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UNDER EXPOSED: Crypto Ghost Month vs Rate Cuts - Who Will Prevail?
Recorded: Aug. 26, 2025 Duration: 1:00:15Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. so
gmgm everyone thanks for joining us here this morning, this afternoon, wherever you're at.
We're going to start the show here in just a minute.
I want to give a shout out to some listeners out there.
Fungi, GM, Carlo, Husker, GM, thanks for joining us.
It's Pingus rolling out those announcements.
Go get those soul bounds, folks.
Go get those soul bound tokens.
Zanzibar, Harry Krishna, GM.
Who we got?
Charlie, Bay Area, all right.
GM, Googling, always here.
GM, GM, all right.
Charlie, whenever you're ready, let's kick it. Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 40 of Underexposed.
Wow, 40 shows deep.
How about that?
This is our weekly macro show hitting all of the biggest topics and trends impacting crypto and Web3.
Today is Tuesday, August 26th.
And folks, it was over. We were back.
Now it's kind of over again, depending on what tokens you're holding.
The crypto roller coaster is more volatile than ever.
ETH just hit a new all-time high, then dumped. Bitcoin
seemingly going lower by the day. And today we're asking, is this just ghost month or what is
happening? We're going to break it all down on today's show. I'm your host, Tyler D. I've got
two of my co-hosts in the house. First up, D's, art collector, coin stacker, trader, and a lot more,
GM. How are you doing? Doing well, well man we got the transition from summer to autumn
happening here in ohio and i can feel the cold chill in the air as i get ready to sit in my
chair for 16 hours a day for the next uh six months oh that cold chill is also partially
brought to you by ghost month that's ghost month dude it's just in the air you can feel the ghost
month when you walk outside right now i i can't unfeel it or unshake it.
It's seemingly impacting my bags on a daily basis.
We'll get into that later on. Folks, we've also got Peter Jennings on with us.
I've been over several companies. Still finding time to hang with us. Peter, GM, how are you doing?
GM, doing great.
It's a little chillier here in Colorado. We're getting some rain, but that's great for our climate. Mid 70s all next week. So yeah, it's kind of the peak of golf season here, some tournaments and whatnot. So that's fun. And I'm going to get in the best ball streets. And yeah, crypto is definitely nothing short of entertaining. So I had to chat macro and everything going on in crypto.
Countdown to NFL is on, right?
What, next Thursday?
How soon is the season starting?
Yeah, next Thursday.
And oh, shout out to Tommy Fleetwood.
I've been betting Tommy to win for some time now.
Finally paid off and couldn't have happened to a better person.
Just a great ambassador for the game.
And really cool that he got his first PGA Tour win
in the Tour Championship.
So shout out to Tommy Fleetwood.
Yes, incredible.
What a win that was.
Folks, we're going to talk macro, a lot of things.
Before we dive in, a few housekeeping items.
First, we're live on KICK.
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And of course, as always, gamble responsibly.
And then one last disclosure, the opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the
speakers who 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, let's get into it. I am going to fire up the screen share for those who are in
the kickstream. One second here. Let's take a look at the board. It's mixed, right? So Bitcoin is down 3.5% in the week at 109.6.
ETH is up 8% at 45.20. Feeling pretty good about that, though it is off all-time highs.
And Solana up 7%, hanging with ETH with no DAT bid yet, no ETF bid yet either,
DAT bid yet. No ETF bid yet either. Hanging out at 191. Somewhat sneaky under the radar. B&B
also at 850. It's been hitting new all-time highs as the weeks go on as well. From a macro
perspective, last week it was all about Jackson Hole and Powell came out and he delivered.
Basically came out dovish. Odds of rate cuts spiked on the back of that.
We saw markets broadly rally.
Stocks and crypto just boomed on Friday.
Then they sold off over the weekend.
And yesterday was actually quite a bloody day, but may have turned around on this headline from Trump last night that he is attempting to fire Fed
Governor Lisa Cook and remove her from her Federal Reserve Board position based on statements
made in her mortgage agreements.
But it looks like she's fighting it.
She is not going to resign.
So this is still a very TBD up in the air situation.
What that means for rate cuts, we can get into perhaps later on. So this is still a very TBD up in the air situation.
What that means for rate cuts, we can get into perhaps later on.
From a pure crypto perspective, again, ETH hit all-time high.
I think on Sunday, touched 49.40, 49.50 or so before selling off into the Sunday market open.
The other big story of this week has been more Solana debts. So Solana treasury codes,
companies being spun up just to buy and hold sole as a treasury asset. We had three new firms spin up yesterday to the tune of around $2.6 billion. So some big buy pressure coming there. With
respect to Bitcoin, of course, there's a lot of factors at play, but it seems this one
whale has been converting 24,000 Bitcoin, around $2.6 billion or more, into ETH. And he's been
doing it all on hyperliquid, much to the euphoria of the hype bag holders there. So that's been
impacting the Bitcoin and ETH price action.
And then our good friend, Tom Lee,
he called the bottom to a T last week,
referencing his quant, Mark Newton.
He called 4075, said you were to go long.
The actual bottom was like 4,063
and then it ran straight to all time highs.
Well, guess what?
Last night, he's back at it again.
His quant was calling Monday night bottom within a few hours, around 4,300, running up to 5,100 or 5,400 for ETH next
up. And guess what? I mean, at least on a short-term timeframe, that bottom is looking like it was in. 4,300 last night, 45-20 here this morning.
So Tom Lee, he is back at it. A lot to get into.
