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UNDER EXPOSED EP17
Recorded: March 18, 2025 Duration: 0:56:06Space Recording
Full Transcription
GM, everyone.
GM and welcome to episode 17 of Underexposed, our weekly macro show, hitting all the biggest
topics and trends in crypto and web 3.
Today is March 18th and folks, St. Patrick's Day is behind us. March Madness is
in front of us, and well, we all might have some extra time on our hands to actually watch it this
year as crypto activity has cooled off quite a bit, at least price action-wise, as we enter this
chop zone. And the question, when will it end? And what should we do in the meantime?
We're going to get into that on today's show.
I am your host,
Tyler D I've got my cohost in the house.
First up D's art collector,
coin stacker,
trader,
mask connoisseur.
Dare I say D's GM,
how are you doing?
Doing well.
We had a little bit of a NFTs or so back for a few days and now it feels and now it feels like they're becoming less back and the market's going to shit again.
So glad to be here. Glad to be on this rollercoaster of both.
It's a good description. We were so back, and now we are less back than we were seemingly across the board.
Folks, we've got Peter James on with us as well. He is a Plus Eve expert founder of several companies.
Peter, Jim, how are you doing?
Doing great, Tyler.
Happy to be with you boys.
A lot going on in the markets, a lot going on in the world,
but eager to kick it with you guys and get into some of it.
I'm eager as well, but quickly, how big is March Madness for you?
Are you glued to it?
Is this taking over all your time?
What's your level of engagement these next few weeks uh it depends year to year um sometimes we're betting
all the games and you know halftimes and things of that nature so it becomes very time intensive
this year that's not the case uh we'll probably have some bets um there's a couple sharps that
we know that uh you know are active in the college basketball markets.
And this is college basketball is one of the inefficient sports.
So generally, there's a really big edge.
But broadly, it's hard to scale, which is kind of the challenge.
So it's a tricky sport in terms of being able to get the volume down to make it worthwhile.
The tournament, the markets are much more efficient.
So your edge goes down, but you can scale it in a big way so kind of a different trade-off um with these games but uh yeah it should be a lot of fun i'm excited for it and csu has uh got a shot they're a decent team this year so excited
to watch it we'll definitely be uh rooting on csu here uh it's gonna be an exciting tournament i'm
excited for it this year uh definitely i'm doing a calcutta draft tonight gonna get some action in here this week as well calcutta is like my favorite form of betting like
literally my number one favorite form it's fun i've got a partner who uh he's he's my quant he
does some deep modeling pulls in a whole lot of data sources we knock on wood we've uh we've been
positive been net winners the last three years so we we're trying to run that back here in year four.
But it's fun.
It just feels like you can root for more teams.
It feels like there's a lot more thought that goes into it.
There's just a lot more variables at play.
For the people who are ignorant, what is the TLDR on this format?
Because I don't think I've ever bet this way.
A lot of being better.
You can describe it a little bit better than me.
But basically, like the way we run it is you auction off all the teams
and it's effectively uncapped.
So you can bid however much you want.
And then there's a payout structure for like you get X amount
for passing through the first round, through the second round.
You get Y amount for winning the whole thing.
Yeah. We do them for golf tournaments. one of my favorites is for the masters um so yeah basically you bid and so you're you build a model based on what you think each player
is worth and then based on how much players go for you continue to bid them so we've actually
been a part of some of these calcuttas that are like seven figure calcuttas some some big action
it's super fun though um so yeah if
you if you really love a player you can always bid um it's it's uh so slightly different than
like the auction drafts I'm used to where everyone gets a blanket $200 for their entry you could buy
in theory what would ruin a Calcutta which I actually have never seen is someone just bids
and buys 100% of the pool right like in theory that could happen um but that would go
kind of like an unspoken rule that we're not going to do that because that kind of
but i have seen situations where people own like 60 of the pool and then you know
they're basically hoping they don't get smoked um so yeah it's it's a it's it's definitely my
favorite format um it's great for you know march madness it's great for like golf
majors you could do it for the nfl playoffs um a lot of times you can make like obscure rules so
like as an example for golf majors we'll give like one percent of the pot to like the highest round
score each day so that's how you make like the old guys who play the masters like have a little bit
of value uh obviously like straffler and rory because most of the pot ends up going to like
the winners and college basketball will be similar where i don't know the rules of
yours tyler but a lot of them will have like a higher percentage of the pot going to like the
biggest upset and there's a lot of different rules that you can put in place that are dynamic to give
each team you know more value and not just like okay here's the top five teams and win equity
it doesn't just there's normally a lot of things that you want to factor in so it's really fun in that regard yeah and that allows someone
with a smaller bankroll who isn't going to be able to afford duke or uconn they can still
have fun they can still pick a few teams at a minimum we're not getting a seven figure
pool size so we're a little bit smaller fish than that but that would be uh quite the exciting
calcutta folks we're going to talk about more than just calcutta drafts on today's show we're a little bit smaller fish than that, but that would be quite the exciting Calcutta.
Folks, we're going to talk about more than just Calcutta drafts on today's show.
We're going to get deep into some of the crypto headlines of this past week.
Talk about this chop, when it's going to end, what should we do in the meantime?
I also want to talk a little bit about this increasing politicalization of crypto.
