Projects
![]()
No projects found
Investors
New
DAO Treasuries
DATs
Lend / Borrow APRs
Chains
Categories
Spaces
UNDER EXPOSED: Bitcoin Is The Hurdle Rate
Recorded: Aug. 5, 2025 Duration: 1:07:56Space Recording
Short Summary
In a pivotal week for the crypto industry, the SEC's Project Crypto aims to revolutionize financial markets by bringing them on-chain, while the White House's crypto report signals a trend towards regulatory clarity. Major players like Robinhood and Coinbase are positioning themselves as super apps, indicating a competitive landscape ripe for growth and innovation.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. GM, GM, everyone.
Thank you for joining us here this morning, this afternoon, wherever you're at.
We're going to start the show here in just a minute.
A couple of quick shout-outs before we begin.
Harry Krishna, GM, Poria, Dump, Vibe Trader, GM, GM, who else we got?
Wago, 884, CJ, all right, Pablo, GM-N-G-N. All right. Charlie, I think whenever
you're ready, let's kick it. This is a production of WGBH. so
so GM everyone and welcome to episode 37 of Underexposed, our weekly macro show,
hitting all the biggest topics and trends impacting crypto and Web3.
the biggest topics and trends impacting crypto and Web3.
Today, today is Tuesday, August 5th.
It's been a huge week for crypto,
with the SEC dropping its Project Crypto report in a bombshell surprise.
Yet, it's another red week for prices.
After a big reversal this morning,
macro feels perhaps a bit more fragile than it has been with tariffs looming and a bad jobs report.
Key question on traders' minds, is Powell finally going to cut?
And then for the crypto folks, has Bitcoin become the hurdle ring to beat?
We're going to break those questions down on today's show.
I'm your host, Tyler D. I've got my co-host in the house.
First up, D's art collector, coin stacker, and trader rocking the Rectat again today. Deez, GM, how you doing?
GM, doing well. The Rectat is still the strongest asset in the portfolio, so we got to wrap it.
The Rectat stays on. You love to hear it. Folks, we've got Peter Jennings on with us today as well. Founder of several companies, still finds time to hang out with us. Peter, GM, how you doing?
Well, founder of several companies, still finds time to hang out with us.
Peter, GM, how are you doing?
GM, I look forward to this every week.
Been a busy morning.
A lot of interesting macro stuff going on.
So excited to dig in.
A lot of macro stuff.
So I'm excited to get into that with you as well.
Folks, we've also got Jeebs on with us.
Early stage crypto VC.
Dabbles in internet capital markets, wears a lot of hats.
Jeebs, GM, how are you doing?
GM, wearing the punks hat today. For the same reason, Jeebs is wearing the recs hat. internet capital markets wears a lot of hats jeebs jim how you doing so yeah we're in the
punks hat today uh for the same reason jesus we're in the rectat it's been a great week for
punks um but it just looks like everything has slowed down i finally got around to checking
prices just now and uh who sold who sold perhaps we'll get into that perhaps we might have some
insight into who is seller uh we shall see folks we're going to get into that. Perhaps we might have some insight into who is seller.
We shall see.
Folks, we're going to get into all of it here soon.
Before we do, a couple quick housekeeping items.
We are live on Kik.
Make sure to follow our channel.
We'll be streaming here going forward for all of our content.
Also, we might be getting into the giveaway game starting next week.
We're working on something for our loyal listeners, so we are excited about that.
Also, as always, the opinions expressed on this podcast
are those of the speakers and do not reflect the views
or opinions of any organizations they are associated with.
We are here to share insights, provoke thought,
and maybe even stir some debate, but this is not,
I repeat, not financial advice.
While we talk about markets, investments, and trends,
remember, your financial decisions should be made with the help of your own research or with advice
from a licensed professional. All right, well, let's get into it. I am going to fire up the
screen share for those who are in the stream with us. Let's take a look at where things are at. So
Bitcoin's at 113k. We were back to 115 yesterday.
We are down about 3.5% on the week.
ETH also down a bit more, down 5% on the week, 3580.
Sold down 9% at 164 after a nasty little reversal.
It was a big week of macro, as Peter said.
So we had FOMC last Wednesday.
Powell came out pretty hawkish.
Afterwards, we had September rate cut odds fall all the way to 37%.
But then Friday morning, jobs report came out.
It was bad.
There was a massive revision on some prior jobs numbers.
Rate cut odds have actively soared since.
Meanwhile, the dollar is up a bit as well, at least compared to where it has been, perhaps
halting some of the crypto rally in its steps.
As well, MAC7 came out.
Most of their earnings were past week, and they're all pretty good for the most part.
So some mixed signals out there.
From a crypto macro standpoint, Coinbase came out with their earnings.
They were not good.
So they were not in line with the MAG-7.
We saw a fairly large sell-off in CoinStock.
Strategy and Michael Saylor, they came out with record-breaking profits.
They also introduced their STRC, new yield-bearing product that they're going to use to raise capital, primarily because
new rules for MicroStrategy stock they're not selling unless MNEV is above 2.5.
Notable change for that stock.
So we'll get into that as well.
We had the White House finally release its crypto report.
That one was a bit of a nothing burger.
It was nice to see, but mostly just a regulatory framework style report.
But the bombshell was out of the SEC just a day later, July 31st.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins gives a speech, unveils Project Crypto in a nutshell.
They want to bring all financial markets on chain in what will be a huge step for all markets as
well as crypto native participants as well.
A lot to get into here on today's show.
Peter, I'll toss it to you.
First up, maybe macro wise, is Powell's hand getting forced here?
You think he's finally going to bend the knee and cut in September?
How are you feeling about everything that's kind of went down on that front
in the past week?
Specific to Powell, I think he will indicate that he is likely to cut,
the Fed that was likely to cut at Jackson Hole.
We're now seeing 90%, like you mentioned here on the screen, share.
And I think given the data and everything they've said, I think they're going to end
up cutting in September.
And I think we'll get an outline of the plan at Jackson Hole.
But taking a step back, the biggest thing that I'm paying attention to now that I think
is critical going forward, which certainly represents kind of more risk to the market
and kind of one of the big things, you know,
the anti-Trump crowd was saying initially is market integrity.
And what makes America great is that we have capitalism,
market integrity, and people believe the data coming out of here.