Peter, I'll toss it to you. I guess first, just macro
reactions to Jackson Hole, surprises, thoughts on
rate cuts coming. What's top of mind this week?
Yeah, Jackson Hole, Powell basically said nothing
beautifully, did have kind of one key statement where he said they may have to change the
restricted policy, which that sent everything from a risk asset perspective mooning. So it does
seem like we're going to have rate cuts to what degree we'll see
in addition
I think the biggest news right now is what's going on with Cook
and Trump trying to fire her
from the Fed
it's clear she's done one thing wrong and that's
voting against
rate cuts based on the Trump
administration so that's her
one definitive crime in quotes
obviously being facetious here was not voting for rate cuts based on the Trump administration. So that's her one definitive crime, in quotes,
obviously being facetious here,
was not voting for rate cuts.
So that's something really to watch.
We saw gold spike on that news yesterday.
So yeah, what's happening with the Fed,
the Fed independence and where rates are going is certainly the main macro thing that we're watching.
In addition, I think the Russia-Ukraine war, if there's a resolution there, would be another big macro dynamic that could play out, especially from an energy perspective and how that impacts inflation.
So those are the two main things that I'm paying attention to from a macro perspective.
And then there's all sorts of nuance within crypto.
Obviously, a big rotation from Bitcoin to ETH.
With that whale you mentioned, we've seen quite a few Bitcoin whales sell in the last couple of months.
So, yeah, it's a very intriguing time in crypto.
So many people calling for the top.
So many people saying it's still early.
There's a lot of cross currents to navigate, which I'm excited to chat with you guys about.
Yeah, I guess let's just dig right into that.
I mean, what rate your concern level about Bitcoin Wells selling slash selling for ETH?
Has it impacted your thoughts on the Bitcoin trade in either near term or longer term?
Not really. I mean, I feel best about Bitcoin's
narrative still is digital gold. We've talked a lot about, you know, kind of where monetary,
the M2 money supply, that's another big theme overall that continues to go up. So that should
be good for crypto assets, should be great for Bitcoin. I do think it's really interesting,
kind of the narrative shift around Ethereum. Obviously, Tom Lee's been really influential in that.
I think he's the best mascot possible for Ethereum.
And similar to Sailor, obviously, the huge bid that he has.
And then going on TradFi, things like CNBC, podcasts, etc.
Pumping ETH is certainly really good for that asset.
And also, price is the best narrative.
So ETH is really benefiting from the recent run up. Um, but yeah, I'm not overly concerned. Um,
from a Bitcoin perspective, I think Bitcoin still is going to kind of stay on the same trajectory.
Uh, the one thing that I'm really kind of, we talked a lot about the bats. I still more bearish
on how that's going to impact things long-term, I think, than the rest of the group here.
But the other aspect that I think is really important from a bearish perspective is just how quickly this cycle has played out in a lot of ways.
Things that we've seen in the past normally took longer, and I feel like everyone's trying to play this game of musical chairs where they want to get out ahead of time.
And we've seen that in some of the price action.
So that's one thing that
kind of concerns me is that we've dumped down. I think a lot of crypto natives just are really
making sure that they're not holding the bag that they have in previous cycles. So that is one
concern that I have just from a short term to medium term price action standpoint. But then,
you know, you have the M2 money supply going up, you have the best regulatory setup we've ever had for crypto.
I think that we're going to continue to see fiat currency be debased,
which is why we're in crypto to begin with.
So I see a lot of positives and I see a couple of negatives and it's really tricky to navigate.
I think that's spot on.
It is wild week over week how many folks, at least on crypto Twitter,
It is wild week over week how many folks, at least on crypto Twitter, are desperately looking for the top, trying to get out in advance of the top.
And we see it reflected in the sentiment and the fear and greed.
So looking at fear and greed index at 43 below average, still in the neutral, not quite in fear yet. But we're below 50 when ETH hit an all-time high two days ago.
And Bitcoin's at $110K, 10% off its all-time highs.
Other alts are starting to get to all-time highs.
It is very much still a tale of two markets.
You've got CT looking to sell, move on.
And then on the alternative, I feel like the institutional bid,
the Wall Street bid, is just getting started.
So I saw this stat.
Bitcoin Archive tweeted this.
Every category of investment advisor added to their Bitcoin ETF ownership in Q2.
And granted, this is Q2.
We don't know if this trend will continue for Q3.
Q2 also had the tariff dip, which presented a good buying up for anyone who had cash on hand.
So perhaps we don't want to speculate too much on this continuing, but I will do that. I'm one
who likes to jump to conclusions. And I feel like there's a pretty clear signal here that this cohort is just now starting to buy it.
And I think they are going to continue to buy in DCAN.
And they're not trying to time a November top.
And their sentiment is not 43 edging into fear.
At least that's my read on it.
Deez, I'm curious for your thoughts.
Read on sentiment.
If it's right,
if it's wrong,
what your personal rate is,
any and all that.
I think we spend too much time on Twitter worried about day-to-day price
action.
Sentiment seems to just like ebb and flow based off of the last 24 hours of
price action.
So I think like we overreact.
I'm not really too worried.
I also think people should just be comfy selling partials.
I sold some last week and kind of sucked when I did it.
But then three days later, I was really happy I sold some.
So instead of trying to sell the top,
if you're nervous about your exposure,
just sell a little bit.
You can keep selling small chunks.
You don't need to sell everything.
But I think in general, we're just a little too online.
If you just zoom out, look at the macro environment,
we're in a good spot.
I don't think we really need to overthink it too much.
