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UNDER EXPOSED: Macro, Crypto Bear Market Blues & Retail Hates Crypto
Recorded: Feb. 10, 2026 Duration: 0:59:09Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, crypto enthusiasts analyzed the current market decline, with Bitcoin and ETH prices dropping significantly, while also exploring emerging trends in AI's impact on jobs and the need for more meaningful crypto applications. The conversation highlighted new token launches at lower valuations and the potential growth of stablecoins, particularly with Layer Zero's strategic moves.
Full Transcription
I think the space is live.
I'll get people. you I Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 61 of Underexpose, our weekly macro show, hitting
all the biggest topics and trends impacting crypto and broader web.
Today is Tuesday, February 10th.
folks that the bottom fell out since the last time we were together.
Folks, the bottom fell out since the last time we were together.
Bitcoin hit 60K, ETH 1700, tokens down 10 to 20% across the board.
Retail seemingly hates crypto based on the Super Bowl ad reactions from Sunday.
The bear market vibes are engulfing the timeline.
The question is, are they here to step or just temporary?
We're going to talk about it on today's show.
I'm your host, Tyler D. I got my co-host in the house first up d's rocking the rect hat which is quite uh
apt today gm how you doing doing good man i feel like we could be wearing this hat uh every week
at least when the show starts so easy choice today glad to be here need that rectum evergreen color but maybe i'll uh i'll go shopping
for that one uh peter yeah they need like a matcha matcha drink or something let's give us a darker
green oh vi hope you're listening i think that could go over well with uh your drink audience
folks we've also got peter jennings house, founder of several companies, still hanging out with us every Tuesday. Jim, how are you doing?
Jim, excited to be with you guys. Not as excited about the crypto markets, but we'll get into that
and everything else that's going on from an investment perspective.
Excited to dig in. As always, a couple of housekeeping items before we get started.
We're live on X and Kik. Go ahead, give us a follow.
Give us a subscribe over there.
All of our live content can be found on Kik every day, every week.
We also got some EAT giveaways coming.
So we'll do one EAT giveaway at the end of today's show.
I appreciate Charlie will pop up the code on the screen.
I think we're doing bronze tier today.
So if you're eligible, go ahead and enter.
What are we talking about?
We're going to start with macro.
We got to talk this crypto sell off.
We'll talk about macro stocks, AI, the CapEx spin, perhaps dampening.
Mag seven rally, maybe, maybe not.
We'll talk this Coinbase ads, some pretty rough reactions from retail.
I do want to get into hyper liquid with these.
We didn't really have a chance to dig into it last week.
One of the more interesting tokens out there.
Uh, I have a personal trade decision I'm trying to make, so I want to go through it with him.
Then these new tokens are launching at much lower valuations.
Uh, maybe a positive for more room
to grow. So we'll talk about that and a whole lot more. Before we get started, as always,
a quick 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, and maybe even stir some debate. But this is not,
I repeat, not financial advice. While we talk about markets, investments, provoke thought, and maybe even stir some debate. But this is not, I repeat, not financial advice.
While we talk about markets, investments, and trends,
remember your financial decisions should be made with the help of your own research
or with advice from a licensed professional.
All right, well, let's get into it.
I will fire up the screen share for those who are in the stream.
And, well, I guess the good news is we're not selling off live during the show, which we typically
do every Tuesday.
Yeah, we front ran it.
But yes, we front ran it.
Last Thursday was indeed Black Thursday.
Markets just totally, the bottom just fell out.
Bitcoin went all the way to 60,000.
ETH, I think 1,700 was the low.
Sol went to 69.
I think maybe even lower on some exchanges.
Then Friday, we got the relief bounce.
Bitcoin right back at 69,420.
Down 9% since last week's show.
ETH at 2024.
It's down 9% from last week's show as well.
Sliding down 16% at 84.
So looking a little rough, the more well, I guess at this level, we basically have a race to Trump pump, maybe slightly ahead of the Trump election back in November.