You know, specifically, we have that foundation,
which enables entrepreneurs and builders to
create the biggest companies the best companies in the world which we still have and by no means
are we you know in a horrible place now but there's signs that really concern me and you know
I think obviously Trump pushing on Powell the Fed is supposed to be an independent agency you know
there's been a lot of back and forth there. That was concerning, but ultimately, I think cooler heads prevailed.
Besson certainly conveyed to Trump that firing power would really disrupt the markets.
It's been hilarious content, but certainly scary at times.
But it seems that we'll have a smooth transition.
that we'll have a smooth transition.
At least that's my hope going forward.
But then we have the firing of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics Chief
based on some bad data.
And to me, that was like one of the biggest red flags
that we've seen from a macro perspective,
specifically here in the U.S.
We need to be able to rely on that data.
And, you know, Trump is basically stoking, you know, conspiracy theories and
different things, which he's done throughout, you know, his first terms, you know, obviously
didn't win the election on the second term, he pointed that out. And I'm not trying to
specifically be political, there might be some evidence that that's true. But in general,
we want to believe the data coming out of this. And specifically here, part of Doge was cleaning up some of the reporting and some of these people were on the payroll.
Now they have a small budget.
But we need to be able to rely on that data.
And Trump firing the chief because he didn't like the data is really, really, really concerning to me.
And a lot of smart people are coming out on both sides of the aisle.
It's a bipartisan kind of talking point.
And yeah, you have Ray Dalio's tweet right here.
But to me, that's the biggest concern that I have
is make something, he's gonna fire them.
And if he doesn't get the data he wants,
he's gonna fire the people.
I really, really think that this is a concern.
And one of the most important things to preserving our democracy and capitalism is market integrity.
I'm with you there on the market integrity front.
I will say I had the opposite read on this.
And shouldn't this person be fired?
The jobs numbers were off 90%.
If I did my morning minute newsletters every day and I was reporting volumes and
prices that were off by 90% I'd probably get fired too and I don't know Trump's reason
I actually haven't listened to him speak on this but this one is the data has been
the data is definitely there's holes i think i think everyone's
for a revision of like how this is done um i think it's clear that we need to kind of update our
systems um but it's been there's been errors and then it's been revised multiple times in the past
um and maybe yeah maybe maybe there's a reason to you to revamp the team that's doing it.
But it certainly came off very political, which is the concern to me.
But I agree with you.
We should be expecting accurate data, and we should make systems to do that.
My read was that it wasn't because of the 90% wrong problem.
It was because Trump didn't like the numbers.
But I get the value of this point too,
and I'd love to hear it kick around.
Yeah, I think I'm with you on this one, Tyler,
and with Ray as well.
I think the narrative's being spun
that Trump doesn't like the numbers,
and so he needs to fire this individual.
But I'm based on the reality that this person,
obviously, has worked really well, really great statistician.
But if your agency is undermanned and is producing arguably the most key data to the American economy right now, and it needs to be revised at that level because we're working off of estimates, then it's a systemic issue. And we need to have
probably new leadership in that position to be able to revamp how we're collecting this data on
a regular basis. I think looking at it, it's just Trump looks at it and says, hey, this person's
not doing their job well. How can someone get these numbers off so much? We need to put someone
new in. But then the narrative being spun by media is that he doesn't like the data.
And so this person is getting fired.
And I think those are two very different things.
I think that's a fair take.
Dees, any reactions on your side before we dig into kind of what the impacts of this revision, what it means for the economy itself?
Nothing that hasn't been said already, honestly. I am a little out of the loop of
what's going on with the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Yeah, basically Powell has two mandates.
He needs to keep employment
and inflation low,
employment and inflation low.
And he's very data-driven.
And what we're seeing is that it has been garbage.
So I'm very curious, personally,
does Powell have the actual numbers?
Or is he going off of all this as well?
Or is it all some part of intricate game?
And it is easy to put the tinfoil hat on, right,
when we're seeing revisions of this magnitude but i guess peter going to the next level of all this
so like what does it mean for just the broader economy so clearly there are there's less job
growth than we thought mag 7 is strong main street perhaps not as strong. Do you have a read
or any concerns with where we're at? I've seen some mixed reports on this as well,
that actually private sector is doing okay. I'm not sure if you have a lean at this point.
Yeah. And just to summarize my last point, and I've heard both sides, I guess we disagree a bit. I want accurate data, they clearly need to revamp the systems. I think we all want that. It came out very political to me. And I've heard both sides of the argument. I certainly think there's merit to what you guys are saying. I just think we need to be really careful with market integrity.
But moving on to kind of just the jobs in general, you know, I think there's a couple of things at hand.
And this is where, again, it'd be nice to have accurate data.
But historically, or at least recently, a lot of what's happened is more kind of a mix of the government jobs, which obviously with Doge went down.
And that was a big part of what we saw during the Biden administration is a lot of the job growth and then kind of, you know, below unemployment was because we had so many government jobs. And obviously, part of the Doge mandate and what they're trying to do with this
administration, which I'm very pro, is eliminate the waste. So you have to break down the private
sector and the government jobs, which I don't have any conviction around given kind of the,
you know, the data that we're all skeptical of. So we'll try to dig into that more
once we feel like we have good data,
but that's something to watch.
Alongside that, Palantir beat earnings yesterday,
and I think this is kind of a big thing
that we're going to see,
and one of the things with AI that is both very bullish,
but also something we're going to have to kind of dig into
and figure out long-term solutions.
Palantir is saying that they're going to reduce
their workforce
from 4,100 people to 3,500 people leveraging AI
and that profits are going to go up.
So businesses, in theory, are going to get a lot more efficient with AI,
but they're going to need less people.
And if that's the trend, there's going to be a lot more people unemployed,
potentially, or they're going to have to find some new type of job.
Obviously, if it's growing and things are becoming more efficient, that's a very positive thing,
but that's something that we're going to have to wrestle with. So there's a lot of different
things going on from the workforce perspective. One other thing that's, you know, worth mentioning
is just immigration. You know, I think a big reason the Biden administration, you know, I think
was so aggressive with the immigration, which I think most people are against, including myself.
But the main reason they were trying to do that, from my perspective, was as a deflationary force.
And, you know, a lot of people coming in across the border were willing to take these really, really cheap jobs.
And now that we've basically shut the border down, which is, you know, a lot of ways great.
