad.
The default music's not that bad. You just can't play.
You've got, yeah, you have, do you have your setup? Do you have your setup?
Uh, not in front of me.
Damn, I should have probably thought of it before, because I know you play pretty cool music when you do your space.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you could always invite someone up who has like a really good setup to play music.
That's all good.
Slaman's here, here's our music.
Uh, send you guys an invite.
What's up Sleeman?
I am doing good.
How are you doing?
Good thing.
I heard you were on a space early today.
How did they go?
Oh, shit.
You'll give me the chance to shield the finance one, yeah?
Yeah, obviously.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Actually, let me invite the speakers.
Can you just tell the audience what happened earlier today,
the news that we broke?
Yeah, sure.
So basically within the finance space, which runs at...
What's the US time?
Is it?
8 a.m.
E.m. E.m. E.S.T.
Every day, Monday to Friday.
8 AM, yes.
Not 8 a.m. PM.
8 a.m. E.S.T. I said.
What are you listening to, right?
Okay. Make sure. Yeah, it's Monday to Friday.
Hosted by the main man, Dr. Danish.
A lot smarter than Mario.
So you'll get a different style there compared to this style.
And essentially on that space, what happened was he, from his sources, and there was multiple sources verified, he found out that there was a deal that was imminent or already there was a handshaking deal in place.
And I believe that there was going to be a 3% increase on the military budget.
So those were the sources that were that he had and they were leaked on the space and removed.
relate to the public and what made it unique was that the mainstream media,
the biased, incompetent, ignorant mainstream media did not,
did not publish it until at least a few hours later.
And even when they published it,
the horrendous, biased, incompetent mainstream media
did not source the fact that where they got that information from,
which was Twitter spaces and was from the main man.
Ah, okay, okay, that's a fair, that's a fair jab,
that they didn't reference us.
I think that was a fair jab.
But otherwise, like them taking a while to refer,
to, to mention it, it's like, it's a tricky position.
Let's say, and I remember I had this conversation
with name redacted, so while waiting for the panel to join,
Let's say there is news that you have, yeah?
But if you share that news, it could cause harm.
For example, let's say you've got news of a problem at a bank.
You can either work to fix that problem in the background with regulators and other banks,
potentially acquiring assets, et cetera, or getting a line of credit.
And if you go public with the news, it could lead to a bank run and then there's no chance
of saving that bank.
Should you go public with that news or not?
It's a good question.
I think whenever you go down,
I have thought about this quite a bit.
I think when you go down this road of where journalists are essentially embed with the government
and they only relate stories based on the timing of when the government give you,
it's a slippery slope and you end up in a situation where, which I believe where we're in now,
where basically the media is basically another arm of the government.
So I believe in order to stop that, which is to keep the government in a situation
where the press is keeping the government into account,
that should not be curtailed.
Yeah.
I don't know, like if I was in that position, if there's news that you have that could lead to a bank run,
I would think twice before sharing this news.
You would share it, bro. Don't try it.
No, bro.
On a serious note, I've had that...
Can I finish?
You literally start screaming it and be like, guys, I've got news and literally posted everywhere.
You'd put it on your head. You'd let the whole world know.
Can I finish?
Let me see, one of the speakers having an issue,
Tante is shadow band.
I cannot invite, he needs to request.
All right, so I was gonna need a couple of minutes
for the panel to join, but on that point,
I would not, I would consider whether to share it or not.
I had that happened to me during the FTX collapse,
so we had news that came to us,
that if we shared it, it would impact an exchange
or business.
What was it?
What was it?
Tell us, let the people know.
It was exchanges having, having,
Look, I ended up sharing it.
I'm not saying I didn't share it because I'll tell you why I shared it.
I know you did, bro.
Do you want to listen or not?
Do you want to tell you what happened and what I did?
Yeah, because that was before your day.
That's because back when you didn't know how to use Twitter, when the first started Twitter spaces.
So we had, I won't mention which exchange it was.
And then we had reports concerning reports about that exchange, one's from verifiable sources.
And, you know, even, even, actually, I won't mention who the sources are.
But we've had good sources give us concerning points about those exchanges.
We were able to verify them.
And we had two options.
If we share that information, there was a lot of fear when FTCX collapsed and it could lead to a, to an exchange run.
But the reason I ended up sharing it is exchanges are not banks.
So they hold assets one to one.
They custody your assets.
They're not a bank that allow them to,
they allow for a fractional reserve banking
where they can hold like 10% of your assets
and the rest of it they could,
they could use to generate yield.
So the fact that they held us as one to one, it put us in a, you know, that means that even if everybody pulled their money out, they should have enough money to give money to give them the money back to everyone else.
They're holding people's money.
They're not a bank.
That's the reason number one.
Reason number two is that I felt responsible that if I didn't share it and they still collapsed, then I could have saved people from losing their money.
So that was the second reason I shared it.
And I think, I don't know if I made the right choice because the exchange ended up doing, you know,
Luckily, the exchange was holding by the looks of it,
it was holding assets one to one,
because there's a lot, when I shared that information,
they went pretty viral back then,
a lot of people might remember the exchange.
and they had massive withdrawals.
I gave the exchange CEO and the opportunity to come on the show and refute the claims and give him a voice, but he refused, which was a bit odd.
Anyway, they had massive withdrawals, but they held enough assets.
They managed to meet those withdrawals and the exchange still functions today in doing well.
And I think I did the right thing.
I have no regrets.
I still have the tweet out there because I...
I have no reason to remove it.
The information was accurate.
The reports we had were accurate.
So, yeah, I would think twice before sharing that information.
I don't know about you.
What would you do if you were in my shoes?
I would have let the people know, bro.
I don't want the people to lose out.
Even if it could cause more harm than good.
Well, this is the problem, you see, because once, I don't, whenever I look at a situation,
I don't look at, like, immediate possible harm, but long-term ramifications of that and the various
strands from it.
So, like, I explain that when you have a scenario and you're censoring information or journalism,
the actual wider impacts of that are much more globally problematic and can cause a totalitarian society.
So I think when you look at it from a more holistic perspective, I think journalism is paramount.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right, man, so before we kick off the space,
we've already got a few panelists up,
I'll start doing quick introductions.
Tell the world, man, tell the audience,
the last 48 hours for us have been pretty insane.
It started off with the descent.
It was always the crazy space that we have,
but DeSantis won, what happened then,
and then what happened yesterday?
We never got the chance to really talk about it and gloat about it, have we?
Well, let's be clear.
I was going to talk about it before, like, you know, something happened.
So essentially...
Guys, it was a mad, it's been a mad crazy 48 hours.
So first we had DeSantis announce his run for president
and for his run to be the GOP nominee.
And he did it on Twitter space.
He tried to do it on the Elon Musk space,
which had about 1.4 million live viewers,
but then that basically collapsed.
And then they did it on David Sachs space.
And...
And we ran a simultaneous space, which started about an hour earlier.
Just so because we knew that Elon space will face issues.
So we wanted to offer an alternative.
Because we've done this before.
We've ran simultaneous spaces with Elon when we know it's going to be overflown.
And, you know, we would have preferred to host DeSantis on our platform, but it didn't work that time.
He would never come to our platform because you can't deal with the questions.
Let his people know, is he man enough to come, bring him here.
But anyway, he is, he is going to come.
But yeah, so, so, so we ran a space in conjunction.
Yeah, continue with the story.
Yeah, which was a much better space.
It was much more interactive and innovative.
And we had us.
And so in our space, what I essentially happened was there was a lot of people who
could not actually a huge number of people could not enter the other space.
I tried to enter via my other phone as well as my laptop and I was unable to do so.
So due to that reason, our numbers were parallel, if not more than the other space.
And so we had at least at one point.
Yeah, I don't want to gloat too much about this.
So we had a lot of numbers then.
We were streaming it.
Bro, I don't care, bro.
Let me tell people the story.
Stop interrupting, bro.
You like a bit.
Anyway, so essentially what happened was, right?
So we had 257,000 viewers live concurrent more than their space.
But anyway, it's not a competition.
Yeah.
But in total, by the end of it, we had 5 million live viewers.
I think we're up to 5.7 now.
And they had about 1.3, and I think they're up to about 3.9.
So in total, all of it is around more than 10 million viewers.
which is amazing.
And so even though
I believe that Desantis didn't do a great job,
in terms of from a Twitter perspective,
in terms of an engagement interaction perspective,
it was a massive win.
We also then had straight immediately after that,
after DeSantis did his structured space,
we then had our one, which was,
unstructured in the sense of it wasn't scripted and we had mayor Giuliani on here we had
someone from the Trump administration on here we had a huge number of major guests
Jenna Ellis and so on and so forth so that was a hype day there was so many people coming on
and they were all asked questions by liberals by conservatives who's open and that's how our space is
Then the next day we did a round two of the distance.
Maybe we did have a few.
Did you mention the guest that we had the first day?
We had Rudy Giuliani come on.
We had Jenna Alice.
I think you did mention him, didn't you?
Yeah, yeah, I mentioned him.
And then in listeners, we had Eric Trump was on the listeners.
We had Kailen Jenner on the listeners.
We even had the new CEO, Linda.
I think she preferred our space, so she may have been on here rather than that one
or she couldn't get in, but most likely because our space is better.
Yeah.
no it's because she couldn't get in
most likely
because our space is better
and then what happened
was um
Then the next day we had Matt Gaze and Laura Boba.
Again, they were asked questions by...
Congressmen and congresswoman, for anyone doesn't know.
And they basically were asked questions by liberals and conservatives,
especially Matt Gaze.
He was on here for a considerably long time.
Like it was like an hour or if not long,
maybe a couple of hours.
I can't remember now.
It just felt really long.
But he had a huge number of questions from a variety of people.
So I have much respect to him.
He was asked some tough questions as well from liberals.
He answered all of them.
And then today we had what I already explained to you, which was the finance space and the team broke some news.
And then Mario did a number of posts about that.
So it's been, and now we've got this major, huge, dynamic crypto space where we're going to destroy the crypto nerds.
Yeah, so another couple of things.
And then we'll kick off the panel.
First, another thing that happened during the Descenta spaces,
we had Benny Johnson, who's a regular on the show,
and he's friends with a lot of people from the Trump administration,
and he said something publicly that I've heard others close to Trump say as well,
and that Trump is coming to Twitter, which is big news, but not surprising.
So he was confident in making that an official statement,
and he's going to be leveraging spaces as well.
So I've pinned the tweet above.
I just tweeted it before this space, and I've included the clip in it.
Also on a side note, what I want to do is let me retweet something.
I've retweeted and I'm going to pin it above.
I want you all to watch the video.
No joke.
Watch the video.
Bro, oh my God.
Salman.
Okay, stop for a sec.
Bro, you need a girl?
How many times you do you do?
I did not call you out on this.
I did not call you out on this when you did it when Matt Gables is on.
I thought, you know what?
I'm going to let this kid look like he actually, you know, let him have his fun.
But you can't do it again the next day, bro.
Like, what are you doing?
Yeah, so I wanted to, I wanted to, yeah, I want to pin this video above.
Watch it.
For me, this was Trump, Trump posted this video.
You know, I'm not saying I'm a Trump fan.
I hate Trump.
I love Trump.
I'm not saying any of those things.
Yeah.
All I'm saying is that watch that video and put in the comments whether you find it funny or not.
Again, I didn't make this video.
I'm just retweeting it, what Trump tweeted.
And I found it to be the funniest video.
I've seen in months.
Can I ask you put in the comments that when you watch it once, it's funny.
But when you basically watch it 100 times and mention it in like...
five different spaces over the three days.
Like,
is that what you would do as well?
Yeah, I've watched it about,
getting close to 10 times in the last three, four days.
It's,
it's,
Borovic,
you should watch it again, bro.
I'm not sure.
Have you seen it,
Borovic?
Have you seen the video?
I've just pinned above.
I watched the video.
It's,
I think it's kind of hilarious.
Man, do you remember when I first saw Hitler and the devil
and Dick Cheney and that billionaire George Soros
and their Wefkeye Schwab?
I just love that Dick Cheney.
Bro, why are you mentioning it in the space as well?
Because these crypto nerds are going to make a meme kind of
Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm not endorsing any coin, but when I saw those names, I'm like, shit, like this is, this is something I don't want to touch.
But when I play it, then when I hit the going off, and I know the script, they got it from a movie called The Downfall, it turned out to be the funniest, the favorite video I've posted.
But, all right, now we're good to go.
So...
I'm gonna tell you who the sponsors are now.
The point of this show is gonna be pretty interesting.
Funny, Slay, man, a lot of the anti-crypto guys we had.
So we had a lot of guys from Wall Street that was meant to come on.
But I'm not sure what's going on.
Either Twitter's glitching, they're not able to come on.
But literally, none of them are here.
Let me see if any anti-crypto people are on stage.
Oh, we got Reid is here.
Read, where are you?
Oh, there, John. How are you, John?
Good, good. I'm fine. I'm on my own, I guess, huh?
No, you do have, you do have Tanty with you as well. Let me see if Tanty,
managed to come up. Oh, there he is. Tantz, how are you, man?
Good, it's a tad light here in good old Germany, so excuse me for sounding maybe a little bit less energetic than some other people here.
You're excused and then obviously we have Slayman, but the problem is John Slayman and I'm being a...
Do not do not chat nonsense, Mario. Don't be trying to do you just kind of see how much knowledge he has about crypto.
I'm a huge amount of knowledge on crypto.
Yeah, so, so the, so the purpose, the purpose of the space is the first segment will be discussing crypto in general.
Um, because, you know, a few months ago, I wouldn't even bring up this topic.
Like should we is, is crypto a scam? Is crypto legitimate? Is it overhyped?
Uh, are the use cases?
you know,
worth the market caps that we're seeing.
This discussion I wouldn't have just a year,
year and a half ago.
But obviously after the,
the shit show that happened in the last 12 months,
12 to 24 months,
we're in a different environment.
And the sentiment outside the crypto community
is not as bad as it was in 2018.
but it's definitely not great either and significantly worse than our thought so it's
it's actually going to be an interesting conversation and then we're going to move something to
something a lot more interesting and that's meme coin so everyone on stage especially the the
bitcoin ogs so we have we have dennis we have udi um and we have has not here where are you
a dusties here as well um and we've got del fiddy so we've got a lot of great speakers um
Rob, I don't know, I haven't mentioned you, Rob, because I don't know if you're anti or pro-crypto.
So I think you're pro-crypto, so I'll put you in that category.
But I want you guys to stay because we're going to bring up a bunch of meme coiners and
NFT community people.
And our second co-host who does his own spaces, Borovic, does some of the biggest spaces in the NFT community.
and he's, I've warned him.
I gave him a call before this.
I'm like, man, if we take jabs at you, if we interrupt you, if we attack you, don't be offended.
He's like, I'm chill, man, don't worry.
So I made it very clear to him because the meme coin debate is going to get a bit more heated than last time.
So that would be the second segment that we'll have in a bit because I'm, yeah, I'm kind of,
Sick of some of the shit that I'm seeing.
But to kick it off, what I want to do is mention the sponsors.
I know we kick off the discussion.
So we got the sponsor number one is, and I'm going to tweet them in a bit,
and we're going to give out some money for people that comment about which favorite sponsor they like.
and why they like them.
We haven't given out money in a while,
but we do those in the crypto spaces.
So the first sponsor is Kwan Q-W-A-N,
the handle is the Kwan underscore I-O.
So Kwan is a decentralized cross-chain
and gas-free network
that allows developers to build
and deploy high-performance DAPs.
So they're reshaping the gaming world towards a brighter future with this easy integration into games, platforms and applications, but providing utility, incentive and governance, giving true ownership to gamers across games and platforms through a unified currency.
They'll be pitching later today.
Did you understand, Sassaliman, just to give you an idea of your knowledge.
Did you understand anything I just said?
Be honest.
Yeah, bro, I understood all of it.
And I'm ready to ask this guy questions.
I got some sick questions.
You were briefed beforehand.
I didn't know.
You know the sponsors beforehand.
The second one is Arcus.
Arcus Geo-Go 8.
So Arcus is a blockchain-based first-person shooter mobile games.
I'm a big fan of Web3 games.
We used to do a lot of Web3 gaming spaces back in the day before we became who we are now.
It's a first-person shooter game.
It's a mobile game that uses bow and arrow combat.
So if you're a gamer, you want to check it out.
It's called Arcus.
It's an intense, fun, real-time and arena-based PVP game.
PVPs player versus player.
And by the way, just for the panel, we do have people from outside the crypto world that
will be listening today.
So it's important to keep things simple for them.
It will feature a variety of NFTs that can be used to customize characters and weapons.
So they VC back, they work with crypto.com, and they've got 45 plus strategic partners.
The first, the third sponsor, so I've got three here.
Yeah, I've only got three.
I thought I have more.
The third sponsor is...
The fourth.
Yeah, what's the...
Oh, there's the fourth one.
Yeah, yeah.
Cryptokades.
C-R-Y-P-K-C-A-D is a social Metaverse platform powered by AI.
Okay, they got the two cool words.
The buzzwords, Metaverse and AI.
Put them together.
We got Crip-Cade.
It's powered by AI that allows users to play, earn, and socialize.
It features a variety of games, including NFT-based games,
and a social hub where users can interact with each other.
So I like, and I'm not referring to Cryptgate, in general,
I like social metaverses that integrate gaming.
I think social metaverses, so social digital ecosystems
that don't have gaming, and not that interesting.
And I see John listening to me now and Tante, don't block me guys.
Dennis as well, don't block me.
I know you guys might not like a lot of these projects.
when you're critical of the of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
And the last one, I think you like this one is USP coin.
I think there is security token.
They are there.
USP is a real estate tokenization platform.
It's Ethereum based that uses blockchain technology to tokenize real estate assets.
I know that's been hyped up for many years now.
As a use case, that makes sense.
It's hard to refute that.
We'll see.
Maybe some people disagree.
Okay.
This allows investors to buy and sell real estate tokens, which represent ownership in real estate assets.
USP coin is a security token.
Yep, I was right.
That's making it possible to preserve your savings in US real estate.
Potential advantages are ability to fight inflation, global access to US real estate,
and investing in startups starting from a dollar.
So it's a cheap way to invest in, sorry, invest starting at a dollar, not investing in startups.
So these are the sponsors for today.
I appreciate them all.
They'll be pitching later in the show.
I want to welcome the panel.
So the first question for the panel.
And maybe, Udi, I want to go to you.
It's been a while you have been on the stage.
And the reason I'm going to you,
because you keep popping up on my feed, man.
Something about wizard hats.
You're getting a lot of criticism.
So maybe briefly from Bitcoin to NFTs,
I don't know your full story.
I want to maybe a quick introduction because I think it relates to the discussion.
And then the second part is where do you see crypto today and keeping it simple for the audience that's outside the ecosystem and a lot of people that are skeptical.
And where do you see the ecosystem where we are today?
For John, anyone else, Tante, Rob, anyone else to speak, just put your hand up or just jump in if you want to disagree with Udi or add anything to what he's saying.
But Udi, we'd love to get your thoughts on where the ecosystem is today.
Yeah, so for me, I mean, first of all, thanks for having me.
Yeah, I just like wearing wizard hats.
It's kind of part of my culture.
But, you know, for me, I've been a bitterner for 10 years.
And I think specifically in the Bitcoin ecosystem, I think in the last...
four months or so, there's been this kind of reawakening.
A bunch of stuff that people have been trying
in the rest of the crypto ecosystem is kind of trickling down into Bitcoin.
That's something that, you know, Bitcoin historically I've been talking about for many years.
Like, I remember when I got to Bitcoin 10 years ago, people used to say,
well, you know, we'll have all those other coins, all those alt coins.
They're going to try out a bunch of stuff.
And if someone succeed.
Yeah, I'll fix it, John.
I'll bring you down and back up.
Sorry, go ahead, Euddy.
Yeah, and people used to say if the stuff in the altcoins succeed, then maybe the best of it will be kind of adopted by Bitcoin over time.
And I think we're seeing that kind of happening in the last few months with NFTs on Bitcoin.
Recently some meme coins on Bitcoin too, which I'm still not sure what I think about that.
But yeah, there's been this kind of reawaking.
Yeah, which I want to, we're going to touch the Bitcoin meme coins a bit later because I'm not that's very polarizing.
And we're going to discuss it in the Bitcoin, sorry, meme coin debate in a bit.
but let me let me go to del or john guys actually let me make this easy first before we get a let me let me ask a
question i have i have a question i want i want to like it's a very general question i have if you like
it maybe you can let them answer it if not you can replace it with another question but i wanted
to go to del um or john and get you know what is your main concern with crypto like
Like, how, because I don't know your stances, guys, like completely anti-cryptal.
Like we had Professor Plum, Michael Green that was going to come on, maybe comes on in a bit,
or special sits is a bit more mild.
But Michael Green was like really not a fan of crypto.
Like he hates the fact that I have a crypto punk, criticize me for it when we did the finance basis.
He's, we're chill.
But I want to get your stances.
Maybe Del, where do you stand on that spectrum of being pro or anti-crypto?
Yeah, so first off, thanks, thanks for having me, having me back, actually.
Yeah, last time I was here, I talked about being, I think, said, crypto agnostic.
And the reason for me is because of this kind of discrepancy between reality and theory.
So for me, it's the theory of crypto sounds sound.
And, you know, in the early days, not as early as you.
You know, I had a lot of friends in space, people who made...
and know people who make good money, you know, folks without, you know, like elite backgrounds or anything, have the opportunity to make some great money.
And I understand, like, you know, kind of the proposed freedom produced benefits of it.
But then actually, you know, working in the venture capital space and seeing the way that the mechanism was used to,
skirt regulation. I'm not talking about, you know, with the average crypto investor. I'm talking
about the VCs themselves, right, as just a pure means to drive liquidity without creating any
value and then leaving the actual holders of a lot of, a lot of these crypto assets with,
with nothing. And so how seeing it all kind of be controlled by, you know, the
richest people in the world and kind of
recreating the system that it is meant to circumvent
has made me much more skeptical and then knowing where all of that money ends up
also has made me much more skeptical.
So I'm still on that kind of theory versus practice dynamic.
Like I can see the theoretical benefits,
but it's really just like what on the ground has actually happened
that I look at and I go, you know, I can't be...
you know, 100% for it.
So is it what?
Centralization of wealth and and regulation.
Like John,
it seems that whenever I ask people that are not fans of crypto,
regulation is like the only excuse they always go to,
which is a fair excuse,
but that you shouldn't be anti-crypto
if crypto's not regulated.
Well, look, first of all,
Let's start with crypto's axiomatic parade of horribles, from ransomware to just about every single crime out there.
Ransomware is the best one because but for Bitcoin, there would be no ransomware.
It's spent the last decade or so or less working, helping people who are victims of ransomware.
So you have all these dire externalities, and then you sit back and you sort of say, okay, for what?
What is, is it worth these dire externalities?
And don't say to me that, well, Fiat has dire externalities too.
That's not true.
Of course Fiat has...
terrible things that people do. Of course, finance needs a lot of help. I spent 20 years in the
SEC Division of Enforcement getting people who were committing financial crimes. I get it.
But with crypto, it's orders of magnitude much higher. And crypto is not traceable, despite what
people might say, have written a lengthy article about this. I was an instructor at the FBI Academy
in Quantico. I meet with the FBI frequently. And
You just look at last year, FinCEN said that there were over 1251 ransomware attacks,
and the payments were about $1.3 billion.
None of those people were ever caught or brought to justice or even identified.
So if crypto were so traceable, then all these victims that I've been helping would somehow
get their money back or somehow those people would be found.
But let's put all that stuff aside.
and just say, okay, does crypto work as an investment?
Well, there is no regulatory oversight.
There's no transparency, no consumer protections, no insurance, no licensure, no net capital
requirements.
And the rugpole bazaar is so rife with market manipulation, insider trading and fraud.
The investors stand no chance in the course of that.
How do you even value Bitcoin?
There's no balance sheet.
There's no cash flow.
It's just greater fool theory.
And it fails as a currency as well because the price is too volatile.
The fees are too high.
The taxes are too burdensome.
The risks are too infinite.
You know, just think about it.
Every time you spend your crypto, you've got to pay taxes on it, every single transaction.
And unless you've lost money on it, then I guess you don't.
But aside from all the fees, and I've looked very closely at the fees, I went to the local
supermarket and tried to and traded a bunch of coins for crypto, for a bunch of doge coin.
The fees were outrageous and usurious.
So it fails as an investment because of all that lack of oversight.
It fails as a currency.
It fails as a store of value because it lacks utility or any intrinsic benefit, which is the
measure of what an asset is actually worth.
So, you know, this idea that, hey, it's a great store of value. Well, how do you say it's a store of value when you can't even value it in any way other than the greater fool theory? And what about the marketplace? And there have been.
too remarkably, there've been actually a bunch of articles written about how the marketplace is so corrupt.
All this data that you receive, all these data points, there's no regulation about any of them either.
John, John, how do you really feel about that?
Let me go on, because there's a few more points.
Before you go on, let me, you've made a lot of points, John.
I think a lot of valid points.
I'll let you jump on on on, Dennis, jump on on addressing some of those points that John made because I know he's got more of them.
I think that point about investor protections is very interesting.
You know, like, there's all types of crypto coins.
And some of them do kind of look like a company that maybe investors would like to have investor protection for them.
But Bitcoin is not one of them.
But Bitcoin is literally not controlled by anyone.
No one can rug pull you.
So you don't, you by default do not need investor protections because there's nothing to protect you from.
There's no kind of...
There's no kind of group in control or some kind of NTC or corporation.
So you're saying because there's no centralization, protection isn't even needed, correct?
That's a complete myth.
Of course there's centralization.
There's the exchanges.
There's the miners.
There's all the fee collectors throughout.
The exchanges are regulated.
The exchanges are regulated.
They are not regulated.
It depends on which exchange you do.
They're absolutely not regulated.
When you say something's regulated by calling yourself an exchange or a broker dealer or a market maker, these trading platforms, they co-opt historically powerful nomenclature, and that implies trust, oversight, and consumer protection. But that's just the total rules.
Ruth, if a drug dealer suddenly offered to perform brain surgery for their customers,
but had never gone to college or to medical school, never done a hospital internship, a residency,
and their only health training consisted of watching a few TikTok videos on how to sell heroin to elementary kids,
that's what you're talking about.
By hijacking these bona fide labels,
together with a sleek website and a few celebrities.
Let's just consider the no record keeping an archive requirement.
John, can I just reply to one point you made?
Let me say it.
No record keeping and archiving requirements.
No requirements regarding the pricing or order flow of transactions.
No reason to abide by U.S. statutes and rules prohibiting manipulation, insider trading,
trading ahead of customers.
No mandated cybersecurity requirements or standards to combat online attackers and protect customer privacy.
No requirements to establish mandated training or code of conduct requirements.
No obligation to have in place internal compliance, customer service whistleblower teams to address and archive customer complaints.
No requirement to reverse charges if any dispute or problem arises.
No mandated robust and document process for the redress and management of customer compliance.
customer complaints, no minimum financial standards for operation, liquidity, net capital,
no U.S. governmental team of objective auditors and examiners to inspect and scrutinize
the fairness and execution of transactions, nothing to ensure consistency of trading operations,
That's a that's a fascinating.
John, John, John, John, John, John, can I, can I just, can I just answer everything you just said right now?
Because you talked about the fact that it's not tangible, there's no asset, blah, blah, blah.
You probably bought a diamond ring for your wife, I assume.
Yeah.
You know that diamonds are abundant.
You pay more because the beers has a bunch in their vault.
So you're paying for an intrinsic value.
When Amazon in 2002 was at $135 and it went all the way down the five,
nothing changed that to company at all.
All the assets were the same.
Where you were trading was intrinsic value.
as well. Plus, since 2000 or 2001, there's been 563 bank failures that are regulated
and have everything you just mentioned about the transactions. 548 billion dollars lost,
right? Never recovered. You know what? You look at the first exchange that ever existed in,
in, in, in, in Bitcoin, which now I'm forgetting the name of it, but
Most of those funds were recuperated.
FTX, big tobacco, $8 billion, $6 billion of it's already been repriced.
You keep saying they're not, you keep saying they're not, they're not reaching.
That couple that stole money from Ethereum, they had their wallet watch, they had their wallet watch, that money's being recuperated.
Thanks, let me tell you, thanks, first.
we regulate ourselves
because everything's on-
I can say,
hello, JoJo.
I'm pro-Crypto, I'm pro-Crypto,
but we cannot say
we regulate ourselves.
I think we kind of,
I agree with everything you said.
Again, I've got a crypto
as a profile photo.
But can we still say,
and Joe, the question for you?
Yeah.
Can we still say that we self-regulation works
after what happened?
No, of course not.
It has.
What's happened in the past.
And all of the Genesis
and,
Celsius block phi.
You know, here's the thing, okay, if you get up tomorrow and you're a regulated entity for the SEC...
They weren't $548 billion like the U.S. banks were, John.
Banks are heavily regulated.
What do you mean? Come on.
You're talking about crumbs.
Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
If you're comparing two things like banks,
and a crypto exchange.
That is, I'm sorry, respectfully.