And if we're going down a bad path with that, before we get into that,
today's show is powered by Wallet Connect. Wallet Connect is the connectivity network
shaping the future of on-chain UX. If you've connected to a Web3 app, you've seen Wallet
Connect, that blue logo, it's everywhere. An icon of trust in crypto as recognizable as Visa at the checkout.
So if you want to learn more, follow at Wallet Connect on X and Telegram to stay ahead of what's next.
And folks, a lot is coming next.
So the big news out of Wallet Connect this week is voting opens for their WCT token transferability proposal.
That starts on March 19th.
So to participate, you need to have your tokens
staked before March 19th, which is tomorrow. Right now, of course, this WCT token cannot
be freely transferred. This proposal lays out the key milestones that the wallet connect network
must reach to unlock that full transferability. This includes milestones like 16 certified wallets, 100 million WCT tokens staked, 16 node operators on board, 12 weeks of staking, and more.
So that all needs to happen.
So who can vote?
Voting power is based on amount staked plus staking, period.
Any amount staked above zero WCT tokens qualifies.
Minimum staking duration is one week. Of course, the more tokens you have,
the longer you stake, the more voting power you will have. So if you're holding those WCT tokens,
get staked and get out the vote. Shout out to Wallet Connect. As always, we are very excited
to continue partnering with them. And one more quickly, before we get started, a disclosure,
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, 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, folks, let's get into it.
I am going to fire up the screen share for those in the stream.
I'll also be firing out that stream link here in just a minute or so.
Let's see.
Hopefully we get that stream link up on stage here.
While we get the stream loaded, folks, running through some of the headlines here
from the last week. So we had a relief bounce at the end of last week ahead of this week's FOMC.
It seems like it's now actively reversing. Last week, stocks hit a seven-month low
during the middle of last week. We've had crypto ranging, basically. I'm looking at Bitcoin right now at 81,700.
It's up 1% on the week.
ETH is down 1%.
So we're basically in this chop zone.
This does come as we've had, once again,
another week of pretty bullish headlines.
So the Trump administration,
they want to acquire as much Bitcoin as possible.
Sander Lutz over Decrypt broke this story late last week that was discussed at that crypto
roundtable. We have the treasury meeting with three crypto firms to decide where to custody
the Bitcoin for this reserve. So it's more than just headline talks. They are actually looking at how the operations for this would work.
We've got Circle, their USYC meme coin.
They just introduced this.
This is the largest tokenized treasury and money market fund in the world.
They've got a billion already deployed in USYC.
This is going to be a stable coin that offers yield.
This is going to be a stable coin that offers yield.
So more developments in the stable coin space.
So more developments in the stable coin space.
We've got Coinbase launching the future of investing on chain via the base ecosystem group on Echo, Kobe's platform.
So providing more democratized access to startup investing.
We had Binance announced a $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi's MGX. This is the
largest crypto. It was an investment in crypto, which made it the largest single crypto investment
I believe we have ever seen. Goldman Sachs mentioned crypto in their annual shareholder
letter for 2024 for the first time ever, effectively telling their shareholders they
are struggling to compete with
other entities that are offering crypto services and showing that they want to get in that door.
And then this morning, some news out of Michael Saylor and Strategy unveiling a new $500 million
stock race to buy more Bitcoin. So headlines keep pouring in and yet we just continue to chop. Peter, that's the
backdrop. I'll turn it over to you. We didn't have a chance to connect last week. How are you
feeling about macro right now? Thoughts headed into FOMC? What's on your mind?
Yeah, there's a lot going on. I mean, I think with crypto specifically, it's just so hard to
fight the macro and just risk on assets in general are falling. I guess one thing that
I'm noticing is just kind of the price action on gold. We're up to like $3,040 an ounce,
which is very, very strong. Bitcoin is still performing a little bit more like a QQQ asset
than gold, but I think long-term, hopefully that will switch. But yeah, Besant and this
administration telegraphed this and kind of told us that there's this detox period and that we're
going to have some short-term pain. So it's not surprising that we're seeing risk on assets trade
this way. In addition, I think the other factor that's really tough for risk on assets is just
the uncertainty. And there's just so much chaos with all the
tariffs and everything else going on we'll see what happens with fomc in terms of rates the 10
years kind of been holding steady in like this four three range i'm expecting rates to stay the
same this time around and really what we're looking for is uh kind of the tone and how
dovish or hawkish pal is in regards to the May meeting, which is
where some people are starting to predict that we may see a rate cut. So the broad macro things,
personally, I'm as bullish as ever on Bitcoin long term. All of these headlines are quite
positive. And I think, you I think coming into this administration,
there's a lot of hope around just buying a ton of crypto assets and just craziness. And
obviously, that was amplified with the Trump meme coin. But if you look at the actions that
the administration and specifically David Sachs and kind of the crypto side of the house has taken,
it seems like really good long term, thoughtful thinking from my perspective. So to me, there's more of a divergence than ever in Bitcoin versus other crypto assets.
And I'm really excited about the long-term prospect of Bitcoin. That doesn't mean it
can't continue to fall. It's probably going to trade similar to the Qs in the short term,
but long-term, I have as much conviction as I ever have in Bitcoin. Now, the rest of crypto assets, it's a little bit dynamic depending on what asset you're looking at.
And I'm eager to kind of chat through that with you guys.
I know there's some good conversations around Ethereum and Solana and obviously the ad yesterday.