A lot of these jobs aren't being filled necessarily. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, if, you know, American citizens or who's going to be end up taking those jobs, especially as people are deported.
So the whole job market to me is very interesting, especially kind of with AI and where that's going.
My optimistic hope is that,
you know, AI makes everything more efficient, new jobs pop up and that like human touch is a really
sought after thing, which to me is kind of going against the major trend that everything's going
digital. So hopefully things evolve. And I am still super optimistic about human civilization in America.
I think AI is a huge, huge, huge boost, but it definitely is going to shake up jobs.
I had that same concern.
I was chatting with a few buddies at the bar on Friday, and I come from the consulting business.
At a college, I worked at Accenture, and I think Accenture had 60,000 in the U.S.,
hired probably 10 to 20 000
new consultants per year i'm like are they going to keep that up like do they need 10 000 new
analysts every year with all their current analysts and consultants now powered with ai
i guess i feel like you you only need to hire to backfill churn almost at this point.
What AI does, it enables your good managers, your good senior managers, your partners, they have superpowers.
Now they can help.
They can build their own decks with AI in 30 minutes or an hour and have their teams off doing other things.
So it's just a broader concern last year.
I haven't dug into the numbers that much.
It's pretty staggering.
The new graduate hire rate is pretty low.
It's trending downward for that reason.
I think most organizations are moving more toward middle to senior leadership
and then associates with maybe two to five years of
experience and are cutting out those analyst jobs. And that's really difficult because
where is the new entrance into the workforce? Where will they get any of their experience from
to be able to move up into corporate America? And maybe it's just corporate America ends up
aging a bit and there's just less analysts.
And I'm not sure what happens from there, but it is pretty concerning, especially at consulting
firms. They still need billable hours and you really can't bill out for AI agents,
so they'll probably need some people in seats to some extent. But it's just going to mean that...
I mean, you could also argue just that things become faster and better. I think that there's this world where as we use AI more and as the workforce is trained more in AI, you wait less time for things and general services get cheaper over time.
an optimist take just on new sectors adding jobs yeah 100 yeah any revolutionary technology does
that right i think there's been fear of this amongst any revolution that's happened in the
past and we end up effectively like you said creating new industries i think to peter's point
people are going to have more leisure time so what are the activities maybe that they start to do
maybe you know it's hobbies, spending more
time with family, whatever that may look like. Those high touch environments are going to become
really, really valuable, especially things that take more time.
Maybe it's Project Crypto and people working to bring all financial markets on chain. So maybe
let's go there quickly. I want to come back to majors perhaps here in a couple minutes as well.
But arguably the biggest news of the past week, month,
you can maybe make a case this was the biggest news of the year
in the crypto streets was Project Crypto announced from SEC Chair Paul Atkins.
Basically, they want to bring all financial markets on chain.
They want to modernize the rules to make that happen,
provide clear frameworks to enable builders
to go to market confidently.
Some of the immediate takeaways of this,
digital assets, most digital assets
are not going to be securities.
Even for those securities,
they want to create guidelines
for how to handle securities versus commodities versus stablecoins, reducing ambiguity.
They want to have new disclosure requirements and safe harbors for things like airdrops and ICOs, plans to enable and update self-custody frameworks,
networks, enabling DeFi operations for tokenized securities.
And then a big push for more rights for Americans.
Ensure on-chain software has a home, getting rid of things like VPNs that a lot of Americans
have to use to even work in some of these protocols.
And then a big push for enabling builders, even going as far as putting out this
innovation exemption to allow builders to go to market during the interim timeframe before these
rules are even all put in place. I wish to me it was one of the biggest takeaways of all this.
It feels like a truly monumental shift from Operation Chokepoint and where we were just
eight months ago, 12
months ago, I guess. G's, maybe I'll
toss it to you and then we'll go around the horn a little bit.
Reactions to this? Am I overstating it?
Am I understanding it? How big was
Project Crypto to you? What were your reactions?
This one seems pretty big, Tyler.
This is...
It's really clear that the SEC's tone has completely changed. That folks like Hester Pierce, Paul Atkins are wanting to align themselves to crypto. And I think that aligns to the administration's goals.
I think we should expect more great news like this to continue coming out of the administration.
And so, yeah, I think this is very optimistic.
I think the markets, we've just run really hot now for what, like a month, month and a half?
I haven't looked back, but there's this clear pullback happening right now.
right now. Treasury companies are still
Treasury companies are still gobbling up crypto, which I think is great.
gobbling up crypto, which I think is great.
But yeah, I think expecting this
lull right now,
I'm anticipating we're going
to go much higher as we
cook into summer and early fall.
And I think news like this is going to be really obvious
in hindsight.
Peter, I'll talk to you. I'm curious
for your reactions to Project
Crypto, perhaps maybe who some of the winners or losers are.
Yeah, I love this. I'm super excited just in general about everything that's happening in crypto.
It's such a breath of fresh air. You know, this seems just great.
I mean, America should be the crypto capital.
And it's one thing I think that you know at least in
our circles we love about the administration so love seeing the sec trying to trade transparency
trying to create rules um i think stable coins like we talked about are going to be an amazing
place that's a huge part of kind of the overall fiscal monetary plan um you know i think stable
coins will be huge buyers of treasuries.
I think we'll see, hopefully, tokenization of real world assets become an even bigger
thing with transparency here.
Definitely seems like ETH is in a good place.
One thing that I keep going back to, I think Santi mentioned this, I heard this on a couple
podcasts and it makes so much sense.
This is really the institutional cycle and we're getting kind of more and more transparency from the SEC, which is making institutions come in.
And, you know, a lot of them obviously started with Bitcoin and that's kind of been the main buyer.
You know, the institutions have been buying a lot of Bitcoin, which is why we've seen so much price movement on Bitcoin, which is great.
of bitcoin which is why we've seen so much price movement uh on bitcoin which is great the next
asset that seems like institutions will love is is eth and we're seeing that with the treasury
codes now um so i think it's a really really big winner especially um with some of these rules and
kind of what that network will enable uh long term obviously stable coins defy hopefully we get more
and more clarity there and then again kind of
bringing real world assets on chain seems like a really really positive thing and of course it's
nice to have all the inflows from uh you know these treasury co's uh which we can talk more about but
yeah this is really positive um i listen to castle island ventures uh podcast uh with nick carter
matt walsh they said they're like as bullish as they've ever been about the industry.