I'm curious for both of your takes,
just on a personal trading level,
how do you think about cycles?
Like, do you, let's assume the cycle holds.
And that's a different conversation.
Like, are you looking to exit 100%, 50%, 25% at a top and trying to buy a dip into the next cycle?
That's one school of thought.
And then you've got like the Haralabob school of thought,
which as I understand it,
is just trying to accumulate
as much Bitcoin as possible
because they feel like
it is going higher
on a longer time frame.
I think I've talked about it
a few times,
but my biggest concern
about this cycle
is more the political side of it
with the Trump family
just being so in bed
with the crypto space and
the possibility of the uh 2028 elections swinging heavily back to the democrats and then there being
some type of like retribution regulation to to go out i mean just today i saw like donald trump
jr is now working with polymarket there's a um the giant crypto.com buy related to the trump family and just like every fucking day
they're just like you know the roots are just going a little deeper into random shit around
us i hate that um so my concern is more along the lines of do i have enough cash to comfortably do nothing for four years from 2028 to 2032.
And then after that,
you know,
is plugged,
then I would focus on like denominating in Bitcoin,
denominating on bit in Bitcoin while paying attention to the ETH Bitcoin
ratio.
I still think it was like the lowest risk,
best way to kind of move big chunks of money around.
That makes sense. Peter, same question to you. I'm curious how you think about it.
Well, this cycle, I feel better than ever in terms of how I'm rebalancing and, you know,
managing my portfolio specifically because you can basically take risk off the table while
earning yield through the basis trade. So whenever I feel like, you know, I'm not even feel, I think, you know,
obviously you have the tax consequences to be cognizant of, but in general,
when things are ripping and my net worth is skewed more and more towards crypto,
I try to take and be cognizant of that. It's hard.
When things are going up, you always are like, why don't I have more?
But I generally try to basically take some chips off the table by shorting
perpetuals and collecting the yield by shorting perpetuals.
So that's how I've been thinking about managing my portfolio.
And it's just kind of grown over time on the shorting side.
Obviously there's a little bit of risk there.
So be really careful and understand what you're doing if you're going to make
that strategy.
But it's made it a lot easier versus in the past where you just have to sell.
That was harder for me.
It's much easier for me to,
you know,
basically take some chips off the table knowing that I'm going to collect a
little bit more yield.
And then to your original question,
how I try to think about it
is just my overall portfolio and what I need for my family. So most important thing is just
preserving financial freedom for our family, making sure we're in a position to continue
to pay our bills and things of that nature. And kind of the nature of my work, there's a lot of risk,
you know, just in trading, sports, etc. So I try to bucket that. And, you know, as things grow,
you want to take some risk off the table. And, you know, really just preserving that freedom is
the number one important thing to me. And part of the way I've done that is, you know, buying land,
buying a house,
converting crypto for those things, obviously moving money into the S&P 500, which to me is just the least risky way to protect against a basement. There's still obviously risk with
stocks as well. And then looking for private investments yield in other places and thinking
about how those all work together and how they're correlated. So right now, probably the biggest risk that I see to my portfolio is that, you know,
a lot of these stocks that are booing the S&P 500 are correlated with AI, which is correlated with
crypto. So in that regard, maybe I have a little bit too much risk on, um, so then finding
alternatives, whether it be like Berkshire style equity, more yield bearing thing, gold.
I continue to add gold right now, which is not sexy.
But from a protecting against a basement perspective, I feel pretty good about that.
Yeah, it's just a holistic point of view.
And I really try to rebalance.
And the easiest way to do is like, what do you want your portfolio to look like from a percent allocation real estate equities private investment gold
crypto how do you want those things to look so um long-winded answer but uh i feel like i've
learned from past cycles i'm really trying to be cognizant of when i feel myself getting greedy
those are the times to try to take some chips off the table.
And it's been much easier from my perspective,
just shorting some of these perpetuals because you get yield.
I think it's great macro advice on how to think about managing a portfolio
over time and lessons I think just about anyone can take from.
And then I think also just on the zoomed in on ways to take profits via these
Delta neutral trades. So I appreciate you sharing that.
Peter, it is interesting. You're coming on gold spiked metrics.
I just checked the month gold's up 4% on the month. Bitcoin's down 8%.
It is,
it's still noticeable how Bitcoin is not trading like digital gold.
And at least on the zoomed in basis, I am curious if and when it will start doing that.
It seems not quite yet.
Perhaps zooming in on another, I guess we could call it a macro trend.
Tom Lee.
Maybe I'll toss this one to you.
Did you see his call last week?
Did you trade on it?
And then did you see it yesterday?
Did you make any moves?
I saw the calls.
I did not trade on them.
And maybe that was stupid in hindsight.
It feels just crazy to me.
We have this guy who's plowing tons of money into the market.
And then he's doing TA, calling bottoms and shit,
when he knows that he's about to deploy money or something.
It just cracks me up.
But no, maybe I should be trading on it.
It is.
I guess I'll flip the question.
Did you put them on alerts, and as soon as you got the push notification,
just slam along in in or what happened?
I did. A cheeky one,
but a small one.
I'm mostly in positions
and a few of them are...
I'm in some longs that are underwater.
I'm in a Bitcoin long that's underwater,
unfortunately.
Had I longed ETH instead,
it would be a much different situation.
But I did have a count that had a couple hundred bucks.
And I put a little 25X in on the Tom Lee call.
And on a short time frame, it certainly has worked.
It worked last week as well.
I'm a little more dubious of this one playing out just because it feels too easy.