It's hard to kind of know what to think about all those different assets outside of Bitcoin.
But from crypto's perspective, at least how I'm thinking about things, I just want to continue to stack Bitcoin.
And yeah, trying to think through there's ways to be opportunistic with other assets, but I still
have a lot of, you know, broad concerns about risk on assets in the short term, just given
what the Trump administration has telegraphed. Yeah, I think that makes a whole lot of sense.
I agree with your comments on Bitcoin and this divergence i mean it's reflected in the bitcoin
dominance chart bitcoin dominance effectively just up and to the right it's at 61 and a half percent
all-time high is 62 so effectively trading at all-time highs or that's the yearly high rather
or five four- year high rather,
but basically over the last four years,
just grinding up into the right.
Like we saw one Bitcoin worth 44 ETH last week,
which was just a staggering number.
Peter,
this morning on FOMO hour,
Amanda was sharing his thoughts and it seems like his base case right now is
effectively chop until Julyuly like maybe we
go 10 higher maybe we range 10 lower on bitcoin but probably staying in that range not going
you know widely outside of it um i'm curious for your for your thoughts directionally is that kind
of in line with your base case either for for bitcoin for for equities kind of how are you approaching this next quarter or quarter beyond yeah i'm
talking to respect for mando and always listen i listen to your guys's show uh the michael
sailor stuff in particular i thought was really interesting and kind of how the the converts work
um for on that side uh i'm less convinced that we're going to trade in the range just because
i expect kind of piercing volatility which we've talked about. That's been kind of my broad theme for 2025 to
be prevalent. And I'm concerned that that could be the case. I think Bitcoin itself has like a
bullish trend in general with everything that's going on, but it's so correlated with just risk on assets around
the world. So, and specifically here in the US. So I'm not, it's hard to be really bullish short
term. It's more of a long term call. I don't really have any conviction in terms of what it's
going to do in the short term. Outside, I expect a lot of volatility and risk on markets. So in that regard, I wouldn't say I
disagree in a big way with Mando, but I just think it's, you know, it wouldn't shock me to see
Bitcoin drop to, you know, high 60s, 70k range, like, and then rally right back. And I just think
there's a higher likelihood of serious volatility given kind of what's going on. I mean, we'll see
what happens within April 2nd with the tariffs. We'll see if we can get a peace deal with Russia and Ukraine.
We'll see how inflation numbers continue to come in with all the different things that are moving
here. So to me, there's a lot of catalysts that could create a lot of volatility, which is why
I guess I disagreed to some point. But broadly, I think that makes sense that, you know,
I think a lot of the risk has been taken out of Bitcoin in the short term in some regards.
It's more just how the overall risk on assets trade.
Yeah, it seems like there is a bid.
There's going to be a fairly strong floor on Bitcoin.
I don't know exactly where that is.
Last week, I was starting to get a little
bulldoze just with Besson's commentary. And he was talking a lot about how corrections are normal
and healthy, but that he didn't see a recession coming. And then even Trump, who had been more
focused on rates, even came out and started giving some commentary on the stock market.
So it made me think that, okay,
maybe they are starting to pay attention to this a little bit.
But then on the flip side,
we saw those approval numbers come in last week.
I'm not sure if you guys saw these or not.
This is from an NBC News poll.
Effectively, the headlines here,
44% of Americans think the U.S. is heading in the right direction.
That is the highest in 20 years.
And then Trump's approval rating at 47%,
which is effectively his all time high.
I think for context,
that is lower than most other presidents at this stage,
but is at his all time high.
But I guess my reaction to these headline numbers,
I was surprised because NBC news to me is slightly left-leaning, left-center.
So this is not like a Fox News poll, in my opinion.
I think the bigger takeaway is that if 44% think the country's heading in the right direction, that this gives him more leash to continue the pain.
gives him more leash to continue the pain.
So to continue cuts,
perhaps continue with some of the trade wars to help get the U.S.
in a better position.
At least that's as they've been kind of talking about it and positioning us
here.
And does that mean we'll go lower?
The bull case here on like kind of all the tariffs and trade stuff that I'm
hearing more and more about that makes
sense is basically getting alignment within North America to give them more leverage.
Short term, we're playing kind of the negotiation games with Mexico and Canada.
And I guess you could, you want to include Greenland in this mix. So that's the bull cases
that we're negotiating. And then we're going to
have this great deal. We're going to have all this alignment within North America,
and that's going to give us leverage for the rest of the world. That's something to consider,
I guess. Certainly, if you wanted to be optimistic, that makes some sense. And then
we'd go to Europe. And then ultimately, a lot of this is going to come down to what happens with
China. So that's kind of the optimistic way to look at it. The pessimistic way to look at it is
that we're just going to continue to battle. And there's a lot of reliance on Canada and Mexico.
And in general, globalism has been very good for prices. And we're hoping to get lower inflation.
And I think broadly, if we have these trade wars,
that's going to be bad for inflation. So those are kind of two sides of the coin that I'm thinking
about. But trying to come around, I want to be bullish. I'm an optimist by nature. And like,
you know, bears get to be right, bulls get to be rich. So trying to have that lens on and be
opportunistic. But there's just a lot of uncertainty, and that's why we have a lot of volatility and why the markets are behaving the way they are because they hate uncertainty.