Yeah, but that's what the ethos of crypto.
You're talking about centralized finance.
You don't have to use the exchange.
That's what everybody uses.
That's what everybody uses.
You want to put it in a popcorn tin in your bathroom
under a blanket on your laptop.
You can go and do that.
A lot of people do that.
You know what?
That doesn't make any sense either.
Banks are heavily regulated.
Depositors have protected.
Well, are you trying to tell us what makes sense or what's dangerous?
Because if you try to make sense, there's no insurance,
no regulatory oversight, no consumer protections, no examinations, no net capital requirements,
no auditing, no licensure, no cybersecurity standards, no standards, no fiduciaries,
no segregation of customer assets.
It's just an article.
We heard that list before.
Okay.
So if you're actually arguing.
that if you're in a better place, if your stuff is with finance or your stuff is with FTX or your stuff is with BlockFi or Celsius or Voyager, than a regulated entity, I can't compete with that argument because it's so absurd.
The bank, look at all the depositors of every, of signature, SVP, Republic, all the regional banks, have any of them not gotten their money back?
You know, are you saying to me when you wake up in the morning and you see on your
FTX screen that your trades have been suspended and you can't ever touch your money and
you become an unsecured creditor, last in line, never going to get a nickel back versus
if you're at a broker dealer and something happens and there's a team of SEC and FINRA examiners
at that place the next day.
But John, you don't have to use, but you don't have to use FTX.
But you don't have to use FTCX.
If you want something institutional regulated, you can go use Fidelity right now.
You don't have to use FTCS.
You don't have to use Binance.
You have options.
And that's what that's the nice thing about crypto and Bitcoin.
You have options.
Some people want to be like complete degen's and use Binance or use options.
Any person who recommends that they put their money with an exchange is violating.
If they're a registered person is violating their fiduciary duty because.
That custody has no safe to your controls.
And people don't understand that.
You know, here's the biggest thing about crypto that's so amazing is that, and it really
strikes at the heart of everything, just how horrendous.
They say this is going to help the unbanked.
This is going to help the financial inclusion.
It's a big affinity fraud.
It's not just a Ponzi scheme.
Because if you look at the studies that have been done by the Brookings Institution, if you read
Michelle Singletary, who's kind of a legend here in Washington, D.C., she wrote an article
of the Washington Post about how all of these entities use this as a pitch to get people
of color, to get people who, the downtrodden, to say, hey, we're going to solve all this problem.
But the truth is, as all of these studies have said, all of those people have lost money because
of this.
And so it's a big scam to say that it actually helps those people.
And it's what we used to call the SEC.
It does not.
It's taking advantage of people who don't understand finance.
You have to be accredited an investor to make any kind of money.
You have to be accredited.
Look at Coinbase testing.
John, how have mutual funds done for that?
Dennis, I want you,
I'm curious.
Dennis, can you tell me what you think on the banking,
the unbanked, which is one of the main use cases of Bitcoin,
and one of the main use cases has been mentioned since the early days?
Well, I'll start off by saying to John that, you know, I find your points very interesting around the regulatory approach for exchanges and for the space.
I don't necessarily find, you know, any sort of fault with what you're saying.
In fact, you know, I work with, you know, several members of Congress and one of them, this is their main key issue that they're focused on fixing.
Now, I'm not a fan of regulation.
Right.
I don't think necessarily you would be either, John, of just blatant regulation.
But to have no regulation in the face of exchanges, traditional exchanges that are highly regulated,
just doesn't seem right.
At the bare minimum, you know, crypto exchanges should have some level of regulation that at least mirrors or comes close to what we see from traditional exchanges.
And that doesn't exist.
Now, now that being said, I think going on to the, you know, you jump kind of leaped over to the,
banking, the unbanked component.
And I obviously disagree there.
I think that Bitcoin, specifically Bitcoin,
very much so does give the opportunity for those
for those without access to financial services, the ability to be banked.
And just really simply does it in a couple of ways.
But the biggest one is that if you don't have a physical address or,
or let's say you don't have a good credit score,
like you can't actually get a bank account.
So there are millions of Americans and billions of individuals on this planet
who have no access to financial services.
And Bitcoin doesn't require you to have any of those things.
There's no sort of restrictions on whether you need a home address to sign up.
So if you're homeless,
There are millions of homeless people across the country, across the world, and they are not able to do your financial services because you need.
Go ahead.
John, keep going.
I'm sorry.
You.
You need to be able to have an address to gain access to financial services from a traditional bank, which is just extremely common within the United States.
I wouldn't say I'm a master of regulatory regimes across the entire planet, but that is one component.
And if you want to keep providing better services, if you want to change the regulations within America to provide those services, I'm not opposed to that, but simply for the fact that Bitcoin does provide that, it does get...
access to those that are currently on banks, the ability to be...
There's not a single study that supports that.
Every study that I've ever seen in that space...
We're like...
There's a study that just came out.
There's a study that just came out that there's an increased percentage of people using...
Bitcoin and crypto that are
I just gave you
I just gave you
four sources I can give you
There's a recent JP Morgan's
And I've written this all in an article
You can go to my website
And read one of the articles
I've recently written
I think on the one on Coinbase
I talked about it
John I don't need to go to your website
Well, I'm telling you that the Brookings Institution, Michelle Singletary, Sir J.Gorgan, University of Chicago.
I'll say that that's completely...
Let me ask you.
So, John, let me ask you a question of this show.
You totally fall.
That's what I'm saying.
No, it's not.
Let me support what I'm saying.
Let me ask you a question if you don't mind.
Let me ask you.
No, but Dennis, can I ask Dennis for the sources?
So, Dennis, where's the source for yours information that there's been an increase in people who are unbanked and are able to be banked?
Let me go look it up for you.
I was something that just came out today, but it came across my...
Yeah, Dennis is...
It was a government...
It was...
Listen, hold on, it was a government agency, so it wasn't like, oh, Brookings Institute.
It was an actual government agency that came out and said there was an increased percentage of people that are using crypto that are currently on...
Yeah, and there's a whole bunch of them.
Dennis, I'll give you a couple of minutes to go find a few,
just use chat, GPT, you can find a whole bunch of them.
Because, and John, I'll give you examples.
So Lebanon and Venezuela, two obvious examples.
I have, and Ukraine.
So I have friends and family and employees
in pretty much all three countries.
My partner is Ukrainian, my parents are Lebanese, and I've got a lot of employees in Lebanon and Venezuela and some in Ukraine.
And the way I was able to send them money was through sending them Bitcoin or Ethereum or Stables.
Isn't that banking the unbanked, isn't that a store of value or a use case that is difficult to argue or you don't believe that's a use case?
John, you're muted.
In the meantime, by the way, just while John unmute...
I get that, no, I get that, Mario.
Go ahead, sorry, John.
And I think that's an excellent point.
And I really think it's a fair point.
I'm talking primarily...
I'm talking primarily about the areas that I know about, which are the U.S.
You know, my friends, Jacob Silverman and Ben McKinsey,
they traveled to El Salvador and actually went around to see
how does this Bitcoin work in a place like El Salvador,
and they wrote extensively about it.
And they came to my house...
and met with me and we discussed it for several hours.
And it just is a complete, not just a disaster.
It's just an oppressive regime using Bitcoin as a ruse to fool a lot of people.
But your point, Mario, I think is a fair one.
And I think, Dennis, if you're making that point, I haven't been to these countries.
I haven't.
You know, and I'm kind of older now, so it's not likely that I'm going to get to those countries.
But, you know, so maybe in some country it works because the government is so corrupt and
And this is the best way for people to somehow transact.
I feel like they still are going to need Fiat in order to really transact, which is what happened in El Salvador.
But I think that's a fair point, both Mario and Dennis.
If you're talking about other countries that I haven't been to and I haven't spoken to anybody from those countries...
But I do look at every study and I read it carefully.
And I think the one at the Brookings Institution, certainly from Tenazid Carmona, is very compelling.
I think the University of Chicago study is very compelling.
I think the J.P. Morgan study is compelling.
And I think Michelle Singletary's column is very compelling because there were a bunch of statistics that she covered and she cited several studies.
And this was just two weeks ago.
and again, she's a very legendary columnist here in D.C.
been doing this for 30 years, and she talks about this kind of thing.
That's the best I can do for you, Mario, in terms of telling you empirically why it is just an affinity fraud when I look at those studies.
But I also think it's a, it's a.
terrible way to invest when you can't even put a value on it.
Let me go to Brian, I've got a question for you.
Before that, just let me tell a couple of things for the audience.
So number one, I've just pinned it above all the sponsors.
So choose your favorite one.
Put a comment on why it's your favorite.
If you want to win some money, I think we're giving away,
I don't know how many thousand dollars.
Either $1,000 or $1,000 for each sponsor,
a comment for each sponsor.
So that's pinned above.
And number two, we're gonna be anyone for the meme coin debate.
And the NFT debate, which I know is going to get a lot more heated.
And that's requesting.
We'll be starting that in a bit.
So just stay with us there.
Secondly, the Twitter space is glitching.
It just looks a bit of the numbers are all over the place.
Anyone that's having issues jumping in or issues coming up on stage.
Just DM me and the team will help you out.
Brian, my question to you, man, is regulation, regulation, regulation, regulation.
Everyone's talking about that we're going through a crypto bear run, similar to what we had in 2018.
And it's just a matter of time.
A lot of us are kind of...
you know, putting it, you know, our actions is in, you know, putting it where our mouth is and
putting money into the ecosystem now when everything is undervalued, expecting it to recover as it did
in 2020, 2021. Now, I'm not asking you to predict what the markets will do. I'll probably ask
Dusty to do that. But my question to you is,
Is it different this time?
Or are we going through the same bear on we had previously?
Because it seems like regulators are cracking down.
Let me give you an example, Brian.
I actually wrote them down.
It's going to be pretty crazy.
Slaman, you're going to enjoy this one.
Let me tell you a few of the things that you consider
as a tax on crypto or just regulation towards crypto.
And let me know what you think, Brian.
Now I'm going to go to Michael afterwards.
There's an SEC lawsuit against Paxos regarding BUSD.
SEC targets cracking, another big crypto exchange.
Paxos, they issued BUSD, which is a third biggest stable coin in the ecosystem.
Gary Gensler labeled all crypto as security except for Bitcoin, that was a few months ago.
Senate committee held a hearing on BTC's environmental, so Bitcoin's environmental impact.
Biden, there's a Biden bill that targets crypto miners on tax.
The New York Attorney General declares ETH a security again a few months ago.
The SEC blocks the BTC ETF, Bitcoin ETF, again.
Silvergate collapsed after an SEC investigation.
The court blocks Binance from buying Voyager.
And now we know there's a whole investigation into Binance as well by the SEC and other,
I think it was it the SEC or the another regulator that's investigated by?
The CFTC.
The OCC lets crypto bank trust charter application expire.
Again, a few months ago, Coinbase got an SEC Wells notice not too long ago.
And the SEC is targeting a whole bunch of crypto influences,
which I think is the best out of all these.
And obviously we saw what happened with Bynast.
We saw the Reuters hit piece on Bynast.
I'm calling it a hit piece because I genuinely,
initially I thought it was something really concerning
then I read into it.
It wasn't as concerning as they made it out to be.
So I just feel, Brian, there is either a targeted attack,
some would call it a targeted attack,
others would call it much needed regulation.
that's cracking down on crypto.
And I haven't even started talking about the Restrict Act,
which is a whole different discussion.
And I don't think crypto understands how concerning that could be.
But I think we could discuss that in another space.
Is it different this time or is the same shit different day for the ecosystem as it continues to mature?
Yeah, look, and as an early stage investor, I have vested interest in this, but I'm
I'm pro regulation.
It's just, I want to see sensible regulation.
I want to see bright line guidelines.
I want to have it be clear.
I want things to be updated.
A lot of these acts from the 30s and the 40s, you know, really don't apply in my view
to today.
And I think we just need to have clarity around a lot of these things.
Look, I think it's positive.
I think we could see, I was just on a panel today at Vulcan 3 in New York, Vulcan Forge,
it's a big event, a Web 3 game studio.
Anthony Scaramucci was on stage and he was saying he agreed as well.
You know, we could see Bitcoin at 60K or 100K tomorrow if we have positive regulation.
So it's positive for that side of things too.
And I think it brings an institutional money and clarity for these companies.
A lot of what we're seeing is honest companies that really just want to build things in the blockchain space that have really good use cases like gaming, as you were involved with Web3 gaming as well.
where that's a really good use case, but they just don't have clarity, especially in the U.S., and we're not getting it.
SEC is just kind of arbitrarily going after people and using these old guidelines.
You know, maybe stuff has to get pushed through that is clearer, but it seems...
Can I address that? Regulation would be...
And just really quickly, I don't know if you want to see up top, John, but I posted up there that the Federal Reserve came out and said that use of cryptocurrency for financial transactions was more common amongst the unbanked.
I don't.
So I think it just kind of goes and it flies in the face of like your comments.
I think it helps me.
The point is it's an affinity fraud targeting the unbanked and the unbanked are losing lots of money because of it.
And that's what I think.
Or it's a lack of the financial services and sector that we have like providing services to the unbank.
That gives a need for Bitcoin to be able to do this thing.
I have to quickly step in here and say,
my whole reason as to why I started with crypto
was because a bank was a very annoying process.
It was about 10 years ago.
And for the last five years,
I've been working with a very large group
to actually try and get people in Nigeria,
specifically more access to financial services.
Because I'm not...
If someone's talking, I can't hear.
Oh, you can't hear?
No, all good, Dusty. Everyone can hear except Joe. Go ahead.
Maybe for John, it's hard to imagine.
But there are so ridiculous in many people that really want to get into this banking realm,
want to be able to transact to receive money, but just have absolutely no way to do so.
And like I said, if you actually go and travel to these places, potentially in El Salvador, it wasn't that good of an option.
But to so many places, they're extremely happy to find out a new way to be able to transact that nobody can take away from them, that nobody can stop them from, that nobody has control over.
And they can, yeah.
I get that. You know what I mean? I honestly get that. But that's not the way it is in the U.S.
Okay. There are about a dozen anti-money laundering statutes that are built around the fact that the government is going to know what you're doing with your bank.
And you might not like that.
I'm a serious libertarian.
Most of my writing, if you looked at anything I've written,
and I've been teaching law school for 20 years, so I've written a lot,
is anti-SEC, anti-FBI, even though I teach at the FBI Academy,
if you read anything I've written,
and I wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal against the SEC,
I wrote a scathing article about the FBI's use of 102s.
So I totally get what you're saying,
but that's just not what the law is in the U.S.,
You know, the law just, it says that because they're worried about terrorism and all of these congresspeople have voted for it, it's just not a defense to say, well, people don't want to know.
People want to be secretive in their transactions.
And that's a note.
I certainly would like to be secretive in my transactions, but that's just not the way it works with thin sand and suspicious activity reports.
So I appreciate what you're saying, and I'd probably vote against some of the AML stuff that's out there.
I'd probably be with you.
And I think the SEC is constantly overreaching.
I just wrote two scathing articles about SEC overreaching in administrative proceedings and in a lawsuit they have against a law firm where they're seeking client names because of the data breach.
But this idea of regulatory clarity, this is the talking point of all of these crypto companies.
And again, having worked at the SEC and the enforcement division for 20 years, including 11 as chief of the Office of the Internet Enforcement,
There is absolutely regulatory clarity in this space.
And when I was chief of the Internet Enforcement Office, people always made the same argument.
Hey, this is a new technology.
We need regulatory clarity.
You can't take these old laws and apply them.
Well, these old laws were written specifically.
not security regulation is not meant to be precise it is intentionally drafted to be
broad and all encompassing clarity is not just uncommon is deliberately avoided and if you
read the supreme court cases including one of the last opinions that justice thurgood
marshall wrote he talked about how the securities laws were never meant
to cabin the scope of securities regulation.
So if you look at police-
John, can I ask you, though,
isn't regulation to help to protect the people?
Wait a minute.
Because the easiest way to protect people is to launch an ETF.
We wouldn't have all these issues.
the reason you can't want to use by binaance and use ftx 70 percent of the purchases are bitcoin
the easiest way to protect americans is to launch an etf and they refuse to do it the marketplace is so
well did you did you read the letter that the cc wrote that where they specifically did in like 20
pages explained in meticulous detail
that it's a total black hole with respect to what these entities are doing, and that runs counter to the investor protection.
There needs to be transparency.
But back to my point, if you look at policing foreign bribery payments, municipal securities fraud, derivative scams, unlawful insider trading,
subprime grits, eel farms, ostrich farms, orange groves.
And look at a lot of the cases I brought in the 90s were against these things called prime
bank instruments.
And prime bank instruments were bogus instruments purporting to represent a secondary market
for standby letters of credit.
Completely fictional had come over from Europe.
And the Chicago Housing Authority bought $4 million worth of these notes.
And...
It was a terrible thing.
They went to court and the court said, well, look, the SEC has said these prime bank notes
are fictional, so they can't possibly be securities.
Well, the circuit court disagreed in the case called SEC versus Lauer and said, look,
if these prime bank notes were what they purported to be, they would be securities.
That's how broad security regulation is.
Let me just ask a interesting point, John, you made.
I get the point about regulation.
It's a strong argument.
Borovic, I mean, you're hosting the show.
What about his argument?
And I thought he made a good argument about this as well,
that the volatile nature of cryptocurrency
means it's completely unfeasible
to have it be a replacement for Fiat.
Yeah, that's not a really good argument.
If that's your only argument that it's volatile, I mean, markets are volatile.
I mean, not everything could be, you know, Amazon, Apple, that goes up only.
I mean, there's plenty.
There's plenty of assets that are volatile.
And the fact that it's volatile, that just goes back to the type of market is a free market.
You know, it's not manipulate in the sense of like where government interferes, you know.
So, yeah.
It's just not that way.
Hector, also, I want you to comment on that, before I go to Michael and Dell, I want you to comment on the argument because Slaman makes the argument every time.
The first thing you always says, oh, it's volatile, it's volatile, it's volatile.
Maybe you can talk about how any new asset class will start out to be more volatile.
As it matures, it becomes less and less volatile.
Yeah.
When's it gonna mature as well?
It's already been matured.
It's a lot less volatile now than it was Amazon, for example.
If look at Amazon, it was like, it was like,
Bitcoin was like 32,000 just a few weeks ago.
And now it's like 26.
Simon, there was a quarter where it was less volatile
than the NASDAQ.
There was already a quarter was less volatile
than NASDAQ, just so you know.
Hector?
It's huge volatility.
Like, come on, 25, you lose 25%.
Okay, so huge volatility, but less volatile than the NASDAQ, yeah?
Hector, go ahead.
What about the tax requirements?
Sorry.
Hold on.
Yeah, go ahead, Hector.
I want to go to Del and Michael afterwards.
Go ahead, Hector.
I agree with John a lot, what he's saying.
A lot of these, this technology is really not being used as it, as is being advertised,
especially with Dennis's argument of saying, banking me unbanked.
It's like pretty much crap.
Sorry, Amar.
If you look at just El Salvador.
Oh, good. I'll fix it.
If you look at just El Salvador.
Go ahead, Hector.
If you look at just South Salvador, there's roughly by the central bank saying that less than 1% of all remittances are being done through crypto, not just Bitcoin.
So even a lesser percentage than 1% is being done by Bitcoin with a country having legal tender being Bitcoin, it's pretty sad when in reality there's still one of the largest...
places in the world that do remittances. So Bitcoin is not actually solving a problem that is really required there.
If that was really the case, everyone in El Salvador would be running to Bitcoin to be solving the remittance issue that they have every day.
So that only points.
Sorry. So how isn't it fixing the remittance issue? Sorry, I missed it.
well the reason it's not is because it's it's vastly more expensive right and it's it's less
possible like right now if i wanted to send el salvador i can go to western union and pay five dollars
to do it and have it sent to them directly and use usd to then transact in the economy versus the
inverses i have to go buy bitcoin pay an exchange fee then have to send that bitcoin with another fee
then they have to capture that bitcoin on their end then go pay a fee to transact that bitcoin so that that's the
effectively three places where I lose money and purchasing power to be able to use that Bitcoin in the economy.
That's a terrible way to be using this currency.
Like it's, and it gets, the problem exacerbates with more people using it.
So if I say, for example, nobody's using it right now.
Hector, you're forgetting the exchange rate, you're forgetting the exchange rate, which also happens with the Western Union.
But the fees are much higher.
Change rate.
No, but not just the exchange rate, also the minor rate, which is what we see when people like Udi, for example, want to do ordnals and have fun, you know, that drives prices all the way up to $50, $100 and even farther in the future.
Then that means less and less people will be able to use it.
People in the software won't even consider it to be a use case because it would be $50 to make a $10 transaction.
Right.
So people in a sad point, it gets even worse.
The things you're saying are incredibly inaccurate.
People in Losavala are already using second layer networks.
No, they're not.
Nobody's using that's what I'm telling you.
They're using layer one already.
They literally are.
No, they're not using layer one.
If they were losing, if they were using layer one, you see a spike in usage,
but there's not a spike in usage.
There hasn't been a spike in usage since Elinos came out.
You just said there was.
Yeah, because of ordnals, not because of El Salvadorans.
And because of Turkey, people in Turkey, 45% of people in Turkey are using crypto to escape inflation.
It's a very good use case in Turkey.
It's a fantasy belief to think that's the case.
If that was actually the case with millions of people fleeing inflation, you would see millions of transactions occurring.
But that's not the case.
They just put their savings into Bitcoin once a month.
And that's it.
That's absolutely not true.
The things you're saying are absolutely not true at all.
Look, we know for a fact.
They're not buying Bitcoin to save their money in the future.
Most of them are probably buying US dollars.
I would agree with them.
Exactly. So it's not Bitcoin because not solving the problem.
Some of them do buy Bitcoin. By the way, the way that they buy these dollars is not a belief.
It's an abstract belief that you have.
No, it's no, it's back by it's people that I know, man.
Sure, exactly. And your anecdotal evidence is, I mean, your, your own evidence is not the actual reality of what's happening.
Like you can have 100% of your people.
Neither is yours.
There's, look, there's been, there's been papers about that.
But not only, but not only Bitcoin usage, the way that people in Turkey buy dollars,
the way people in Venezuela, especially by dollars, is.
is by buying stable coins.
That's the main way that they have to buy dollars.
They get access to dollars.
You can't use through crypto.
You can't use stable coins to pay for anything.
They aren't payment.
They're not paying.
They're literally, they're not paying for anything.
John, this argument about not being able to use crypto, I solely use crypto.
The same way that you.
The same way you solely, I live in a country that doesn't tax crypto.
Okay.
Now, because I moved there purposely.
I moved there purposely.
Sorry, guys.
But John, you can travel.
Sorry, guys.
Just I need an important announcement.
There is...
some kind of Twitter glitch going on.
So if anyone gets thrown out the space, you can come right in.
If any of the speakers are getting thrown out of the space,
you can come right in.
It's happening to all the spaces.
I was in a number of spaces earlier on today,
and you basically get thrown out.
So don't think that somebody from the space threw you out.
Even the audience numbers are like all over the place.
No, no, but it actually says you get a symbol said you've been removed from the space.
It's been happening all day.
And so some people may think that we're throwing them out when we're not.
All right, cool.
John, if you use the U.S. dollar, like, I'm sure you hold most of your cash in, or your liquid cash in U.S. dollar, right?
If you were to travel to the U.K.,
I doubt highly, like most tourists, that you would then convert all your money into the British pound and then use the pound at the local mark that you went to a restaurant or whatever may be.
I hold it in Bitcoin or I hold it in other tokens.
And when I go to a store, it gets converted into the local fee and the transaction is done.
The same way your US dollar gets converted into the local fee it and gets done.
Right. So you can use it as cash. Everyone keeps making this argument that you can't. You can the same way you use a
foreign reserve currency. Oh, you're killing your own argument there by saying you're self-sovereign individual when you're leading a middleman to make the transactions for you. That's not what the Bitcoin purpose is. You're trying to treat it like it's a it's not there. It's not there. Yeah.
No, it's never going to be there because you're using middlemen to facilitate this cash-like feeling.
That's not really what's happening when you're having these middlemen settle in between you.
You have half a billion people involved in crypto until there's a lot more people involved in crypto.
That's not going to happen because you can't walk to your local 7-Eleven and they'll be like, oh, yeah, I'll take your Bitcoin.
You know, look, purple in the U.S.
This is what I'm talking about is in the U.S. you have to pay taxes.
taxes. And the IRS just got $80 billion to go after people who haven't paid their taxes in crypto.
On January 1st, 2024, two new regulations are going to come in. Every single exchange is going to have to file 10.99.
John, you just said like 10 minutes ago, you just said you cannot track.
crypto and that's why you can't track it oh wait a minute wait a minute i'll tell you i'll tell you how
the irs does it this is exactly how they're going to take their 80 billion dollars they're going to
use it to get jondo lost jondos subpoenas they've already saw it about half a dozen of them they've
gotten one every single time then they're going to subpoena coin base and they're going to say give me
every single person that profited by x amount in in
to from 2015 or 2022 then they're going to it's going to be like shooting fish in a barrel okay
again i was a prosecutor for 20 years and i'll tell you it'll be like but that's going to work for
everything else too no what are you talking about what are you talking about here's the point what's
going to happen to every single person on coinbase
or on any of these other exchanges.
Again, on January 1st, 2024,
they're all going to have to submit 1099s
anytime anybody uses it.
Secondly, if you go to buy your Rolex on 47th Street
and spend more than $10,000,
they're going to have to report that as well.
No one here disagrees.
No one here disagrees.
No one here just reads.
Everyone agrees that people should pay their taxes and that crypto is not a good tool to evade taxes.
Everyone agrees.
It's not evade.
I'm saying every time you spend it, it's a taxable transaction.
That's the point.
Every time I spend fiat, it's not a taxable transaction.
That's an incredible burden on people.
People.
aside from all the fact that, again, you have all these externalities, you have the price volatility, you have the risk, you have the transaction costs.
All of those things are baked in there, which make it a ridiculous, a ridiculous use of currency in the U.S., which is why.
John, can I tell you why it's not ridiculous? Can I tell you why it's not ridiculous?
I'll tell you why.
In 2010, a pizza cost 10,000 Bitcoin.
Today, it costs 0.000-0-3-7 Bitcoin.
A Big Mac in 2010 cost three bucks.
Today, it costs over $5.
That's why it's not a burden.
That's not why it's not a burden.
That's not a burden.
scam has worked and the Bitcoin price has gone up, but you still can't use it to buy anything
in the United States. It's a ridiculous. You just said they get taxed if they do use it.
That's right. Can they use it? Can they use it? Impossible. Do you want to tax yourself every time
you use Bitcoin for anything? Of course not. And do these stores want to deal with the AML
responsibilities that they're going to have?
starting in January 2024.
And if you don't pay your taxes,
do you want the IRS coming after you?
Do you want to deal with that?
Does everyone who uses Robin Hood pay their taxes?
Can they do multiple trades a day?
Of course they can.
Robin Hood submits all the paperwork.
Can you do it?
Nobody,
everybody pays their taxes on,
on stock transactions at Robin Hood,
because Robin Hood sends those 1099 to the government.
So if you decide not to pay your taxes on those stock,
you think, oh, nobody's gonna know, I made, you know,
$50,000 on Apple, that's not true
because the government has those forms
and they know exactly how much that you've gained
in terms of capital gains and how much you've lost.
And that's just the way it works in the U.S.
Again, maybe that's not a way that you like.
No, no, no.
I get it.
I am American.
That's what makes crypto a ridiculous use for currency.
That's why nobody uses it.
It's complete failure.
In Robin Hood, I can have every single last time I have in Apple stock.
I can sell it in Robin Hood right before I go to the Walmart and buy a Coca-Cola, right, and use it with my Robin Hood credit card.
I could do that today.
And I still pay my taxes and everything else.
Yes.
And I could do that today without a problem.
So I don't understand why it's a problem.
Every time, if you're talking about using your crypto to go down to the store, the grocery store, the liquor store, every time you buy something on Amazon, every time you buy anything on the street.
But you forget, you're paying the tax.
through inflation, John.
You're paying a tax through inflation.
You simply reclassify it as inflation instead of tax.
Okay.
So that's, but at the end of the day, it is a tax.
That's ludicrous.
I think we just found the person who's short.
I agree.
I agree that inflation is regressive, and that's a terrible thing.
I agree with that.
But just because...
You think that you're beating inflation by using Bitcoin.
Again, nobody accepts it anywhere in the U.S.
I don't think.
I did.
I did beat inflation by using Bitcoin.
Well, look, you know, then money, you're one of the lucky ones.
And when it goes down to zero, you know, you might still be one of the lucky ones
because you got in there early.
But everybody else who gets there a little later and gets in trouble.
And when you wake up in the morning and you're a Celsius investor or a BlockFi investor
or an FTCS investor or Voyager investor, and you suddenly see, get this thing on your screen that says,
trading suspended, you're blocked out of your account.
John, John, let me, let me ask you a Michael.
Let me, let me ask you a Michael a question.