But certainly down nearly 50% from all-time highs.
I think more folks calling for the bear market.
I think more takes for it to last here for a while.
In macro news, I think on the stock side, the biggest has been
MagSafe and companies releasing earnings and CapEx spend is through the roof.
Some of the big names selling off on their CapEx spend is through the roof.
Some of the big names selling off on their CapEx numbers,
but seemingly rebounding, so the markets are kind of taking it in stride.
Peter, I'll toss it to you.
I guess, what's top of mind for you here this week?
What are you watching?
What's jumping out in mid-February here?
Yeah, more conviction kind of than I've had on some of the macro themes.
Obviously, there's so much going on.
I feel like this administration and kind of what we've seen in the last year, it feels like, you know, in a week you have like months worth of action.
But I think the overarching theme that I have conviction on now is the impact of AI and kind of what we've seen with Claude and the Opus 4.5 and now Opus 4.6 is the belief in what, you know, the reality is now with what this, you know, AI can do.
It's really going to impact jobs, which we get that report.
I don't know if I want to have these slip.
I believe we get the jobs report tomorrow and then we get CDI on Friday. My view is that we're going to see inflation go down. AI is such
a huge deflationary force. I think that's going to be overwhelming. And obviously now we have
Worshin who is an inflation hawk. So my view is inflation is going to go down and unemployment
is going to go up, which is really concerning for the K-shaped economy.
I do think long term it's going to be a huge productivity boost and we can see some amazing things for society.
But we're going to have to navigate this short term challenge where a lot of people are going to get laid off.
And we're already starting to see that, you know, with these companies.
You look at the earnings calls, obviously the CapEx was the main headline,
but some of the other things like Amazon
continues to reduce their headcount
while having revenues go up.
And I think we're going to see that
with a lot of companies that are beneficiaries
of kind of this AI and robotics theme.
So to me, that's the major trend that we're seeing.
And I think it's going to just continue to play out.
So I'm thinking rates are going to go lower given that we're going to see unemployment spike.
Job openings have been weak.
So that's an interesting spot to be in.
Generally, this would mean you'd want to own assets, which I think has kind of been a broad thing that we've talked a lot about here on the show.
But, yeah, I'm really trying to think through how I want to position it. My assumption is that we're going to see really weak employment numbers and
less inflation. I think those are the main macro themes. And then in addition, which is correlated
obviously is the CapEx from the MAG-7, which to me, there's a ton of merit. Every waking hour that
I'm not with my family,
I'm trying to be working with these AI tools.
I don't know how you guys stand,
but I'm just so obsessed with Claude
and now Codex is pretty interesting.
There's just so much you can do with these tools.
And I think knowing that these are the worst
they're ever going to be
makes me really optimistic about what we can see
in the, assuming we don't blow ourselves up or we don't have a terminator
yeah i'm uh i'm right there with you it's very
exciting and still i have to find time to pause just uh
kind of come up with with the right ideas and focus us because it's easy just to
start running on different things and you know start going down the path build something out but like is that what you
are you really going to take that through to finish line because I think a part of it is
it's easier than ever to build these apps right like I mean you can build a finance app you can
build a health app you can build a food app that scans menus and picks out the healthiest option.
So if you want to go through that process, I think there's also this question of commitment.
Like, so are you going to – the next is like are you going to do the vibe marketing aspects?
Like are you actually going to try to distribute this?
Or are you just building apps for your own personal use?
And if so, that's fine but i think
that's kind of a decision point that i've had to find myself dealing with peter i'm curious how
you know you you mostly are building personal tooling like have you started thinking about
like anything for like consumers or external facing like i've thought a lot about that um
and there's a i have friends that are built some really cool things that are now live and starting to do well. So I'm certainly interested in that.
The personal tooling and some of the things that I've been able to build are helpful to make money, which is kind of why you build something consumer facing.