It feels like inflation is coming down, but yet we've got the tariffs just looming over everything because they haven't really gone into effect, or the majority of them have it. So it's like we might see temporary relief,
but that might not be enough for Powell to start making any directional
changes just as he wants to have his data-driven approach.
And we have huge data points still like on the horizon.
So I'm curious if he'll mention that when he speaks tomorrow.
Dees, maybe I'll toss it to you.
You're wearing the Rekt hat.
Is that how you feel?
Yeah.
Yeah, I tried to send a subliminal message.
Looked at some of my AI shitcoin bags and just don't know what happened.
Like ARK.
ARK's at 40 mil.
Feels like just literally a month ago it was at a 400 mil so and there's many such cases i'm really
close to just ripping on some band-aids and tax loss harvesting like a couple hundred thousand
dollars of losses and um calling it a day but uh yeah i feel pretty wrecked on on the alts i feel
fine with with mostly everything else um and lucky you, we've talked about this every week, I feel like
for like two months now.
Relatively comfy just having
cash outside of crypto and
a good amount of runway.
So it's rough.
I'm not really a
buyer of any of these things. It does feel like
some shiny new things are popping up on base
and our friends are getting 5 or 10x's
off absolute dog shit again, which is cool to see. but it's nothing uh old it's all new and uh that's kind of what we saw
in november and december a lot of the older stuff maybe some of murad's list popped off but a lot of
the biggest runners were just new new things with no bag holders and uh starting to think that's
what we'll see again like you know these tokens that
went to 100 mil or 500 mil and are now worth 50 or 5 mil i don't think um they have nearly the
same upside it's just new tokens without bag holders it's tough i mean i'm looking at this
arc chart i'm keeping it up here just for for a reason so like this token was one of the the darlings of the late ai cycle it ran to
500 million pulled back when everything pulled back it pulled back a full 60 but then it was
the first mover so the first signs of some positive headlines in mid-february it rallied
back from 150 all the way to 450 thank god i sold 25 when that uh launch pad went live i was like all right we're
gonna take some off the table but as always we should have sold all of it and then that that run
to 450 reversed then it chopped in the 200 million range so then we're at least starting to get
somewhat comfortable like okay this is a newer coin it's becoming a leader like it's going to chop here in range
perhaps until like the market broadly turns around but then just the bottom falls out
and then it falls 75 from there and now it's at 40 million and from this chart everyone who bought
unless you bought in the first day you're're underwater on this. And I think that kind of reflects
where most people are at
in the broader market right now.
That's about every AI token now.
If you buy in the first six minutes,
you are now underwater.
The AI bubble has burst.
But I mean, I think we're in agreement
that Bitcoin looks strong,
the rest of the market looks weak,
but it does raise the question of like,
for those folks who are going to be around like like what should they be focused on what
should we be focused on during this job i mean if bitcoin is going to be in this volatile range
till july or until the next major catalyst like how are you approaching that d's like are you
are you tuning out are there certain aspects so many video games
i am like completely apathetic to the market right now which is probably a sign that you should pay
attention and there will be good opportunities um i mean i was checked out last week but just to use
an example like the good vibes club stuff i still minted 10 of those because i was aware of it and those are
still like 0.49 0.48 or something um so there are still are like random opportunities here and there
if you're paying attention to to hit good multiples there was that um i put it in one of
our chats yesterday the kta chart i don't know what that's at today, but that thing went from
nothing to like 35 million in a week. Oh, holy shit. Is it at 56? No. Am I seeing this right?
That's an old one. I don't think it's, yeah, 57. I don't feel like that's right.
I mean, the volumes are wrong. Yeah. I'll try to find it keep going but anyway like there's that token
um came out of nowhere came out I think on March 5th was chilling between 10 and
two and a half three million and then broke out and ran to like 35 40 yesterday I don't know what
it is today but I mean yeah like, there's still shit like
this. Like, this is why, like, why are you gonna buy this arc dip when you have people down 80%
on their buy looking to sell any pump when you can just go buy some brand new fresh piece of
shit with no bag holders that, you know, people are believing it. And that's kind of a problem we saw with a lot of NFTs last
cycle, where, why are you going to average down on stuff that has a bunch of bag holders when you
could buy the fresh new mint? And we're probably going to see it if not, we're already seeing it
with AI tokens. And I think we're going to see it just I think that's a Lindy thing in crypto.
it just i think that's a lindy thing in crypto um most of these things have one exit pump in the
grand scheme of things and they slowly die off as new things come out and people rotate to the
shiny new objects but there will be things that don't do that but they're way more rare and the
risk isn't always worth the reward even if you really like the token or what people are building.
Yeah, I think Staths shared a post about that yesterday
that he was in chatting with friends,
and one of the rules that they had was basically
nothing ever goes as high as it was in the prior cycle again.
And there are clearly exceptions to that,
like Pepe, Mog.
Now, here's a good question. Do you think Pepe and mog are ever going to make new all-time highs mog's down 88 since the rug radio party in december um i don't have pepe
i'll pull it up but i don't have pepe on my other list here but i'll i'll see it pepe looks a little healthier um
pepe's only down 72 that's my definition of a little healthier but yeah it mocks down 90
percent uh it got the coinbase listing like what other big liquidity events are gonna happen for
it i don't know i'm still holding some I only sold 25% on the Coinbase listing.
It's been painful
watching that evaporate.