So I think people are really, really excited.
And it's definitely something that's given me a lot of optimism about what we can build.
And now it's really on the industry to just deliver value to society.
Exactly.
And a part of me does wonder, I mean, since we've been doing the show,
I think a recurring theme is like, what has come out of the cycle?
What's been built?
And there wasn't a whole lot, right?
But also, to be fair, it was a very difficult environment for builders to really try to invest time, capital into products in the U.S.
with how unclear the regulations were.
Now that excuse is totally removed.
So hopefully we usher in the golden era.
Dees, I'll toss it to you.
I'm curious, A, any reactions,
but B, are you surprised at price action following this?
Basically, granted, other things are at play,
but we basically have been down only
since this announcement came out. basically so granted other things are at play but we basically had been down only since uh
this announcement came out yeah definitely definitely surprised by the price action i
think it's a little counterintuitive um it's regulation stuff i feel like we've been talking
about it all year since we started the show but it continues to be the most bullish regulatory
environment we've ever had for any of these assets, the crypto assets.
So to see the market kind of eat shit as soon as we got more good news is a little concerning.
Also off the back of the old Bitcoin whales who are now realizing billions of dollars of wins.
Yeah, it's not great.
I didn't really change any of my personal allocations
based off the news,
but it is one of those things
where I would have thought
it would have been more bullish than bearish
in at least short-term price.
Maybe you could even say it was priced in.
One thing to add, Tyler, going back to winners and losers here
really mostly winners
I think that two of the biggest
winners are going to be Robinhood and Coinbase
coming out of this as
we move more toward crypto
super apps and those two become
the competing forces in space
do you care care elaborate on that
so it's clear that like both of them are in an arms race around rwas around having a high level
of distribution currently baked in fair amount of crypto native users that come there maybe buy and
or store crypto you know they're both have their own version of their l2s that they're
rolling out a base has been around for a while incredibly successful i think i saw somewhere
that it's now launching more tokens than solana at least yesterday right from zora and so i think
what you're going to see is this hyper race of these centralized players that have distribution baked in, drawing in new hordes of people to crypto, to their layer twos,
to play games, to trade, for financial activity, whatever it may be.
And I think a lot of it will be abstracted away where, you know,
you no longer have to do manual sort of like cash and carry trades or other
stuff. It's all vaulted. It is, hey, here are the vaults.
Here's the yields they produce.
Here's their historical returns.
Feel free to go participate in these.
And I think they're going to be done
in such a seamless user experience over time
that it's going to be hard for people to compete with them.
So I think these laws allow,
or really this regulation is going to allow them
to offer more products to their users on chain.
I think it's going to have to come with certain guardrails as well, though.
Robinhood looks like an absolute juggernaut right now. Hoodstock, basically up only
about 150% from the April lows.
When you look at Hoodstock and Coinstock next to each other, though,
there is a market difference.
And I'm curious what's driving that.
I think one of my, I'm expressing on this show,
is if banks get the green light to completely go into crypto,
bring everything on chain,
does that hurt the Coinbase's business?
Why do we need to custody that? I don't know, like Coinbase JPM partnership.
It could just look like that.
Exactly.
So that would be the bull case for Coinbase,
where they are the Coinbase crypto as a service.
We're going to provide the layers,
the infrastructure that you need to do this.
And I thought that was huge for a coin stock.
Though, of course, it's not being reflected in near-term price action.
And that wasn't the only announcement.
They also partnered with PNC, I think, in the past week.
So it's been a nice month for Coinbase.
Like the Zora stuff, we don't talk a whole lot about Zora on this show.
And, D, I don't know if you've got takes on that,
but I mean, Zora, one of the strongest tokens
in all crypto in the past month.
Jeeves, you rattled off the stat.
More tokens are being created on base via Zora
than on Solana right now.
Aren't we in a little base season?
It's interesting.
I mean, over the last like three weeks zora went from 30 million to 300 million and it's now at 200 million i don't know if this is going to uh play out a little bit like launch coin did
where it hits that like 300 million ceiling and then just kind of
sputters off, I do think
the Zora team
is significantly
more reputable or
has more going for it.
I just
say it nicely, I guess,
than LaunchCoin.
But I do think
I wouldn't be surprised if the
price action is similar where you have this
300ml topper and then
the ceiling
on the main token
kind of hurts the ceiling on
all the other tokens that are created on the platform.
Where
you kind of have these glass
ceilings with these platforms
where if the market cap of the Zora coin is $200 million,
then you know any token that you buy on Zora
is probably not going to go past $100 million.
At the minimum, you would be pretty shocked.
Or even if it's a $200 million market cap ecosystem token,
I would be very happy to sell tokens in that ecosystem
for like 10 to 20 million.
And not be a moon boy there.
But I don't, from what I've seen,
at least think a lot of the Zora tokens
have been super successful.
Like it's Fake Taxi, still the number one token.
Yeah, I'm not even sure where to check.
All right, I had a dashboard yesterday
someone put in a group chat that was pretty nice.
Let me see if I can find it.
Yeah.
Well, it's either that Garrett Scrovina had a good tweet.
I didn't know a lot about how Zora's mechanics work.
And he had a really good tweet about it,
basically talking about how
I didn't realize the pairings
for how creators and then creator tokens work.
So he says,
the reason these pairings are important
is because it creates a flywheel
that drives demand to Zora
and creates a loop
where Zora's market cap
raises the market caps of creator's coins
since they're paired with Zora. So the creator coins are paired with Zora's market cap raises the market caps of creator's coins since they're paired with Zora.
So the creator coins are paired with Zora and then the tokens the creator
makes are paired with the creator coin.
So it creates this sort of like endless flywheel back into Zora.
Double flywheel.
I mean, it's similar to the virtuals model, right?
So all the virtual AI agent tokens were paired with virtuals.
So when virtual, the token was going up and to the right,
all of its ecosystem tokens benefited from that.
It works great on the way up
and it works just like you think it does
on the way down too, right?
So levered up, levered down.
But I think Zora, I showed the chart,
it's up 700% a month.
Like it was arguably the single best trade on the board.
So it's becoming hard to ignore, I'd say.
So Jesse and crew, they've been consistent with it.
I thought it could be fun to kind of play this game, real or fake.