So I'm really focused on things that will help me as a speculator,
both in prediction markets, traditional markets, and private investing. So that seems like a really good focus. I'm starting to see some real fruit from the work that I've done. And I'm really
excited about some of the things I'll be able to continue to iterate on. So we'll see, I could turn
some of those tools into consumer facing things down the road. The challenge is if you put something online, it's so easy to copy these things now.
So it's really hard if you're going to try to build something.
What is your moat?
What can you do that is sustainable and durable?
It's a challenge.
So I'm still just kind of in exploratory phase trying to make my life as a speculator
easier, try to, you know, increase my edge, which to me, this is just kind of a golden age from that
perspective. So it's, it's incredible what you're able to do with these tools. And now all the,
you know, open claw and people having agents doing work 24 seven7. A lot of my friends have built really, really cool systems
where they're just, their output has gone up exponentially.
So I really thought the last All In podcast was excellent.
They talked a ton about, Gerstner's talked a ton about
just kind of where software's going.
David Sachs had some really interesting points.
I think the most profound thing he said
is that his mental model on AI has changed.
He used to have the model kind of, I think it was, I he said is that his mental model on AI has changed.
He used to have the model kind of, I think it was, I can't remember, basically his model was, you know, AI was never going to be end to end.
It was going to kind of be in the middle here, right?
And that humans would have to prompt the AI.
But now with what we've seen with OpenClaw, these AI agents might be able to do work together and come up with ideas together and you won't necessarily need prompting.
So that's a huge shift from kind of where we were before.
So it's just it's a hard time to just kind of wrap your mind around everything that's going on.
But I'm trying to do my best and it feels like there's so much happening and i think the last thing that's relevant all this is so interesting and this is why crypto is just not getting a bid is that
there's so much more interesting stuff than what's going on in crypto broadly from my perspective
yeah i think that is certainly a part of it um although the the big looming question
is are the agents going to turn to crypto rails for for payments and if so does that lead
to the next wave and i i think there's a real chance that that they do but that that verdict is
is certainly still out a bit i found the quote that I was trying to,
it was Balaji,
and I just don't want to mispronounce the name.
He said,
AI doesn't do end-to-end,
it does middle-to-middle.
The new bottlenecks are prompting and verifying.
David Sachs said that was kind of his mental model,
and that certainly was my mental model,
and that's what shifted.
So that's really important going forward
and what the capabilities are.
And I do agree that these agents and I do think there's still a huge case for, you know, crypto rails being a great medium of exchange for value and stable coins are going to be a huge part of that.
So I'm still optimistic on certain things.
And there's certain sectors and certain companies that I adore in crypto that we'll talk about.
But the AI kind of shift is certainly top of mind for me.
Yeah, and rightfully so.
Certainly an exciting time.
I want to come back.
You mentioned inflation going down, jobs also going down.
And you mentioned prediction markets, right?
So have you looked at these fed
rate cut markets it's worth 17 to get a cut in march 27 in april feels a little low to me
especially april have you have you looked at any of these very hard oh yeah i'm i am i have
positions on that rates are going to go down,
especially on the front end of the curve,
both in traditional markets and prediction markets.
I think you can go a little farther out if you want less uncertainty.
Like June 17th, go to that market.
This one I think is more interesting for like 50 bps.
And that's the other thing too is there's
probably easier ways to to do it than just straight prediction markets because yeah we don't know when
these are going to actually come to fruition i just i expect the the rates to come down in the
short end of the curve and worse is going to come in and who knows i mean it's hard to speculate
exactly when this will happen but um i don't mind that if I were to make bigger bets on prediction markets, I'd do the earlier stuff just because I think this week we could get really, really surprised on the inflation side.
It could be softer, which is just much cooler than expected.
And then I think this jobs report could be quite bad, but we'll see.
I mean, Truflation has been showing some insane numbers.
And granted, true inflation is not the core metric that the Fed uses.
But it's been fairly leading, I would say.
They've got down 0.68%.