That was one of my bigger
altcoin bags.
It's tough. I'm always
max pessimist with this stuff too,
which is why it's hard
for me to hold it for a long time
most of the time. A lot of the money
is made if you do believe in this shit and can hold it for a long time most of the time and a lot of the money is made if you do believe in
this and can hold it um it's just tough for me i mean mog drew down 85 or something last year from
35 million to 5 million that's what makes it all tricky right is there's historical precedent for
these tokens to have these drawdowns for an extended period of time and then make all-time highs.
I think to answer your question, I feel like you have to address whether or not you think...
This is the meme coin markup. I'm showing it for those in the stream.
If you think this chart will ever hit a new all-time high, then I think the strongest coins will make new highs.
If you think the meme coin bubble is just totally burst and it is over.
I think the meme coin bubble is just totally burst and it is over.
I mean, even my Rekt hat, I just like to Rekt.
Rekt is down 88% from the highs in December too.
It was at 125 million.
Now it's at 15 million.
I was buying more over 50 million and just holding it.
Now it's like, shit, what was I doing?
But it's easier to hold something I know OSF and friends are working on at least.
Yeah, I think that becomes a big factor.
So if you look at which NFTs crossed the cycle,
I'm using multi-cycle, it's in quotes,
but the 2021 era that are still around,
it's those that have the strong teams that are still building.
I feel like it's going to be somewhat relevant for these memes as well it's like mog does have a team yeah they're super active and they get a lot of i mean even though
the token is down 88 i saw the um pit vipers ceo is finally talking you know uh on twitter about making a log pair of pit vipers, which
feels like something they should have done a while ago, but it's, uh, it's still nice to see
the token price is down so much, but the, um, pit vipers CEO is still like, Hey, we should do
something here maybe, or maybe he's just scrolling. I don't know. I, I didn't really look too much
into it. I just saw a couple of people mention it and quote tweet it.
Yeah.
So that's an out perhaps.
So we'll see.
I'm not in any way.
So I think it's going to be shape.
Maybe kind of coming back to our conversation,
our broader conversation of what to do in the dip.
I think you provided a few examples, right?
Good vibes club.
It was an NFT that anyone could have came in and hit a five to six X.
We've seen a few meme coins run.
So there still are going to be opportunities.
And what I do like about market conditions like this is everything's much less crowded.
So many people have just given up or just indifferent.
It actually becomes a little bit easier to spot some potential winners.
If you are in groups who are at least still kind of paying attention
and monitoring things. So in some ways it can be a little easier. You just have to have patience
and you can't just be FOMOing in, you know, on a daily basis because the winners are much fewer
and further between. And I think the other thing to do here is just to start, you know,
paying attention to protocols grinding protocols i mean
kaido is one it's a super low capital grind right you just have to create content and sign up and
you have a chance to earn some tokens create content is a wide wide word for saying shit
post with keywords create content like sit on your toilet and shit off a list of keywords that maybe
add nothing to the discussion but make a another number go up well maybe do it in a way that can
uh have a little more shelf life for your personal brand than beyond the end of this
kind of season i mean i it's kind of quieted down but before the first airdrop i was getting so many dms of people just
begging me to follow them back because of the smart follower bullshit they're like trying to
get a list you know more smart followers to get more yaps or whatever uh but that's kind of died
down i think the other one what the fuck happened with kaido this week their accounts got hacked
and like butted and shorted and then i wasn't really paying much attention but i opened up
twitter one day and i just see uh like bud basically coming from the founder and kaido
and then like an hour later i opened it up again and they're saying, Oh no,
we were hacked.
This is all false.
It's like,
that was fucking weird.
Yeah.
So I was following this in real time.
So I think this is a real,
a relevant story to share with our listeners.
So on Sunday I was home.
I was scrolling crypto Twitter.
I see the Kaido AI account um that their wallets had been compromised
and live the kaido token unsurprisingly it started going down but it wasn't going down
a ton they'd go down much like like 10 cents or something like 15 cents
yeah it went down like one weird wick down to 132 or something
it was went from like a dollar 50 to like a dollar 36 and i was watching in real time because i was
debating whether or not to share the story and in my head i'm like i would if there were true
wallets were compromised i would expect like a much bigger red candle than this yeah it looked like henlo going from zero to negative and it came out uh just an hour later less than an hour later
that their x account had been hacked none of the walls were actually compromised and it seems like
the person who hacked their x likely had taken a short purpose position on the market. And like that, this is like the new trend.
Whereas previously we had hackers come out and try to launch tokens.
Maybe they,
they feel like the market has gotten too sophisticated for that to work.
So now they're,
they're trying to share.
And the thing is the tweet was very well written.
It looked like it could be,
it could be real.
And then we had people in CT amplify amplify it i had people call it big bad
and effectively tell people to sell their kaido tokens big bad um which is something a uh something
that happens in this era of citizen journalism where citizens don't always go through due
diligence and research steps to verify if something is accurate or not.
Which of course is also amplified in the Kaido era where the more engagement
you get, the more tokens you can potentially earn.
So I think that the moral, be careful out there,
be careful making any trading decision based on a tweet,
specifically a tweet that could be resulting from a hack event.
specifically a tweet that could be resulting from a hack event.
Because luckily, I think no one really got too hurt, I'd say, by this.
The token effectively is kind of trading at where it was.