So I'm going to go through a couple questions.
Similar topics as we discussed on the show and then give a real or fake answer and then you can elaborate on it.
Peter, maybe I'll toss this first one to you. So yesterday, Jeff Park announced that he was
leaving Bitwise to become the chief investment officer for Anthony Palpeano's pro cap, the latest Bitcoin treasury call.
Perhaps most notable in his announcement,
one of the takeaways that I had was this quote that he ended his announcement
with, Bitcoin is the hurdle rate.
Your response to that, is that real or fake?
Bitcoin is the hurdle rate in 2025.
I would say that the hurdle rate is the S&P 500 over Bitcoin at this point in time.
But I certainly could see that being the case in the future.
And it makes sense for Jeff to say that.
And kudos to Jeff.
I put in a congratulatory tweet.
That's a great addition.
And they're definitely building a really strong team.
But I think when you're looking at what the hurdle rate should be,
it's basically what do you want to use as the main thing
to basically track keeping your purchasing power?
Or in theory, if you're investing and not spending,
you should be gaining purchasing power, right?
And I think you still have to go to the S&P 500.
I mean, just the market cap of the S&P 500
versus the market cap of Bitcoin.
I think you have to stay with the S&P 500.
But curious everyone else's opinion.
I would say even gold probably,
given it's 10 times the size,
is probably a better benchmark than Bitcoin.
But I think Bitcoin hopefully will be that
thing long term. I think that's what we're
betting on, right? In a lot of ways.
trying to figure out what
the actual
market cap is of the S&P 500.
What do we have here?
We'll get
it from Chabit GBT in a second, but yeah, kick it around.
I'm curious, does anyone have...
I agree with S&P 500 right now is the benchmark.
Anyone agree or disagree?
52.5 trillion?
Big.
It's big.
So from my experience as a fund manager and talking with LPs,
generally Bitcoin is the hurdle rate for them when it comes to their investments.
So I think if it's crypto investments for most people, at least most LPs that I deal with,
and I think most other fund managers would agree here that every one of your investors will benchmark your performance to Bitcoin 99% of the time.
will benchmark your performance to Bitcoin
99% of the time.
So I think it depends
sort of who you are
and what your investments are,
your investment strategy, etc.
But for LPs into most funds,
I think that's what they're looking at over time.
And that makes sense for crypto.
Sorry, Todd, just I'll get the list.
Yeah, exactly.
You guys can go.
It looks like right now, somewhere in like the 55 to 56 trillion market cap range is the S&P 500.
So about 25 times the size of Bitcoin.
So I think you'd have to consider that when you talk about,
if you're looking at the benchmark for, hey, I'm going to invest in anything.
What should I compare my investment to?
Especially as an American, I think the S&P 500 should be the
best market, but for sure in crypto, it's Bitcoin.
That makes sense.
Jeeves, your point, I think for more crypto, for crypto native VCs, if you can't beat Bitcoin,
you're doing a disservice to your investors, right?
I guess you can make an argument that perhaps you're diversifying.
I think venture and liquid funds.
I would say it's both.
Like both are benchmarked against Bitcoin performance.
But it's up 100% this year.
So that's a tough hurdle rate to beat.
So I guess, does that put pressure on VCs and these funds in markets like this?
Because I can imagine if I'm an investor and I haven't,
if I don't have a hundred percent return,
now I'm maybe a little pissed off.
Right.
Maybe I'm not.
I think a hundred percent Tyler,
like venture is a different game because it takes longer for your investments
to mature.
Most have in about a 10 year time horizon from point of investment.
So I think when you get LPs who are questioning whether or not, you know, that that's,
you know, they'll basically say, hey, I'm only up 50%, but Bitcoin's up 100%. Most of the time,
that is the measure going to get from LPs is, oh, I should have just bought Bitcoin.
It's like, well, your venture investment is, you know, you're going for a home run investment,
you're ideally getting multiples on it over time. And I think it's honestly, I view it as just a different risk bucket.
But I think LPs mentally benchmark the hurdle rate against Bitcoin there.
For a liquid fund, I think it's the same question, but almost scrutinized even more.
It's the equivalent of, like Peter said, you're going into something like the S&P 500 versus you invest in, you know, an indexed S&P 500 versus you going and investing into a hedge fund.
And so I think it's the same with liquid crypto funds that are saying we have an alpha strategy of some sort.
They're, I think, absolutely going to get benchmarked against Bitcoin.
And I imagine in their investor statements that they benchmark themselves
against Bitcoin as well.
Deez, I'm curious for your take on this as well as someone who's going to take
crypto gains to help fund your lifestyle and also want to avoid being inflated
away. I don't think you're just parking in cash.
I'm curious how you approach this.
Yeah, I think marking it against Bitcoin makes
sense when you're taking money from people
who are very
aware of Bitcoin and crypto.
Personally,
I have... What would that be?
It's almost like
50-50 right now between
Bitcoin and stocks, like the S&P 500,
which is probably not what people
expect to hear. They probably would think I'm closer to 100% Bitcoin.
But yeah, I mean, I don't like to hold any money in cash or bonds
unless I'm doing it for tax purposes and living expenses.
Other than that, I want to own either Bitcoin or the S&P 500.
I think it's pretty fair to say that you're 50-50. to own either Bitcoin or S&P 500.
I think it's pretty fair to say that you're 50-50. The more people you have dependent on you,
it really just depends on a lot of different factors.
But at the end of the day,
it's like the more people you have dependent on you
and the less cash flow you have,
the more it is easier to rationalize
owning some stocks instead of 100% Bitcoin.
If I was single and living my life, I was living 10 years ago,
I would definitely be 100% Bitcoin.
I wouldn't probably even own a brokerage account.
But given being married and having family planning stuff,
it's a lot harder to, no matter how bullish I am,
it's a lot harder to do that matter how bullish I am, it's a lot harder to do that.
I think that's the realistic take.
That's actually where I was going to go.
The more folks you have relying on you, the bigger your family is.
Even if you're a massive Bitcoin bull,
I think we're all pretty bullish on the show.
There's also just some reality aspect of things can still go wrong.
Yeah, and shout out to the people who do have all those dependents
and still put their balls on the table.
I always see that article of the guy who sold his house two cycles ago
to buy Bitcoin, and it worked out really well.