It's like one of those things that like –
So last week, people didn't really believe it.
And he gave the exact bottom of 4075.
And then it did run to all time high over the course of what, three, three or four days.
And I felt like most people were off sides from that.
This time it feels like perhaps more folks are on sides and tailing.
And it's almost one of those things where it's too easy for it to play out this way
um it certainly would be nice but the trend still feels too big to ignore of eth outperforming
bitcoin right now i was sharing the eth bitcoin chart it's at year-to-date highs it's approaching
one year high and uh the eth ETH that's are in control.
Tom's up to 1.7 million ETH,
nearly 8 billion.
They have another,
they have some decent 560 million cash on hand.
SBET's got,
this is even outdated.
SBET's got nearly 800,000 ETH now.
They have a couple hundred million cash on hand,
which is interesting because a lot of folks,
as these deaths have been trending
more towards 1x MNAV, folks thought they would struggle to raise capital on an ongoing basis.
So far, that hasn't been the case.
They raised a lot of cash last week, which matters because they can use that cash this
week to keep buying.
So I'm expecting this trend to continue.
I think there's a myriad line on Sharplink.
Joe Lubin and crew getting $ million ETH by September 16th.
That's in three weeks.
They need to do 60.
They're at 800,000, so they need 66,000 per week.
It's the right line.
I think they're going to be right on that.
This continues to be an interesting one to watch.
I'm curious.
You've been thinking about the Solana trade for a while.
Curious for your reactions to the big debt news.
So there was rumors, speculation,
that there were some big players entering the Solana Treasury Co. race.
Boom, yesterday we got it.
Jump in multi-coin is doing a billion-dollar one.
Pantera is doing 1.25 billion.
Sharps Technology is doing 400 million.
Does this change your perspective on Sol?
I'm not sure.
It's a little confusing to me
because I saw some numbers floating around
of the existing Solana
that some of these entities may already own,
whether it was buying FTX liquidations
or other locked Solana during the bear market
so i don't know if it's more trying to like come up with a clean exit vehicle for that large amount
of soul or or what um i keep going back and forth between soul and pump i like i use three brain
cells three brain cells tell me i want pump i used four brain cells three brain cells tell me I want pump. I used four brain cells, four brain cells tell me I want soul.
Five brain cells tell me pump.
And it's just like that.
And every time I go down there, I haven't really changed too much.
I'm just holding some Solana and Pump.
I still have most of the soul I had a couple episodes ago when I was talking about it,
but I did buy some Pump.
But Pump is underperforming soul.
And if you have all the DAT hype on top,
you probably don't want to
hold pump over Sol in the short term
because it's not going to get the DAT hype.
But then you wouldn't be surprised if there is
a fucking pump DAT, because now we have
Canary
is filing a Trump ETF
for the Trump token or something
I saw this morning.
So we're just doing all sorts of dumb shit.
Why not throw a pump one in?
So I think if you own soul, like you should have some pump.
Like I don't know what the ratio to, you know, balance is,
but it feels like if your bet is on soul,
at least having some of your soul be a pump feels good.
Like today, I mean, soul's being outperformed by pump souls up 2.5 pumps up 8.3
so i think it's good to have a mix of both but yeah it's tough it's it's tough trying to
constantly balance while considering all the tax consideration stuff because for me my soul is like
all long-term cap gains it's been staked for almost two years, so it's a lot harder to want to rip it out and throw it into
something new.
But yeah,
it's not bad, right? There's no world
where this is really bad for a soul.
It's not bad at all.
Let me propose a strategy for you, Deez.
What about the idea of...
L-Ping, soul punk?
No, here's a
strategy that I think makes some sense
um you have your stake soul you can borrow against it you borrow some stables against
your stake soul you go buy pump and then whatever amount that you would obviously now you're longer
the soul ecosystem whatever amount you want to get back to where you feel comfortable
you short soul perps and obviously obviously, sole perps, the funding
rate is not amazing. You're not going to like, hopefully, you'll make a little bit on that.
We'll see how things play out. But yeah, the funding rate is kind of bounced somewhat negative
to somewhat positive. But even let's just assume you break even, which I think you'll do a little
bit better. You basically accomplish your goal without uh taking on that tax consequence
yeah i wish i was smarter peter i wish i was about um three standard deviations smarter than i am to
the right because it's pretty easy you literally just close it up you're still your stakes holds
earning yield you borrow against it your borrow rates aren't going to be super high.
No, it's more the once I have a short position on Hyperliquid
and I open up the app and I see this position,
it tweaks my whole mental.
I need to put it in a wallet that I can't see or monitor,
but then if it goes against me.
So Peter, I hear that, and my immediate reaction is,
why would I ever sell anything?
Why wouldn't I always just implement this strategy?
So what's the risk to it?
The short just gets blown out?
The risk to it, obviously, is you have the management.
And then wherever you're shorting the purpose that you're taking on,
that risk that wherever you're doing that doesn't pay you.
That's the major risk.
And obviously, tax consequences to be thoughtful around too.
But to me, that's how i'm thinking about things i mean you can do the same idea with eath
you you could loop eath borrow against it um take that same money that you're borrowing against
short these futures which by the way the funding rates on eath have been unbelievable over the last
couple of weeks um i mean that's how how Athena built their entire ecosystem, right?
Is the basis trade.
So...
It's interesting.
ETH earlier today was like 34% on hyperliquid.
Wow.
I have a big fan of it.
I mean, this is not a new idea.