But, you know, you could have led to folks selling off their tokens
for the wrong reason.
So be careful out there.
I guess, Peter, maybe I'll toss it back to you,
get you back in the conversation. How are you thinking about playing a potential three to four
month zone of CHOP? What's your mindset? Yeah, I don't really have short-term thoughts outside
of just protecting your lifestyle. Prices are still, if you compare relative to the depths of
some of the bear market, I know it's dependent on kind of where you are, but if you're still heavily overweight crypto in
general and can, you know, take a lifestyle chip, that's something to be cognizant of. It feels bad,
you know, selling at any low price, but something to just be cognizant of is just your overall
asset allocation. But to me, the thing now is just,
we have this great administration for crypto.
Stable coins are basically at an all time high.
We have regulation that should get clearer and clearer
for builders and it's time to just execute
and actually provide real value to society.
So Bitcoin has done that.
I think stable coins are probably the most killer use case within crypto.
So that'll be something to monitor and how that plays out this year.
DeFi, there's still a lot of really interesting things going on there.
I'm bullish on RWAs and Deapen.
Got to give the standard shout out for since Jeep is not here. So I'm looking in those areas and I'm just trying to play around with stuff. I think that's the other thing. It's
very easy to get restless and try to make moves, especially if you're chasing. I think one of the
worst things you can do is just compare how much paper money you had before to where you are now.
do is just compare how much paper money you had before to where you are now.
That'll cause bad behavior.
You shouldn't be trying to gamble to get it back.
And broadly, just try to figure out what stuff is cool to play with.
Like, go out there and mess around with things.
That's the best thing to do during bear markets.
And also, if you want to think through things that you want to own long term,
start thinking about targets.
And the best thing from a accumulation standpoint
is if you can be buying
when there's just pure pain out there.
That's super hard to do.
It's so much easier to click the buy button
when things are ripping up
and to click the sell button when things are ripping down.
But if you can figure out stuff that you want
and can wait for one of those piercing volatility days
on the downside, that's definitely something I'd be looking into.
So it's kind of a mixed bag of different ways to look at things.
I think number one, like I mentioned, look at your overall asset allocation.
Think about your life.
Then think about what you want to accumulate long term and just go out and play in kind of the crypto world.
I'm really bearish broadly on like this valueless crap i mean i saw i know you guys talked about
pump fun and i'm sure memes will have a run again at some point in time but i have no interest in
trying to outsmart the crowd and play the pvp games um during this time and kind of this market i want
to be looking for long-term value that aligns with what i'm sharing
here from coinbase so i think that the news out of coinbase um is they've become a group lead on echo
the base ecosystem group this is led by coinbase ventures and folks aren't familiar with echo
um it's i believe the pitch is decentralized
or democratized startup investing effectively.
So companies are able to launch on Echo.
Echo facilitates the fundraise,
and it's a little bit easier for a normal person
to actually be able to get into these rounds potentially.
So like MegaEth did a fundraising round on Echo.
I think this is an interesting area to pay attention to.
Yeah, Echo is awesome.
And then the other thing that's been on my notes
I've been meaning to shout out,
one thing I'm so bullish on is prediction markets.
And obviously we're a little biased as a group.
Shout out to Myriad.
I'm very excited about the growth there. on is prediction markets. And obviously we're a little biased as a group. Shout out to Myriad.
I'm very excited about the growth there. Robinhood came out saying they're gonna get
in the mix there too, as well.
Obviously they had a potential partnership
with Cal sheet for the Superbowl.
They had to push that back.
But my sense is that prediction markets
are gonna be a huge theme for 2025.
So there's a lot of good long-term stuff.
And again, we know the. So there's a lot of good long-term stuff. And again,
we know the casino is what drives a lot of kind of the growth in crypto, but long-term,
we have to create value outside of that. And to me, it's the best setup we've had. And now it's
just a time to deliver from the builder's perspective to actually build things that
people really need. so i'm trying to
mess around i'm going to be playing a lot in like kind of the base streets get back from far caster
spend some time there um anything else that you guys are looking at just in terms of uh
projects that you know you think will be around in five years long-term long-term plays
five years is a long uh time in this space so that's a lifetime they only been around for eight
and the only things that have lasted over those eight years that still use today are bitcoin and
ethereum so i don't don't really hold anything on a five-year time horizon a more in the uh i'd say like two year max time horizon because i feel like
it's it's too hard to be like a long-term hold right and i'm not saying i'm not advocating for
like what do you feel comfortable holding it's more if you had to you know let's paint a world
what is crypto and what does the world look like in five years if you start trying to think about
yeah punks punks are up there that's that's something i've held the longest or year four on holding punks
going into year five they're relatively you know all things considered doing well um like 30 80
is still this 72k which feels worse than dollars but in terms of eth pretty pretty solid
i think sam sprat will still be relevant in five years and maybe we can get into these perhaps
people people will still be making art every day for five years uh there's some plays you can make
there ekosaki just had a nice uh addition raffle that made a coin will probably be in a really
good spot five years
from now we'll probably continue to gain ground on gold what happens when we have president aoc in
five years that's actually a great point so let's quickly go down that that rabbit hole um so i
not that i think she'll be president five years i just i see that thrown around it really does feel
like we're getting there what brought to to my attention was the Democrats slamming the stablecoin bill last week.