But he had two kids and a wife, and it's like,
yeah, I can't imagine being in that position and being like,
fuck it, we're just selling a house and going all in on on the coin but you know different
risk tolerance for different folks and shout out to those people i mean anyone who did that in 2021
it was a very painful two years right like now you outperformed holding the house. For sure. That's all that matters, right?
It's a real question.
It's one I've been struggling with a lot.
Going S&P index versus Bitcoin with free capital.
And what's the right percentage allocations?
Before Ibit, and I guess you can say gbtc existed but with all the premiums and
shit it was hard to feel like properly allocate to it um you didn't really have a good way in
your tax advantaged accounts to like put money into this stuff and for those of us who are older
we have these tax advantaged accounts and for a while it made more sense to just have stocks there now that you can get IBIT there, it's an even tougher question because you're like,
all right, well, now I can just own Bitcoin where I had those stocks and I can still get
the preferential tax breaks that I would have got for owning the stocks. But now it's for
Bitcoin, essentially. That's where it gets tougher for me. I have my traditional IRA,
my Roth IRA, these old accounts that can actually get access to Bitcoin now when they couldn't when I made them.
That's what triggered it for me personally.
So I finally, after multiple years, rolled over my Vanguard 401k.
And my new product, I had the option to do IBIT.
So I had the decision right in front of me, IBIT or index.
And I tweeted about this.
I actually went 100% IBIT.
I think it makes sense.
I mean, the younger you are,
the more technologically,
I feel like, developed you are,
the more the bet on Bitcoin just makes sense
compared to other bets.
I will share some nuance
that my wife's 401k is though in indexes.
So that does make much more
of a 50-50 split
versus 100-0.
So I thought I'd share that
in case any of our listeners saw that.
Next question, real or fake?
Deez, I'm going to throw this one right back to you.
ETH strength against Bitcoin.
Are you buying it?
Is it real or is it fake?
I think it's pretty real.
I want to say over a month ago, you put a gun to my head
and I said I would rather own ETH.
It was one of the first times I'd rather own ETH in a long time.
So far, that's been pretty decent.
I think Ethereum was beaten down so much against Bitcoin.
And with all the TradFi bullishness with regulations and clarity and stuff,
it makes it a pretty appetizing investment
when you look at the prices it used to go to and the prices it's at now.
And you're like, all right, this gets back to half of where it was.
It's still outpacing Bitcoin by
quite a bit.
I think it's
pretty real and I think as long as
we continue to
get clarity and
bullish news from the government,
I think it's going to stay pretty real.
I even
sold a punk to get more ETH
because I'm an idiot and I realized
I didn't have enough ETH after one of those shows.
And then
my punk that gets sold is
in a 60 punk sweep and the
floor goes up from 40 to 55
in fucking three days.
It's great.
Speaking of puns,
hold on. There's a monster punk sale.
Oh, really?
What did we miss?
An ape sold?
An ape just sold for 720 Ethereum, $2.58 million.
Is that Beauty and the Punk?
Wow.
Oh, it sold to OTC.
Wow.
What's the go down? What did they they pay for it $720,000
$2.58 million
what was the prior purchase
claimed
so we have the ancient bitcoin whales
we have the ancient bitcoin whales
dumping on us and we've got the ancient punk whales
dumping on us
that's why punk's ATC exists, baby.
Look at that bid from last cycle,
Tyler. Look at that.
2.2 thousand ETH.
Wow.
Ignored.
Ignored.
2.5 million
is a lot better when it's 720
ETH and not 2.2 thousand
ETH.
This is actually a pretty in ETH and not 2.2 thousand ETH. Yeah. So let's see. So this is actually a pretty,
in ETH terms,
down quite a bit from the last sale five months ago.
That was a little over a thousand ETH.
And there's only one for sale right now.
We've got eight going for almost 2,000 ETH.
So honestly, that's...
US dollars-wise, that's actually a pretty good sale.
Good sale USD-wise.
Maybe not the best sell on ETH.
But for apes, there's very little liquidity.
Unless you're a new company looking to blow $10 dollars of your treasury on an ape um or you're
a mentor who got one for free and wants to sell it you know it's a it's a wide range down there
yeah it really is i'm looking at zombies now too the zombie floor is pretty high but realistically
there's probably selling i don't know based based off that ape sale, where do you think zombies should sell now? Last one sold for
$440? Probably $400.
$350 to $400, I guess.
Yeah.
I mean, in ETH terms, probably closer
to, or if you think about it in USD
terms, I think it would be closer to like $350.
I'm not sure.
We haven't seen an ape sale in a couple months. Or we haven't seen an ape sale in a couple months or we haven't seen a zombie
sale in a couple months and we've only seen like two this year and i lied there was yeah
like it does feel like basically the punk sales have been like mid slash clean male punks
uh and then just floors yeah and that three million dollar hoodie sweep i'm never gonna
let anyone forget that uh for my bags crazy that that one really stuck out to me man and then the
guy who sold the the hoodie and then spent a hundred years more on arguably an uglier hoodie
um just had me feeling some type of way for about
two days, Jeeves.
I think there's a big argument
to be made that if you are bullish on ETH, very
bullish, now would be a good time
to sell.
Wasn't Mander making a case this
morning he was looking at CryptoPunks?
Yeah, a little
bit. And it still shocks me
that he doesn't have any punks especially with
given like he's very long right now i think he's a little bit more of a trade he's a liquid trader
yeah he's more of a liquid trader um meanwhile i'm trying to figure out my my path into another
punk before they become obtainable i'm trying to figure out how to get a time machine tyler
to unlist my punk before
60 sell in three minutes um do you find out any lead on that let me know
so your guys's view is that or tyler i guess you're saying that you
you know you'd rather own whatever it is 52 e versus uh you think 52 e outperforms a floor
puck that was my take away from the Ape sale, I think.
If you feel like ETH is going to triple,
are you going to get more than 720 ETH for that Ape?
Which I guess you can take that down the line.
So what does that mean for the overall floor?
overall floor.
It's a tricky game.
It's a tricky game.
I feel
like
the wealth effect really does kick in.
If ETH goes high,
and Punks will be the most coveted.
With that said,
they're up there in ETH
right now
at 52.
And I feel like a lot of people price these in USDC.
So I guess where I'm going, I could see a punk floor perhaps at 500K.
But I guess ETH would have to be like 12K to make that a bad trade.