This is a somewhat crowded trade,
but especially while we're still in this bull market,
to me, it's a pretty easy way to de-risk.
And then if funding really changes, then you can kind of rebalance
and figure out what you want to do.
But to me, it's a pretty good way
to manage your portfolio,
especially when you think about taxes.
Deez, were you going to jump in there?
Yeah, I was going to say,
I do like borrowing against my soul in Bitcoin,
but I normally just don't go that extra step
of borrowing against it
and then hedging with some short to capture yield.
I don't normally do that.
Most people like to borrow against it,
loop it, and just more levered.
That's how I justify some of my trenching is uh you know just take out a small loan against some bitcoin gamble it if it goes shitty you know sell something else and pay it back if it goes well you
don't need to pay it back that's how i bought hype too while we're in this like yield strategy
conversation um shout out to the guys over at Gandhi.
I mean, you can earn pretty good yields on your USDC.
So if you wanted to take some risk off the table, sell some of your crypto assets and then, you know, put up some capital.
That's really interesting.
There's a variety of different yield strategies on Pendle and, you know, within the Athena ecosystem.
strategies on Pendle and, you know, then the Athena ecosystem. So yeah, to me, that makes it
much easier to rebalance your portfolio if you're going to say, okay, I'm going to use the capital
that I'm raising to go then earn yield versus, hey, I'm going to sell it, take the tax consequence,
and then go, you know, put it into the bank. And then now what do I do with the money? Like that,
that's hard. And, you know, there's still a lot of merit to doing that especially if you're trying to take a lot of risk off the table
buy things like gold or the S&P 500 or even putting it in treasuries right now I think
you're going to underperform kind of the not even underperform I think you're still going to get
debased being in treasuries or similar products but you don't have to go that far out on the risk curve to get yield that I think will keep up with inflation and the debasement, whether that's in corporates or to me, I think the best yield opportunities are still in crypto.
But that's something that I think makes it a lot easier to rebalance when you can use that capital to earn yield.
It's very interesting.
So it's definitely a tool i'm going to start looking
to put in in my playbook appreciate you talking on it here fairly frequently i think at this point
so if some of our listeners are taking that in as well um like the fart coin like the fart coin
debacle like i i've been able i historically i would have just held fart coin all the way down sure and it's
been it's been ugly and uh i'm basically neutral i mean i don't i'm not really that long fart coin
and um you know i've made some good trades bad trades on fart coin but it made it so much easier
uh to to get out of this um and yeah it's been from a funding perspective this has been one of
the best out there by a mile.
We'll see if that changes.
I think Farpoint is kind of going out of favor now,
but if you look at the funding rate for the last three months,
it's been quite strong.
It's a good way to play it.
And it certainly worked out.
I guess on this note, this was on my call sheet anyway.
How do you guys feel about the meme coin trade?
I think there's more,
there's more speculation of the meme coin trade of 2025 being over.
It's done.
Diesel,
toss that to you.
And I'm curious to your thoughts.
And I think that there's a couple of ways to think about this.
Think about this.
There's the me majors.
There's the meme majors,
And then there's the trenches,
and then there's the trenches.
New runners.
new runners.
There we go.
Yeah.
Unless you count Rekt,
my hat,
I think the only other meme
I'm holding right now is Mog,
which is not doing well either.
Doesn't feel like we're getting
any new liquidity to flow in the memes.
I don't know what catalyst
happens that brings them back.
I think they will come back.
I don't know what will bring them back.
But yeah, I think for now,
I'm not looking to allocate heavy in any memes.
Are you looking for any that you think are just not going anywhere?
Because you're getting a nice discount right now
compared to where you were in July.
I'm painfully holding my FARC1 position still.
I haven't cut it.
Still a believer.
I always said that my view had shifted to it being a Q4 runner,
so I'm just going to stomach the volatility.
I probably should be short on perps and collecting on this.
I'm just not.
The data is a little bit messy because of bots and whatnot,
but there's a clear trend.
There's many less people trading in the Solana meme game right now
than there has been in about a year.
That's undeniable.
I think it's easy to see this
and jump to the conclusion that the meme trade is over.
And part of me wants to go there,
but then at the same time,
I feel like historically this is also the slowest time.
It was very slow last August, September.
If you go look at the volume data,
it was terrible before we had an explosive month in November and the AI
trade came on and then leading into the Trump trade.
And that's when in December in Miami,
I'm talking to your buddies and they're,
they're glued to their meme coin apps and they're making crazy plays.
But with that said,
like if I saw them again,
this December in Miami, I wouldn't bet that they will be back in the meme trade do you think they're
going to be back in the meme trade in december um not only do i think they won't be i can guarantee
um they probably won't be uh one of those guys still trades some memes but um the other two
they're just like what am i doing here like i they're they're
they fucked up they're like they round trip some money they ended up netting a win you know not
nearly as big as it could have been and they're like all right like i'm gonna just chill out and
they own like you know bitcoin and soul but they don't they're not in uh the photon trenches
anymore with me right now well Well, why would they be?
I'm a FOMO guy.
I get FOMO a lot.
There's not that much going on.
I think they know too that their edge is essentially like any information flow I put in a group chat with them,
and I have not been putting anything in the chat
so i don't feel good about anything yeah i think i i did share some of the the heaven memes that
went to zero in there that was the last thing i shared uh but yeah it's tough it's i want to like
you know we haven't talked about football.fun, but I want there to be consumer apps
that my friends want to use
that aren't primarily buy tokens,
sell it in 15 seconds for money thing
and then hook them that way.