And I ended up writing a newsletter about I'm trying to pull up some of the quotes here.
So I think the stablecoin bills in front of Congress, basically looking for ways to build a regulatory framework around stablecoins, either at the federal level or perhaps push to the state level.
There's two different bills in front of Congress right now.
And I think generally most pro-crypto folks are behind these bills.
And so I was caught a little bit off guard seeing some of the pushback from the Dems in Congress.
a little bit off guard seeing some of the pushback from Dems in Congress.
I'm going to read a few of these quotes.
I'm going to read a few of these quotes.
So Maxine Waters, ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, saying
the bill tears down the wall that was used to separate banking from commerce.
We have Representative Lynch argue that it's basically just going to help big tech.
I'm quoting, allow big tech firms like Meta and Apple to effectively become stablecoin
issuers and dominate the stablecoin market.
They are concerned about lack of consumer protections.
It's a race to the bottom, leaving consumers unprotected.
And I think perhaps not explicitly mentioned, but the underlying tone was that Democrats are worrying that handing stablecoin issuance to private companies
could weaken the government's control over the financial system.
So some pushback here on what seemed like a relatively, I don't know,
I guess I was thinking of it a little bit more innocently.
And then this past week we had the ECB, European Central Bank,
come out and say Trump's pro-crypto policy could trigger a global financial crisis.
So I think part of the writing on the wall, perhaps a concern of mine, is are we getting to a Trump equals crypto, crypto equals Trump world here?
And then in a scenario in 2028, or even sooner, if something happens in the next two years and
Democrats take back control of Congress,
are we just in the gridlock and in 2028,
all this pro crypto regulation,
everything we've been trying to put towards it all get reversed.
So I'm curious if either of you guys have a read on,
on that or share those concerns in incapacity here
yeah i mean trump is polarizing right like we've seen big swings kind of back and forth um
for just the last whatever 12 year whatever eight nine years we've just kind of seen this crazy
flip-flop back and forth and um trump is up definitely a lightning rod regardless of your
politics and you know that trend continues we may swing back the other way so i think there's a
valid concern there um but at the same time we're very early and i think you kind of have to see
what transpires and you know what happens in the next year or two before really doing anything major.
You're going to have time to kind of readjust how you're positioned and the decisions you're making.
But I do think that that's a valid long-term concern if you're really invested in crypto that it's become a political thing.
in crypto that it's become a political thing.
And in the event that we swing back hard towards the left,
you can see the left being aggressive towards crypto
because of how it's tied to Trump and this administration.
So I see the validity in it,
but I don't think there's anything to do in the short term.
Hopefully we get some logical,
sensical frameworks put in place under SACS
and this crypto task force that can stand,
you know, the test across both parties.
I think that would be a huge win.
I think that's something to root for.
And I think Trump himself has done a lot of good things to put that into position to happen.
But at the same time, I feel like World Liberty Financial is becoming like a bigger red flag.
So they completed a $550 million token sale.
I'm actually, I'm not 100% sure that we should be interpreting it this way.
But the fine print in their white paper says that 75% of the protocol revenue, including token sales, goes to Trump's company.
including token sales goes to Trump's company.
And some have interpreted that, which means of the 550 million raised,
390 million is going to go directly to Trump and team,
which then it's pretty easy to see, you know, where the, the hair,
the narratives, where the headlines go from there that, you know,
it's just a cash grab.
And basically they use that cash grab as a way to poke holes in what might
have been, you know,
more positive developments just across the broader crypto industry.
So I don't have the answers.
That's just something I'm monitoring here.
And I think we've seen a lot of pushback on CTE from world Liberty financial
and this kind of this new game where they'll perhaps endorse,
they'll buy some of your project's tokens if you participate in the token sale as part of a quid pro quo.
So that's just another narrative or thread that I'm going to be monitoring pretty closely here in the near future.
Not a whole lot necessarily we can do about it, I guess,
other than just continue to monitor it.
I've got a few minutes left in the show.
Peter, you kind of went there earlier.
Perhaps we can just quickly address it.
Soul versus ETH, perhaps.
Which one feels stronger or weaker right now?
I think the big news at Aslana in the past week,
really the past day, was this new ad that came out.
We won't have time to play it.
But basically they dropped a new marketing campaign video,
which was meant to be anti-woke,
went a little bit over the lines,
got a lot of pushback on crypto Twitter,
and then they deleted it.
So curious if you had any reactions to that
or just the broader conversation.
If you had to pick an alt between Sol and ETH right now, which looks stronger in March 2025, which is a question I think a lot about.
I would pick ETH right now, which is crazy because I've been on the Sol side for a while.
But I would pick ETH.
It's hard for me to envision kind of the next
catalyst for Sol. I still love the UI and UX. I think they've done a lot of things really well
coming into the cycle, but there's just too many people who got wrecked. I mean, it's not Solana's
fault necessarily. Some of the actors and builders in this space for sure deserve some blame, but
so many people just came in and got wrecked on meme coins.
If you just look at how that played out and in general,
he was playing a longer game. There's certainly a lot of infighting.
I think the layer twos are pretty toxic towards each other,
but you have some positive momentum with base and you know,
things like punks, like you mentioned are still there.
And I'm going to bet just long- kind of aligned with Nick Tamindo, I've mentioned a zillion times on the show and just basically make that bet.