So I guess I'm still bullish on the floor side,
I guess I'm still bullish on the floor side.
on the grail side of things.
On the grail side of things, I think it's a trickier.
I think it's a trickier.
I mean, the illiquidity problems,
or illiquidity, not I said E,
the illiquidity problems in the mid and high range
for any NFTs, I mean, punks are some of the most liquid.
It's still a pain in the fucking ass.
If you own a grail of any of these,
it's probably because you really like it.
It's not normally the best ROI-wise to buy these grails.
Yeah.
Jennings, are you still thinking about scooping one up and financializing it?
I am.
I've been looking all the time.
That's why I'm hitting you up, Jeeves.
I'm hitting up all the people.
And I'm debating what I want to do.
Yeah, what's the ideal strategy
walk us through like where you're at with this trade like what's the ideal punk what's the ideal
price what's the best way to financialize it like how are you how are you thinking about it
so to me and i and i've been just so wrong in this but i still feel just based on how things have gone
um let me take a side back.
I should have chosen floors over some of the clean puns.
Although I did get some really specifically,
I got an incredible sale on a white hair VR girl.
I sold for like 288 at like the peak.
So I got a couple of good outcomes.
And I guess the hoodies aged pretty well relative to the floors um but i
still have this belief that like especially some of these cleaner males that like if you can find
one near the floor it'll probably outperform the floor a little bit so my dream would be to find
something you know within 10 of the floor that's relatively clean and financialize it on Gandhi and then basically use that capital
to do the basis trade. Now, the problem is the basis trade is starting to kind of come down,
given where the market's at. So we'll see. A lot of people have flooded into the basis trade.
I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see kind of how things play out here
in the future.
I was a part owner of that pipe smile, which I I've always thought like Phil Ivey or something like that would be a
good buyer for that.
That one's standing out to me a little bit.
I am that one too.
This one here.
Yeah.
I've been a part owner in that multiple times,
like two different groups.
So we've bought this.
So I don't know know it feels kind of bad
to kind of buy it here uh relative to some of the prices that i held it for so long i think i broke
even that's disgusting i was relisting it like every day you held this one the good old days
in 2021 baby just relist it two and a half week hold hold there. That was long back then, Tyler.
I was trying to get in and out of punks
within 24 to 48 hours back then.
I started panicking.
There were some times when you could do it.
Within two days, it didn't sell.
Do you guys think we're due for another suite sometime soon?
I don't know.
Is there any other funds raising money
that want to blow it on punks?
Because if so, we're due. If not, I don't know. I any other funds raising money that want to blow it on punks because if
so we're due uh if not i hope so game square i mean that we heard of anything from these um
people who swept the punks like have has there been any more discussion on this um have they
come public out or come out i don't think public at this point there's like private murmurs of
kind of what's going on but i don't think there's anything public. There's private murmurs of what's going on,
but I don't think there's anything public yet.
And I think when they do come public,
it'll be a pretty big announcement.
Okay.
Yeah, I've heard a lot of rumors,
but I've seen nothing substantial,
so I don't want to feed the rumor mill.
But I'm mildly pessimistic on whatever happens.
Based off of the rumors I've heard heard that may not even fucking be true.
Which is always great.
I guess Spencer went on, Spencer Ventures went on Rick Vision.
I'm like playing telephone here, but I believe what I understood,
interpreted for Mando was, he said, there's something happening.
Spencer's involved interesting there's a lot of smoke around punks right now and definitely some speculation on what's going to
happen i do think we'll see a treasury punk co as well i think that's inevitable yeah um so there's
there's bullish bearish all sorts of weird things you just you hope that people just leave punks
as like you don't need to do anything else just hope that people just leave punks as like you
don't need to do anything else just let them let them be punks and do you want a punk treasury co
peter do you think that just makes unnecessary risk in the punk ecosystem i think it'd be good
for the the overall ecosystem i mean i'm very bearish in the treasury co is relative to most
but if there's something that merits a treasury co uh i would think it would be punks for sure
i think it could be hunks for sure.
I think it could be interesting as long as they don't use debt or any type of convertibles.
I think it could be really cool to see something like that.
What I really want is for,
there's so many people like high profile names crowded around Ethereum right
now.
And they clearly are understanding DeFi.
They're understanding Ethereum.
And I feel like it's only a matter of time
before the art culture components come through.
Like Tom Lee, he got a free Pudgy.
There must have been something there
between either some of the larger groups,
like financial groups that are involved with the budget ecosystem
or with Luca for you know giving him like a sponsored PFP but punks seem like the natural
thing that they're going to gravitate to at some point and not necessarily like something that
people have to have but something that will become a larger flex as we move into potentially better market conditions and people get more familiar with what the Ethereum ecosystem has to offer.
I'm right there with you, Jeeps.
I 100% think they're going to be the big flex.
I just want to circle back quickly to exactly what Peter's talking about when he's saying financial lies on gandhi there are standing 38 eth loans
30 day for punk so you can effectively buy a punk for 13 eth right now now granted that's high risk
you're going to have to pay fees on that like if the punk floor goes down if it gets called you're
going to have to figure out that situation so just know that you know how an nft loan works but how much did his interest do on gondi loans
at the end of the duration 30 at the end of the duration you just pay up the the full amount with
interest in principle there's no you can't call it at any point can't be called typically
origination fees like for these two, it's zero.
And then you pay the interest at the end.
If the loan ends within some time within,
I believe you only pay for the time that you had it.
So if you take 120 days.
The Gandhi play is really if you're bullish.
It is definitely more risk versus just buy and hold.
You got to be expecting ETH to go up. You got to be expecting ETH to go up.
You got to be expecting punks to go up in dollar terms
and also the basis trade or whatever you're going to do with the capital
to offset the APR that you're paying.
You're only going to exceed the low APR if we're in a bullish.
14% is tough.
Bullish market.
Right.
That's tough.
I just looked at someone yesterday for a leg up, though.
I don't know.
It's tough until you put it all into Zora
and you 7x it in a month.
Then you don't have to worry about it anymore.
Zora funding rates on the long side, near the peak of that,
were like 5,000%, by the way.
On the long side, so it's negative funding.