What will, Michael, maybe you can go first,
because I know you share a lot of the same concerns as John,
maybe you can add on to them as well.
But what do you think the space needs for you to change your mind?
Is it use cases?
Is it regulation?
Is it both?
Well, it has a use case.
The last speaker.
Your audio, Michael, your audio is a very glitchy, a bit robotic.
Oh, that's a bummer.
Is that better?
No, it's the same.
I'll let you say your piece.
We'll keep it short because it's hard to hear you,
but I would love to hear what you thought is.
Just give me one second and just flip on.
All right, cool. So, John, maybe I'll let you go first with that same question. What do you think the space?
I think I know what Michael was going to say. He was about to say, right, Michael, it has a use and the use is crime.
It's great for drug dealing.
It's great for ransomware.
It's great for murder, for hire.
Let's see, let's see.
Maybe he's a bit more optimistic.
I never thought I'd find someone.
I never thought I'd find someone more pessimistic than Michael.
You could be it, John.
Michael.
Go ahead, Michael.
No, no, I actually think that.
What you just described is cash, too, by the way.
That's cash.
All right.
All right.
Whoever that was, I just chimed in.
Whoever that was, I just chimed in.
Actually, was an individual who articulated the primary use case for Bitcoin or for crypto.
which is speculation. It is actually the exact same as Apple stock.
What John has correctly pointed out, and he's done it exhaustively, and he's 100% correct,
is that there are limitations around how Apple can advertise its stock.
That's what the regulation is really providing. It's providing protections for investors
that say you can't say these things without running afoul stuff.
I've listened to any number of people speak in this space who have offered various interpretations and statements of what is fact,
that are actually fundamentally untrue,
but they face very few penalties and burdens associated with it
because you're actually dealing with a truly unregulated market
that it largely exists because it's been able to, you know, evade the authorities.
And they're all sorts of good, you know, feel-good stories around it.
I heard everyone say everyone should pay their taxes.
And yet simultaneously, people are saying, you know what,
it's really wonderful for getting money out of Lebanon.
Well, do you pay taxes in Lebanon?
So what you're saying is that it's okay to do crime in Lebanon,
which, by the way, I fully support.
I think those are coercive and abusive governments.
but you're really actually subsidizing it with the crime that you're committing in the United States.
I mean, like, it is, that's what it's being used for.
You can do money transfers to Lebanon.
You can do money transfers to Turkey.
How, but this is, how can you do money transfers to Lebanon?
Because I've tried sending money to people in Ukraine when the war started.
I've tried sending people to money to Lebanon or Venezuela.
Bank accounts to Lebanon, obviously, you know,
No one wants to put their money in their bank accounts after all the money.
So what happened in Lebanon for anyone listening, the currency collapsed for like 95 to 99%.
I think it's like 99% now, 99. Something.
And banks froze a couple of years ago.
They froze all the assets of every Lebanese citizen, rich or poor.
So how can you transfer money to anyone that has a bank account, assuming they have a bank account?
It's also not easy to get a bank account in Lebanon.
So that's exactly the point, right? It is a form of money laundering into Lebanon. You are evading the official controls. Now that can actually be a wonderful thing. It can't be a wonderful thing, right? That transfer, as exactly John was pointing out, and I will completely agree that these are unmet needs, and they're really, really important. But let's be very painfully clear. Lebanon has an economy of $25 billion a year.
You do not build half trillion or trillion dollar businesses around $25 billion economies.
That's not what it's for.
It is a side use case.
And it's also helped by the fact that, you know, it is extremely useful if you want to get contraband out of places like Lebanon or Turkey.
If you want to transit drugs through them, et cetera, it provides mechanisms for payments to individuals who are.
who are distinctly unsavory in that process, right?
And I understand that every single person on this call is somebody who truly believes
that they should pay their taxes, et cetera, but the underlying system itself is set up to
to facilitate crime and evasion, and whether that's happening in Lebanon, whether that's happening.
Michael, that's not true.
And you can look at the national cryptocurrency enforcement team.
And they've said 0.24% of all crypto transactions are used for illicit activity.
Yeah.
That's lower.
Wait a minute.
That's lower than gold.
That's lower than diamonds.
And that's lower than cash.
Real criminals will use diamonds or gold to transact and keep their currency and everything else.
Right.
And you can argue that gold is cash, right?
It's denationalized, denationalized currency.
How do you use diamonds or gold for ransomware?
How do you use diamonds or gold for ransomware?
You can't do it from them, but we're talking about 0.24,
and you guys keep parking on this point.
And it's lower than the dollar.
It's lower than diamonds and it's lower than gold.
And that's the only point you keep putting it.
No, this is exactly the point.
That is actually a totally fake statement.
When you say 0.24% of transactions, that's including all the exchange transactions, all the speculation.
If you do the same calculation for the U.S. dollar, right, that's quadrillions of dollars of transactions that are happening every year.
Far less is happening in terms of crime when you calculate it on apples for apples basis.
Like I said, transactions, Michael, not quantity, transactions.
I didn't say quantity.
That is not true.
The total end market transactions in the entire crypto universe are about $400 million a month.
It's a tiny...
And no one's talking about the capital.
This takes away what the value is, Michael.
Yeah, this is basically percentage of transactions.
And you measure the percentage of dollar transactions.
And it's higher.
Yeah.
No, that is not true.
Is that from a number of total transactions or a number of total volume of dollars distributed?
Like if you're saying if it's, there's a hundred million transactions,
transactions.
Yeah, but those, yeah, but those number of transactions that are that we're talking about,
the very small number could be billions of dollars or could be lots of money that's being.
Yeah, I took that out because of the difference in size, right?
So I'm not talking about the total capital.
You're not articulating that.
You're not telling us what that is.
You're telling us that you're just telling us raw number of transactions,
which I agree, the minority of transactions could be what in this case.
But are you telling me the dollar figures behind those transactions that are small?
Yeah, I don't have a study with that.
That's where we're missing.
But you can look at all of, you can look all of Bitcoin,
and that doesn't equal the guy, the bond guy from, what's his name, Madoff, right?
You can look at all the exchanges that failed.
It doesn't equal what Madoff did.
So I doubt you're going to get there through the volume.
Do you actually understand what happened with Madoff?
First, he wasn't a bond guy.
Secondly, the actual dollars that were lost in Madoff were largely inflated dollars.
It was claims of profits.
The actual losses in Madoff were in the single billions of dollars.
He was a bond guy.
That's not where he lost his money, though.
No, he wasn't.
No, he wasn't a bond guy.
This is actually exactly the problem is that you have all these people who actually think they know something.
but truly have no idea what they're talking about.
Michael, he owned the asset management firm,
and that asset management firm, not the hedge fund,
had majority of their investments in bonds.
Just like a lot of different ones.
That's just not true.
It's totally not true.
I was at the SEC when we prosecuted Madoff.
I can tell you all about it, and that's absolutely not true.
Just read any paper on Madoff.
He was not a registered investment advisor.
Then he became one and he had this secret place where he collected all this money and he gave all the...
Yeah, on a different floor.
I'm not talking about that floor.
I'm talking about the regular...
The one where he did have a license.
You're actually...
You're totally wrong.
You're just totally wrong.
The other floor was a market maker.
You're wrong.
Dennis, I want to go to you.
Not to you actually.
First, Michael, before I go to Dennis...
What are the use cases that you think crypto has beyond what you just mentioned earlier?
What are other use cases that you believe in, that you think have a future in the space?
So, I mean, I've said this over and over again.
I actually think that there is a very interesting dynamic associated with tokenization of securities, true natively digital securities.
We carry far more information than is embedded in a single Q-SIP.
All securities that are currently traded on U.S. exchanges are fundamentally paper-based.
There has to be a storage of documents of record.
That creates incredible burdens and prevents a lot of very interesting developments that could occur.
But ultimately, that doesn't require anything that's been done in the crypto space.
So the technology could be used for tokenization.
The technology could actually become valuable in that context.
We could ultimately find out that there's lots of interesting ways to engage with natively digital securities that are registered.
and that are properly monitored for the dynamics of fraud,
misstatement of facts, et cetera.
But we don't have that currently,
and candidly, the speculation that's going on in the space,
if anything, actually slows this process down.
At Blau, you've seen the debate happening now,
and I've seen the sentiment shift over the last 24 months.
You know, when I do that, I've said this before,
and Michael knows this, I get a lot of slack in the finance spaces,
for example, for still having a crypto punk.
and I had a few people bet me and they said,
Mario, the bottom is in when you remove your
crypto punk as a profile picture.
That's when crypto's bottomed.
I wanna get your thoughts and I wanna ask a question
I asked earlier is like, do you think this time it is different?
I know it's a dangerous thing to saying in finance,
but considering that every other bear market
preceded a bull market, do you expect the same thing now?
And I know we're talking about price just for now,
but also in terms of,
of use cases.
Do you see more adoption kicking in
over the next few months?
We saw with the blockchain gaming,
for example, decentralized ownership
of gaming assets as one use case.
Michael talked about the tokenization of assets.
One of our sponsors, they tokenized real estate,
US, and he's got USP coin,
which will be good to hear their pitching a bit.
I want to get your false blower
on what are some of the use cases
that you can maybe mention to Michael, John and Hector,
and Hector is going to be a tougher nut to crack.
that could maybe change their sentiment.
Yeah, you know, I've been listening to the conversation for a minute,
and funny enough, I actually agree with all of you.
I think everybody's making it more binary than it needs.
Sorry, I'm not hearing it, Mary.
Oh, wait, really?
Who said that?
Sorry, who can't hear?
Is that you, John?
That was John, sorry.
Yeah, yeah, I'll bring you down and back up, John.
All good.
Sorry, go ahead, blah.
But everyone else can.
Everyone, yeah, yeah, it's a common glitch.
Today's glitching like crazy.
Go ahead.
Oh, man, Twitter spaces. I tend to think of these things as non-binary.
Like, any technology is a tool that can be leveraged for good or evil.
We all know this, whether it's AI or blockchain technologies of any kind,
cryptography, et cetera.
I think the reality is there's a lot of interest in, and I think Michael said this earlier,
leveraging blockchains for metadata use cases that still run in compliant circles.
you know,
this is sort of how I've always been obsessed with the technology,
like all of its,
all of its features of transparency,
all of its features of liquidity,
The ability, you know, to send money anywhere in the world anytime, whether you're using that as a form of currency or as a store of value is really up to you as the user.
And I think the way that I was listening to the stage kind of talk about this is like it has to be either this or this.
When in reality, it's, you know, all of cryptography and blockchain technologies and distributed ledger technologies, L2's...
ZK roll-ups, all of these things, they're all across a spectrum of things that enable us to think about value in a different way.
And the example that I like to give to a lot of people is, you know, back in the, you know, the U.S. dollar has only been around for 400 years, right, or a little bit over 400 years.
And your 600 years, my math, forget my math.
And the reality is that like before that we traded goats for cows.
Right. And those were low liquidity instruments. And you'd go to marketplaces and villages and trade things. Right. And so I heard somebody, I think it might have been John say earlier, you can't spend Bitcoin very easily yet. Sure, you can't.
But the reality is these things have use cases from 10,000 feet up that we don't even necessarily know or see yet.
And one of those use cases was digital ownership of media assets.
That was my obsession for the past seven years.
Little did I ever know that NFTs would take off the way they did.
There was a small group of maybe a thousand people that even gave a shit about them six years ago, seven years ago.
and all of a sudden, you know, certain things happened and people's perspectives opened up to the idea that you could own something digital and that owning something digital might be more efficient than owning something physical when it comes to displaying or be talking about.
That digital asset that you own, does it need to be decentralized?
You know, I think the word decentralizes also on the spectrum, right?
Like proof of stake Ethereum, like node validation lies mostly with Lytto and Coinbase StakedEath.
So like, you know, there's always a degree.
There's always a degree of centralization, decentralization, all these things.
But the thing, the kind of end point to what I'm trying to say is this.
I think everyone on stage could probably agree that the technology is undeniably really freaking powerful.
And it went from zero to a trillion in 10 years, right, of total market capitalization.
That is still less than half of the market capitalization of Apple.
And yet we're talking about frictionless value transfer anywhere in the world that could be utilized for a number of things, whether it's digital ownership or in some cases as a currency.
And this new technology that enough people believe in has grown from zero into something significant.
My personal obsession is with the idea of digital ownership.
I think that owning a PFP is more interesting than owning a Rolex.
And that's my opinion. Someone might disagree. That's fine.
But there are other people that agree.
And that's also cool, right? Because that's how you create these micro communities in the digital world.
And so when we look at the future, I think everybody wants to do the right thing for the most part.
Not everybody, but I think everybody on this stage probably wants to do the right thing.
Pay taxes, follow laws.
We also understand that there isn't much regulatory clarity.
But the thing that I'm really excited about is the intersection of all of it.
Like what is okay?
What standards can politics establish?
Right.
And I say politics more broadly because we're talking global, not just in the U.S., like what policies can be established globally that enable a sandbox to exist for people to experiment in?
Because people like myself have basically dedicated my entire life to this, as I'm sure many of you on stage have as well.
We just want to do things the right way and leverage the technology to create real value for people, not speculative value.
And I agree someone else on stage said earlier, a lot of this has been speculative.
But just like dot com, and I think it's a good comparison to make, speculation does breed innovation in its first earliest stages, and eventually real value comes from it.
Amazon provides enormous value for the world.
In my opinion, right?
Like, I use Amazon all the fucking time.
I know a lot of people that use Amazon all the time.
We also use their web services to run a lot of things on the internet.
And so speculation is a prerec-rack to real value.
And I think, like, I guess I was just coming on stage to say,
keep minds more open and don't think of things in, like, super binary ways
because I don't think there's really an answer.
Question for you, Dennis and Blau, and then I want to get a quick market update by Adrian
and probably Dusty, but...
Do you think that the, I did go through all the different things that regulators are doing, in a way, targeting crypto, whether for the right reasons or the wrong reasons.
Do you think considering this regulatory crackdown, could we see a longer bear run or maybe even up to five, even more years before we see a recovery in the markets, a recovery back to new all-time highs?
I know we're doing a bit of price predictions here, but I'm, and I also not only price, not only looking at price, but also in terms of adoption, because I think adoption correlates with, with the price.
Yeah, Dennis, I know you've, you've been, you want to go for it.
I mean, personally, not a, not my wheelhouse. I'm like trying to predict the price of Bitcoin. I don't think anybody really knows for sure where Bitcoin is going to go.
And if the regulatory crackdown that takes place comes in has an impact on the price, I wouldn't be surprised.
I would also not be surprised if on the other side of,
a new regulatory framework that we see you know bitcoin potentially other assets go much much higher
than where they are today but i personally and i think mario even knows this i really try to stay
away from yeah i saw i i saw i went to blouse or anything else in a space i just really
it's all good it's all good wait wait you went to me you went to me first i i also kind of tend to
agree with dennis um that i i let me let me let me let me give the let me let me let me let me let me let
Mario, I will.
I will.
I'll be how you do.
All right, guys, let me...
China's deregulating.
It's a lot bigger than...
Let's see what...
Dennis, I know you got another point to make,
but let me get Tone's thoughts on that particular question,
the Oracle, Tone and Adrian.
Tond, you want to go first in terms of adoption and price,
considering the regulatory crackdown,
ignore the sentiment because we had worse sentiment in 2018.
In terms of use cases, we have more use cases now than we did in 2018.
Whether they're enough or not, that's something that we're debating.
But regulators, fuck, sorry guys, regulators are significantly more active this time around.
What impact do you think that'll have tone?
So in the long run, regulators are not going to have any impact whatsoever.
Like, it feels like Bitcoin is being adopted very, very slowly.
But in reality, it's actually being adopted somewhat quickly.
The difference with Bitcoin is that it's being adopted globally.
What was it?
Like, I think the telephone took like, what, 30 years to be adopted?
I mean, these things take a while.
Like, is it adopted in Asia?
What, Bitcoin?
No, not at all.
Asia is actually adopting it super slow.
I mean, we're seeing what El Salvador is doing and the Middle East.
Like in Dubai, for example, actually Tether is extremely popular.
And, yeah.
very extremely.
But for the wrong reasons.
You're looking at Dubai where all the Russian money due to the sanctions is coming in.
So I would be, I'm in Dubai now.
No, no, that's the right reason.
No, but that's literally the right reason, right?
John is because of the same.
John is just gave him a heart attack.
John, are you okay?
All right. I understand. I get it because I'm a libertarian. I feel it.
So go ahead, Tohn. The crime is unbelievable.
Let me let me let me let me let me let me yeah before I do that because I know your, you're, you're, I want to hear your predictions after Tone. Let's get a bit of optimism in Tone.
So real quick kind of price, right?
That's kind of what I do.
It's silly to say that I predict the price.
I don't predict the price, but I have been a trader for 20 years now.
And I started covering the price of Bitcoin going back to 2014 when I first started writing
articles about it and had a YouTube channel since then.
And we are just in a, the bear market has lasted for a while.
And at this point.
in Bitcoin's history. And Bitcoin's history is now going on, what, 13 years, 14 years.
So we do have some data to see some cyclical moves in Bitcoin. We are very close to the next
halving. That tends to drive the price of Bitcoin up. We've had an extended bear market where
Bitcoin fell 80%. That tends to create lows in the price of Bitcoin.
Now, we're also, there's also lots of on-chain analytics that are, I guess, rounding and going up.
Like, here's an example.
The number of Bitcoin wallets with one full Bitcoin has crossed one million wallets.
Now, if you think about it, if someone has accumulated enough Bitcoin for one pool Bitcoin, that person is not selling.
You don't accumulate one Bitcoin for speculation.
Right. One Bitcoin right now is $30,000.
If you are middle class and you've spent the last three years accumulating enough money to have one Bitcoin, you're not selling that.
You're waiting until it crosses $100,000, maybe even $200,000 for that Bitcoin.
And if you're able to accumulate one Bitcoin, you're able to accumulate two Bitcoin because you're at that, I guess, income level.
This is the Bitcoin that has left the market.
Remember, there's only going to be 21 million Bitcoin.
And approximately 10% has been agreed upon that it's lost forever.
And it's just not accessible due to lost keys.
You have that metric.
You have the Lightning Network, which allows for micropayments.
and I'm going to suck it up this.
I'm going to jump in just because I know you get a bit technical and we do have a more general
audience here.
And I also want to say just to the panel, we are shifting to the dirty side of crypto and dirty
in a positive and negative way.
I mean, we're here in the last hour and a half.
This was the dirty side as well, but please.
He's done.
No, we're gonna start debating meme coins and NFTs.
So if you think, John, Michael, Hector,
if you think that you know,
you didn't like this part of crypto,
If you stick around for the next one, you're in for a shock because this stuff you're not going to like.
I can guarantee you from now.
Wait, I might be able to make him like it.
We'll see, Blah.
We'll see, Blah.
I'm glad you're here.
It's going to be interesting.
So feel free to stay if you want to debate, debate meme coins.
And I know, Dennis, you're not a big fan of those.
Meme coins and NFTs.
And I split crypto into two parts.
Split them to more, but two main parts.
Fundamental crypto.
and degen crypto, degenerate crypto.
And we're going to move on to the degenerate side of the ecosystem.
And I think John does the same.
He calls them scams and bigger scams.
Yeah.
I think even though I'm not a trader at all, I can predict the price of Bitcoin.
And I think it'll be surprised by my prediction because I think you're right, Mario,
we're in the midst of a regulatory onslaught of epic proportions, right?
The SEC has brought 143 crypto-related cases and they've just hired 33 more people
for their crypto enforcement unit, almost doubling the size, making it the largest
of any specialized unit.
The CFTC just filed a really intense lawsuit against finance.
Obviously, the Coinbase lawsuit, like I said on our last Twitter space, the Coinbase
lawsuit is imminent, whether they charge fraud or not.
We don't know.
We know Coinbase is going to fight it.
Whether they charge, they're probably going to charge not failure to register as an
exchange, failure to register as a broker dealer, and failure to register,
As a clearing firm, they may make other charges as well.
You never know.
I mean, usually in my cases, we had informants telling us all kinds of other things that the public doesn't know.
All we know is what Coinbase told them.
The FDIC and the Fed have both said specifically to any bank that wants to do crypto.
Not only do they need to notify the FDIC and the Fed, but they need permission.
The Department of Labor has said specifically anybody who, and they have this kind of SEC like jurisdiction over crypto.
uh, pardon me, over retirement funds as opposed to the normal traditional SEC jurisdiction
over ordinary funds. And they have said that anybody who recommends crypto and then for
anybody's retirement account is essentially breaching their fiduciary duty. So, and then you
have the IRS getting 80 billion dollars filing these John Doe lawsuits and they are
But John, what happens if DeSantis wins?
Well, no, you know, that's a great.
That's an excellent point.
That's an excellent.
So what I was going to say is, so I think the Bitcoin price with all these, all these lawsuits are going to keep happening.
But if a Republican gets elected, it will come to a screeching halt.
But it's RFK, too.
It's DeSantis and RFK are pro-P crypto.
Oh, absolutely.
Any Republican who gets elected.
Any Republican who gets elected, the SEC will shift.
They're going to, they'll immediately approve if Hester Perst becomes like an acting SEC chair.
during any interim, they'll immediately allow for a Bitcoin spot ETF, which will boost the price up
significantly. That's just my opinion. Again, I have no insider knowledge, but I do think,
and I think it's sad that crypto, when I first started writing about this stuff in 2017,
I always thought it was an incredibly bipartisan issue. You know, you had Trump tweets and Maxine
Water tweets and Hillary Clinton tweets that all said the same thing about crypto.
So that's changed dramatically. And I've participated in a lot of these Hill proceedings and these recent testimonial proceedings. And it's just clear that there is a real partisan change. So, you know, whatever your party is, if you make the vote, if a Republican gets elected, that's what I think, Mario. I think the price will go up significantly. But, yeah.
You know, don't bank.
I'm not a price.
So John just gave us financial advice, everyone.
John, thank you so much for giving us crypto financial advice.
Adrian, do you agree with John before we start getting into the dirty side?
Before we get down and dirty.
Adrian, good to have you, by the way, Adrian.
It's been a while.
Yeah, good to have him, Mary.
Good to, well, good to hear you, Mary.
I would not see.
A long time, my man.
Yeah, listen, I mean, there has been...
This has been a very interesting discussion so far, right?
And I see kind of like both sides of the story here.
And I do appreciate the risks and also the return side of that.
So I do.
It's definitely coming, you know, a long way, 14 years, kind of like, you know, almost.
Yeah.
ready with full history.
So it's still new.
It's still finding its own way.
It's still innovative.
It's still definitely early in the overall adoption stage.
Whether it's going to be adopted or not.
It depends on many, many factors that I argue would,
we are not able to predict, right?
Anything that is that we try to predict is basically going to be very,
very much more difficult as we had deeper into the future, right?
So...
So it's almost impossible to, of course, predict where Bitcoin is going.
I completely agree with that.
However, by tracking the long-term trends, we can actually, well...
figure out the potential directions because this is what the market is telling us right and the market
is telling us just like previous great speakers you know just said that the bull market is in right
and i know many people who keep repeating that the bare market you know bear market this per market
that and most of the time they keep repeating the status quo and they keep repeating with a
you know, have basically had been doing for the past year or so, right?
So they are still stuck in the all bare market frames.
So arguably we're looking at some sort of like a disbelief stage, right,
where the greatest amount of cognitive dissonances.
This is where we most deny the reality.
This is where some people are still stuck in shorts, right?
Then typically the more aggressive,
the more aggressively they would voice out their short opinions,
you know,
probably it means they are over leveraged to the next day.
So Adrian,
more financial advice that we should all buy crypto
by the looks of it.
By the way,
this is not financial advice for anyone listening.
I'm just messing with you.
I know, I know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I would say, first of all, it's good to have some exposure, right?
Because it serves a good overall leverage when you try to build your portfolio
on an institutional level.
I still think it's undermined and undervalued in terms of the perspective of many portfolio managers.
Yeah, and that's it, Mario.
Like, if you listen to the space, essentially what people are saying is,
Yo, yo, you, yeah, Simon, I just got breaking news,
breaking news, bro.
Perfect timing because I don't want to hear your thoughts.
Breaking news, I just got insight.
I'm not saying who the source is,
but I'm going to read out exactly,
and they're still writing for me.
I'll read out exactly what they said.
I won't say who they are because I didn't get their permission.
Actually, hold on, let me, can I mention this?
in my space now. It's pretty cool.
So I'm just getting a panel ready.
This is going to be pretty epic.
I'm getting it.
You verify this, Mario.
It's not one of your blogs, is it?
No, this is just, I'm going to quote what someone said.
And yet, this person was just on TV,
and he talks to people in Washington all the time.
So I'll mention something.
It's going to make you very, very fucking happy.
And it's not going to be surprising for you.
It's not surprising for me.
But I'll read out the first sentences...
So sorry for the delay was on TV.
Today made me realize how powerful your spaces are.
And I'm waiting for permission to read the next sentence on why he said that,
epic sentence.
In the meantime, while we're doing that, Dennis, I don't know if you're going to run away,
but we are getting the meme coin and NFT community up.
Let me read out.
Let me see if I got permission to read this first.
Just he's typing.
I want to get a yes, so I can read it.
I'm so very excited to mention it to the audience.
While you're reading that, while you're getting your response from...
Mention, yeah, comments and the pin tweet,
guys, any comments you've got about these meme, you know, these memers?
All they do is memes, so they'll be spamming the comments with memes.
So in order to educate them that you can actually write letters and words,
write down your questions and write down your statements to hammer these guys in the comments.
No, no, no, no.
No, no, a meme is a million words.
A meme is not a million words.
Yes, it is.
Yes, it is.
Pepe meme is like a trillion words.
A meme is what, 10 words if you're lucky?
No, I could send you a meme and 10 different people can interpret it and say different things.
Bro, what are you on about?
What happens?
And you can interpret it in a million ways, bro.
That's how read the sentences.
Yeah, well, then you're proving my point.
All right, guys, just let me read out.
I got permission here.
I'm not going to say who said it.
Today, maybe we realize how powerful your spaces are.
Caucus members off guard.
Darnish was telling me about an article that essentially cited the leak in the hill.
So that's the tweet I did earlier.
You can see it on my profile,
and we have a lot of people that weren't here earlier.
So essentially on our space early in the morning,
we had news break and Darnish verified a few sources,
and it took me a while to tweet it.
So like after 30 minutes after we broke the news in my space,
we tweeted it to verify the sources.
That a deal, a handshake deal was reached in terms of the debt ceiling
and raising the debt limit.
which included a 3% boost in defense spending,
which I know the GOP side is going to go crazy on this.
So that was really major news.
I got a lot of pushback when I announced it,
but we did verify the sources,
and then the people that gave me pushback,
they're like, actually, Mario, we verified it, and it's true.
So now we've got almost getting close to 10 sources that confirmed this.
And then not long ago, I tweeted an article by the Hill in which, this is fascinating.
We've had many instances like this, but this one's pretty unique.
An article that pointed out, let me read out.
So a GOP member, his name is, so he's a GOP debt ceiling negotiator,
a lawmaker, Republican, Representative Patrick McHenry.
And he says the following.
He's attacking, so a few hours ago, we did an urgent space, so...
Where is it?
Okay.
So Representative Patrick McKenry denounced the leaks as he walked into Speaker Kevin McCarthy's office.
And he says the following.
Everyone wants a detail of this.
Everyone wants a tweet.
I want an agreement that changes the trajectory of this country.
But the tweets, the context, the details and all the stuff and the leaks don't serve getting an agreement that changes the trajectory of the country.
And it seems there's a lot of people that are unhappy up in D.C. about the leaks that happen in our space and the tweet.
And I've got more messages.
I'll read out one of them off the record.
Well, I'll tell you this.
I haven't read this one.
I'm reading it for the first time.
Well, I'll tell you this.
My contact said that when we went live and started discussing that the deal was done,
minus final details.
There were a ton of members on the Republican side going nuts,
asking how were they close to finalizing a deal without members knowing?
So we knew this is fucking mental.
We knew before members of Congress found out and Republicans went wild and unsurprisingly,
as I said earlier, that's not some good news for them.
And this is off the record because he asked me not, he asked me not to say anything else.
So this is the updates on this developing story.
So all hell broke loose after we released this.
And I wouldn't be surprised.
And also I may love to hate on mainstream media.
I don't.
I criticize them, but objectively, not like you.
But I genuinely think they had.
I'm objective.
I know.
I know.
I know.
They objectively share.
We had a few journalists confirm this to us, but they did not release a story.
Only one publication on Yahoo Finance, as far as I know before I went to have a nap,
and released this information.
And very briefly, they sneaked it in one of the article.
And I wouldn't be surprised because lawmakers don't want that information out until a deal is reached.
So I don't know if I did wrong releasing that information because I don't think it brings any good to the world.
They could wait to have that news.
And I think I did jeopardize the negotiations that were happening behind the scenes.
No, you never. Stop being a baby.
Yeah, no, I'm not being a baby.
I'm being objective.
You're related to the public.
You let them know what's going on.
I don't think we should have.
I think we should have been more careful.
But I didn't know that that could, I didn't know.