That chart is right, though, to me.
Just kind of what I'm feeling and what I'm seeing.
I'm really trying to get as much data
as I can. I just see inflation going straight down right now. The only thing that could change that
in the short term and that maybe is somewhat priced in and expected is we're going to get
tax returns. I assume we're still going to get some form of helicopter money from this admin,
especially to kind of the lower quartile of people in the economy here in the US.
So that will be helpful because they're really struggling and that could boost inflation
to a degree.
But there's so many deflationary forces specifically with AI that I think the trend is definitely
going to be going down.
I think that makes sense.
Dee's maybe pulling you into the convo here.
I guess maybe we can talk crypto a bit.
As a former director of Vibes,
how are the Vibes?
Is this as bad as you've seen them in recent memory?
We had the fear and greed index go down to five, I think, last week.
What's your read on the situation?
I don't think it's as bad as I've ever seen them, but I'm also not in bad positions like I have been in the past.
For me, the worst is still 2018, that November-December dump from 6 to 3 3K and then the COVID crash where we thought,
you know, Fitnextun unplugged their servers
that we were going to go to zero.
So this is like maybe third worst I've seen it.
But then when you look at the prices,
they don't really match up.
Like, I mean, outside of the new stuff
that is trying to raise it like a billion dollars
and launching under 100 million.
I think like the price of Bitcoin and and eth is still generally kind of high compared to the sentiment
so i think uh i tweeted last week i think we're like in the denial stage maybe of uh the bear
market where people people don't want to admit it um but, I mean, maybe, you know, there's a case to be made
that last week's fuckery is a good low, too.
I still think we're probably closer to denial.
But, I mean, there are pockets of interesting things.
Like, all the AI stuff, I'm sure we'll talk about Banker
and stuff like that, but there are, like,
some interesting pockets to pay attention to. Whereas in like i don't know in 2018 i don't feel like there's anything really
interesting going on like the most interesting thing in 2018 for me was like preparing to to
fucking buy tezos to to stake it or bake it for six percent um so i think what we're doing now
is more interesting to what we were doing back then. Yeah, I mean, there were parts of 2022.
Yeah, even then, I was like...
This stretch was pretty...
Yeah, I was selling NFTs to live off of
because we closed down fractional.
That was in the beginning.
That was more 2023,
but it was grim times around then too.
But I still feel like there was more hope
now it's like Peter
said all the attention is on AI so even if
there is hope it's like well why don't you just have more hope
for the shiny new
things that people are playing with
and maybe we can say and I do want to get to
debanker here in a minute but I think one of the
the bigger stories and it was
kind of lighthearted at the beginning until you like get deeper into it it's like we had the coinbase super
bowl ad on sunday it is the backstreet boy song karaoke lyrics on the screen everyone's singing
along to it and then it flashes to coinbase at the end and it's just audible booze and then flipping off the screen.
And it's not just this one video.
Like, hey, there's like dozens of videos.
And then even to the point where Morning Brew is tweeting out, this seems to be the universal reaction.
And at first it was funny.
And then I started asking the questions.
Does retail actually just hate crypto?
Yeah, I think so, dude.
I think so.
I don't think I quite realized it
until they hit me over the head with these videos.
And what does that mean?
Got to build something that they value
that they don't think of as a complete scam and
i don't know if you put the coinbase branding on anything if they're going to think that
it's tough and i know you know peter one of the the things kind of long running themes is you know
we need to build more you more meaningful apps that people use.
And I think one of the terms that Brian Armstrong used,
I mean, he was talking about his ad, economic freedom,
you know, permissionless finance.
That is still like the primary foundational core use case for crypto.
And I think the reality is average retail user doesn't need that use case, right?
Their bank account works just fine.
Their banking apps work just fine.
Folks in other countries, perhaps a different story.
But are they just never going to come?
Are they going to come along for speculation at periods of time? And if they get rinsed enough times, then they're out.
But I don't know.