I could be wrong. Maybe Solana has some really interesting things with gaming. I certainly think AI agents and kind of how that evolves could be really big on solana that'd probably be my favorite bull case but i'm most optimistic about things like base rwas um and uh yeah i just i
think that a lot of rec you know retail got burned um in the meme coin casino and i think that's
going to be hard to overcome in the short term these may all tell the same uh argument and put it on eth
too i mean retail has gotten on ease um even people who've just held eth have underperformed
bitcoin and solana and other assets like the the bet on eth in my mind is like institutional
adoption not really retail based i don't think think we've seen L2 adoption correlate with value accrual to the underlying ETH token at all.
So it's tough.
I still would rather hold fucking Tunks and other ETH related assets rather than ETH itself.
and other ETH related assets rather than ETH itself.
But it's tough from a capital allocation perspective in my mind
to allocate to ETH or Solana when you can just put it in Bitcoin right now.
It's kind of my problem.
And I'm the most overweight Bitcoin I've ever been,
which is, I don't know, maybe that's a sign that that's not the move
because I'm normally some type of local indicator.
Look at all those eights we just had on the screen there for Ethereum. 1888.08. That was nice.
I agree with you, by the way, dude. If it's like, choose one, Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Solana, we're all choosing Bitcoin right now, right?
right yeah it's just tough um because yeah solana has wrecked a lot of retail this cycle but
Yeah, it's just tough.
people who've been holding solana for uh let's just say the the end of 2023 into 24
in an hour still up quite a bit versus if they just held ease um or or even bitcoin depending
on when they they bought it it's still um if you bought i think before november 2023 are still pretty
It's still, if you bought, I think, before November 2023, you're still pretty, you know, doing well against Bitcoin by like 50% or more.
We had a guest on FOMO today from IONet and their protocol effectively offers up decentralized compute and CPUs.
And the guy was incredibly well spoken and went to Harvard and previously was from AWS. And we asked him, so they're building on Solana.
We asked them why. And he said, just very simply,
it's the fastest horse. And that's a good pitch, right?
I think we're a lot of us are like looking for like,
what is the narrative that Solana is going to cement Solana for like this
next cycle, right? Because meme coins, it was the meme coin casino.
I think everyone pretty largely in agreement that that's not a narrative to
bring Solana forward in 2027, 2028. So what is it?
Just the pure speed and continued, you know,
big players building on them could be enough.
Right. And I agree with you, D's that ETH has the institutional,
like institutions bringing all their stable coins, tokenized assets,
but it just, I feel like that's happening relatively at like a snail pace.
And I feel like we keep talking about it and I got pulled up the charts.
We had a longer conversation with Jeebs last week and it is happening,
but I feel like we just don't see that as much.
You see the teams building on Solana more, at least I do,
and perhaps it's because of Solana leadership
and how they blast it out.
So I do think Solana has some outs like that,
or outs may be the wrong word,
but might have some potential narrative shifts in front of us but it's going to take some time
for us to likely neither feel great i think is kind of the overall
troubling part um and hopefully that changes i mean it was really impressive what solano was
able to achieve over the last couple years um i don't know it's it's it's a hard one i just
i hear your point d's like like, yeah, you've been
rugged is probably too far, but just if you've been holding ETH, it's been, it's just been pain,
just pure pain. Yeah. I pulled up the ETH BTC chart on the monthly timeframe and tweeted it,
put it, uh, mimics what a lot of my AI bags look like over the last three months,
but instead of three months,
it's on a, you know, yearly or multi year timescale. I'm sure it'll bounce back eventually.
I mean, it's hard to imagine it keep going down. But at what point, like, I feel like you can just
kind of wait for the tides to shift and then pile in when you see momentum rather than like
try to catch the bottom on it um because i think we all wouldn't be surprised if eth btc went up
like two or three x over the span of a two month time period like that wouldn't be surprising at
all it's just a matter of when does that happen and what does this catalyst look like and i uh
i do think the l2 stuff just makes it a
lot more murky like it's so cheap to use eth now um you know minting these good vibes clubs was like
a dollar or something uh every time i'm looking at guay outside of you know moments of major
volatility guay is under like right now it's 0.55 guay um and you look at the the ultrasound money you know inflationary
deflationary chart and it's just been uh up only with inflation as um you know people are just
burning less eth to use the chain so i do think it has some interesting incentive and tokenomic
differences that like i i don't know how they shift um and
if more people are using l2s then the value is accruing to the l2s which most like like base
doesn't have a token for you to bet on you buy the coinbase stock that's your bet on base as an l2
and i don't know it's. None of it feels great.
And I think that's
the original idea was like, well, L2
scale and do well, like, well, that value
will accrue back to ETH, but we're not
seeing that much at all.
We're seeing the value accrue to the
companies running the L2s
and the sequencer fees and all that stuff.
Or WAs.
If I had to make the biggest bull
case that would be that would be it yeah and it's a strong one but it's one that's going to take play
out over months quarters correct years so we'll be having this conversation probably for a bit
longer so we'll certainly see well peter i know got to go. We're at a little over the
hour mark. I think we'll go ahead and call the show here. I want to thank you to our listeners.
Thanks to my co-host. Of course, thanks to our partner, Wallet Connect. Folks, we will be back
next Tuesday. Until then, enjoy your day. Have a great week. We'll see you soon. Bye. We'll be right back.