I thought that the media is going to release that information an hour or two after us.
I don't know.
It's going to take them that long.
And, you know, if it did jeopardize those negotiations, which are important, you know, important for the entire country, I do apologize. That was not our intention. But we're trying to do it.
I apologize. But it's not been a goal. Why would what you said impact the negotiations logically?
I just read it, man.
I don't know if you hear me.
I just told you.
No, no, I understand.
They need to finalize.
They need to find...
I'm asking you.
I don't know if you hear me.
I don't think you understood it,
but anyway,
let you answer the last third.
Where are you about?
And then we'll get into the meme coin debate.
But let me tell what I think.
Um...
When a deal is reached, they need to figure out the final details and then they need to inform the rest of the members before this information leaks.
If the rest of the members know there's a handshake deal done without their knowledge and without that information being shared with them, they're not going to be too happy.
So us leaking it, and this is very common, whenever there's behind the seas negotiations,
it's not meant to leak for obvious reasons.
So us leaking it didn't really bring any good.
We didn't save anyone from losing money in a bank run.
We didn't save anyone, I don't think we brought that much good.
We did the right thing you could argue.
But if we did jeopardize those negotiations, that that definitely was not my intention.
or our intention.
Mario, Mario, I'll argue it.
A 3% increase in defense spending is insane.
They should be cutting defense spending, not increasing it.
So if you jeopardize it, great.
Exactly.
That's what I was about to say, Tony.
We got another one confirming.
Okay.
I won't say who it is, but Mario, as someone in the audience now, Mario, I can give you
additional confirmation to credible sources personally, and I know the person that sent me
that message, and someone that I know personally, not personally, but I know who they are.
They've doxxed and they trusted. So, fuck yeah, we did it, man.
What I'm trying to say, Mario, is essentially, like I said, it is important for journalists
that they don't basically counter to the government, so you have to hold them to account.
So I disagree that it was a bad decision.
But bro, like, this is fucking insane, like what our space did.
I can't get credit for it.
Danish gets the credit.
I wasn't even online when he broke the news.
I came in right after.
So Danish, well done, bro.
But that's the morning finance space that Michael Green and John and Joa join every morning.
But let's go back to the topic at hand.
Number one, pin tweet above.
Okay, someone, Joe, I stop pinning shit, bro.
Pintread above is the sponsors for today.
Choose your favorite one and we're giving away either $1,000 or $5,000.
I don't know.
It does the team, but giving away money to the best comment when you choose your project you like.
And tell us why.
The reason we're doing that obviously is to boost engagement to get more reach for the tweets.
And I'll be choosing the comments and it won't be some crappy meme.
So make sure you're writing letters and words.
Yes, let me have to be impressed.
Now,
I'm glad that Dennis is still here with us.
Because last time we got into meme coins,
Dennis is like, fuck this and left and I didn't blame him.
So it's going to be interesting.
I don't know how long he lasts.
So who has the balls to make the arguments
on why meme coins should be taken seriously?
Who has the guts?
to kick it off and make...
I have the balls to do it.
I do.
Why should we take point?
See what I mean?
Mario.
Mario.
Mario.
Anyone with a dot E for your name.
Okay, guys, I'm sorry.
Before you jump, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You couldn't be more well-time, Mario,
because I actually do have to go.
Oh, what a coincidence to this.
A lot of coincidence.
Thank you so much for having me up.
I wish we were going to have more opportunity to go back and forth on the use cases of Bitcoin.
Because we didn't even get into the energy conversation of how Bitcoin mining is going to advance the energy industry in a number of different ways.
And so thank you, John.
Despite the fact that we disagree on many things, I thought you came fighting with the facts.
At least, Dennis, John is not a chicken.
He's still here.
Yeah, yeah.
A lot of obvious experience and knowledge backing up some of the things you say,
even though we disagree on some of those things.
So thank you, everybody, and I'll see you on the next one.
I appreciate it, Dennis.
All right, Baravik, you were saying I brought up Lala as well.
I brought some support, man.
I brought some support.
I brought Paui.
I brought Fidi.
I brought Wab.
I got Lala.
Blows here.
Like, you guys are unfairly represented here, and I think you're still going to get crushed.
Even though I'm in the middle.
I'm genuinely in the middle.
Slaid man hates them.
Joa doesn't like...
Why you in the middle for, bro?
Don't be accepting these meme coins, shit coins, bro.
Barovic, go ahead.
Yeah, look, it's very simple.
Mario, if you ran a poll right now
and said, hey, who in the audience
understood anything that happened the last hour?
Like, normal people, they'd be like,
they would understand.
Like, nothing you said the last hour and a half
like makes any sense to normal people who don't have any financial background.
But if you talk about a meme coin, literally everyone in the world understands a meme.
You could show a meme to a five-year-old and they'll understand what it is.
They'll laugh.
They'll be like, oh, wow, like, that's funny.
They'll interpret it in their own way.
That's why I said it's worth a million words, maybe even a trillion words.
It's also the best gateway drug into crypto.
Also, earlier we were talking about centralized finance.
All of this bullshit that happened over the last year of all these blowups of Celsius,
BlockFi, that's all centralized finance.
The same blowups happen in traditional finance as well, right?
Well, defy, right?
If you want to get these shit coins that are not in any exchanges, guess where that is.
That's Uniswap.
That's on decking, right?
You know what's worse than a crypto punk?
A clown.
Now, imagine putting both of them together, man.
But please continue your point, please, sorry.
Well, look, look, I am a crypto punk clown, but my whole point is that the shit coins that aren't available anywhere by Uni swap, it forces people, forces people who want to have fun.
And as long as they're responsible, I'm not saying go like mortgage your house.
I'm saying like throw a couple hundred dollars and have fun, learn about defy.
It forced them to go on, to go on, learn about defy, learn about, you know, making a metamask or getting a ledger, and then.
going and having fun. In order to do that, they have to, you know, use D-Fi.
So they use Hoonyswap. They buy some shit coins. They start learning about, you know, different protocols.
Maybe they'll get interested in lending. They'll use Compounder Abe and realize, oh, man, I don't need Blockfire Celsius.
We have lending protocols. So it's essentially a gateway drug.
Let me ask the most serious question. Let me ask the most serious question.
So how are meme coins regulated? And the reason I ask is,
regulation is there to avoid the fucking stupidity and ugly side of humanity.
And one of those ugly aspects of humanity is greed.
And because we're greedy, what many people do is they launch a coin.
A few people behind the scenes get early access to it.
And then when the audience, the retail market starts to hear about it on social media, they put their money playing with it, putting a couple of hundred dollars in, which is what you're making it out to me.
Some people put a lot more than that because of the promises being made.
The early guys just dump on them and it's pretty common for these meme coins or shit coins, whatever term you want to use, to just last a few days and weeks.
It might sound fun to you.
Because you're early.
You're leading some of the biggest spaces in the space.
It might sound fun to poet who gets really early access to those.
Maybe everyone on stage here.
Translation, Mario.
It's fun for you guys.
How about the early, how about the late idiots like Slyman?
Still being an edge.
Look, look.
For someone like Sleighman,
it's fun for you guys because you're making the bag,
but the other losers are losing.
That's what Mario said.
Go ahead, sorry.
No, it's very simple, right?
You're talking about all the shit coins that I go to zero after like a couple hours after a day or so, right?
I mean, first of all, here's what it does.
It teaches someone who comes into the space to identify a rub pull like early on.
You identify like, okay, what does what does lock liquidity mean?
What does renouncing on contract mean?
It teaches it makes them want to go on YouTube and learn about how, you know, Ethereum actually works, how the chain works, how to actually like.
Can I do a little bit of research?
Let me do you.
Let me do you.
Let me do you.
I'm doing your favor.
It's much this.
This points will be.
Right.
guess what happened right when I wanted to learn about these meme coins I didn't have to get scammed by
hundreds of pounds or thousands of pound to learn about it no one cared about the last two hours of the
conversation no no it's gonna go youtube to learn about that you literally said you need to go do this
meme coin risk hundreds of thousands of pounds and then once you're in it you can learn it
guess what I can go YouTube and learn it before I get scammed well look that's
That's why I said,
have you ever
Have you ever, have you ever
Have you ever bought a shit coin?
Bro, I'm not dumb enough to get scammed
But I'm worried about the people who are
Okay, why are you so worried about other people?
I care about humanity, bro
That's a,
The way are you in my life?
When people like you are trying to scam them,
I'm gonna save them
And they think it's gonna go to the moon
No, people expect to lose the money
That's literally what you got to say is going to the moon
You go you buy it a lot.
You're taking your kiss to that money goodbye.
You go to Vegas.
You go to the black check pay at the table.
You're kissing that money goodbye.
Why do you think humanity is so fucking stupid that they're so stupid that they're buying
shit coins?
Why do you assume the worst in people?
You literally said, I should not care that you guys are scumming people.
I should allow it because...
Who said...
That's literally what you said.
No, he said...
No, I'm the...
He made it.
He made it.
I never said anything like, man,
that was your best comeback.
He's putting words in his mouth.
He already said putting words.
No, no. He said...
Why are you putting words to talk?
He says a lot, sorry.
Mario, you need to stop saying that because when I asked...
This guy's...
I've been listening to this to Lameen for a couple weeks now.
Every time I get on these fucking spaces...
You guys are shitting all over crypto, all over shitcoins, like a bunch of fucking
losers.
And I'm sorry to be fucking loose.
No, I don't mind it, bro.
I'm sick of hearing it.
Like, what's your prerogative?
Why do you care so much?
No, bro.
Why do you care so much?
Oh, I tell you.
Let's go ahead.
Let's get slim.
Let's get slim in response.
Let me go ahead.
I'll tell you.
And first of all, Paul, I loved what you said.
It's funny.
So don't worry.
I'm not offended.
But.
The thing is, I care because I want to stop you guys from scamming people and letting people know.
Wait, wait.
He said, essentially, what I want is, while you're as long as you're honest with the people,
and you tell them, guess what?
I'm on, by the way, if you scroll down my Twitter, if you scroll down my Twitter,
you will see all shit coins go.
I say all shit coins go to zero.
Expect to lose all your fucking money.
I disclaim it on everything.
I say not financial advice.
I'm not.
I'm open and honest with people all the time.
But you are assuming that everyone is stupid enough.
What about, what about everyone?
That's brilliant.
Now, like, if you do that, I value that because essentially,
you got to tell people the truth.
The problem I have, I have a poll is I've been on these spaces and
Honestly, you're the first person who's come up here.
Not the first.
One of the few people who've come on here and been on a straight way and said, guess what?
It's going to go to zero.
It's a gamble.
And that's fine.
But a lot of people...
It's all a shit coin.
Crypto is one big shit coin.
Bitcoin is a shit coin.
Ethereum is a shit coin.
Cardano's a shit coin.
It's all designed to pull multiple thousand Xs.
and for people to dump on it.
That's all it is.
First, let me say two things.
Let me, let me, let me, let me, bro.
But why do you guys, why do you guys, I want to know why you guys are making it your fucking journey,
mission of life to come on Twitter and hate on it all day.
No, no, bro.
Let me, let me respond.
Bro, people are out here making generational wealth.
people are here having a good time some people so much report let me let me let me let me
let me let me let me speak let me let me speak silly let me let me let me lose how bad so so yeah yeah so
number one i had a question for john but paura just i wanted to kind of just your last time when
you say people are making generational wealth this is exactly the statement like you said all
shik-goons go to zero but people are making generational wealth that statement will get people to
put a lot of money into shit coins.
That same is the dangerous one.
He's making, he's made the, he's made the,
you know, I was able to pay my medical bills from.
Yeah, but other people went up.
But other people, but other people, other people, yeah, but your gain,
Sully, can you stop talking for a sec, please, bro?
Your gain is other people's loss.
And John, I have a question for you.
I understand that.
Hold on Popo.
First, you're a beast of a debater, by the way, Paul.
So much respect.
John, I have a question for you.
Why are meme coins?
And probably the answer will be regulation, but is there something beyond regulation on the following question?
Why are meme coins not okay, but gambling is okay?
Well, you know, first of all, I think these guys have seen Wolf of Wall Street just too many times.
And everybody in the comments I was just reading is like, okay, boomer, okay, boomer.
Yeah, yeah, whatever.
I'm a boomer, okay?
And I can look back and say that these guys are the same scam artists that we're peddling penny stocks in the 80s, peddling microstops stocks in the 90s.
And that we're out here calling bullshit on it is the right way to go because people deserve protection.
We're here to help other people.
That's why we're put on this earth.
We're not here to watch other people get scammed.
And me, you know, I happen to have a lot of experience.
So victims come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
There's no standard profile.
But when you've spoken to enough of them, and I spoke to a lot of them over 20 years,
it's pretty sad to see people who lost it.
And even if they were being stupid, even if they admitted they were being stupid...
Who can keep their guard up for 24-7?
These guys are fast talkers.
These guys make a lot of sense.
Hey, you can get rich quick.
Okay, so why is it different than gambling?
Well, first of all, if you walk into a casino and you buy a bunch of chips,
and you go in there, you know that the dice aren't loaded.
You know that when you walk out of there, whatever chips you get,
you're going to be able to exchange for dollars.
You know that there's a whole enforcement regime surrounding everything.
You have faith that the cards...
are not being
manipulated that the crap dice
are not somehow...
How do you know?
How do you know that, bro?
Well, look.
You don't want the casino.
You don't know what to do in the...
I do know that.
I do know that.
No, you don't, bro.
No, you don't.
No, you don't.
There's a better argument.
There's a better argument, Po.
Okay, that's not, the fact is that, so when you look at these penny stocks and microcap stocks, which they now call beam stocks, and you can see there'll be another big special coming up on San B.C. on Monday, where they go over this as well. And so this is a very hot topic.
But these fast-talking wolf of Wall Street who don't care about people, don't care about ripping people off, are happy to disclose how joy their life, how wonderful their life is because they've stolen from all these innocent people who maybe got greedy, maybe got stupid.
I have a lot of sympathy for the victims.
And even the people who shout on me in Twitter or threaten my family or whatever, I realize, hey, I'm getting, I'm hitting something.
I'm hitting your financial well-being, so you're coming back hard at me.
I get that.
but you're going to be a victim.
And the fact that you're so proud of it
is really so incredibly disgusting to me
that I can't blame the other guy for just getting off
and not wanting to participate.
But I'll stand here and tell you that so long as I'm on this earth
I am going to call bullshit on what you're doing because it's not right.
And shit coins, whatever you want to call them, they're all securities, and you're all going to get busted sooner or later.
So I hope you do.
Why don't you educate people instead of like telling people, like instead of hating on it,
educate people to it actually.
You're not hating on it.
You're not people are not.
You're not stopping people from gambling on meme points.
You're not stopping people.
So instead of trying to stop people, because no one's going to listen to you,
tell them like
no one's going to
teach them how to be safe about it
you're doing the opposite
people listen to me all the time
okay I've been a law professor
for 20 years
and I was at the SEC for 20 years
you know when I get up and talk
sometimes people listen because hey
I am a boomer and I've been
experienced and have a lot of experience
seen a lot of victims. So just like, you know, when you're looking to get heart surgery like I had,
I talked to a doctor who has a lot of experience. I don't talk to some fast talking creep who's trying
to rip me off for his own gain so that he can pay his medical bills. I mean, it's just abhorrent,
you know, and it's nothing to be proud of. It's not why we were put on this earth. And thank
goodness that there are others who feel the same way that I do, because it's just not the kind of
society we want. So as far as educating people, okay, I'll educate people right now.
buying and risking your
choose your investment like you would choosing a doctor for heart surgery
due due diligence buy from only people that you trust
make sure when you buy something you fully understand what you're buying.
If you don't get it, then don't get it.
So that's my advice.
And guess what?
A lot of people ask me for investment advice like that, you know, generally.
And that's what I tell them.
I tell them to be safe and choose every investment like you would.
John, that's really good advice.
Let's go to Lala.
But it's not investing.
It's gambling.
Lala.
It's gambling.
One second.
One second.
One second.
One second.
One second.
I know John smushed you guys.
Lala, buck your people up.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, right off the bat, I don't even like the way that this conversation is being framed. Like every single time we have this meme coin versus bitcoiner's or meme coins versus, you know, like non-meamers. The framing is always like to put people that are having fun in meme coins like immediately on the defensive. And the question is like, why meme coins? Why mean points? I want to turn that.
entire thing around and be like, why not meme coins?
Because the same people that come at us for having fun with memes are the same people
that are advocating for decentralization and people being able to have our coffee on the internet.
Let me ask you a quick question.
Hold on.
Yeah, yeah, hold on.
So Lala, when you say having fun with memes, why do you, why you frame it like this?
Like let's just stick to facts.
We gamble money on memes.
We in behind the scenes we get in early, by the way, I think there's value to meme coins.
I'm just struggling that you guys are making a bad argument and I'll make an argument supporting
mushroom, bro.
Yeah, okay, bro, hold on.
So when you make an argument, okay, so I ask why not?
Why not?
Why not?
No, not why memes.
I'll reframe my question so it's very clear for you.
When you say having fun with memes,
So you're calling people that get in early in a coin, let the retail market come in and then dump on them is having fun.
Now, I do want to make a disclaimer before you respond, Lala.
This is not all meme coins, and there's a positive side to mean coins.
And I will smash Slyman for you.
Like, I'll do that for you guys because it's very easy.
I'll do that in a bit, though.
And John, I think I will in a bit.
But let me, let me, let me, let me smash Lala because I've been always too nice to her.
And John, I think you like my argument.
But Lala, do you understand where I'm coming from?
Like people are losing their money.
Lala, smashing, go on, right.
I can only understand where you guys are coming from in the context of like the only reason that we're here is to make money.
That's actually not like the primary reason for a lot of people engaging with memes.
Like memes are little here to buy a memes.
He's like, I'm actually a clown.
Like we're out here to have fun.
So yeah, yeah.
So post.
Okay, Lala, if you want to have fun, and that's okay.
Tweet memes.
Tweet memes.
Tweet memes.
Tweet memes.
Why do you want to put money into memes if you don't want to make money?
Okay, so I'll give a great example, all right?
So, okay, we're all fairly young in here, I guess, except for John.
And so we can all remember Wall Street bed, right?
So I'll just give my own personal experience.
I'm not dead yet, though.
I'm not yet yet.
Okay.
No, John, all of. But I mean, all of us in here were onboarded one way or another, right? So when we're talking about like the onboarding power of memes, like I was personally onboarded into the space because of how much fucking fun I had with Dogecoin, right? Everyone was like sticking it to the man. It was all like Occupy Wall Street. All of this like BS, regardless of your politics, it was.
really, really fun.
Like we were deep down.
Why do you put money into meme coins?
Lala.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to make money.
Most people in crypto want to make money.
But why would you put money into it if you don't want to make money?
I'll give you one last chance, I'll go to Dubsy.
So, but Mario, you're literally just asking the same exact question
that I just said was the whole problem with this conversation.
It's like, why not?
Like, why not allow people to gather around?
I understand.
Because it's registered and the time.
I know, I know.
It's not regular.
All are talking over me all the time whenever I come on the stage.
Let me finish my statement, okay.
Try to answer the question, though.
Why do you put money if you don't want to make money?
That's the question.
I'm curious about.
Go ahead.
Okay, but you got to let me stay a sense.
I want to have fun.
Okay.
Let me say the sentence.
So the whole concept of memes is this memetic conversation that people have,
this memetic bond that people have around an idea, right?
So back in the Wall Street Betts days, when Dogecoin was really pumping hard,
what was the entire concept there?
The entire concept was, we're going to create our own financial system.
Now you guys can laugh at that.
But the community was like,
We're going to create our own financial system.
We're not beholden to banks.
We're not beholden to people who are corrupt, yada, yada.
That was this memetic idea that people actually got really into.
People loved it.
People became friends through it.
A lot of us are still freaking bagholders at the bottom.
We don't care, baby.
We had a freaking good time.
And it also reinforced this memetic idea of like, we want to create something different
and apart from the mainframe.
that's exactly the issue that's exactly the issue because there's a group of people who will never care
they're always going to be seeked out by people who do care and want to use you as exit liquidity so as long as you
never care you're always going to be part of another scheme where someone who does care will will tie you in
again under some new narrative and then dump on you again and you'll be happy as a clam saying that it didn't matter
so let's go okay so comes down to your individual guys i got to go yeah yeah sorry okay
strong to anyone
you didn't come off strong
you came in
you did pretty shitty
you were weak
hold on
poe you are weak
you are weak
you are weak
no no he's all you got
that's all you got
sorry Paul
you let your people down
but it's off
No, no, I got to go, I got to go.
I just got to go.
I just want to say, thank you for having.
No, I appreciate, bro.
Okay, Suli, just relax.
Fuck, bro.
Would you have other panelists coming up?
And let me go to Dubsy.
So, we heard Lala's argument, Dobsy.
And Blow, I know you've got a pretty good argument to make.
I want to hear, I'll make my argument.
I just got to go soon.
Guys, I'll let you go right after Dubzy.
And by the way, we do have a lot of panelists that want to come up.
So if we do bring panelists down, we are, we have to rotate.
So, one second, Mario, before you go to somebody.
One second.
stop being a
girl
right
listen
guys
any comments
put them in there
any memes
put them in there
even though
they're not worth
a thousand words
as you get
as these nerds
saying
another thing is
guys we have
got a subscriber
button
a million
on his page
Mario
I heard you got
like one of the
top subscribers
Oh, thanks, bro. Yeah, I didn't know.
No, so we are doing...
Obviously, it's not as valuable as mine, but still, you've got a lot.
Anyone wants to subscribe, hit Mario's subscribe button.
It's on the bottom, right?
It's only a dollar.
So with you meme guys...
By the way, silly, I...
Let me finish my point, bro.
Meme guys want to throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars
because they want to have phone and they want to see a picture.
Well, guess what? Subscribe. It's only a dollar.
And we'll have exclusive interviews.
And even though it's just a dollar to make it clear that it's not to make money, it'll be all donated as well just for anyone that says, yeah, they're trying to make money.
So all the money we make from subscriptions.
We're doing it.
Please stop.
We're doing it to build out a close community and to also help promote subscriptions on Twitter as a new way for Twitter to monetize.
So just doing our part to support Twitter.
Now, going back to the point, Dubsy, I think Lila's argument and much love, but I personally think it's a weak argument.
I want to get your thoughts
and maybe you have a completely different take
or maybe you agree with Lala
Wait, can I summarize Mario?
Yeah, go ahead.
I have to go.
Can I summarize Lala's argument
in like one sentence?
Because I think she's right
and I can take both sides of this.
I'm only going to take her side for now.
I will crush you as well, Blow.
Regardless, F.
Say that again?
I will not hesitate to crush you if you make a weak argument, even though I've got a lot of respect for you.
I'm just going to support the argument that law is making in one sentence, which is there is some residual community value to non-zero-sum investing activities.
What I mean by that is some investing activities are zero-sum, but if things don't go to zero, there's some residual community value of being a part of that movement.
Right.
that is valuable to someone who's buying it.
That is what I think you say.
This argument, this is the argument I want to make in a way
and I want to use Dochecon as an example,
that there is value beyond making money,
but I just don't think it's as prominent.
I think anyone else to promote me,
go on, should it.
By the way.
By the way, like, I don't own any meme coins.
I'm just saying I understand a non-zero-sum world where community value is established with something that would otherwise be perceived to go to zero.
And I think a perfect example of this is less so pepe and more so...
board apes.
But on the flip side of it,
there do need to be some protections,
and it's the Wild West,
and nobody has any fucking clue what they're doing,
and most people are probably doing it
not to stick it to the man,
but to get rich quick overnight.
So I see both sides.
I think it's a fair argument.
And just so I have to be able,
I see your strategy.
Every time we come up on stage,
you always say I see both sides
and everyone is right.
I don't know if you're in politics,
but you play both sides really, really well.
Let's see your follow account.
You've got...
261,000 followers.
So yeah, your strategy seems to work, man.
Dubsy, I think Blau made a really good argument.
I want to get your thoughts, because,
He's kind of shifted to the point I wanted to make.
So I'll make my point.
And this is where you know, it could easily,
and where is John, John is still there, yes.
So John, I think you'd like this one.
I'll give you the mic in a bit after Dubby to respond.
But the value I see with meme coins is obviously brings adoption,
but there's, you know, AI is getting adoption,
but it's getting adoption not because there's a way to make money.
It's getting adoption because there's a use case there.
That's what adoption means, not people coming in to make money,
although it does bring attention to the ecosystem.
But it also leaves a sour taste in people's mouth.
They're like, fuck this.
I don't want to get into crypto anymore.
Cryptos is a scam.
So there's two sides to that coin.
But to the argument that I want to make is there is value.
Matt Wallace will probably come in, the Doche coin spokesperson.
Okay.
to talk about it because Dogecoin is a good example of where communities built around it and people buying Dogecoin now are not really looking for the next 10, 100,000 X.
They want to be part of a community and they believe in the use case that seems to be growing and there's a decentralized way of building utility on top of Dogecoin.
And Hector of shit, you disagree.
Wab, I want to get your thoughts on this and then we'll see if John thinks I made a fair point.
Go ahead, Wab.
Yeah. So my take on meme coins, I, again, I'm going to play like Blow. I do see both sides. The main issues that I have is a undisclosed shilling and a bunch of like nasty stuff that happens. And, okay, some other stuff. But I think generally with meme coins, what is interesting with Lala's argument is that,
People naturally seek in groups.
It's just a phenomenon that humans have and I think meme coins allow for that sort of activity to take place and obviously it's financially incentivized so you get that more exhilarating experience with it.
And so I think there is some validity in being able to have a community come together and yeah, if it's non-zero sum and it does eventually take off, you
you can get these scenarios where these communities actually start to build stuff and do cool stuff together that is worth more than the
you know amount of money they have that's the reason why like you know doge coin has stayed around despite people being down like 99% um or not 99% but a lot um and other similar coins you know they're still around and you know decentralization is all about that it's about communities coming together in order to do things and you know the price is going to move up or down and um
It just depends on other people.
What about the legal aspect of it?
And this is what John's biggest concern,
that these are securities.
Like, okay, you want to gamble?
Sure, but gambling is regulated.
Of course you are.
Well, so it depends on what sort of meme coins you're talking about.
Would you say Doge is a security?
Absolutely.
Was it?
But the thing is you can't compare meme coins launched today to Dogecoin that was launched many years ago and is decentralized today.
So I know your argument about Dogecoin.
It had to get there.
Yeah, so it starts, but yeah, but doesn't it start as a security?
Shouldn't it be treated as a security until it becomes decentralized enough to become, to no longer become a security like Ethereum?
Yeah.
I mean, it's a fair argument.
I just don't know.
Huh?
Ethereum is more security. It always was. It still is.
Ethereum is more centralized now than it was when it launched.
I won't think, Tony, you cannot shit on Ethereum at a time where we're discussing meme coins.
Like Ethereum is like the gold-de-use right now.
Shit, like, go to John.
You know, this is unbelievable to me. First of all, I do agree with your point.
John, welcome to the dark side. Go ahead.
We have, we have, just for that anyone doesn't know, sorry John.
John, do you want to give you a background very briefly?
For anyone that doesn't know who we have on stage, you've worked at the SEC as far as I understand.
Sure.
Yeah, I've worked in the justification of law business and technology for 35 years.
I taught at Georgetown Law School for 15 years.
I've taught the last five years at Duke Law School.
I spent 20 years at the SEC in the enforcement division.
including 11 years as chief of the Office of Internet Enforcement.
I've written probably close to 200 articles over the years in various publications about
different securities and technology issues.
I was an instructor at the FBI Academy for in-service instruction.
I mean, look, but you don't need any of my credentials to see how absurd this is.
I mean, I feel like I need a shower when I get off this.
People are talking mostly about how wonderful it is to rip people off.
You want to do it.
You want to go off and form a group.
Go off and form your group.
Have at it.
Have a great time.
But don't do it at the expense of other people.
That's just, and again, it's deja vu all over again, Mario.
And you were right in the sense that you said, this makes, you know, your plight to try to make good points about Ethereum and Bitcoin a lot tougher to make.
because you have this legion, this cadre of manipulative,
really awful individuals who think it's just hilarious to go and rip people off
and leave them with nothing because they were stupid enough not to read it.
John, John, hold on.
Before you ask him, can I ask him a question?
Yeah, I've got a really important question for John.
I think the audience is going to find probably the most important question.
And then whoever was jumping in, I'll give you the mic right after.
John, from a regular perspective,
We saw the SEC to be, you know, they were very slow in responding to what happened in 2017
and all these fucking token projects that were scams.
I was happy to see them take action.
The SEC might be slow, but they're there.
And if you fucked up, you should sleep with one eye open.
They might get you immediately.
They might get you after a year, after two years, after three years.
They will eventually get you if the scam is big enough.
So I'll ask you a question.
What is your warning?
And I don't mean this in a negative way.
Like I see the value in meme coins.
even though I never bought any,
I see the value in building something like Dogecoin,
but I also hate the fucking pump and dumps
and I hate how they avoid regulation.
So let me ask you the question, John.