I'm kind of struggling with what gets them back in the door.
Right.
And we talked about that a little bit with Logan on FOMO hour yesterday.
Like what is there for retail to get excited about, you know, other than the primary use cases?
And it seems like it's a question that we've got to try to get the answer to if we want to get them back in the door.
Peter, curious if you've thought about that or if you saw these reactions, anything kind of going through your mind on the retail topic?
on the retail topic?
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things
that are clearly working, hyperliquid and lighter.
And I think perps are a better way to speculate
on assets than options almost always.
There are certain situations where you would prefer
a speculator to use options, but I'd say 90% plus.
If you have a view, it's easier to express it via perps. And one thing we're seeing work in a huge way, which gives me tons of
optimism to own, right now it's hype and lighter that I like and prefer hype still, but
the commodity trading, I mean, specifically what we saw with silver and gold and copper,
now the stocks, hopefully we see more and more private companies come on chain at some
point in time.
That is super exciting.
And that will create a ton of value for people, especially if we can ever get real liquidity
and accurate pricing for some of these private companies.
There are some real hurdles there, but that is something I'm super excited about.
So I think both those companies and specifically Hype being the leader now,
they found true market fit.
They're real companies with real revenues and it makes sense to own them.
So that's really exciting.
In addition, stable coins are something we're all excited about.
It's really easy here in the U.S. to just take for granted
that you can use dollars from Venmo, your bank account, credit card, whatever,
and get things.
You don't really have to worry about your purchasing power changing overnight.
Whereas in other countries and other places, that certainly is a challenge.
So I do think we'll see more and more
stablecoin apps and just different things where people can exchange value. And I think stablecoins
are going to be a huge part of what's, you know, not just the crypto ecosystem, but the worldwide
economy. So those are the two use cases I'm still super excited about. There's still some things in
DeFi I think make a lot of sense. Digital gold
and Bitcoin I think makes a lot of sense. But outside of that, I haven't seen much other than
the casino, which is crypto has proven to be a great casino. So maybe you still want to own
Pump for that reason, which I think is another one we've talked a lot about. That's certainly
an interesting asset. And maybe meme coins just are here to stay as a different form of a casino.
My issue with the meme coin game is that a super small percentage of players extract all the value,
which makes it really hard, but that's common in peer-to-peer games.
So those are the sectors I'm thinking about.
We'll see how AI interacts with all of these.
I think stable coins is where AI is really going to do or have the biggest impact.
But curious to your guys' perspective.
Right now, in terms of just like how I'm thinking about my crypto portfolio, mostly in the basis trade still, Bitcoin, hype, lighter.
Those are really my only real position.
And then, of course, the punks.
That smile, hype smile just stares at me every single day.
When you close your eyes at night,
is that the last thing you see before you saw the sleep?
I feel really good about how I maneuvered broadly
through this cycle.
And then I just look at that and I'm just like,
man, that's just greed personified.
If that's the worst mistake you made all cycle, though,
that's a pretty good cycle comparatively to, I mean, last cycle,
I lost like half a million dollars on farming blast and stuff.
So like if my worst mistake this cycle is top blasting a punk,
like that's it's pretty it's a good cycle.
Assuming I sold other things that went up.
I'm just waiting for one of Peter's open claw agents to personify itself and take the punk, the smile.
The pipe smile.
Yeah, it's just like Tibber, but it's Peter backwards.
I don't even know what that is.
Just like Alex Finn's agents are starting to come up with names and pictures for themselves.
I want to talk about the hype trade, Peter.
You kind of went there calling it one of the more exciting tokens, protocols, themes in crypto.
And I think it's pretty spot on.
You've been in the trade pretty deeply.
Last week, I was having hard thoughts sitting down.
Should I sell?
My primary holdings are still largely Bitcoin.
Punk's a couple other things.
I was looking.