I haven't been able to sell friends
really on prediction markets so much.
I had one friend who seemed really interested in it.
I talked to him two weeks ago.
We went on a long drive and I talked to him in a couple years,
and I was explaining prediction markets.
And that was interesting enough to him to take his ledger out
that he hasn't used in four years and fuck around.
But trying to look for more actually real apps
that get people excited to use any of this shit
rather than, hey, there's the promise of
if you buy this shit coin that maybe you could sell it in 15 seconds
to the copy traders and
rinse them and move on.
I think there will be a Q4 meta.
I don't think it's going to be meme trading as we know it.
Maybe there's a new version of it.
The AI meta of Q4 last year was a new version.
I don't think it's going to be AI 2. Some people think maybe there will be round 2.
I don't really know that I would put my chips on that bet for Q4.
It's a little bit harder to predict.
If it is AI round 2, what tokens would you buy right now to play that?
Is there any of any that you feel like
get a really nice pump in the AI round too?
That's a good question.
In general, I'd look at tokens
with teams that have good products
and have been building for a while.
I think Moby would jump out.
Yeah, see your list.
Moby at $22 million is probably one of the most interesting
if you thought there was an AI about to play.
I love that dash isn't going anywhere.
It's up off the bottom,
not going,
hasn't been going,
it had the big run to 50 now back at 22.
Right.
That looks like it could be a five to 10 X trade.
Potentially.
I like Tibber.
It's still a very speculative trade.
Still hold a good chunk of that.
Other than that, Bankers had some success.
Prompt is an interesting one from the Parallel team.
We know they've been cooking.
I haven't heard much from that since it launched.
It's a good one.
It was this new AI token, Caesar.
Wrong user, the frog, has been heavily
tallying this one.
He generally
gives pretty sharp takes.
It came out
at 25 million last week,
so it's basically even
grinding up a little bit.
It's a new AI
tool that gives you
trading alpha
as well.
So there's some
interesting plays
out there.
But maybe it'll be something totally different.
Maybe it'll be football.fot. I was trying to pull that up.
I'm curious. These or Peter, if any of you,
this sparked your interest.
These were chatting about a little bit before.
It sparked my interest for three seconds until I realized it was soccer.
Not football.
I was on there too last week for like like
if i knew anything i would i i knew that this was going to be i had a feeling this was going to
really run and uh unfortunately don't know anything about soccer and was too lazy to even
just spray and pray it shout out uh jack the the clipper jack with like five numbers in his name
because i think he's the first person i saw
post this last week and i looked at it and was like oh this is interesting and i clicked it and
was like oh fuck it's like it's actually like you know european football um i don't know any of these
names and then i xed out and i didn't think about it and then i spent the next week every day
opening up the app and seeing people's pnls um which is always fun but i i heard so if you
read some of the comments from the founder i think i shared them in telegram yesterday i think tyler
tweeted them but they said they're trying to do something for nfl and it's not um necessarily a
big lift to to do other sports now that they have their framework for soccer done so i guess i'll
be looking for nfl this and losing money um nfl will explode if and when they drop it
because there's two things there's one everyone just saw the blow off success this of their
their uh soccer their soccer version the the real football of the app had.
And we haven't really talked about it,
but basically the market cap was at like 2 million
for all the player cards, tokens a couple weeks ago,
and it ran to 170 million this past weekend.
So just a massive 50 to 80X.
Early users were up a ton.
People who entered the trade on Friday were up 3 to 4x on their
portfolios, which of course was just total mania.
It's come back down since.
But it's still far above where
it was. We interviewed Adam, the
founder, on FOMO Hour yesterday.
I encourage anyone who wants to learn more to go back
and watch that. I came out
pretty bullish on him. He's
a funny guy.
One thing, he basically answered all the
fuds they have fud around ip of their players and will they eventually get sued by like fifa which is
something that would be a concern for any other sport that go down she had a good answer for and
he previously worked it so rare so he knows the industry pretty well uh and then there is effectively
like an exit tax so So the way that their,
their game works is you don't trade like top shot moments,
which are basically just NFTs. You trade tokens.
So they're all on basically like Uniswap pools and like the,
the fees go back to the LP so that they can constantly keep the,
the players all liquid.
And that's how the pricing works.
So the pricing is very dynamic.
But anyways,
based on like how you've been holding your players,
you might get hit with a 25% sales tax when you try to exit.
And he addressed that basically saying like, I don't want flippers in this market.
I want to reward the true users who are here to play the fantasy game.
So I thought that was somewhat refreshing to hear
and him just being talking like, yeah, I'm going to text you.
You can come trade, but I'm going to text your ass
on the way out pretty hard.
So I think people got behind it.
Of course, it was mania.
If I had to bet on football.fun going higher from here
and putting in a new all-time high,
I think I probably would bet yes on that.
It doesn't feel like it's just going to be a one-weekend thing,
and I do feel like if they launch a new sport like American football,
I think it could get pretty crazy pretty fast.
I guess Peter, if he drops a football game next Wednesday,
are you going to ape it? An NFL game? Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. I guess Peter, if he drops a football game next Wednesday, are you going to ape it?
An NFL game?
Oh yeah.
I would ape it for sure.
I mean,
I did all the Rainmaker stuff.
We built a bunch of stuff at Lucky Trader around that.
Those were our more successful products.
I really love these types of things in general.
Obviously grew up with DFS.
I think initially with NFT mania,
people were really excited about this.
And the reality is these games are just like a little bit more hardcore DFS.