What is your warning?
What is your advice to all these,
anyone that's investing in meme coins
or more importantly launching meme coins?
And let's say they even did it a year ago, six months ago,
and they're like, oh shit, no one did anything,
no one knows about it.
What should they expect in the next one, two, and three years?
That's a great question because the most wonderful thing about prosecuting and investigating securities fraud is that these people put themselves in plain view because they have to go out and market themselves.
Unlike the hackers, you know, I do a lot of cyber work, unlike the hackers who are trying to tamper with the energy grid and remain hidden, these people are doing it all in plain view.
Let's look at all the celebrity cases.
Paul Pierce, Kim Kardashian, DJ Khaled, Steven Seagal.
you know the macafe john mackafee all these people what did they get charged with well they
got charged with securities act section 17b which is a very simple rule for those with people who
want regulatory clarity this rule is perfect for you because it's a statute not a rule and it says
that if you're promoting a security you have to disclose the nature source and amount of that if
you're promoting a security and you're getting compensated for it you have to disclose the nature
source and amount of that compensation and
When we, in 1998, we bought a big, big sweep against penny stock promoters because they were all violating 17B.
It's an anti-fraud statute, but it's a strict liability statute.
So even if you said, hey, my lawyer said it was fine, everybody told me this was okay, it doesn't matter.
Paul Pierce, Kim Kardashian, none of them, Stephen Seagall, they didn't have any defense.
So for those people who are getting paid to promote any of these securities and not disclosing that, that's number one.
Number two, manipulation, market manipulation is covered by Section 10b5.
And whether you're doing scalping, whether you're engaged in manipulative behavior, wash trades, match trades, sock puppets,
Whatever you're doing, the SEC will figure it out pretty easily and will come after you.
And this kind of boasting on something like a Twitter space, you know, if I were at the SEC, I'd be recording this whole thing and I'd be using it against you.
We've had, John, because it's perfect.
It's inculpatory evidence that's perfect.
for juries and judges.
Believe me when I say that.
I will snip.
John, about Bitcoin, though.
That happens with Bitcoin.
That happens with Ethereum.
John has, yeah, John, John, John has concerns with those as well.
And I'll let him, like, John, I let you respond to Lala's interesting point.
But before that, I just don't want to move away from the importance of what John just said.
And I'm going to snip this and tweet it after the space, John.
And one thing I want to mention out of experience for the audience.
And I think this is moving away from the debate and just some advice and not only to do this a lot, but some important advice is in 2017, everybody, I got into crypto in mid-2017.
Everybody was launching a token was called ICOs back then, initial coin offerings.
And I remember my team.
So I had IBC, which was a consulting firm.
We were the second biggest back then.
All our competitors, I don't know of any of them except maybe one.
None of them still exist.
Either they disappeared, they went bankrupt, or the SEC shut them down.
Eventually, all of them fell, all of them.
And we're one of maybe a handful of that survived.
We never launched an ICO.
All my team wanted to, and I probably would have made a lot of money.
We never did.
And I felt like shit, and probably a lot of you that haven't launched meme coin because, you know, you're worried about regulation, especially if you live in the West.
Yeah.
I felt like shit for at least two years.
I'm like, fuck, crypto crashed.
All these guys that did launch an ICO
that made all that money and we didn't.
And then I saw the SEC stand to crack down.
I saw one after the other fall.
And then I felt a lot better.
I'm like, fuck, I did the right thing.
And here I am.
And it happened in the NFT.
I never launched an NFT project.
I avoided the entire NFT hype.
And I expect the same thing to happen there.
All these people that launched an NFT project
and sold these NFTs and raised all that money.
It's just a matter of time, depending how much money you raise.
If you're rut pulled, you're probably going to be on the radar a lot earlier.
And the same thing is going to happen with meme coins.
Now, there's a way to do it.
You can do it the right way, but you probably won't.
This is my warning to everyone.
And I want to go to the person that I interrupted.
to jump in.
But I think John's feedback, whether you agree with them or not,
just remember that even if you're in 6, 12, 18, 24 months
since you've launched your project and you're living the life in the US and Europe
and you think you're okay, you're not.
It's just a matter of time before they knock on your door.
Just a warning.
And I think it's the right thing considering how many scammers there is in the space.
But whoever was jumping in and I interrupted.
I want to give you the mic again.
Yep, yep.
That was me.
I wanted to ask John.
why an accredited investor traditional finance is able to get in super early,
a dump on retail on an IPO or direct listing.
I mean, how is it any different?
I mean, I get it like it's regulated and this isn't,
but regulation stops the little guy from getting in.
Like, why is it, it's not fair.
During the ICO craze,
If you weren't an creditor, you couldn't invest in ICO.
So what you had to do, you have to find some shady person and give them money.
There were pools, ICU pools, and they would steal everyone's money.
So, like, congrats for, like, protecting the small guy, they got wrecked anyways
because you're not going to stop people from gambling or investing.
I get it.
You're complaining, like, five different things there.
Okay, first of all, an initial public offering, an IPO, is registered with the SEC.
There's all sorts of documentation relating to it.
An ICO was not.
And I wrote an article in 2017 saying all ICOs were securities and the SEC is going to crack down just like lending products, staking products, simple agreements for future tokens.
All of them are securities.
Okay.
And the SEC, again, has brought 143, 144 cases.
They've not lost a single one in the crypto space.
And there's a reason for this.
it's because these cases are like shooting fish in a barrel.
They might lose one now and then,
but they'll win it on appeal if it comes through.
So that's an IPO.
John, John, John, I'm really familiar with the promoter thing.
No, no, no, no.
You're saying accredited investor.
That has nothing to do with IPOs.
It's not, I'm not talking about the credit investors.
You did.
You said accredited investors.
No, that wasn't me.
That wasn't me.
It wasn't me.
I get you.
I agree with you.
I agree with you.
The thing that I don't get is, for example, in the 80s,
Trump was very famous, famous for using a fake voice to call the news to say Trump was about
to buy out a company and then he would sell that stock.
Basically pumping up the price of that.
That's a security crime.
You could go to jail for that.
But he went to be on to be president, but you're trying to put meme corner behind bars.
No, because one guy got away with it.
It doesn't mean anything.
You can look at all the cases I brought.
Most of them were joint prosecutions.
I was also a criminal prosecutor for a time.
And people go to jail for that kind of thing.
You show me a case.
where somebody in a fake voice was promoting a stock like that,
that's a clear deception.
It was great case for the community evidence.
And I would bring that case.
That's not a reason to say you should go invest
in some sort of silly meme coin.
No, but I didn't say, I didn't say that the financial markets,
there's all kinds of ways that it's rigged
for sophisticated investors or accredited investors
or people who are in on the system.
I totally agree with that.
And I wish there were ways to fix that.
And I'm always working towards fixing it.
But that is no excuse to say that somebody should buy some stupid recommendation from some person who's just so greedy and so careless and so uncaring of other people that they're willing to steal from them, that they're willing to make them into these terrible victims and ruin their families because it's all sorts of fun and it's all great games.
John, look, I...
Mario's right.
You're all going to get caught.
I worked on the floor.
It's perfect.
I don't want...
John, John, I don't want, Joe, before you answer, just...
I want to mention a couple of things.
I don't want the people that are doing the right thing to get caught.
I think you might get a fine.
I don't know how aggressive the SEC will be.
But if you launch a meme coin but end up building an entire ecosystem and not dump on your
investors, I think, you know, I don't think you should be treated the same way as someone
that...
launches a meme coin and just a matter of time
before they dump it and play that whole gambling game,
the pump and dump game.
Those are the people I really want to tag enough.
Celebrities, yes, celebrities are celebrities.
They'll always be made an example of.
I just want to remind the audience,
the sponsors are pinned above.
So you want to check them out.
All sponsors are pinned above.
You can choose your favorite one.
Put a comment on why in Sleighman.
We'll choose one or five winners.
I'm going to ask a team and finally find out
that will win either $1,000 or $5,000.
Make some good comments, guys.
You will be chosen.
And number two as well, I forgot mentioned.
So I mentioned IBC, our incubator, and I probably should have mentioned this earlier as well.
So we do incubate projects.
If you are a project, we only get paid in tokens.
We don't get paid in Fiat and we lock our tokens as well.
So we're long term with the project we work with.
And so if you have a crypto project, you want to work with us, or if you want to come on the show and pitch or be part of whatever we do here, do hit me up.
The team checks my DMs.
That's the second point.
But let's continue with the discussion.
And Dubsy, I want to get the positive side a bit more.
For people that don't have any idea what meme coins are,
what are the positives?
Because John, I think, pointed out a lot of the risks.
I've been a bit more critical today than usual.
But I do want to point out that first, there's money to be made
if you're early, but it's just not my favorite aspect of meme coins.
What can you know you've you've built an incredible project with NFTs but the end on the same on the same argument NFTs there was a lot of NFTs that were pump and dumps and
Our meme coins are the same.
There'll be some that will be like Sapry Seals.
They'll build out that ecosystem and they'll be there when the market crashes and continue building.
They'll have a community like you guys do while others pump and dump.
Will we see the same things with the same thing with meme coins?
And maybe you can touch on Pepe as well.
We cannot talk about meme coins without touching on Pepe, which John would love to hear about.
Dubsy and Wab, go ahead, guys.
I think we should hear from Wab because I'm actually not on the Sabu Seals team.
And I know that Wab has launched an NFT project and a token,
and he's probably worried about going to jail after speaking to Jonathan.
So I'd love to hear what Wab's thinking right now.
Go ahead.
John just love to slap the word security on anything he doesn't like.
And there is zero guidelines or anything for what he's saying.
So, you know, when we're talking about securities...
How do we what are the rules like John tell me I want to hear from like the horse's mouth
What what does it mean for something to be sufficiently decentralized? What are the rules? How do I determine if you know my cryptocurrency or my NFT is sufficiently decentralized? Because that's one of the biggest problems that I've seen so many times with you know you guys slap in the security label on a bunch of things is that you know they clearly aren't securities from my perspective because I believe they're sufficiently
decentralized. There's hundreds of thousands of people using these networks, building on these
networks that aren't overly dependent on one group. And yet they're still labeled as security. So please,
I would love to know.
Sure. You know, it's a great question. It's a fair question because, again, we have a principles-based securities framework. So you have two big cases, the Howie case, the SEC case, the Reeves case, where the Supreme Court was interpreting exactly what is and is not a security. Now, the definition of security was written to be incredibly broad, and it included the idea of the investment contract.
And people will tell you, well, how he's got a four-part test.
So let's look at vertical commonality and horizontal commonality.
I've taught all those things.
But I think you just need to take a step back.
If you're taking money from people...
Okay, and it's your efforts that are going to somehow either make them rich or make them poorer, then it's a security.
And why is the law so broad?
You know, we had a crash in 1929, so they enacted the Securities Act of 1933, the Exchange Act of 1934, and the 40 Act for Investment Advisors and mutual funds.
So all of this was taken to say, look, when it comes to securities, when it comes to people investing their money, we have a different framework in the U.S. that's much more protective.
It's like anybody who wants to be a registered broker dealer or registered exchange or a registered clearing firm, they're essentially consenting to a 24-7, 365 days a year, financial colonoscopy.
And it's very challenging to be those things, but all of these regulations are incredibly broad.
So once you start doing anything, I used to tell my law students, I still tell them.
It's kind of like one of those old driver's ed films that I saw, you know, again, Lala, way back when there was electricity, and they showed you these films.
And...
There would be driver's ed films where they would show you every conceivable type of problem,
like somebody jumps in front of your car, somebody, the light is half orange or half yellow or whatever,
and shows you every single kind of problem.
That's the way most of these securities cases are.
There's every single kind of violation possible.
So you need to take a step back.
You can go to your lawyer and you may be able to find a lawyer who says, well, there's some gray areas.
There's always going to be some gray area.
I did lots of insider trading cases.
Everyone was a little different.
I did lots of microcap fraud cases,
lots of penny stock fraud cases.
We did five sweeps involving penny stocks
and microcap stock promotions,
which again are a lot like these meme coins.
And in all the sweeps, no case was really ever the same.
So you got to say to yourself, you know, gee, I'm getting this advice or I'm feeling this way.
But if you just set back and you sort of say, I'm taking money from people and they're hoping to make some money off of me, you can look at the SEC pronouncements when Chair Clayton, the chairman before Gensler, who was a Republican appointee.
He said every ICO was a security period.
That's interesting.
Let me just take that point.
One second.
Let me bring Fitty and FITI.
I mean, John's smashing your boys really hard.
I mean, I think all your guys are afraid.
He's not. He's not. He's really not.
No, let me go. Let me go to Fitty. Let me go to Fitty.
He's good. Add him on the other space. He was a good debate.
Fitty, you're smashing your boys, bro. You need to back up the meme coins.
Everyone's jumping out of meme coins afterward.
You have to have to have, John. Save your people quick time.
Fitty.
Okay.
Yeah, no, I'm glad.
Thank you for bringing me up.
And I love the conversation.
And like from,
from what John does for Olivia,
and I've been researching.
I'm not hearing you,
Mario.
Sorry,
it's John.
Yeah,
I'll bring it.
Yeah,
John,
I'll bring you down and back up.
I can't hear me. I can't hear me.
Oh, okay, okay. Let me bring Fitty down and up.
Great argument, Fiddy. You're down now.
No joke. I'll bring you back up.
Yeah, go ahead, Wab, and then I'll bring Fiddy back in.
My question to John is, I don't know too much about you, but I'm wondering,
do you believe that Ethereum is a security, and do you believe that BordAub Yacht Club is a security?
Those are the two that I want to know.
What was the second one?
The Bored Apeer Club, the Bored Apes, the Monkeys.
The Bored Apeer Club.
Oh, those are good questions.
You know, I think Ethereum is security, and I think if you went to court, it's going to be a security.
It's curing, again, there's a foundation that benefits from it.
And I think you make the argument.
The best place to look for an answer to that question is the New York State Attorney General has already sued.
And in a case that they brought, I think it was called Q-Coin.
They explained in multiple pages why Ethereum was a security.
And I agree with that analysis.
that the New York State Attorney General's made.
As far as NFTs, I think that's a tougher question.
You know, I think NFTs are a horrendous rip-off.
I don't understand how a fractionized link to some, you know,
the metadata of a JPEG file is somehow going to create authenticity.
But I appreciate the sentiment behind it, my wife's an artist,
So the idea of protecting art is a good one.
But I think it's all a giant scam.
All of the exchanges that have traded, that trade NFTs,
most of the reason people buy them are to try to make money on them.
John, let's get Fiddy. Fiddy's back up.
Fiddy, hold on, Joe.
Fiddy, go ahead.
Let's see if they can hear you.
Hey, guys.
Can you hear me okay?
John, can you hear him?
Can you hear me?
John, did you?
No, I don't.
I don't hear me either.
That's not weird.
All right, let me bring Joe our down and John down and then bring them back up.
Fiddy, I think they're scared of you, man.
They're pretending not to hear you.
We've got an SEC, ex-SCC.
I don't know what your position was at the SEC, John.
Who's scared of you, Fiddy.
Scared of a board eight.
But go ahead.
Well, you can hear me.
You scared him, bro.
Go for it.
Well, you guys.
You guys can hear me, right?
Yeah, we can.
I got the other.
So first of all, I just want to let you know that I've never had a token.
I've never started a token, so I don't want to go to jail.
I'm not going to jail.
It's a wob.
I'll bring you a package.
Let's just, let's start with that.
But I want to tell you guys something.
So I am...
John has got these boys scared.
No, no, no.
I want to touch on this because I do have a point to make that I don't think anybody's touched.
So I have been looking...
I love the meme coins.
I think they're fun.
I have three little girls.
I've been playing with the frog.
They've been looking at it.
They've been thinking it's cute and fun.
They don't know there's a token.
They just...
They just see me playing with it.
And I think it's fun.
I think it's engaging.
It brings communities together like Pepe built an incredible community.
There's other things that have brought communities.
I'm not going to talk about specific tokens.
But what I will tell you, there's a lot of new people have been coming to the NFT space in crypto Twitter because of meme coins because they like it.
It's fun.
They're interested.
It's fun.
And I'm here because I like new people.
I like the education behind it.
And I really truly believe that the innovation
from some of the token people and the NFT token
will come together and create some really unique
opportunities because we're really early. I mean this is AOL dial-up right now.
So I get both arguments and anybody who over the age of 35 or 40 is having a big trouble,
it's a scam, it's this, it's that, but look at like the accounts in the spaces, there's
30 followers, 40 followers, they're brand new to Twitter. Why? I've had people call me say,
hey, what's going on with this project? What's on with Pepe? What's going on with
this one? What's going on with that one? And they're coming in here because they're learning.
So I've been using this
as a networking opportunity to find some really incredible people.
I've met people from NASA, like some incredible jobs that have come here because of the frog.
Can't they learn without having to lose all their money?
I learned about crypto.
I went on YouTube, watch the videos, learn about it.
I didn't have to get stuff.
So that's a great point, but you don't have to put a lot of money.
Look, you could put 50 bucks and just play with it.
Yeah, you don't have, but people, but people do.
When they see people making a thousand X, 100 X, they say, don't put a lot of money, but they
fucking do with that one.
Like, when we say that guy, what's that guy, what's that guy, what's that guy's
what's that guy's name that one told me in the group, the one that keeps shilling Pepe?
He's a really good debater.
I forgot.
Pauli.
Pauli.
Pauli's a great debate,
it makes a lot of good point.
But then when you go on his profile,
it's like, Pepe to the moon
and puts chart after chart after chart of Pepe pumping.
Well, how can you say to people,
don't put a lot of money,
but then tweet nonstop about how this is going to make you rich,
how this is pumping.
For every pepper that,
for every,
for every,
for every pepper that pops,
for every pump,
for every pepper that pumps,
there's a million others that crashed.
Pepper made it.
Even then,
Mario,
even then,
you're quite right.
You hit the point because what he actually needs is,
he doesn't need the $50.
He needs,
people to pump in a lot of money.
It needs to buy the incentives to get more buyers.
It's all a ruse.
It's all just a complete subterfuge to make money.
And, you know, if you, I appreciate that you want your kids to play in this playpen.
And my kids, you know, my kids are older now.
Of course, Lala, you know, my kids are older.
But, you know, the thing is they used Club Penguin.
They played with the...
John, John, we're doing...
I think I'm going to interrupt you.
First time I interrupt you.
Just for...
I want to hear the counter-argument to this.
I'm genuinely curious.
So, I'm going to see, who wants to make the counter-argument to what I just said,
that the incentive is to get as many buyers as possible,
and they'll eventually be sellers, the people that were early on.
And it's very, like, there's a very low likelihood for any startup to succeed.
But the likelihood of a meme coin succeeding of becoming the next Doge coin is significantly lower than a startup because the value that's being created is not as clear as the value of startup is creating.
I hope that makes sense.
We'll see if you can argue.
Mario, I can argue this from the Wall Street side and the meme coin side.
because I've been on both, right?
On the Wall Street side, there's a famous saying from the 90s, which is pigs get fat,
hogs get slaughtered, right?
And that's exactly what happens with the meme coins.
People who go in and just want to have fun and they're early and they discover a new community,
they do well.
People who are like, I'm going to become a millionaire.
The hogs, they get slaughtered typically.
And they put in a lot of money.
Do I think most meme coins are scam?
100%.
But.
I do give some a chance.
I've never bought a meme coin
until I bought Pepe.
I spent eight hours with that.
I made the same argument.
There's meme coin that was successful.
For every Pepe, it's just somebody's succeed.
Let me just tell you what I think people miss.
Like John said, his wife is an artist.
It's not like you're buying art.
It's like you're buying a membership to Soho House and art, right?
And because you're a member of Soho House, you're going to have certain opportunities that you don't get at other places.
And that's what most boomers, including myself, didn't get in the beginning.
And now I do.
If you have a crypto punk, Mario, you get offered a ton of stuff just because you're a cryptopunk.
because people want access to that community and that's why you get it.
And that's I think you might be a talker and might be vulnerable because you put that up.
And, you know, look, there are plenty of groups that my wife as an artist can use to meet other people.
There are plenty of venues to meet other people online and offline and everywhere.
But those venues don't need to rip people.
The problem is, John, these guys have never met anyone in the real world.
well so they need that. Okay, but goody, I want to, you know, Joey, you make it, it's a pretty
fair argument. You're kind of treading the line in the middle. Goody, I want to get your, look,
guys, I know I sound critical, but like, I'm guilty as charge and John, you might give me shit
for this, but if I, you know, I'll say it, but like we started for now, we started after,
especially after the last space. I was pretty convinced, you know, we had, I remember who pitched
in the last space. There was a project called, you know,
I think he's like,
WSP chair,
chairman.
I think it was
WSP something.
Another one was like
Capibara coin.
And then the guy
from Capybara
came in and said
that kind of
gained the respect
a lot of people
that hated me
because like
hey guys,
we're fucking around.
Like he was pitched
he paid to pitch
and we said to them
we're going to criticize
the fuck out of you.
And he came on.
He's like,
guys,
he said,
Don't expect to make money here.
We're not here to make money.
We're going to try to build some shit.
High likelihood will fail, but we're going to try our best.
If you believe in what we're building and we be part of the journey, then come on up.
This type of argument, and this is kind of, Capy Barrow played a role in convincing me to listen to some of my team members and start working with some meme coins for the first time ever in IBC's history.
I saw some Minkoans trying to do the right thing, similar to have some NFT project and SAPPI SEAL is still on, yeah, Wab is still on stage, I think, or he was on stage, some NFT projects that are doing the right thing.
So I'm not hating on Mim coins, but I am hating on all the fucking shilling that's happening.
Goody, what's your position?
I mean, when it comes to all of this stuff, you're talking about startups, like these meme coins like startups.
And like that's part of the fallacy is like a lot of these meme coins don't have a point.
And they don't even have like most of these don't even have like a team or a dev.
They have devs, but they don't have like a massive team or anything behind them.
The point is that they're these are fun.
These are not.
Yeah.
onboarding mechanisms, these are not things that people are using right now for financial purposes.
We understand as a space, like the people that are participating in this, understand that the
meme coin side of it is somewhat of a gamble, is somewhat of like a casino type aspect to it.
But the point is that it allows people to keep transacting within this space and keep moving it forward.
Can I show you talk about that?
Okay, not in the financial marketplace.
Sorry, sorry.
Yeah, yeah.
Not at all.
Like, this is a good kind of argument.
But it is somewhat similar to an adult Chuckie cheese, John.
But the point is that you're able to...
It ripped people off.
It's not similar.
Do you have, this, Pepe, can anyone, Jen, maybe you can ask this question?
I have a question.
In terms of Pepe, how centralize is it?
Is this someone that holds a big percentage of the supply?
So one of the main arguments for a meme coin for a pump and dump to happen is there'll be a bunch of wallace that hold a massive supply that is unlocked and they'll be able to just dump on the retail audience.
Is that the case with Pepe?
I heard some way that the person that held the most coins burnt them or something?
Jen, do you know?
Yeah, we send it the contract.
There you go.
Renounced it, yeah.
I don't actually know the centralization,
but I think like the Chuck E. Cheese argument
is really unfair and even gambling, right?
Because when you go in a casino...
every single transaction you make, it doesn't matter, right?
You put, you get your chips, you pay for them and at the end of the night, you cash the chips out.
Here we're like taxed on every single transaction, right?
So I feel like even trying to make these comparisons between what's happening in
crypto and the traditional finance system, which is broken, is unfair to begin with.
But also like, I've brought multiple publicly traded companies into crypto.
And so.
you know, it was awesome. We had SEC compliance in house. It was very easy for us to define the
difference between both internally and externally, how it was communicated to people that
bought NFTs versus bought invested into the stock, right? But what isn't as easy, because you can
very, you can't easily register these tokens, right? I think a lot of people would do that. And so, at
I don't know.
I just feel like sometimes the point of it isn't like,
hey,
this isn't a legal,
you know,
security because we don't have these options.
And I think a lot of people do want to follow the rules.
But even with that,
right,
it's not just scammers.
And whoever made Pepe,
it does not matter.
I'm sure the majority of the transactions,
like once all the initial tokens have been minted out,
right?
It's all,
just trades that are on exchanges.
You can't assign an agenda to that
because it's people putting a selling price
and a buying price.
And maybe there are some people there
that are trying to do bad things,
but how many shady businesses are there in the real world?
This is why we lived in a perfect utopia.
This is why we have securities law.
Right.
It's not the Wild West.
What you're talking about is post-apocalyptic,
walking dead like anarchy.
But hold on.
John, John.
Yes.
Hold up.
Because I get how you think that.
But what I want to say is like I, I'm sure you're not going to.
But like I would love to make you a wallet.
I would love to give you $20 of a token to play with.
Because we have all, I think a lot of what mainstream here is about.
Yeah, you don't want it.
You don't want to be part of the scum.
No, I, okay, but hold on.
A lot of people hear the worst case scenarios,
but like, shit, I've been in this space
and just gotten things for free
that have been worth like hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Jen, how much?
Jen, Jen, hold on.
What is that?
So you've got $100,000 worth of things.
So, Jen, can I ask you?
Hey, guys, remember that statement when John said,
like, the SEC can be recording this
and then you can get in serious double for it?
You just did.
I paid it.
It's not a tax issue.
It's not a tax issue.
If you're getting transaction-based compensation relating to a security, that's another strict liability statute.
This is...
That's something to do...
So this is a...
Sorry, Jen.
Go ahead.
This is the most, this is the most incriminating space in Twitter space history.
Absolutely true.
We break record after record.
Like earlier today we had the space where we broke the debt ceiling leak that the press started covering and everyone went haywire.
Yesterday we had two senators, including Matt Gates, who leaked something about the implied a deal, a deal reached regarding the debt ceiling.
The day before that, we had the DeSantis thing.
and it goes back
back to FDX
and Twitter files
and Kim.com
I'm going to go to you
because you were there
in Twitter files
you were there
in our first crypto space
ever.
You were there for my
first crypto space ever
and not many people
know that and you
had a whole debate
with Tom Nash
and today we
Today, we are responsible for the most arrests made in crypto history.
So I don't know whether to be proud or not proud.
Are you going to post that for, Marius?
I hope the people that pump and, by the way, I'm just joking for anyone freaking out.
I don't think there'll be arrests just to be clear.
I don't think there'll be arrest for anyone that hasn't pumped or scammed.
You might get fined if you launch a security and you didn't follow regulation.
I think the fine is the worst that you'll be facing.
But if you did pump and dump, you are fucked.
But Kim, you've heard the argument here.
What do you think?
I think Bitcoin Cash.
Anything other than Bitcoin Cash?
Because you sound like the biggest shill, Kim.
I'm not used to you shilling.
That's all you guys need to know.
Everything else is not working.
You don't want to buy Pepe?
Well, by the way, Pauli's coming on.
I want Pauli and Kim to go back.
All these meme coins, I don't have any use for it.
But I'm looking for crypto, I'm looking for something that has utility.
You know, that's all that matters to me.
Because people who run a business, who want to sell stuff online,
they need to have something that works, that is low fee, that is instant.
That's all I care about.
If it makes sense in business...
then I look at it.
That was the last point that I wanted to make, though, about, like, Pepe is, and I didn't even buy any, like, I saw it on Twitter and I was like, oh, I missed it.
Suddenly, come on, Jen, come on, now suddenly you didn't buy.
I know you did.
Come on, I know this is recorded, but come on, between me and you.
No, I literally didn't.
When I said I got shit that I sold for $100,000,
was not referring to Pepe.
I missed that one.
So what's your full name?
Jen, what's your full name?
What's your full name?
Sorry.
Wait, don't tell him.
Don't tell him.
You're going to go to behind bars.
I'm joking.
I'm joking.
She won't.
She won't.
That's very common.
What did you get the $100,000?
It's not that hard to figure out who I am.
What did you get $100,000?
Let everyone want to do that.
Let Jen finish.
Let Jen finish.
I sold a mutant serum that I got air drop for free.
Anyway, I...
People are building right on meme coins.
So where Pepe, I wasn't even involved in the beginning of it.
There's so much infrastructure being built out.
And it's a really low risk place to build because you can experiment with quantities of tokens and really like mass test things in a way to then bring it over to something bigger.
And some of these solutions and things that are being built with Pepe are going to benefit this ecosystem like so much.
greater. And so that was like my point before and offering it to John because I think sometimes
with this stuff, you can't see the positives until you get involved. And I know you don't want to,
but offers open. My DMs will be open. First of all, the offer will stand. You can go to my website
and I wrote an article about this. My son and I went and bought some Doge coin from one of those
stupid coin dispensers at the local supermarket.
And I go through exactly how badly we got ripped off at every angle.
So I appreciate your point, Law, but the point is that when it comes to any of these things, again, the securities markets have regulation around them for precisely this reason.
And as I said, what makes, you know, again, I prosecuted guns, drugs, and domestic violence cases when I was as assistant U.S. attorney.
Right.
And it's hard to do those cases because you pull someone over and there's a gun in the car and there's four people in the car.
It's hard to figure out who's got the gun.
People say it's easy.
You'll get prints on the gun.
That's not true.