I did talk to someone
who's who's they're gonna start doing the basis trade uh by buying crypto with zero percent apr
chase credit cards oh no no no that is such a bad idea what could go wrong what could go wrong oh that makes me want
to sell everything hearing stories like that i don't know that's the four things that chase
chase is allowing that right like you can use your chase credit card points to buy crypto you can now
buy crypto with your credit card i think that's a problem like i don't like the idea of being able
to buy crypto with your credit card or on credit i mean i can go on underdog and just take a thousand
dollars out of my amex and throw it in and fucking rent like i don't think it's that different it's
not that yeah you shouldn't be able to like gamble on credit of course exactly like neither of those
make me comfortable like i'm not okay with either
like one doesn't make the other one right it's like no when i do it i'm like man i gotta like
pay this off i just put like five grand of underdog count which i'm sorry just just this is a true
story um and there's a lot of sensitive things here so just just putting it out there not trying
to be you know uh specifically there's a suicide thing here um that was referenced so just just putting it out there not trying to be you know uh specifically
there's a suicide thing here um that was referenced so just you know get help if that's the case um
but uh the one of the biggest dfs players got the start was the number one dfs player in the early
days from like 2011 to 2014 and he publicly went on a podcast and said i maxed out every single credit card that i possibly
could put a hundred percent of that debt all in on a one-week fantasy right the this is in the nfl
and then built up a role the plan was if he lost to commit suicide that was the plan was that sahil
or is that pre-sahil that was pre-sahil that. That was, whatever it's public, it was Kandia. Kandia's plan was
literally went public on
that. This is my plan.
I want to be really
sensitive to that. That's obviously a horrible idea.
Coming from the gambling
world and crypto and everything else, I
agree there should be regulation around using
credit to buy these assets.
That is an absolutely
horrible death spiral that can happen from that um so be careful out there jeeps you're scaring me
here in this live with credit but people do it i actually well because they're doing it for the
basis trade right so they're basically saying i'll get free bitcoin take the other side of the trade
and then collect the free spread on it i don't love it either way their theory is i can get basically 10 on bitcoin for the whole year since that's
kind of the rate on it i actually think it's not a bad trade in this instance because it's not
gambling right there well they're doing the basis trade but there's risks involved for them, but it's, they,
they see it as like a decent opportunity.
I want to come back to the,
I want to come back to the Farcoin basis trade,
but I feel like we need more time.
So it might have to be a next week thing.
And if that's what's keep keeping us,
keeping a good token down,
which we,
we have our thoughts,
but maybe last question.
I know we're a few minutes over.
I want to throw this one in Jeebs.
We'll make it real or fake.
Memes are dead.
Meme trading in 2025 is dead.
Real or fake?
We were chatting about this a little bit before the show.
Yeah, I'm still sure what Peter just said.
That's crazy um real or dead meme coin trading this year it is it's it's compressing it is compressing and
compressing you guys pulled the stat right the average trade is now 60 seconds that is
tough and i think there's just too many tokens there's too much dispersion um
and i think this is why you see tokens like wrecked going above 500 million sustaining
doing well in this market because people can feel really comfortable holding those tokens
tyler i know you and i were in uh and I'm still sort of in this jugs trade,
right? For example, it's
the meme
token
of the
Moonit ecosystem, which is
MemeLand's new
launchpad. And look, this
is the best they can do is a $2 million
market cap token. Obviously, it's
gone up to like $5 million. It ran to $10 at one point. But this is the best they can do is a $2 million market cap token. Obviously, it's gone up to like five.
It ran to 10 at one point.
But this is the best.
My understanding is like MemeLand and that whole ecosystem is like a really well-known thing.
And they've done well in NFTs and with other stuff.
And I'd love to get stats on here to talk with him about it to learn more about what exactly is going on here. But it's clear this ecosystem is having a
lot of difficulty taking off. And I think launchpads are also just really competitive.
But I think this chart is a sign of what a lot of meme coin charts look like right now.
Price action obviously hurts that, right? We turn around, we're at 120. I think people like to go
gamble a little bit. But in these chop markets or markets where we're heading down,
this is, I think, across the board,
what a lot of memes and then alts are looking like in this market,
minus their handful.
Every single meme coin I bought in the last month has a chart like that,
and I lost on it.
Yeah, I've become a community member of quite a few tokens the past couple weeks.
But OX Wheatport is going to tell me that it's a skill issue
because he's saying the trenches are still cooking.
And then if you look at the board...
You're not in the right family groups, Tyler.
I really think you should get in the right groups and then re-evaluate.
After a couple 15-second holding period trades, you'll really feel a difference.
So if I would have bought the Lizard token, for instance, yesterday
evening, and then would have stayed up until 4am
and sold the top, I would have done
very well. So that's
our most recent example.
We have
pump fun with the
community stuff.
It's hard, man, yeah.
Our pump fun really ruined a lot of it,
I think.
It might have been the other side moment, and CT nailed it.
What if 70% of crypto Twitter was right?
That's insane, Tyler.
That would be the scariest thing I've ever seen.
There's no what if.
They were right.
The pump trade was a terrible trade off the gun.
Maybe it's good now
it was great if you bought it at the bottom
at 2 million you're up 50%
the ICO was a terrible trade
the ICO was free money
well okay
it was a terrible trade for me
because I didn't take profits
it was a terrible trade if you bought
on hyperliquid or something
at current market prices.
But if you were able to get in and then sell it, it was free money.
If you held it for 60 seconds.
If you held it for the average length of the average holding time of the average Pump.Fun token, it was perfect.
Let's see.
ICO, you could have held it for a week and been profitable.
You got to take the free money.
Maybe I should make a bot that
just buys something and sells it in 60
seconds based off momentum.
Those exist.
There's a lot of those out there.
We'll see.
It's tough out there. Let's recheck this when bitcoin's above
18k would be a really
sobering show
18k bitcoin at this
point man we would be
canceled
we're canceled we'd really be going back to that S&P 15k Bitcoin at this point, man, we would be canceled.
We're canceled.
We'd really be going back to that S&P and Bitcoin as the benchmark conversation.
I'm looking at that a lot differently.
Yeah, my...
...for sticking with us and tuning in.
I kind of like this real fake segment.
Maybe this will be a running one for us here going forward.
So something to look forward to next week, folks.
I want to thank our co-hosts, my co-hosts, as always.
We'll be back next Tuesday to break down everything that has happened. Until then, have a great week.
Goodbye. Thank you.