It's kind of the way I'd describe it,
but it's really fun.
And there's definitely a market that loves it.
And it's,
it's the hybrid element that makes it really fun is you get to make longer
term bets and then still get to play like the daily stuff, which is really, really fun.
So I haven't messed around too much with football.fun, but I've heard it's very similar to Raidmakers.
I think a game like this could do extremely well.
It's the type of innovation that you love to see in crypto.
If they dropped a football game, I'd be an nfl game i would be stoked and if you think about the type of product that's going to get new capital
into crypto right like what are the sectors that it's even possible and in sports and fancy sports
seems like one of the easiest right like we saw it with top shot and grand that was very different
um but that pulled in capital
from more your traditional sports
gambling world
and a good crypto native
fantasy app would
and I don't think it's a stretch to think it would pull in
some cash from the fantasy
sector as well
I feel like that sector is already kind of what
somewhat crypto aligned,
crypto friendly.
They might not like be fans of it,
but they at least know the mechanics.
They know how it works.
They're,
they follow financial markets in general.
So not,
not a huge stretch to,
to see them come over if the opportunity is ripe,
I guess is what I'm saying.
And it's that,
and prediction markets seem to be catching a lot of buzz right now as well so those
seem to be if you're thinking about what's going to blow up in q4 2025 those are probably two of
the sector's top of the list right some type of crypto fantasy game prediction markets
how has your own personal use of prediction markets evolved since the election? Do you find yourself actually making bets on anything on them?
Or are you more using them just as a weather gauge for sentiment on certain events?
Both.
I like the weather gauge.
As a content creator, I look to prediction markets when I'm low on ideas.
And one thing I love about prediction markets,
and I still think this hasn't been unlocked,
is it is evergreen content.
There's always something you can say about a prediction market,
but something will have changed.
There will be some news event that will have changed something
or a new market, right?
So I love that aspect of it.
I do dabble in predicting.
I think one of the ones I've been eyeing the closest has been the rate cut market, which is still, I think outside the elections, one of the most interesting ones.
And the 50 bips cut has been the one that's been really top mind for me. I've been going back and forth.
I haven't entered a position on this.
It was at 2%.
Now it's at 4% for 50 bips September.
I think maybe with the Lisa Cook thing,
it's going to be too messy now to really drive the 50.
But I like to look at kind of long shots that you might have some,
somewhat of an edge on actually hitting did 50 bips last year.
There was a surprise 50 bips cut sometime in the last 18 months,
and I hit that bet.
Nice.
So, markets like this.
I thought myself just going to Polymarket just to look at the events.
I don't really bet on anything.
I don't look and just see what has attention and volume.
What might I be missing?
Because I feel like the volume is at least a good indicator
on how many people care about it.
Maybe that's the wrong way because you can have a high volume
with a low amount of people caring,
but I've been using it as more of a proxy for attention.
They rolled out their new breaking news tab too,
where you can see which markets have moved the most in the past day which typically would
be indicative of some kind of a news event as as well so they're leaning into the the media
an aspect that myriad leans into and of course we're fomo our desk and you know we're all plugged in to myriad is a lot
more crypto native markets so there are situations where you can get a higher return betting on a
market outcome than if you were just betting on the token itself so it's a lot of all-time high
you get paid 150 150 on that versus you're going to get 40% on just buying the spot token.
And of course, you could get more on perps, but that's one way I'm looking at it as well.
And there's something happening.
There's a real buzz in the air around prediction markets.
I'm not sure if it's just John Wang who drove this up ahead of his, uh,
big job taking it Kashi,
but it seems like more and more folks are leaning in right now.
And as more volume and more liquidity comes to this market,
I think it gets much more interesting, right?
Because I still think one of the biggest problems pervasive across
prediction markets is it's hard to get big bets in without moving the lines too much.
So that's going to be another trend I'll be following.
Other than that,
I think maybe a dark horse for Q4 meta crypto punks or not crypto punks,
but NFTs rather.
Could it be an NFT rally on the back of a new ETH all time high these?
I'm curious if you've been making any NFT
moves.
Let's see. Last week,
have I got anything? I think I just bought a couple
lower-priced
art pieces in the last week.
Before that,
we added two Maskellucy,
added four or five
of the Align draws,
added the V1 punks i brought those up
um last week or so a couple other things but nothing crazy i'm not making big bets it's a
lot of like little seed plants um you know one eth here two eth there and then just kind of
forget about it and see if a fund wants to buy it at a markup at a later date type stuff so and like track dirt all inside the house that's kind of on the show
but um i had seen enough signs throughout twitter that like people were going to keep talking about
these and with the you know price of punks going up,
these are a natural beta.
It's literally the fucking same thing,
just on a botched first contract
that is now wrapped in the 721s.
But yeah, I mean,
I don't know how high these things can get.
I just thought if you own a punk
and a punk is 50,
and a V1 punk is under 3, why wouldn't you just own a Punk and a Punk is 50, and a V1 Punk is under three,
why wouldn't you just own a Punk and a V1?
It doesn't need to be the matching V1.
And I love that message.
I can't wait till I'm forced to sell it.
He's going to make at least an ETH, I think.
Yeah, it was a great trade.
I feel like that sentiment is somewhat pervasive.
I feel like no one really wants to hold a V1 punk for the most part.
Like I get the hedge case.
There's a nice sale over the weekend.
Look at them.
Go to the activity and look at these on me.
So I tweeted during the show.
Just relative, right?
Like this punk sold for 13 X over the floor.
sold for 13x over the floor.