It's very hard to get prints off of a gun.
And so those are criminals trying to get away, trying not to show their true colors.
But in the area of securities fraud, one of the reasons I always liked it as a prosecutor was because, again, they do everything in plain view. They have to show themselves to make money. They have to show themselves to convince other people to believe their garbage and their nonsense and their grift.
And whether their grift is something like, hey, you're going to get really rich, or the grift is, hey, come join us.
It's lots of fun.
And all we're trying to do is just have a good time.
Either way, it's the same old story.
People get victimized, just like they did with penny stocks, just like they did with microcap stocks.
And as old as I am, I can tell you this is exactly the same.
There's no difference.
Yeah.
So, you know, I appreciate that you might be a nice person.
We've got another attorney.
John, John, John, we have Kim.com's attorney on stage.
Mr. Rothkin, get to have you, sir.
Mario, how you doing?
Why did Kim run, hold on, Mr. Rothkin, why did Kim run away as soon as you came up?
He's scared of his own lawyer.
He's scared of his own lawyer.
This is interesting.
I was wondering when I came up where he went.
He just left.
I don't know what's happening.
Maybe he gave him legal devices to say, get out of you.
Get out of you.
No, I read it is Kim, actually.
Ira, I want to get your thoughts on what you've heard so far
and whether you say John's concern and whether, you know,
panelists right now and people in the ecosystem should be worried about legal
repercussions in launching meme coins or even NFT projects.
Well, you know, a number of things.
I mean, I think it's, you really covered the field with a lot of these things.
And in a very large part, I do agree with John.
I'm probably more towards the middle, though, because there's a continuum, obviously,
with things like Bitcoin being conservative, going all the way over to things that are pyramid schemes.
But the interesting thing about this is that...
A large part of what I'm seeing is not really even a Web 3 issue.
It's a Web 2 issue.
And that is, what are the statements that are being made in Web 2?
What are the statements that are being made in these types of Twitter spaces?
To what extent could the transcripts be reduced in a mass way to being analyzed by technology-assisted review?
And then if anybody wants to bring a case, whether it's a regulator, a prosecutor or whatever...
can they go ahead and analyze reams and reams and reams of data to bring that case?
And it's going to be representations that are made.
It's going to be...
It may not even necessarily be a securities case.
I mean, there could be deceptive advertising, deceptive marketing.
Even the FTC in the Venn diagram of law has overlap right here.
So for me, if someone's making deceptive statements to induce people to buy a coin and they're pumping it,
It doesn't really matter what toward it is.
It's probably going to be illegal.
And if you go into these spaces, you're probably making really bad admissions.
And so that's my opening.
And not just any space, to be honest, they go in.
Especially I've heard some of these Web3 spaces, those crypto spaces, some of the shit being said there.
I saw the same thing transpired in 2017.
I had a few lawyers come to me like Mario.
These ICOs are all fucking securities.
I'm like...
No way.
You're overdoing it.
Otherwise, everyone wouldn't be launching an ICO if they're actually security and they're going to get into legal trouble.
Like Mario, telling you what the law is.
I don't know why the fuck everyone's launching it.
And then later, when I started seeing one by one fall and continue to fall up today,
then I realized that shit, these lawyers were right and everyone else was just greedy.
So Ira, you seem to have a milder version of John, but you gave a warning to the ecosystem as well.
You know, we're getting closer to the pitches.
We do the Shark Tank segment.
We have four projects pitching today.
Eadw and Dill jump in, guys.
Yeah, so, you know, I think there's some good stuff said here.
I think there's good and bad things about meme coins, but I don't really want to come at that angle.
You know, take your side on that one.
Yeah.
What I will say, though, is there's a whole side of this that's focused on art that's really changing different industries.
For me, that's music, right?
And what we're doing with NFTs and what we're facilitating is really a lot more similar to selling digital versions of albums, to selling concert tickets and VIP packages connected to the NFTs.
Yeah, I think there's a side of it that's more focused on music.
Yeah, exactly. This use case, for example, this is the actual use case of NFTs, digital ownership, owning assets that have utility, owning them on a decentralized layer. That to me is a use case that should not be compared with meme coins where the only use case, at least in the early stages,
if it's making money, it's a pump and dump scheme.
If it's building a community, that's a use case that then can expand to something bigger.
Before we kick off the pitches, Dubsy, anything to add?
And Wab your backup as well.
I just want to reply to that, Mario, because I kind of wanted to finish there,
which is that I think there are ways that you can launch coins and meme coins that can work together
to provide similar types of experiences, right?
Like, we're going to see creator coins that are connected in some of the same ways to use cases.
And I think a lot of that can form out of what we're calling meme coins now.
So I think it's really undetermined where this market's going to go at the current point.
You're going to see things that are inevitably fraud.
You're going to see people pull fraud, just like you see in NFTs.
There's pump and dumps left and right.
And that's going to happen.
But I do think there are going to be projects and, you know, things that pull away from here and do create something that doesn't constitute a security and actually do it the right way.
So I don't think it's all said and done for meme coins.
So Doobzy, let me go to you.
Let me go to go to go to go to Wab because he dropped out and took a while.
Okay, Wab, Wab. Go to you then, bro.
Do you like Sully, what do you think of his profile picture in the seal?
Yeah, I mean, it's good.
It looks decent, but I wouldn't like gamble loads of money on it
just because it looks like a nice meme.
Do you get my party?
No, you don't have to gamble on it.
You can just own it to be part of the club.
Who says you have to, like, speculate on it?
No, no, but that's the problem, in it, Wabi?
Because essentially what's happening is your boy,
let's say you were to create it,
you're putting yourself in the position
when you're the leader of it, when you're the creator of it,
and maybe your developers and some of the people
who you're going to pay it to promote it.
Are going to get in early,
you're going to get the...
get in a good position and then you're going to basically pump it, pump it, get people into it.
And then once those poor old guys like your picture.
Who am I pump and dumping?
We had a fair launch.
Everyone could mint it.
Anyone could mint it like almost two years ago.
And I haven't dumped any seals.
So, I mean, I don't know about yours specifically, but...
Ah, shit.
Ah, shit.
I knew Web's going to crush it.
I put him on the spot on purpose,
because I knew he's going to put Sapi Seals on the same basket as all the other meme coins.
So silly, what do you think about the fair launch that Webb did?
Explain it to me, Wab, explain it to me, because I thought it was just a normal meme coin.
Explain to me.
I'm not going to just attack you without knowing.
Wab, explain your meme coin.
Just say mic drop in there and don't explain, Webb.
It's not a meme coin.
Why is it a meme coin?
Why is it a meme coin?
There's a difference between meme coins and NFTs.
No, explain your project, bro.
It's a Sappi sells the NFT collection.
We're doing entertainment, so we're building...
All right, okay, it's an NFT.
I wasn't talking about NFTs, was that?
I was specifically talking about meme coins.
So essentially, when I think...
So what do you think about NFTs?
Do you think it also pump and dumps or not?
So again, I don't have a huge amount of knowledge on NFTs,
but from what my initial research on it is,
if it's used from the purposes of basically keeping, you know,
it's on the, it's, you know, it's electronic.
You're basically able to find something where it's there.
It's on the...
Let me back you up.
Sully, silly.
I love you, bro.
Let me back you up.
So everyone just took a few hours to prep for this.
He's not from the crypto space.
And I put it on the spot on purpose.
So I got you, bro.
I got you.
No, no, but basically, if it's on the ledger
and you've essentially got it there, say,
digitise on the public ledger,
like, I've got no problem with that.
What I have an issue with is when you're essentially
creating a meme coin and you're doing this pump and dump.
And from my perspective,
it's very clear that all of these meme coins,
now there might be some isolated situation
where it's not the case...
and we need to look at them because everyone claims they're not that guy.
But when we're looking into it, they all end up being that guy where most people are losing out.
And the people who are losing out, they're losing out based on the fact that they're essentially at home.
They've want some kind of community.
And these guys are telling them you're going to be part of some sense of community and then they get scammed.
Look, I'll try to back you up
And he's dug a bigger hole
Let me get Crip
You aren't prepared a timer
Suli
So we're going to have four pitches
John
I'm not going to give you the final words
Because I don't want you to leave
I want you to hear the pitches as well
I don't know how you gave us so much time
I'm very grateful for it
And I think anyone
Anyone in the audience
that doesn't understand the value.
How many crypto spaces had someone from the ex-member of the SEC or ex-member of the SEC come on the space and give advice?
And how much are you charging us, by the way, John?
No, nothing.
Let me say something about the penises, though.
He's charging us by Bitcoin.
I think everybody on the Twitter space should hire Ira when they get into trouble for this.
Because I worked for a data discovery firm also.
I led the DC office of one.
You can do incredible things with terabytes of data.
So can the government, whether it be the SEC or the DOJ.
And subpoenas are very broad.
You know, they're going to come to you and say,
give me every single thing you've ever said or ever written on any single paper anywhere.
Give me passwords to every single account you have.
and I want to see everything.
And, you know, if you look at the CFTC complaint against Binance, you know, they found all kinds of communications, including some signal communications and extraordinary and culpatory information.
So, but yeah, let me hear the pitches, Mario.
Yeah.
Yeah, we will. John, I'll keep you on stage.
You're going to drop down, and the pitches are kind of outside your area of interest or expertise.
Feel free to do so.
For the panel, everyone here, so the way it's going to work is Suli is going to put a timer of 90 seconds.
The project is going to pitch.
You know, there's VCs in the audience.
VCs will be sent the pitch as well.
And, you know, if anyone wants to write a check, you could say so on the space, and you'll feel free to criticize them.
The feedback has to be objective.
Soil, you've got the timer ready.
Okay.
Yeah, we're ready.
We're ready.
All right, so we got Cripcade.
But by the way, guys, so there's a pin tweet above.
It's also pinned on my profile for the duration of the space.
What we're going to do is every time in that is a thread.
Each tweet is like four or five tweets in there.
Each tweet is one of the projects that are pitching.
You go in there.
So first one is going to be Crip Blade, if I'm pronouncing it correctly,
Cripcade.
and you go in there and you give us your feedback
as you listen to the pitch in the comments
and surely right after the pitch when we're done
going back and forth, we'll choose one winner
who'll win a certain amount of money.
I think you have either $100 or $1,000 or $1,000
one or the other.
Either way, you'll win money.
So we'll choose after that and that's to encourage you
to comment for those pitches.
If you have a project you want to pitch,
you're going to work with us as well.
do DM me, the team will respond to you
and we do work with some of the projects
that do pitch. I don't know which ones
to be honest, but there's a disclaimer
there, but I don't know which ones.
So I'm going to be pretty direct.
Crip Cade, the mic is yours
as soon as Suleiman says, go.
Are you ready, Cripp?
This is the moment of your life?
Right.
Ready, steady, go.
All right, thanks for having me here, guys.
My name's Eric. I'm from Cripcade.
What we're building is a metaverse.
It's a social metaverse powered by AI.
So what we wanted to do was we wanted to create this central hub
for projects and businesses and users all to come together.
So we've got four different pillars.
SocialFi, business integration, advertising, and gamify.
The social fi is aimed at the end user.
We've got AI powered avatars that use NPL, chat GPT, things like that.
We have AI image generation.
We've got virtual spaces as well, which will be...
AI integrated as well.
The business integration, we have two main formats.
We have commercial-sized buildings that projects can actually have custom buildings made.
And we have office spaces that are low barrier cost of entry to get in.
We also have advertising that billboards, banners, holograms, splash screens, premium...
load screens, etc.
That projects, influences and users can actually hire out as well.
The Gamefire side of things, we have three native games, a hovercraft, a racer, and arcade games, and we're working on a first-person shooter.
But we're also partnering with a bunch of different projects, and we're open to any sort of project to partner in any industry.
It can be the games.
It can be defy.
So Tony's got his hand up and Lala to ask you a question.
But let me kick it off.
I want to do your favour and summarize it for the audience.
But before I do, you have Socialify, Business Integration, GameFi, what was the fourth one?
that would be the advertising
advertising cool
all right let me put that in let me explain it for the audience
that's not deep in crypto to understand it
because obviously the panel is pretty deep in the space
but many people in the audience are not
so the
The metaverse is essentially enough travel the world talking about this.
It's going to be an easy one for me.
It's just a virtual representation of the physical world we live in today.
So whatever you do in the physical world, you could do it in the digital world.
That's how I describe the metaverse and it's been relevant today.
It's been a couple of years.
I've used the same definition.
You can say you can add one thing is excludes physics because you could fucking teleport, transform, do whatever you want in the metaverse.
Code is physics.
Now.
Okay.
There's two types of metaverses.
There's a social metaverse and a gaming metaverse and there's a lot of overlap.
A social metaverse is, as it says, you just go in there and you start socializing and
building relationships, you know, doing business, all that.
And then the gaming metaverses, which again, they overlap with social, but you go there
to play a game and enjoy playing a game and potentially make money as well.
And the overlap is that when you're playing a game, you're also socialized.
And we saw that with, I can't remember which game.
Second Life, I think it was.
It started off as a game.
And then when people started hanging out there and sitting there and just chatting shit,
they turned into a social metaverse as well as the gaming metaverse.
Now that I've explained the two types of Metaverse is what you guys are doing, CryptCade,
and we'll go to the panel for questions, is that you got a Metaverse that has the business aspect to it,
that has the gaming aspect to it, with four games, Hovercraft, Racer, Arcade, and First Person Shooting,
and Social Fire as well.
So you added the social and gaming, and I think something I've said before is I think those two areas,
any Metaverse that integrates those two will be a winner.
I'm not saying you will be winning.
I'm saying what you're doing is the right thing.
but let's start asking the tough questions.
I will go to Tone last, because I know he's not going to have really good questions,
and I'll go to someone smooth.
Tom, first time on stage, let's see your question.
Hey, my question was actually for John.
I know, we're going to do the, I should brought you up earlier for that.
We'll go to Lala, first question, because we're going to focus on the pitches now.
Yeah, so I feel like that there was a pretty big metaverse bubble that happened last year.
I mean, when all of us were like bored in COVID and we all wanted to escape our realities,
I feel like there was really this like huge pump into the metaverse market.
Everyone was very, very excited.
Now I feel like it's almost a little bit like we kind of look back at that time and we almost kind of laugh
because a lot of the infrastructure is simply not there to actually back up a lot of these
metaverse concepts or ideas.
So I guess my question for you is kind of what is your plan to kind of push forward and get people interested again in the metaverse, but in a more realistic sense to where, you know, the technology can support it.
How do you get people to start believing in the metaverse again?
I feel like a lot of the interest is kind of now in AR and in things that are a little bit more down to earth.
Yeah, no, you know what, that bubble, we agree with that bubble and we had to weather that storm during that time as well.
So what we did, we just kept on building and as the technology is changing, we're just adapting to it because Cryptcade's been around for, I think, about three and a half years and it's adapted.
It's been through the cycles. It's evolved.
One of the biggest issues with these metaverses at the time and Decentraland was in front of it because they had WebGL was the client side.
Yeah.
download and that restricted 90% of people.
That was a big barrier for everyone.
But then AWS and Unity Fusion came out with cloud rendering technology.
So now that's one of the big things that we've done is we've introduced the cloud
rendering technology, which is just basically WebGL and upgrade of it,
so that this can be accessed by any device, even a 10-year-old laptop.
Yeah, crypto-Kate.
Let me ask you another question because I don't want it to get too technical for the audience.
That's a pretty basic question that I tend to ask all projects.
And Joe, you probably have a few questions as well.
This is your jam.
Before I do so, I'm just getting, the team is telling me I'm getting DMs of people saying
which projects that I talked about earlier.
Any project I mentioned earlier, I was giving feedback.
I'm not endorsing any of them,
whether it's Pepe or the other two I mentioned,
WSP, I think it was in Capoeba.
So I talked, I said some positive things, et cetera.
We don't own any of these tokens as far as I know,
and I'm not endorsing them.
So I still wanna start getting any criticism
and hate later on.
And there could be great projects.
I'm not saying they're good or bad.
Just talking objectively.
Anyway, sorry, crypto, I just wanted to make that disclaimer.
Back to you. How much money have you raised?
And do you have any partnership with any exchanges yet?
So for the audience, that's not deal.
You have to.
So you raise money privately.
And listing on an exchange is like the first big milestone for projects, because then you'll have liquidity for your token that will have utility.
Any exchanges?
And how much money have you raised?
Okay.
So to date, all of the raises been through VCs.
I think we've got about 33 VCs and just as many partners and backers.
As for the exchanges, we've been in talks.
You'll see in Cryptcade we've got an OKX, OKC building, so we're in talks with OKX,
Whoobigate, MEX.
So we've been in talks with these guys for over six months now.
When's the token launching?
When's the token launching?
We are planning to launch in the next 30 to 60 days.
Oh, cool.
All right.
So there is also a beta already out, which is down.
It's just a link that you can actually access it on the web through your browser.
All right.
Let's take another two to three questions.
A web?
So my question is, for metavers, you need predominantly two things, right?
You need users and you need creators.
Creators need users and users need creators.
Which is why typically you see any Metaverse build.
build a massively successful game first, and then they scale into a MetaVS platform,
so they have both of those things innately, and then they can, you know, transition easily.
So how are you going to acquire both of these and simultaneously creators and the users?
Yeah.
Yep. So what we wanted to do was we didn't want to create so much as a niche metaverse because what we found was a lot of these metiverses had their own niches.
So we decided to just create a hub for these metaverses.
So we want to create this cross-collaborative community.
So that's why we're targeting businesses and users so that we can onboard different projects, different metaverses, different games and put them into their own space.
You can have like a dedicated AMA room.
where, you know, influences users and people that are wanting to use a private space can come together and bring their audience in a token gator or an NFT gated specific area, kind of like Microsoft HoloSense, but in the Metaverse.
So that's how we're planning to sort of bring everyone together is we're going to utilize everyone else's communities rather than focusing on building our own niche community.
We'll go to Suli. Let's see your question, man. I have high hopes.
So my question to you is, what's your plans in terms of add revenue for the project and how are you going to hope to use that in terms of your business to reach diverse audiences and then what's your projections?
So we do actually have revenue projections in our Gitbook, which we're using as the white paper.
For the ad revenue, it is just the internal advertising space.
We do actually have some people using it already, but that's not producing revenue at this stage.
It's just sort of testing it out, you know, the banners and the buses and a blimp.
We actually already have some businesses that are real world businesses inside their
For example, we've got, you'll see a giant green building.
That's an emerald company that paid for a custom building.
And they're actually selling their brand or their jewelry through the Metaverse.
So we facilitate all that with partners.
You know, we're not.
having to build that structure.
We've got partners like now payments,
and we're speaking to another one at the moment
that'll handle that.
So we've got the commercial office.
Yeah, I like the...
I was interrupting you just to...
I think he answered the question,
but so far I'm...
I'll go to Fiddy and Joel for the last few questions.
Goody, I'll go to you first for the next one.
Fiddy, you go first, but I'm pretty impressed so far.
I know you've got to get a lot more technical,
but I'm definitely leaning to potentially writing a check
or being involved with the project one way or another,
because I like what I hear so far, Fidi.
Do you disagree?
Yeah, no, no, I actually really like that he spoke about partnerships
because I am working,
on an incredible Metaverse with Xolo right now.
And one of the big things they've done,
they've got like Post Malone,
they've got incredible people they've already signed.
So the key to these Metaverse is going to be an experience.
So what are you doing like to set apart from all the different Metaverses?
Like what kind of experience can a user expect when they go to your Metaverse?
That's what I want to know.
Thank you.
So at the moment, what you're seeing is sector one.
There's seven sectors, and it's going to be an open development.
So sector two, you can actually see from this Cripcade City.
It is actually in orbit.
So we're going to have different sectors to give different experiences.
That one is more like an Elysium-style upper echelon society.
I think sector three is going to be like an,
an arid waste land that people can drive around in the hover cars, etc.
So we're going to have different experiences in terms of the environment,
but we've also got an AR app.
which at the moment it's just minimal functionality.
You know, you can take your car or your in-game assets and see them in real life.
But you can also use them on the screen of itself for like little bounty or treasure hunts.
And partners can actually use them for, you know, their communities as well.
And VR is also being introduced later in the roadmap.
So that's also being worked on at the moment.
So we want to sort of create this immersive experience with not just different environments,
but different technologies as well.
So AR and VR and with the AI as well, we want to be able to have a space where they can generate their personal spaces as well.
All right.
We've got last question.
Joa, your thoughts.
And final question.
Yeah, I'm very bullish on objective-based metaverses.
I'm very bearish on.
open metaverses.
And that's the difference.
I do like the fact that I kind of look at you like an aggregator of metaverses,
which could be really interesting.
But if they're objective based.
Maybe Joe,
instead of asking a question,
I'll give your thoughts instead.
I think it's better.
Okay, but I had a question, which was basically how do you use the tokenomics to incentivize people to build or to partner with you?
Can they also use their tokenomics or do you have some kind of mechanic like that that would work?
Yeah.
So just to add to Joe's question, like how would you monetize that in terms of from the user experience?
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, so the token itself isn't inside the metaverse because inside the
Metaverse we've got an in-game currency called VK because that way with one of our
actually with now payments but as of last night we've got a new partner that we're onboarding
because they have a seamless experience where they can actually onboard anyone else's
tokens and use it inside the Metaverse so you could use
um bnb you can use um pepe or something and transact with in-game assets um we're using a few
different variations of nfts as well uh within the tokenomics so we're going to use um
tokens for the office spaces that can rent out the office spaces per month just to keep the costs down as well.
And also upgradeable NFTs.
So if you have a character and you buy an accessory, it actually updates that NFT in real time.
And again, that's through another partner of ours.
Cool.
um so we we we kept the tokenomics out of the actual game uh per se because we wanted to to keep ourselves open for like apple and the play stores um you know they've got certain rules that you have to
buy that 30% they want so so yeah cryptocade um man i think it's a good pitch you're from australia yeah
Yeah, so I've actually been up for 28 hours for this, and I'm actually glad that I stayed up.
It's been a really good stuff.
I'm happy to objectively say one of my top 10 pitches in the last X number of months, let's say six months.
We really like what you guys are doing.
Obviously, we have to verify everything we're saying.
Are you working with IBC or not?
Are you working with us?
We are.
Oh shit.
All right.
So there you go.
That obviously gives a tick of approval.
They're already working with you guys.
Well, I'd want to be more involved and would love to jump on a private call.
So well done.
And I think the feedback from the panel is pretty good.
I appreciate staying up.
Anyone that wants to, if you want to win money, go to the Pintweet.
Cryptokade is one of those.
Arcus, I'm going to bring you down because you're going to pitch third.
The Qantas here.
They're going to pitch a second.
They were meant to pitch first.
But Cryptokade is there.
Give us your feedback on the pitch in the comments.
and much respect that you stayed away 20-something hours for this.
Really appreciate it, bro.
I'll keep you on the stage for a bit longer if anyone wants to DM you from the audience.
Otherwise, a lot of people will DM me and I can connect them.
And if you want to go to sleep, just jump off and go to bed, bro.
Vakwan, how are you?
Doing well.
How are you all doing tonight?
I got to say this is in my first spaces of Mario's,
and this has been absolutely incredible.
I'm definitely glad I was able to join today.
Cool, Ben, where are you based?
Currently in New York City.
Cool.
Oh shit.
I was there a couple of weeks ago.
So Ben, a gaming token.
Anything to do with gaming?
I'm in.
I love, you know, gaming for me is the early adopters into Web 3.
The biggest use case in Web 3 in crypto and blockchain for me will be digital assets within gaming and decentralized gaming.
Yeah.
Don't know what you guys do.
First time you pitch.
Are you working with IBC?
I probably should ask that in the early.
Are you working with us or not yet?
Not yet.
We're hoping to.
Cool.
More and more.
All right, man.
Well, I'll let you know if I'm hoping to as well after the pitch.
Sully, let us know when the pitch could kick off.
You ready, Kwan?
All ready.
All right, bro.
All yours.
Go for it.
All right. Well, I'm Hunter, the admin for the Kwandau.
For starters, congrats on everything that's unfolded in the last 48 hours.
It's all been amazing.
So I'll dive right in.
At its simplest form, KwanDAO is trying to sort of revolutionize the gaming world by creating a decentralized community.
Our goal is sort of the hand...
the power back to the gamers.
We're aiming to tackle this through our token
that creates incentives for both the game developers
as well as the gamers themselves.
Tonight we've talked a lot about which use cases do or don't make sense
and I've actually agreed with a lot of what I've heard from both sides.
In fact, I actually got into trouble as the speaker
at a conference two years ago when I said that the majority of crypto projects
are just creating solutions for problems that don't actually exist.
So my views on the matter may actually be a little bit somewhat polarizing in the crypto space,
but I'm a big believer in only creating solutions for real problems.
One of the big problems that we have in blockchain is that blockchain is a great use case for,
is actually making rewards programs infinitely more valuable through interoperability.
And the space with the biggest problem here seems to be gaming.
Imagine people putting hundreds of hours into a game to get their rewards
and suddenly then being able to take these rewards outside of their original ecosystem
for countless further utility and how much that will better the gaming industry as a whole.
So Kwan is partnered with the best in business from both the gaming world and the Web3 world
with partners like Horizon Labs, Banger Games and Finwick and West.
Some basic info. Our IDO will be on Wednesday the 31st, and our centralized exchanges all launch the very day afterwards on Thursday.
So I'm sure there's a ton of questions. So I guess we can dive right into it. I think that's 90 seconds.
That was fucking epic. What exchanges will you be listing on after your IDO? For anyone not in the crypto space, an IDO is a decentralized coin.
You lost on a decentralized exchange. And John is still in the audience. John will probably be pulling his hair out. John, don't block me.
But that's what an IDO is.
No, let's, let's bring John back up.
I would actually love to talk to him on several matters.
I've sent him an invite.
John, I've sent you an invite to come back up about a minute ago, so you can accept it.
But so what exchanges you're listing on afterwards?
So you can find us on several.
And that actually may be a slightly changing matter, as I think we may be having even a couple more there invited.
But follow our Twitter to figure out which exchanges we're going to be listing on.
We have three that are currently committed, including MEXC and potentially Gate I.O.
And we're potentially having a couple more join the phrase.
So, yeah, continue to follow Twitter.
Have you spoken to Sendex?
We have and we are listing on this index.
That is one of them, absolutely.
Fuck yeah, respect.
Cool, man.
I love what I'm hearing so far.
Just to simplify what you do and I'm going to really dumb it down.
If I get it wrong, I only slept one and a half hours, so I apologize.
But are you launching, so each game will have its own token.
The token will be a way to transfer value within a game and have different other use cases.
And what you're saying is that with each game, if they have their own token, that token is bound to that game and that ecosystem.
But what you want to do is create a token that is interoperable among multiple games.
Am I completely off the mark or am I close?
You're very, very close.
I'd say that's pretty spot on with some additional sort of granular details, but I would say that's a great definition.
How much money have you raised?
So we have currently raised a number of, we're working with a couple of VCs.
The exact number will actually be released tomorrow, so pay attention to our Twitter for that.
And we're working with four VCs at the moment and potentially hopefully bringing on a couple more in the next 24 hours as well.
I'm loving the fucking pitches today.
I love what you're doing as well.
I want to work with you, but let me ask a couple more questions.
So reward tokens, obviously, it's very hard to sustain their value.
When you have a token that's interoperable across multiple games,
is it just going to be a reward token that people will just sell to convert to stables?
So what I mean for the audience is if you get a token as a reward in a game,
because you've achieved a certain task,
then that token has no use case to hold.
All you need to do is turn it into money, so you have money in your pocket or use it to spend, but there's no reason to sit there and hold it.
And that was one of the issues with Axi Infinity, one of the top, or I think still the largest decentralized game.
So my question to you is, is what is the utility of the Kwan token?
What's the point of holding it?
Is there anything other than a reward token or it is a reward token?
For starters, you were asking, and we're starting off, I'm glad with the hardest question that you could possibly ask of anyone that is sort of in this space.
And I definitely appreciate that.
In terms of that, it is a very, very, very ongoing, difficult ongoing sort of method to be able to sort of handle what they call these sinks in the faucets.
The sinks are sort of what produces more tokens.
The faucets are sort of what claws back the tokens, if you will.
You're right, a lot of people in the play to earn industry have struggled with this for many, many, many years.
Some people have done it very well.
Some people have definitely struggled with it.
So it really comes down to working day in, day out with our partners and our ecosystem partners,
such as Bangor Games, to be able to determine what the best forms of sinks and faucets are for that ecosystem.
And that's something that we take extremely seriously.
And for every partner that we bring into the ecosystem, that is first and foremost what we're focused on.
As well as additionally, one of the revenue channels that we are creating is a sort of tax that comes
with each time the ecosystem partners sort of claw back any additional tokens.
So, yes, that is the hardest question I could possibly be asked.
I'm glad you asked it first.
Juan, just on that.
Quinn, can I ask similar to that?
How do you plan to, based on what you're saying there,
how do you plan to attract diverse ranges of gaming platforms and services to your ecosystem?
Whoa, hold on.
Yeah, absolutely.
For fuck sake, your questions, bro, respect.
You have no idea what crypto even means.
Yeah, you're asking very, that's the third question you've asked.
Bro, I know what crypto means.
He's just reading, Mario, he's just reading off of my pre-pre-prepared question.
Come on.
Yeah.
He's just reading off of my three-prepared questions.
No, no, no, no, no.
You told me to read these chat and nonsense.
I don't trust this guy.
But basically, no, no, what I did was,
you gave me a test to revise, and I revised it, isn't it?
I learned it.
hard to learn.
I don't know
on a serious
note.
So Goody
Goody.
I don't get
done by
Nemes to learn it,
isn't it?
Goody did prep
questions for us
a disclaimer.
John, come up.
We're almost done
with the pitchers.
But Goon
let me give him credit.
He did prep questions
for us so his
statement is not
coming out of nowhere.
But surely if you didn't
actually, if you followed
Goody's statement,
that was low, man.
You should have given shout out.
If you didn't,
let me finish.
If you didn't,
fucking respect but kwan sorry to take away the limelight uh go ahead man that's the question
how do you attract games to no sorry it was actually also also good could you could you repeat
the question one more time how do you plan on sort of uh incentivizing the growth with these ecosystem
partners exactly like what's the point of having your token
Yeah, exactly.
So, I mean, we plan on sort of having a multi-leveled sort of marketing approach in terms of
originally starting with bringing in the gamers, providing the right incentives to the gamers
and showing the success of their involvement with our existing ecosystem partners like Bangor.
We've had a tremendous amount of success already and showing the sort of additional incentive
that can be created there.
With those proper case studies, we can continue to bring in more and more and more gamers.
Those gamers can...
The more gamers that we have, the more content creators that we have, the more competitive gamers that we have,
the more each gaming developer is incentivized to join our ecosystem.
And especially because they will clearly see the value that is being brought by the massive community of gamers and the power that they're given in our ecosystem.
And so hopefully that brings in more and more sort of gaming distributors or developers, if you will.
So that is one major part of this ecosystem
And as well as providing just a mass incentive
Of the actual gamers themselves
Sort of demanding this ability
And it's sort of becoming a more market industry standard
That's got a WB then Goody
Cool WB, sorry Jalb
WB you want to ask question bro
Goody we'll go to you
Yeah, I mean, I have a couple questions, but first of all, it's like, you have a lot of fluff in the website especially.
And there's like a lot of words without saying very much.
So when it comes to a lot of the like go to market strategy, even just now, you were saying like basically describing the overall Ponzi of a gaming ecosystem of like we want to attract more people and attracting more people is going to attract more people and more developers and this and that.
But where are you starting from?
Like how, where is the go-to-market strategy on a business level for a gaming ecosystem?
And like how are you going to incentivize these, especially these big game creators like the 2Ks and the rock stars and stuff like that to implement your token rather than building out their own chain even?
Goody took my question.
That was good, goody, goody.
Respect, bro.
I like how you asked that.
You would direct your first question ever to a project on our shark tank, the one I run.
And that was a fucking killer question, better than Slamans.
Quan, Mike is yours.
Sure.
No, that is a very good question.
And that is something that, you know, originally when a resource was originally first looking at the foundation of this project is something we were having to ask ourselves constantly.
And we looked at a lot of what a lot of the other gaming downs are doing.
And they are creating ecosystems in which they're sort of this closed garden ecosystem where you sort of need to adopt their blockchain, their token, you need to develop on their blockchain, whereas what we've really focused on is creating an ecosystem in which the Web 2.0 partners can adopt something very easily.
We do that through a series of partnered synthetic tokens with the partners that we're working with, as well as providing all the backends necessary and working a lot on the development for all the backends necessary for them to be able to easily adopt our token.
So what we really aiming to be in the system is there are multiple gaming DAOs that are out there and gaming tokens that are out there.
our core differentiator is really being just something,
a token that is very easily adoptable by the Web 2.0 industry,
the Web 2.5 industry, and the Web 3.0 industry.
And so that's exactly what we're sort of aiming for.
And it's sort of like I mentioned earlier,
our initial sort of go-to-market partners of Horizon and Bangor
provide us a really great case study in exactly that.
as we sort of found the perfect partners for what we're trying to build here.
One more follow-up.
Well, one more follow-up to that is-
Goody, goody.
Get it's too confident, bro.
Let's go to WB.
It's one question each.
And then you'll get a question for the next one.
WB, you'll get a last question, man.
Yeah, it's the last question.
It is, my friend. You've got the last question. Do you want to ask it?
No, no, yeah, because I'm doing a bit more of research here.
Oh, good. We'll give you a question for the next one, bro.
Goody, since Joe, I didn't ask a question. I'll give you the mic again, Goody.
I was just going to ask, like, you mentioned Kwan, like, a Dow in that last answer,
and your website mentions governance a lot.
Like, what kind of governance or decision-making does it actually allow for gamers and users in the ecosystem?
Yeah.
That's a really good question.
And I'm going to answer that as honestly as I possibly can,
which is my entire job here is to not oversee anything.
My entire job at Kwan,
the only purpose I serve is to sort of help act as an admin
and enact the votes that exist.
I encourage everyone here to go in and check out our Dow Terminal
and our governance terminal and see just all of the abilities
that you can actually sort of interact with as soon as we launch.
And really see that this is truly a community driven project.
And my only job here is not to act as any sort of a centralized entity,
but simply to enact the voting structures,
enact the proposals and votes that come from the Dow itself.
and the entire team behind Kwan, that is our only role in purpose.
And we are listed in as very clearly just that,
as well as the constitution and the sort of governance documents and bylaws
that we will be releasing tomorrow as well.
All right, so I think this wraps it up.
Quan, I'm just the reason I'm not talking much yet
because I'm inviting the next project.
All right, so I want to say, let me pitch for once.
And Slaman, let me see how this pitch goes.
You ready, Simon and Jo?
Joe Al.
Yeah, go for it, bro.
All right, so, so Kwan, I run IBC, which is a consulting firm turned incubator since 2017.
We work with projects, we get no fee out whatsoever.
We only get tokens.
That means if the project fails, we fail because our tokens are locked.
for 612, 18, 24, three years even, depending on how many tokens, et cetera.
So it's a VC model for working with projects.
And we mainly focus on building communities, building use cases.
We also have a partner with the biggest incubator in crypto,
who is also one of my best friends.
And we do market making as well through them,
tokenomics, token structure, treasury management, the whole lot.
And we've been in this space for a long time.
pretty large portfolio and and obviously we've got the pretty big media machine. I will actually
make a big announcement at the end of this show. Fuck, I'm going to make a really big announcement
at the end of the show. That is... There's been four exciting announcements already. Yeah, this is a big one.
This is a really big one. This is crypto relevant. Everyone's going to love it. You're announcing an
announcement, really? Yeah, I'm announcing that I'm going to
And now, again, don't question it.
So, Kwan, this is what we do.
You're my judge now.
Any questions to me, Kwan, because I want to work with you.
Yeah, I have a bunch of questions.
In particular, I guess my biggest question is the case studies that you love to show off the most in terms of the success stories that have come out of the ecosystem, as well as sort of your missions and goals for 2023 and 2024 and sort of what you aim to represent in the space.
Yeah, sure.
Our best case study is BitConnect, not sure if you've heard of it.
The second one is one coin, which is a great project.
Yeah.
So on a serious note, so by the way, Slaman, these are two scam projects in the last 10 years, last five years.
But no, and yeah, so we got a bunch of...
Are you also on Mount Gox?
Yeah, Mount Gox.
We list all projects on Matt Gox and FTX.
We've got relationships with both.
So now we've got a bunch of portfolio companies that are listed on our website.
We list, I think we list all of them.
So you could talk to all of them, including the ones that failed, because obviously most projects will fail.
But the ones that fail, we lose money because we hold tokens.
So all the case studies are there.
And our partners have even more case studies, and they're listed on their website, which is TD-fine.
We have very close relationships, including equity stakes in some of the sex exchanges.
When I say very close, I mean extremely close relationships with the CEOs, et cetera.
And then the second question is our mission.
Okay.
I'm not going to give you some cheesy shit.
Like our mission is to help the world by helping startups achieve their dreams.
Man, my mission is to make money.
And I think the best way for me, for me as in us as a company, because we have shareholders
on the board.
And for us to make money is to have pieces of, and we do this in AI as well, not just
crypto is to have a piece of a bunch of projects doing the animal cup brand strategy and then wait
for the bull market 5% 10% of projects recover and do really well and those 5 to 10% of projects
will pay for the other 90% that fail and and a few X is more so that's how strategy I'll give
you one more question quon
I think that's really all the questions that I had.
I mean, it's really excited.
I'm going to dive in, start learning as much as I can.
Continue to join these faces, and I will shoot you a message shortly afterwards.
That's how you fucking pitch.
That's how you pitch.
It was all right.
Salaiman and Joa, last question.
I'll give you one more question.
Try to smash me.
Give you a question.
Pussy.
No, no, Kuan.
Not you.
The last question.
Not you.
You're good.
You're good, bro.
I'm calling Joa and Slaman Pusses.
Any questions, guys.
Give me a question, a hard one.
Come on.
Mario, what do you have to say to all the people who call you a scammer for all the stuff that you've promoted?
No, I'm joking.
Yeah, bro, like, it's everyone in crypto gets called a scammer.
And I don't know who's calling me scammers.
It's been a long time.
I haven't been called one.
But everything's on the blockchain.
So we're pretty transparent about everything we do.
So any allegation that's made, there hasn't been any...
any substance provided whatsoever.
You know, you work with me, Goody,
so you can probably speak for it yourself
and what you've seen behind.
Actually, Goody, you've worked with me.
How was your experience?
And what have you witnessed
working for IBC?
Yeah.
I mean, man, you're probably one of the nicest guys that I've ever met.
And IBC team seems to be pretty well run.
So honestly, it's been a pretty good experience.
That's not he do.
Okay, that's a fucking horrible way of doing it.
So I've never been shit, Mario.
I've never.
I've never.
I've never launched an NFT project because I'm too careful.
I've never launched an ICO because I'm too careful.
I've never participated in a meme coins.
I can, like the amount of money.
I'll tell you this.
One of the top five meme coins in crypto in general came to us early to work with us.
Very, very fucking early.
And we said no.
We said no to many others, but that was one of the top four, top three, top four meme coins.
The reason is we're trying to be as kosher as possible and it paid off really well.
But I'm taking away the limelight from Kwan.
You guys are an awesome project.
I'm really, really impressed by the pitch.
Joe, any quick final thoughts on the pitch before we go to the second last pitch?
Okay.
Yeah, it's just what comes first?
No question.
The games or the users?
No question.
Mario, I'm just going to say these were horrible pitches, not good ones, and I work in the box.
Ah, John, John, you're working games.
You're going to get technical.
Why is it a horrible pitch?
I don't need to be technical to tell you that there will be no global gaming token.
That is a horrible thing.
It makes no sense on a regulatory, legal or practical standard.
So let's go through one by one. Regulatory and legal obviously is going to, I don't have any knowledge there. And that can apply to pretty much any token. But we'll get to those second, Jonathan. The first one, I appreciate coming up on stage. The first one practical. Why having a token, one token for multiple games, interoperable token, not a good idea.
Pretty simple. Games die on an average of about six months after release.
Very few games ever survived past a year, usually a 98% plus fail rate.
And metaverses are not a real thing.
They're only real once a game has survived at least two to three years.
Pretty simple.
Okay, so the second point, I'll count of the second point in Qana,
let it count of the first point because that relates to your project and your use case.
But the kind of point metaverses are not real unless they succeed.
You can say this about any startup, any business.
anything really, any website is not real until it has users.
So I think the metaverse is real, but it's useless until it has users.
I think that's what you mean.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Jonathan.
If not, I'll go to the second point, the first point for Quant to respond to.
Yeah, so that's not what I'm saying. Metaverses are an end state. They are not, you do not launch a Metaverse. You end with the Metaverse after you reach critical users and UGC tooling. And the likelihood that Kwan will ever raise enough to reach that level is very low. You need at least $200 million.
Yeah.
So let me count on this Metaverse 1, and then we'll get Kwan to respond, because I think this is the more important question.
I agree with what you're saying, but I wouldn't say it's not a Metaverse.
I'd rephrase what you're saying.
A metaverse is useless until it has adoption, it has users.
What is it then?
All right, now we're going to Kwan.
Kwan.
He's got to ask you some tough questions and it's been pretty critical.
The mic is yours.
Okay.
No, I would say that's the case for almost any industry and any product on earth,
where a car manufacturer is completely used this until it produces enough cars to actually be seen on the road.
A battery producer is completely used this until it produces enough batteries to sort of go into a significant amount of the cell phones
and achieve that critical mass.
I would say that's true for just about any startup in the world.
In terms of the sort of becoming a global gaming token,
the simple fact of the matter is...
it's not an overnight sensation.
You do not become something global
and you're not become globally adopted overnight.
I don't think that's anyone's goal here.
What is the goal is to show the ability of what we can simply provide through like an increased loyalty rewards program one step at a time, one gaming developer at a time.
And you're a hundred percent right.
The majority of games don't actually last very long.
But the simple fact of the matter is if people who are playing those games can then take all of their rewards that they were playing from that game and move on to the next major hype, whether it's...
anything out there from call of duty and to, you know, they're done playing call of duty.
So now they want to move into Among Us.
And because of they move, they're moving through it, they continue to get to bring some of their
rewards points over is something that it provides a tremendous amount of value and benefit.
I don't think that anyone on the team is necessarily looking to have every single game
adopted, you know, by next week.
The simple fact of matter is it becomes extremely profitable, extremely beneficial and
extremely powerful for all of the community members.
if we can simply continually on board new partners at any level.
So can I think that will be a more quick question, Mario?
Very quick.
We'll make it one.
WB, I'll give you the mic for the next project.
Jonathan, I'll give you one last question if you don't mind, man.
I think you're asking really good questions, by the way, and I'd love you to stay on the panel.
Go ahead, Jonathan.
Yeah, Mario, it's just to interact with Jonah because I think he's the second point.
It's okay.
People call me Jonas.
It doesn't matter to me.
Yeah, Jonah, I think the second point you mentioned, it is not fair to be honest.
I mean, we've seen other projects before that had gaming utilities, and they survived.
Can you name them?
Yeah, for example, Kiti Inu, it survived like now.
Kiti Inu is not trying to be a Metaverse.
They actually have a real game.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying like if you have a real game
I think the line is pretty broad between a game and a metaverse like a game could devolve into a metaverse into an entire ecosystem
No not no no no no no there are let me enjoy let me enjoy this W please aside wb I'm enjoy this because
John up what why not why can't a game evolve to a metaverse because
games can't you define how sorry you interrupt John well how do you define a metaverse? I
A 3D space in which UGC tooling is enacted to create multiple experiences across one shared platform, but is not an interstate ecosystem.
And a game has core loop design.
Okay.
A metaverse usually has what you call event design, and they're very different philosophies, which...
Quite frankly, one of the only people groups that have attempted to do this is the board API club.
I will give them credit.
They're actually winning, and I think they'll actually have a potential success there.
Other than that, it's been Fortnite and Roblox and to a degree, Minecraft.
But my question, Kwan, have you ever worked in gaming?
Quang, you're muted.
Sorry, it was on mute.
Yes, yes, I have.
Without, I guess, doxing.
I've worked a little bit in the metaverse development space and I've worked a little bit in the gaming space as well.
I mean, like, have you worked on a Web 2 video game?
I have not, primarily Web 3.
I have not worked at all in the Web 2 space.
So, you know, the most popular Web 3 game is DeCentraland,
and it barely has 2,000 daily users.
So I wouldn't say that's success in game design.
My next question is, if I have Call a Duty,
and I have Call a Duty points,
and I have 90 million users a month,
why the hell what I want you to take my tokens
and go put it in another game where I'm losing market share?
Sorry, because you repeat that, you said, why would, why would Call Duty 1-2?
You talked about, like, for the player and the whole ecosystem, remember that the IP is owned by the game developer, no matter how much the players transact those assets, right?
The core IP, not the asset IP.
If I'm Call-Duty and I have 90 million users a month and I'm making about...
I don't know, 20 million plus a month.
They make a lot more than that.
But let's say making $20 million plus a month,
why would I want to use a global token
so that way I can be vampire attacked by my competitor?
Why would I want to do that?
I don't think that there's any necessarily, I don't think any of the partners that we've talked to so far have any inherent risk of people leaving the game simply because they can withdraw their rewards points or tokens.
What is a greater incentive is actually sort of the reverse of what you said, which is I'm launching a new game.
And I now have the ability to reach a much greater market because they know that they can bring the rewards from the games that they're done playing into my ecosystem.
Regardless whether or not someone is done playing a game, they will still have those rewards there.
And they will be sitting there regardless.
and if I can capture that market when I launch my game,
that is a great incentive for me as a developer.
So you're much more likely an e-sports company
and your valuation is significantly lower than
because all you're doing is building a layer two on top of
Someone else is layer one, and that makes you just an e-sports match producing company.
And those exist in Web 2 all day, and most of them fail after about two years.
The only one that's had remote success is one that was bought by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is the ESL group, which acquired an asset called Face It.
So you should probably look at those platforms because you're not a layer one at that point.
You're just a layer two.
So you don't even really own the IP.
You're just trying to do rewards fixing, which is a real business.
You can make money doing that.
But I don't know what your valuation is.
I'm just saying that you would have a lower valuation.
I think not just that.
It's really hard to convince Web 2 games to go into Web 3 because it just fucks the whole revenue model up.
and good games are really expensive to build,
and keeping all the revenue is key,
and unless someone comes up with a solution,
I don't see a lot of big games coming over.
That's why I'm watching Suey at the moment,
which is a new chain that's focused on games,
because it does have some benefits,
but it's a really difficult problem to fix and to answer.
And Joe, it's like what are the incentivizations for those games
besides, you know, to have something pre-built,
that they're not going to build themselves.
in Web 3 if they can somehow partner with others, but it's really hard.
What's going to start first, right?
Like the question I asked about chicken or the egg, that's the problem.
Is it the users or is it the games?
Because the only thing is the cost for acquisition of a high value gamer is extremely high.
You could get that through Web 3 and I see that as the big advantage.
But how do you start a network without having the games and how do you get the games without
having a network?
Joe, it's very easy. There's only two options with this stuff. There's only two. Usually it's content first. Every publisher in Web 2 that has become a critical success did not start as a publisher. Because when you want to become a global gaming token, you're saying you want to be a publisher. Maybe that's not what the word you're going to use, but it's a publisher. In fact, many of these blockchains act as publishers. Polygon especially acts as a publisher.
So either one, you make a game that has critical following, which allows you to reinvest into other games,
therefore making you a multi-token standard, or the other option is you fill up a multi-token standard with so much capital that they have the operating capital to fund other games to go fill that void,
which basically works as a SPAC or a fund, which I didn't hear either of those options in this pitch.
Yeah.
John, I appreciate the comment.
Hey,
Quam, have you, any last thoughts before we go to the next pitch?
I'd like to give you the last thoughts before I go to the next guy.
Sure, yeah, I think.
Go ahead, Quam.
Sorry, what was saying?
Yeah, if you can figure out that problem, shared tokenomics works, if you can get the gamers, I think.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think a big part of this is, first and foremost, it's about empowering the gamers.
We're doing so through not just incentivizing the gaming developers and the gamers themselves,
But also, in addition, we're really trying to incentivize the number of different sort of verticals here through competitive gaming, through streaming, through a bunch of different platforms in terms of sort of being the backing token for a lot of this.
And...
Not necessarily looking at Twitch.
Twitch is not something that we would actually look at.
We won't let you do that.
Zon won't let you do that.
Rumble won't let you do that.
Are you going to build your own,
you know, your own, you know, OTT protocol?
Yeah, that's what I would recommend.
Yes.
Yes.
What I would recommend is definitely saying updated with our coming sort of tweets.
You're going to fund the games and you're going to build a multifaceted streaming protocol.
I'm not sure where you got funding the games from.
I'm not sure where you got funding the games from.
That would not be a part of the solution.
That's the only way you're going to acquire games here,
because if not, they're going to go make their own tokens and compete with you.
Yeah, because you're not providing them anything.
They need funding.
Okay, guys, one second, one second.
Look, I appreciate your comments.
Kwan, last comments, because we've got the next pitch here.
It is another game.
So, Jonah, stay on stage because you can basically interrogate him as well.
I'm loving your comments.
By the way, I'm not saying, I'm not saying that you can't do something.
Should I think.
Jonah, Jonah, Jonah, Jonah, Jonah, I'm not disagree with you.
I think he made some excellent salient points.
I'm saying, Kwan, last, last thoughts before I move to the next guy.
Sure thing. Yeah, I think a lot of these questions will be answered via our governance documents, via our white paper and several different items.
What I would definitely recommend is following us, giving us a click here and following and checking out a lot of the sort of documents and upcoming updates that we'll have to produce.
So I think that we'll be able to answer a lot of that very, very soon.
So, yeah, and again, if you have any other questions in particular, feel free to shoot us a DM and we'll always be around.
Thanks for coming on, Kwan. I appreciate it.
So we got the next pitch on, and it is Arcus.
And Arcus, you are also a gaming company on Web 3.
So are you ready for your pitch?
Hello, good evening, good morning for everyone.
Before you start, just for the audience, sorry, I just tuned out for a bit.
John, I stay with us.
I heard I was with you at the beginning and your questions were spot on.
Kwan, really appreciate the pitch.
Anyone that wants to give feedback for Kwan, and I'm still pretty excited to talk to you guys and see if we can work together.
John has asked really good questions, really tough questions.
I think those questions would apply to pretty much any startup, especially in the gaming ecosystem.
But I do and the failure rate of games is very important point though.
Most games do fail.
The failure rate of games is higher than other startups, other industries.
But also if a game succeeds, the ROI is fucking mental.
But it's very hard to just find the right game.
And figuring out the tokenomics of a game, the mechanics of a game,
In Web 2 is difficult.
When you add Web 3 to it, it becomes a nightmare.
So I want to give credit to anyone building a game.
It's not an easy task at all.
But for the audience, if you want to put your feedback for the Kwan, again, the tweet is above.
Slaman will choose a comment and choose them as the winner.
But Arcus, do you want to kick off the timer, Slaman?
Tell them go.
Can you hear me clearly first?
Yes, you can, Archer.
Are you ready, Arka?
Perfect.
Yes, I'm ready.
Okay, and go.
All right. Good morning. Good evening, everyone. I'm the owner and CEO of Arcus Gang. So Arcus is one of the movers of combining Web3 and e-sports games.
And we have a unique value proposition to the gamers by providing an parallel gaming experience that combines the best of the traditional gaming and using blockchain technology.
Arcus is a third-person shooting game that uses a bow and arrow that allows gamers to have ownership with their asset, which can be traded in the decentralized marketplace.
Our project has already have a ready-made product, which we released our Alpha version last February 25 with four game modes, decentralized marketplace, and have around 2,000 monthly active users so far.
We are backed also by four venture capitals, Black Tides Ventures, ATF Capital, Black Asia Lab, and IBC Group.
We also have a collaboration with Crypto.com NFT for our first NF3 drops, which will happen on June 1.
With over 45 strategic partnership involves game aggregators NFT, e-sports platform.
In addition, we are also recognized by Gaming Amusement Board
which is a government regulatory body for professional sports in the Philippines.
This is to support our upcoming national web 3 e-sports tournament here in the Philippines.
As for our go-to-market strategy, we are focusing on the playability of the game,
conducting more e-sports tournament, and we've successfully conducted three mini-esports tournament
which is hosted by our partners with six upcoming more tournaments.
That's time. Thank you. I appreciate it.
All right. I'm going to do.
I think that's it.
Right.
Hands up for anybody who's got any questions.
Is it play to earn?
Yeah.
Actually, it's a combination right now.
They are calling it more compete to earn and also have a little bit of play to earn.
So just to be clear, play to earn for the audience for the beginnings.
It's essentially when you play, it should be play and earn.
But in Web 3, because you can own your assets and there's a token involved, you can play a game and earn money.
So it's not only enjoying a game, but also making money.
Now, if there's a game where you only make money, that's pretty much a pyramid scheme,
because everyone just wants to make money, take money out where the money's going to come from.
But if there's a game that people enjoy and can make money,
then the money that will pay for the people that want to make money
will come from the people enjoying it and don't mind losing money on it.
So that's what play-to-earn-or-play-and-earn means for anyone outside the ecosystem.
We'll go to the next question.
Let's go with Lala before we get, before Jonah goes off.
Yeah, I'm scared of Jonah right now.
I think I heard you correctly when you said that you had 2,000 users,
active monthly users on your platform, and you've been...
operational about a year. How does that compare with other games in the space right now that
you would see as competitors? Would you say that that is a high monthly user count? As someone
that's not super familiar with the GameFi space, if you could kind of break that down in terms of
what that's looking like with your competitors?
All right, sure, perfect.
So, yes, we are actually started last year, actually February last year, and we did our, done our thorough research about the GameFi industry.
So GameFi kind of like really more on a not really sustainable and not more on a.
click or card games.
But what we've seen in the gaming industry on the GameFi should be transformed into more on
the e-sports.
So we actually did a lot of improvement in our games.
But when it comes to 2000, yes, we are not that many yet because we haven't officially
launch and do our thorough marketing.
And now we are actually almost ready because we're taking time to really get the sentiments of the gamers from the web to space.
Why people keep playing games?
Why Dota existing for about 25 years?
Why Counterstrike existing for 30 years?
It's all about the playability.
They're interplayable with other, with their friends and the community.
Arcus, what, Arcus, what's the, one thing Lala asks, I thought was a good question.
What is, in terms of Web 3, what is the biggest game in terms of users, monthly users in Web 3?
Right now, here in Southeast Asia, we...
In total, like, what is the biggest web three game in terms of users?
Jonah, John, I could take that one.
You sure.
I could take that one.
John, what's the biggest web three game?
It's funny, well, I know one that has about half a million a month.
They're likely to be mobile related.
I know there's one other this big, but I haven't verified it.
But this one is from a group called Viker Games, and they do very traditional games over mobile,
and you get paid out in Bitcoin and other cryptos.
There's also a Bitcoin one called Zebedee, where you can do play to earn, layered on top of CSGO.
And you can earn sats against each other, which is pseudo.
Jonah, how long did it take?
I mean, are you aware, how long did it take for that game to achieve 500,
half a million years?
Well, I mean, that guy is an X.
First of all, 500,000 is not a lot.
Like, that's not considered a lot in gaming.
Like, a lot, like...
Everyone in gaming is shooting for 100 million, even though most never reach it.
You need to have several million a month to...
How much is...
Did you say call a duty has got 90 million?
Oh, yeah, but you're not...
I mean, like, Call of Duty is a different level, but they've got at least 90 bills.
And what about FIFA?
How much is FIFA got?
FIFA probably has around that, probably a little less.
But the thing is, that's just on their PC.
That's not mobile.
Cod Mobile probably has more than 90.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
So in terms of half a million, I'm saying what time period did it take?
It's not about time.
It's about how much money you have to spend to go to market.
And it's unlikely that Arcus has that money because you're going to...
It depends.
Like, what game you want to build?
If it's an indie game, right, then you're maybe going to be spending between 1 to 2 million, right?
Hopefully.
If you're building a premium indie, then you're looking at, you know...
three to five million on marketing spend if you're doing a real game like when I say real I mean like high high quality
you're spending 20 30 million on marketing but those are games that are you know different level you're not doing that here
I get I get that but the reason I'm asking the question John I'll explain to where the logic is for example if for that game
Zaka games they achieved half a million in let's say three months
then that I mean I can spend a year and he's got 2,000 that tells me so much but if it's
they achieved half a million and if it took a considerable period of time to do so
I just want to I would just want to see comparity in terms of all the web three games
is into that's what well what I'm when I'm saying here well the problem with his
like I won't roast him like the other guy because the other guy was was selling mineral oils
Um, this guy is at least trying to make a game.
Uh, so I, I don't criticize people who are actually trying to make a game.
So I, I did look into this. Um, first thing, do not download, do not download the game
from the site because you could get a virus or get hacked because this needs to be on a launcher.
If it's not on a vetted launcher, do not in no circumstance ever download this game.
I'm not saying that to hurt his user base.
I'm saying that because I'm not saying he's doing it,
but there's been many, many, many, many, many hacks,
including wallet hacks where people are downloading games that look fun,
but they end up being Trojan horse, you know.
Just to clear, Jonah, I know that you're not saying that we're doing it.
I just wanted to.
really provide some information that were on an installer lunch.
lunch budget and our game is not connecting to any metamass yet well good that it's not connected to
met yeah it doesn't yeah you should you should well you should the first thing you should be doing here
is get it's get vetted by a launcher and get your game on a launcher that's the like you that's the
first thing you should be doing here because if you're going to go raise money and you have an MVP
then you should let those those people who want to write a check be able to test your game on
and there's there are multiple web three launchers like elixir
is a vetted one.
I think Ultra is another launcher.
There's a few that you can do the vetting on.
Yeah.
But you need to get a lot.