Sounds right.
Sounds right.
So if this was the real punk,
do you think it would sell for more or less
than 13x the floor?
So like 611 ETH was the number.
So I think it would sell for more
just because I think this was like a top three zombie.
But anyway, just a fun thing,
mental exercise to do of like ratios where
if you're trying to think in terms of upside or collectability like you know someone was really
willing to pay 13x the floor for this just this weekend i'm not sure i would bet that this ever
sells for more than 200 000 again though it's tricky and i guess if punks go much much higher than maybe v1 punks
that's the price of like a floor punk almost yeah i mean more punk four is 47
so it's a substantial buy what also pops in the last day is grifters so i mean shout out to them
oh grifters are all over my timeline yeah yeah. X-Copy Exposure. Look at that history.
All buys, too.
No sells.
Just people market buying.
Wow.
What a wrong.
22.5 ETH is $102,000.
So the grifter floor.
I remember when these minted.
Wouldn't be surprised if they flipped punks.
Yeah, I've had a couple of these.
I had some nice ones.
I'm currently grifter-less,
and I'm sure I sold them from much lower. Do you have any X-Copy, or do you sell all of it?
I have an ACK X-Copy edition of 15.
Nice.
ACK has been pretty on fire.
And shout out ACK.
He has a really, really big exhibit going on in New York.
I think it's next week. yeah next friday carnegie hall
he has um like all of his piano blossoms exhibited in physicals and then the grand skull piano it's
like a concert and everything um so he's doing some pretty big things i've seen his market get
a lot of love recently too i i like having all the art bots
on alerts on twitter so i have like x copy bot act bot like any artist that has a bot i
probably have it on alerts and it's just fun to see the memetic desire like one sale happens two
bam second sale happens bam third sale happens everyone's like holy shit i'm underexposed
yeah they tend to come
in waves i feel oh it's definitely waves the bots certainly help the ack edition sounds off
exhibition sounds awesome i mean he's i'll be there if anyone else will be in new york i'll
just be in new york for a day oh nice then are you going to the same sprat ohio yeah yeah i'll
be there that's september 12th i think on a friday i'm actually now torn
because i didn't realize it's two days in toledo there's a friday and a saturday event the saturday
event is like the public block party at the museum where there's a whole bunch of vendors and a bunch
of people from the toledo community who like don't know anything about crypto are there at the museum
with the kids looking at art.
You're meeting all sorts of people
and trying to explain to them your weird world.
And then Friday is like a,
I think it's like a Sam Spratt
or certain type of collector's dinner.
So I'm debating,
I want to drive up and get a hotel in Toledo
or am I going to drive there and back two days
or am I just going to go for Friday?
I'm not really sure,
but I'll definitely at least be there on Friday. well nice some some nice things to look forward to in the
digital i'll be in chicago next sunday i need to book my ticket oh wow for what i'm gonna be in
chicago for half a day there's a avenge sevenfold and uh system of an hour concert at soldier field
so i'm gonna go to that and then fly back home. Oh, that'll be fun. I've seen it been sevenfold.
Put on a good show.
Well, my favorite crypto band.
I get to say that.
Well, yeah, I forgot about that.
They're tying it.
So they're very, they're the most involved.
I think they're like the biggest.
I don't, there's like,
they're the biggest band in crypto that genuinely fucks with crypto and
would be in crypto if they weren't in a big band. I think that's what I'm trying to say.
But shout out to them. Indeed. Well, I think a good place to wrap up here today. Certainly
slower into summer week, next week, back to school, coming out of Labor Day. And then hopefully
we'll be shaking off of the ghost month overhang here soon.
We didn't talk about it as much,
but this is the month where Asia typically goes risk off,
at least as I understand it.
So that's why we call it the ghost month?
It's all Asian superstitions?
It's the seventh lunar month for Asian cultures,
and it's like spirits are walking,
and generally it's bad luck.
They're superstitious. They don't trade as much
in this month. But then if you look at the data
historically, Bitcoin is down anywhere
from 6% to 20%
like every ghost month.
This is the first
time I've ever heard that. I feel like
that's crazy. I would have
remembered ghost month the last
nine years in crypto. But then Faroe
says crypto always
bombs on his birthday which is september 7th september 7th is the next full moon the corn
moon it's all coming in full circle the big we're gonna go long bitcoin into froke's birthday
can we get uh marin on here next week did you really break down all the signs i think we could
have some here but just september is kind of a weird month um yeah i have a lot of weird
memories of like doing really well in august and then september just finding myself in a pit of
apathy wondering what went wrong or even blow off summer 2021 right august was the crazy month
well yeah and before that defy summer 2020 august was insane and then right at the end of august was like the um food farming derivative
you know we were farming pasta and then kimchi and then sake and then like author hayes was
tweeting you know food ponies and then by september it just felt like a bomb went off and like nobody
was doing any of this shit anymore that's why i found punks probably why i remember september
because i was so bored i was like what, what the fuck am I going to do?
And then Trill told me to go in the punks this word.
Here's hoping that we're closer to September 2020 and 2021.
Yeah, here's hoping we can find a new punks to support in 2020 spot.
We'll find out soon.
Well, folks, thanks for staying with us.
I want to thank all of our listeners who joined us here today.
I want to thank my co-hosts.
We'll be back next Tuesday or Wednesday.
TBD, we're going to go live next
week, but the time will be different. I've got
a conflict next week. But anyways, we'll let
you know all the details. Until then,
have a great week. Goodbye.
Have a good week, everybody. Thank you. Music