We already partner with three game launcher right now, Miria, Altura, and I forget
the other one.
But yeah, we're also applying in the Play Store.
Are you a mobile game?
Yeah, Jonah.
I was going to say they're a mobile-based game.
We are a mobile game, 3D mobile game.
It says play alpha and then has a whole package.
Okay, so, well, first of all, for mobile, that's different.
You have a whole different situation.
First of all, with mobile, you're spending a lot of money on marketing,
but I don't think you'll have that capital.
Well...
Sorry, go on.
I'm sorry to cut you off, but yeah, I know that you are focused really more a lot on the capital, right?
Yes, we don't have the liberty of a lot of capitals right now, but what we're doing is actually a different, an unorthodox marketing also, and a guerrilla marketing, which we are partnering with a lot of e-sports aggregator, which as of today, there will get.
there will there is an upcoming mini esports tournament one from one of our
esports platform aggregator we're also conducting the national or we're also
gonna conduct our esports web 3
tournament here in the Philippines that's actually going to be a national.
And I think I mentioned that it's going to be also backed by one of our government regulatory
board body here in the Philippines.
I was like my suggestion to you real quick would be the people you need to help you if you're
really going to do esports, which by the way has a pretty low conversion rate, like you need
to be thinking about conversions to sales or conversions to app usage.
you should talk to Yield Guild Games
they have operations there
they'll be able to help you locally with marketing
and e-sports distribution
Arcus I'd look to hear your final
before we get to the next pitch
what are your final thought
the final pitch
yeah my thoughts sorry
I know Arcus I just like to hear your final thoughts
before I move on to the next pitch
Arcus
Okay, yeah. So, yeah, so far our product is actually ready to actually release our next
more beta version in the upcoming. We have also a good partnership upcoming to be released also
with big projects. So the first one that's going to be launching is on our first NF3 MintPass
in crypto.com NFT.
And that will be followed also by the other top tier launch pad, which we will be releasing in our market play, in our social media soon.
Right, Al, because I really appreciate you coming on and appreciate your time. Thank you very much.
Just invited USP. John, you're going to like this one. This is your favorite one. It's not a game. It's a security token.
that tokenizes real estate.
Jonah, do you want to pitch some, bro?
I think we'll invest straight away, bro.
No, Jonah, no.
Jonah, let us speak, bro.
Let us ask questions, man.
All right, you guys, guys, speak offline.
But guys, two things.
First, USP final pitch of the day.
Slaman, make sure remind the audience.
pinned above somebody you got to choose the winners after USB pitches you got to choose the winners
I'm going to make a major announcement I'm going to do the winner I won't be egotistical I won't
who praises me this time I'll try and be fair so give me some good picture or give me some good
comments meme combs forget about it kids
It's not a thousand words, but words you will get chosen.
Words about which project you prefer.
To pin tweet above is pinned on my profile as well.
Go through them.
Comment on each project to have a bigger chance
because we'll choose a winner from each project.
Choose your favorite project.
And tell us why.
And then Slaman will choose a winner.
And yeah, I'll make the announcement right after USP coin does the pitch.
John is still listening to us.
John again, I like this one.
I think it's going to be your favorite one
because I know the other three is outside your area of expertise.
Okay.
And John, stay with us.
I know it's not a game that's going to be pitching,
but you're pretty cool, man.
USP, good to have you back.
I'm a fan of what you guys do,
so I'll be quiet because I already know a lot about what you guys do,
and I think we're working with you
or, you know, I'm a fan of what you guys are doing,
so I'm pretty biased.
So, man, do you want to set up the timer?
USP, are you there, and are you ready?
Yeah, I'm here.
I'm ready.
Cool.
Okay, go ahead, bro.
All right, great. Hey, everyone, thanks for listening. I'm John Zahn. I want to thank
Mario and the other panelists for their opportunity to come back and speak here again. So, first of all,
I want to give a little background. I'm a real estate veteran, I'm being investor and developer,
and then I have a real estate management company I started 11 years ago. I managed over
$2 billion worth of real estate in Southern California. And
And I'm also executive chairman of the executive
investing in the bank and their licensed broker dealer based in LA.
So I know a little bit of things about regulation and compliance.
And there was being pretty hot topic when Jones here.
I know Jones still here, but it was pretty interesting to hear all these debates.
So most people can probably agree that these two things about investing, right?
First of all, it's like it was one of the best inflation hatch historically performing as being always growing uppaced inflation.
Secondly, it's pretty expensive, pretty complex invests, right?
It's high-barred entry in terms of large capital requirements, you know, professional knowledge required, the rosters require the investment manage the property.
So, and then we have a crypto space, right?
It's pretty exciting, it's new and they're, you know, export everyone.
So the debate earlier is like everybody can access crypto.
They can't be actually for say the traditional banking system.
versus even harder to access, right?
But crypto is pretty volatile and risky, you know,
because all these kind of scams and rock pools and no countabilities.
So far, so people have been pretty much can do whatever they want in the space, you know,
and obviously I see it's going after them right now.
So on top of that, in the majority of the project, not based on well-word assets,
so pricing is pretty speculated.
So we have this, you know, USP I created because of this.
Oh, sorry, I get to talk about it.
Yeah, yeah.
Sorry, what was that?
We'll give you like, T.S.P.
Yeah, you got to talk about exactly the benefits of USP, man.
Because you didn't sell it well enough.
Yeah, so I didn't, I didn't know time was so quick.
You'll give you a bonus 20 seconds.
20 more seconds, right, okay.
Okay, okay.
Okay.
USP is a real world as designed by, you know,
allow people to access real estate, you know, from anywhere in the world.
And there are every USP representative ownership of a tangible real estate portfolio in the world.
So imagine being fresh in a land or the real estate before the investor,
calling itself a real estate investor starting with just $1.
It's fully compliance with the current security laws right now.
So why?
So security tokens, what are the benefits of having security tokens?
So one thing, it should lead, so it's actually, and I'm going to try to simplify it for
the audiences outside the ecosystem.
Security tokens or real estate back tokens or security tokens.
Essentially, so tokens that represent a piece of real estate, that's a simple way.
And by the way, USB, if I say something wrong.
or you want to add to it, please jump in, especially if I say something wrong,
but I'll simplify it for the audience.
You can buy a piece of real estate, but what if you don't can't afford it,
or you want to buy bits and pieces of multiple real estate across different countries?
If you're tokenized, it can buy tokens that represent a certain piece of that real estate,
or you can buy the entire real estate that is tokenized through the tokens.
Now, why would you do that?
Number one is increased liquidity.
Technically, it should increase liquidity.
Once it gets adoption, it's got to be a 24-7 market, similar to crypto,
and it will have access from around the world.
Number two, it should have better accessibility, lower barriers to entry.
And that applies again to crypto.
Transparency is another benefit because now everything is on the blockchain.
So buying real estate, especially in less advanced economies, there's actually a piece of real estate.
I think it's in New York or somewhere.
I think it's in New York.
No, in Beverly Hills.
Okay.
massive piece of real estate, I think he's worth in a multiple nine figures, yet no one knows who the owner is.
I think it's in Beverly Hills.
Maybe someone knows the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,
yeah, WB, you know what I'm talking about.
I saw your emoji.
Um, yeah, if everything is on the blockchain, the deed is on the blockchain, uh, ownership is on the
blockchain, provenance is on the blockchain, be able to know who owned that piece of real estate,
who owned that property and how it changed hands over the years.
So that's another benefit.
Obviously, the fractional ownership being able to have different people that own a piece of real estate giving them exposure is another benefit.
And the last one is global access.
Now, that's kind of general benefits of tokenized real estate as security tokens.
So they comply with regulation.
WB gave me a thumbs down.
So I'll go to him.
But USB, I kind of explained it for you.
I hope that I did an okay job in simplifying it.
Let me go to WB.
What don't you like in what I said WB?
And then we'll go to talk.
Yeah.
So you should know, Mario, I'm a real estate developer.
I'm an architect.
Oh, shit.
There you go.
Yeah.
And it's kind of, Jonah here, I'm going to take it from you.
So I own multiple properties in a lot of countries.
And what you just said is not impossible.
but it's very difficult because there's a lot of different regulations across the world.
Some countries will not allow you to own a property unless you have...
some sort of citizenship or residency card etc etc also you have some other legal
problems which is if you buy a project through the blockchain you will have to be you
have to you will have to be not you will have to be docks I'm sorry you will have to be
you will have to provide
Yeah, you will have to provide your identity, etc., which is not decentralized.
I've personally thought about this.
Ownership, ownership is decentralized, no WB?
Yeah, ownership.
Ownership should be decentralized.
You should be docks for ownership.
In multiple countries, you cannot buy a property.
Unless you're going to use some company to hide behind.
So I think what you're saying about USP is possible, but long term, not short term, because a lot of countries are still, does not provide a lot of legal aspects on this matter.
That's a good point.
There's no legal clarity.
That's one of the down.
Exactly.
There's no, you cannot, I cannot prove my ownership of this property through a blockchain
contract.
That's the first thing.
WB, WB, you can kind of.
You can turn it into a company.
And US, if you, if we ask a question.
That's what I said.
That's what I said.
I'm sorry question.
Yeah, yeah, guys, guys, guys, let, let, let USP respond to WB.
WB made a lot of points, man.
Right.
So, yeah, so I agree with you.
That's the whole reason I created this, right?
Because a lot of other countries, they don't have even a really clear deed chain, right?
So you can't really buy it easily.
So in the US, we have a really clear deed chain, right?
You can buy it.
So we're offering not like, say, your property by sell.
The reason we can offer at $1, so we're offering fresh in real estate shares.
Think about like a reeds, right?
It's a reeds on blockchain.
So you're buying fresh ownership and each shares is representing a token.
And we can do that legally here in the US
because we're flowing around a lot right now.
We care us everyone.
We do ML checking everyone.
We'll make sure their US investors buying
this accredited investor owning.
But we'll do this under the RECD rule 506C.
and their exemptions were selling,
and they're foreign investors,
they can buy it on the rag ass.
They can buy here.
So we've done this already,
and there were all tokens already launched.
We have a current offering right now, actually.
So USB is just something similar to what you would allude into there.
Like if someone's investing, and please just clarify if I'm not making a good point.
Oh, good question.
But if someone's an investor, what level of transparency and security can a person expect
when they're participating in this fractionalized ownership of the USP,
a real estate portfolio, what you're referring to?
Can I answer to that?
And how is the interest of the token protected?
USP.
Sure. So we have a prolo.
And you can go there to create a K-YC and get a K-YC and collect your wallet,
they can buy the token, you can see the offering.
You can see all the financials.
So we have a financials, we have audit financials, and we're going to publish every quarter.
So actually people can see, actually not all-a-do.
We do annual audit, but we do all-audit every quarter.
So we can see the financials.
We're making an announcement about the property or buying,
people can see everything.
So this is a private company,
so we're now subject to the public company
disclosure requirement, which is save us a lot of money
in terms of operations, but we do intend to publish
as much as possible to the public, to our investor base.
you know i have to kwas everyone so every every owner's you know information we have them so
they're our you know cap table requirements so the one benefit of that is they cannot be stolen
so if your USB tokens actually being stolen or somewhere and we can actually burn the token that you
stole and we can give you back to you because your real ownership your value is stored in the real
world asset is in the company not really on the blockchain or just using blockchain technology
to make it more liquid right is there transfer to fund you over 7 peer to peer sort of thing
Yeah, you're talking.
You're talking.
Let me go to Joe.
Sully, before you got a job, just I have two major announcements to make after this pitch.
Sorry, now I've just got another one that I need to make.
So two very major, one, extremely major one is average that I will be making.
So I'm announcing that there's an announcement coming again.
About another announcement.
So it's going to be, I want everyone to stay for these two announcements.
And I'm not just a bullshit to you guys to stay.
I actually want to announce us, but I don't want to ruin the pitch like I just did.
Joa!
Yeah, did you turn, are you turning your portfolio basically into a company and then if issuing
tokens off the company?
Is that how you got around?
Yes, yes.
It's a corporation in dollar work.
So it's like a rate.
So it's like a security, basically.
Yeah, it's a security, definitely security.
Right.
And so you're limited to which citizens are allowed to participate also.
Anybody can buy it and they're on the rag ass.
So foreigner can buy it in the US will sell it on other countries because every.
Not all citizens.
Well, they have to pass the K-Y-A-M-L list.
Yeah, they have the item on the launch list.
And then your citizen can buy it, but the only credit investment can buy right now.
And we're actually working with this right now.
You have to get approval to do the crowdfunding.
Once we do that, we can open this offering to the retail investors in the U.S.
Okay.
Right. So right now it's only for accredited investors.
In the U.S.
yes.
For investors.
Right.
Right.
Let me go to Jonah.
Jonah, go ahead.
Yeah.
So I don't know much about this product, but I will say I, in general, I like the
idea of digitized securities.
I'll tell you why.
It's a personal pain point.
So I've been involved in a lot of.
I wouldn't say a lot of, a fair amount of pre-IPO stocks.
These are companies that I think could perform well.
But the problem is there's a lot of playing telephone,
and it's hard to find buyers and sellers.
Even when there's good volume in the private market,
having a platform in which I can buy in and out based on K.YC, AML,
into those pre-IPO assets is something that I would
I would love to have because it is such a pain in the ass
to do it in its current form.
So I have no idea if that's even related to USP,
but I think if someone could do something like that,
that would be a, and they had real backing,
it would be an interesting business.
Yeah.
Definitely, this technology tokenization can be used on every real private companies, every, you know, every fund, you know, LP shares can be tokenized too.
I mean, I think Black Rocks CEO everything, I just said, organization's next generation of the markets.
So I think in the future, these technology can be using every single private companies, you know.
You can tokenize anything you want.
Yeah, I think the use case of USB is just a lot, a lot easier to understand.
Yeah.
then when you start looking to web three games,
decentralized games,
so significantly more complex,
massive potential for returns,
but also a very high failure rate.
With USP, it's a very simple use case to understand.
I don't know who you muted everybody.
Can you unmute?
It's glitching.
Very simple use case to understand.
I think it's a use case that it's just a matter of time.
I've been bullish on security tokens since 2018, but adoption has been a lot slower than I expected.
But I'm still very bullish.
I think it makes sense.
The benefits, the advantages I mentioned earlier, stand, so it just makes it hard.
There's no one reason why it's slow to adopt.
So I've asked around about it?
Regulatory, hold on.
Can I guess?
Is it regulatory uncertainty?
Well, that's always the case for everything.
But from what I understand, a lot of founders of pretty hyped or well-established pre-IPO companies don't want that level of volatility in their volume and in their buyers.
They also want to, you know, a lot of them have what are called rovers, right, a first refusal.
And they want to be able to vet which buyers are coming in and out of their company, even if they're already KYC AML.
So it's a great use case if you have a more free-flowing founder or owner of those companies.
USB, I'll give you the final word before I start with the three announcement.
Two major announcements, one small one.
USP, go ahead.
Final words, I'm a...
Mario, can I...
Yeah, go ahead, WB.
Yeah, just a question for USB.
Have you worked in real estate before?
Yes, I managed over to be in those world of real estate right now.
I'm a developer in Southern California as well.
Yeah, so your legal knowledge is limited in the United States' legal information.
Yes, I'm Chinese too. I'm so I know some. Yeah, so both so China and the United States. Okay. Do you realize yeah do you realize I own I own you can check my portfolio for the country flags I own in most of the countries? Do you realize that it's different in every country?
Yes, yes. Okay. So we're not selling securities on the other country. We're selling here in US and we're doing around the ragged asphalt frames.
So we're actually selling on the other countries of U.S. securities.
So we're not doing that.
Ah, okay.
So only in the US.
Yeah, we're only selling in the US.
We can accept foreign investors to investment under rag ass exemptions on the US security law permitted.
But we're not selling active advertising, selling these other countries.
Yeah.
So let's, we'll have to wrap up.
So last question, WB and then USP will give you the final word.
Yeah.
I was just going to say I'm very bullish about the, um,
Me too, me.
These type of projects.
Me too.
Yeah, because as a real estate developer and an investor,
I always look forward to this type of sense,
but unfortunately the adoption is very slow.
So an advice to you, USP,
you have to check the regulations in Dubai.
Let's give, let's give USB final word.
I want to mention a quick special guest that came in
that are perfect time as we wrap,
but USB, I'll give you the final word.
oh thank you so we're guys over thank you for listening we have a current offering which
ends in five days may 31st if anybody interested please go to website usp.io check out our
content check out our offering and then closing five days
all right usp really appreciate it anyone listening to the replay dm me the team will connect
you to usp for the audience if you go to the pin tweet everyone's commenting on the first
tweet you have to go below it there's a bunch of tweets choose the one you prefer the most and
comment on that one so many can start choosing the winners
Before I start with the major announcements that I have,
and some weird ones, some interesting ones, et cetera.
M.M. Crypto came in last minute, the man the myth legend.
How are you?
Hello, hello. I'm doing very well. I know I'm late, but I'm in Singapore and I stay awake long, so I wake up a little bit later, but I'm happy to be here.
Man, it's a perfect time because we are wrapping up. It's a good way to wrap up with your thoughts, and I've got a bunch of announcements, but before my announcements, maybe you can give us your thoughts on the market. Is the bare market over in your opinion? I know you've been doing this for a long time. Are we in a bull market? Is the market going to be stagnant? What do you think about the regulatory crackdown? Give us a bit of an overview, MM.
Yeah, sure, sure. First of all, thanks for having me. We were texting for a long time, so it's good that it's finally working off. It took us a year, but here we are.
I think so, I think so, but there you go. By the way, great job with the space is really, really well done.
Thanks, bro. About...
Yeah, about crypto, I'm focusing myself on Bitcoin, usually especially throughout bear markets.
And like, when I want to spot the end of a bear market, usually Bitcoin is leading and then the al-coins are following afterwards.
So I personally think the bear market is over in a sense that we have hit bottom.
Of course, I thought that before and then we broke it, we went lower.
I was wrong one time before.
But...
I myself actually, I'm a position trader, so I don't trade a lot, but when I trade, I usually trade big.
So I open a trade somewhere around 17,000 and this trade is open now.
It's a public trade.
Everyone can look at it.
And I would have not opened that one if I wouldn't believe that this was the bottom for Bitcoin.
But that doesn't mean that I expect Bitcoin to like just skyrocket right now.
We have...
the strongest resistance I've ever seen for Bitcoin just in front of us, 30,000,
like a range between 29 and 32,000. So,
I expected Bitcoin to hover around there for a few weeks.
Maybe it will hover around there for a few more weeks.
So we shouldn't expect the most kind of action, especially for Bitcoin.
Now, during summer, historically summer is usually a little bit more boring.
But I definitely see Bitcoin significantly higher at the next halving.
And with higher, I mean still way below 100,000.
But that would be good news for next April.
something between maybe 40 and 60,000 and then breaking eventually the all-time high.
That's all speculative, of course, based on historical past for Bitcoin, which is not
100% indicative, but it at least gives us a little bit of data points we can grasp in April
2024.
I personally think that the worst is over by far, that maybe we are getting another leg to the downside, but I don't see Bitcoin anymore going below 20,000.
And of course, whenever Bitcoin goes sideways and Bitcoin is going sideways, that is usually the time for Alcoins to shine.
and they were shining a little bit throughout the last few weeks.
So I'm pretty positive for the remainder of the year,
whereas I have to say we shouldn't be too positive for the summer to come
because that's usually historically a little bit of a boring time.
That's my outlook for the next few weeks and months.
There's anything else I can add. I would love to do that.
No, I mean, are you concerned about the regulatory crackdown?
We were talking about that earlier.
That's number one. Number two, we had a whole debate.
Got pretty heated. Everyone's shouting about meme coins.
I've never invested in meme coins.
I started to understand them now, the whole concept of community,
but it's not something I understand enough,
or I've got the balls to really gamble on.
I'm not a gambler.
What's your position on meme coins?
I actually never, never asked you that question.
Yeah, yeah. It's a good question and I know you have in the crypto space like it's so so radical that you have some people who love it and some people who hate it. There's not really someone with a neutral opinion about it. It's the same like and rotate. The meme coins are probably like the endotate of crypto space. So you either love it or you hate it. And I don't know.
I personally, I think it's a beautiful approach.
It's funny.
That's why Elon Musk likes it as well, right?
He's a big Dogecoin proponent.
But obviously, in the end of the day, there is not so much foundation to it besides the community.
I personally don't advertise any meme coins or so.
Sometimes I get...
involved without telling anyone because for me personally it's just a lot of fun.
I like a little bit to watch the degeneracy of the crypto space.
But in the end of the day, if you are involved in crypto, you should focus yourself,
in my opinion, on things like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is beautiful.
It was actually designed because of the flaws of the financial system and the monetary system.
It's there to free humans from the traditional system to be involved in
something I would almost call a scam, right?
I mean, look at the US dollar.
It's basically losing its purchasing power since we took the gold standard away.
And all other fiat currencies are even performing worse.
And if you are living in Argentina, in Chile or somewhere, you are forced to use the scam.
You are forced to use something which on average goes down every second on average.
And that is just mind-blowing.
So Bitcoin is beautiful.
No one can prevent you basically from buying it, holding it, sending it.
No one can confiscate it.
This is the first time that you have an asset which is not confiscatable.
If you just remember your 12 or 20 word seed phrase,
and you have it in your mind, you burn the paper, technically no one ever can confiscate it.
This has never happened.
We can confiscate gold.
So if we always kind of try to remember that Bitcoin is the root of everything and in crypto,
and the reason why we are here, I think that is a very important thing to remember.
And then we don't get caught up, like putting 80% of our portfolio in something like meme coins.
So if you want to gamble with meme coins, fine, but don't forget that Bitcoin is king.
I like how asking feedback on meme coins ended up becoming an ode to Bitcoin.
You should have been there at the beginning of the space.
The first segment was Bitcoin, you know, the fundamental bitcoins.
So moving away from NFTs and meme coins, we had Bitcoins debating people from Wall Street.
That was the first segment.
The second segment was NFTs and meme coin debate against the Bitcoins.
and you would have killed it in that one.
And then,
pleasure to have you,
man.
I think it's good to get your feedback
and market analysis
as we wrap up the space.
And now for the announcement.
Happy.
Thanks, bro.
I appreciate it.
Wolf,
good to have you come up for a last minute, man.
I'll...
I'll let you make the, actually, I'll let me make the announcement you can add on to it
because you've announced it already and I haven't had the opportunity to.
So first time we'll mention it publicly.
So we're friends, Ryan, me, you, and we've jumped on each other's spaces multiple times.
You know, you've hosted killer, guest, Balaji, Michael Seder, etc.
You jump on our daily finance spaces that we do in the morning and obviously Ryan joins our
crypto spaces.
We join his.
And we've been doing this for a few months.
Well, now we officially partnered and are launching crypto's biggest Twitter space.
So now we'll have the biggest, second biggest, third and fourth biggest, but we've kind of merged them all.
And it's going to be a non-meme coin, non-NFT Twitter space, and that's unrelated to the Roundtable Twitter space that the DGen team does.
And yeah, tell us about it, man.
What are we doing next week?
Well, the idea, obviously, is to sort of leverage your success, I think, in citizen journalism and to bring that same sort of ethos to the crypto space.
Obviously, I think that there's a lack of solid reporting on what's happening.
And between the three of us and our extensive teams, I think we have the opportunity to have conversations with the biggest names in the space every single day about what's actually happening in the space to sort of turn around, I think a lot of the negativity that we all are sort of drowning in at the moment with regulation in the United States and to really start telling the stories and having the conversations.
again about how important what we're doing here is
and all the amazing things that are being built.
And so, I mean, I think everyone knows
that we're three of the busiest people in the space,
but somehow are committing another couple hours
every single day to showing up and talking about this.
But that should show how important we think it is
going to be starting on Wednesday, 10.15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time
every single weekday.
And, of course, on weekends when there's breaking news
or something important.
I mean, for me, like, personally...
I do it every day. I have these conversations anyways, but not in this manner. And what you've done
and what you've built since, really, just since November and the FTX crash has been so
inspiring that obviously we've all decided that this was the route that we want to take. I mean, I think it's
really an opportunity to just leverage all of those contacts and the communities and to bring everyone together and have a positive conversation.
Yeah, we've been talking about this for ages, for months, and we've met about it, but just never materialized.
So finally, we're making it happen.
And it should be exciting, man.
I think we'll be able to bring the masses back into crypto and trying to change that perception that was tarnished by our friend Sam.
I'm joking, it's not our friend by Sam.
Sam Beckman-Fried.
But, yeah, Scott, I really appreciate it.
Appreciate it coming in.
And what I'm dead, by the way, guys.
Like, I slept an hour today, seven hours yesterday, two hours, day before us.
Because, Scott, I don't know if you know what the fuck happened.
I think I sent you.
So we had...
The news that we broke about the today this morning,
and we broke the news in our space.
Danish broke it.
I don't know if you were in the space when he did.
Yeah, I was co-hosting.
Oh, shit, you're co-hosting there.
Yeah, exactly.
I was in there.
I came in right after.
And we tweeted it for anyone that doesn't know,
but we broke the news about the...
A deal reached behind the scenes, a deal reached on the debt ceiling.
Now they're sorting out the final details.
There's a hand-check deal that's reached.
And that's been confirmed by multiple sources and new sources have constantly came,
including during the space, we had two new sources come up and say, yeah, this is correct.
The media hasn't covered it till ages afterwards and very discreetly.
And then we kind of got a bit of a jab.
Did you hear the jab we got from the negotiator, the debt ceiling negotiators saying?
Yeah, they don't.
I think that they don't like when they don't control the air in the exact second they want to control it.
And you just saw that in real time.
Pretty crazy.
Yeah, man, he goes exactly.
He goes, everyone wants a detail of this.
Everyone wants a tweet.
I want an agreement that changes the trajectory of the country.
But the tweets, the context, the details and all this stuff and the leaks are,
don't serve getting an agreement that changes the trajectory
for the country.
And that was by a Republican lawmaker,
Representative Patrick McHenry,
taking the jab at us.
So Patrick, if I hurt the negotiations in any way,
if we did, if the Anish did, we apologize.
But good luck, I'm sure you'll figure it out.
Otherwise...
I apologize.
Man, stop being so attacking of every fucking policymaker and every, every journalist in all of mainstream media.
You've got to work with them, man.
But I want to thank Slayman, like both of us,
completely burnt out last three days,
starting with the DeSantis stream,
and then the congressman and congresswoman coming up the next day,
and obviously today's leaks.
And now the crypto space.
We're going to have a long sleep.
Not sure what space we're going to cover tomorrow.
I want to appreciate, you know, thanks,
Porovic for helping us co-host, last minute, jumping on.
Thanks for all the panel.
Welcome M.M. Crypto to the stage
for the first time ever on the roundtable.
Was that all your announcements?
I thought you had about...
No, the major one is caught.
The second one is not really...
The second one I'm going to skip.
It's just stupid drama.
It's just silly to even mention.
I just came to my attention.
And then the third one is just...
It's not really an announcement.
I said it's very minuscule,
but that just seems Twitter's glitching like crazy.
Today I don't know what's going on.
Have you noticed?
Yeah, yeah.
It's been happening.
No, no, yeah,
because I was on a number of spaces before Mario.
And what's happening is...
people get thrown off the space
and then they're coming back
so it's messing up the spaces
and messing up numbers
and people feel like they're getting thrown out.
So essentially that's what's happening
and it's not just your space
I've been on quite a few spaces
before our space started
and it was happening.
We have to,
a few people have to restart this space a few times.
Yeah, and have you noticed the numbers as well as all over the place?
No, no, that's the reason why.
So imagine like hundreds of people are getting thrown out or thousands or whatever it may be
and then they're coming back in and then they're coin out.
So you actually get the message saying you've been removed from the space.
Oh, really?
But the high panel has constantly drop out.
Even Scott coming up had issues.
But yeah, it's a pretty good panel, man.
What do you think, Borovic?
I was thoroughly impressed.
I was thoroughly impressed with all the debates.
I didn't say slam out.
I said Borovic.
Borovic, what do you think?
Good, great feedback.
No, it was a great panel.
Here's the feedback.
I mean, the first hour was a little boring, but we got really interesting.
The securities, you know, from the SEC.
That guy was pretty good.
Yeah, that was a beast.
Rebuttals for everything, yeah.
You know, John, it's a beast.
Scott, we had John Reed Stark.
He's in the audience now, ex-SECC.
He came up on stage and started debating everyone in crypto, started debating all these meme coiners.
It was a fun time.
Better him than me.
Slayman, final quick words, and I'll go to Goody for a final word.
What do you think, Slayman?
It's a trap.
Not for you.
Go ahead.
We'll give it to Goody.
Goody.
Final words, man.
What do you think of today's space, man?
I'd love to get your thoughts, your feedback.
How do you think we're performed, considering how tired we are?
And maybe a final word for the crypto industry.
Like being, what do you want to tell every meme coiner?
I know you've been in crypto space for a while.
Goody, the mic is yours, man.
Don't get too emotional.
I mean, I'm, I mean, you guys, you guys were all right.
Like, the panel was.