I don't have any hype exposure and i was thinking like do i sell a meaningful chunk of bitcoin and rotate to hype for for a
long-term time horizon trade um and then i i slept on it and like the next day is the day
actually spiked to 38 and of course i'm like oh I missed the window. It has since sold off back to 30.
So the high Bitcoin ratio hit an all-time high.
Now it's back down.
It's still near the top of the range.
What's given me a little bit of pause is I've been following these HIP3 volume numbers very closely.
I think this was a part of the recent rebound rally was these,
this volume soaring and it just fell off a cliff these past three days.
It's a small sample size.
So I want to see this play out a little bit,
but this did give me a little bit of pause.
And the other thing that's given me a little bit of pause is Peter.
You're still telling lit the lighter token. And these, I think maybe you're in the light token as giving me a little bit of applause is Peter you're still touting Lit the lighter token and
Deez I think maybe you're in the light token as well
a little bit I'm not convinced they both
conform well at the same time
at least in a bear market
yeah I thought Lit more based off of
Will Price's dashboard that he vibe coded that
shows the premium we're paying for hyperliquid revenue
versus lit revenue.
And obviously, I think that premium is compared to people's perception
of how sticky each revenue is.
But when I saw that, I think when I bought it,
it's trading like a 3x premium or something.
It's down a little bit since.
It's just like, I don't think the premium should be that large.
So even if I'm holding a bunch of hype, like hedged a little bit with Lit, not a lot.
The other thing I like about Lit is the whole, you know, if you buy 50k Lit, you can stake it.
You could put 500k in LLP and then eventually you'll be able to use that as
collateral to trade with um i think that mechanism makes sense and i don't know if i'll use the llp
uh to as collateral to trade with but i like that optionality and i think that kind of makes the lit
token a little more attractive um assuming they have similar uh successes past months with
llp which i think over time outside of like 10 10 it's been pretty good um so yeah i bought a
little bit of it but but it was like it was more of a hedge on hype like looking at it as the whole
perp dex bet um i don't know for the hip three volume if we're seeing just a decline
because it feels like maybe there's a actually i just looked at silver it's back to 81.
i was looking at silver going in the weekend it was back like 70.
um but i was wondering if like the just i don't say collapse of the the metals but like the the price going down is making people uh not trade them
as much because when we were looking at that volume last week i remember the open interest
compared to the volume was like crazy different if you were to compare like bitcoin like i remember
the open interest for silver was like significantly lower than the open interest for Bitcoin, even though maybe volumes were similar.
So like a lot of those, you know, volume metrics were short trades.
They weren't like people holding positions with long time horizons as seen by the open interest, not really getting close to what the large crypto tokens are.
So it doesn't surprise me to see that volume drop off hard.
Makes sense.
I mean, I didn't realize
Lighter's still doing 50%
of Hyperliquid's volume
on the month.
Yeah, I'll link you
with Will's dashboard.
It's a mouthful, but I'll
just throw it in the chat so you can see
how I'm talking about
and it's trading at 1.4 billion FDV
hype's trading oh the hype premium now is down to 1.6 so it's this premium is very uh
volatile because both the prices are down but hype is down more than lit you know by a bit so
the premium went down um if you go to the
top right the crypto and rwa tab is what i'm looking at and then that middle yeah that middle
number where it's basically showing you the fdv of both the 24-hour fees and then what percent
of uh you know comparison between them
interesting all right so lighter five percent of hyperliquid 24 hour revenue eight percent
all right so you okay yeah and it changes this is like obviously it's like changing every day
um because it's just pulling the 24 hour fees but
is lighter still okay so this is so this is based on revenue all right so this yeah it's not based on volume as
much as revenue peter you're still a user both protocols i am i'm using height more um i have a
pretty big position in lighter that's that um is delta neutral um so i guess i am directionally
long but um right now you're getting about nine percent to
stake lighter um and you can hedge that by being short um perps which is quite good it's probably
one of the best multi-neutral trades out there um so that's that's that's i've been hanging out
there um for a bit the biggest risk like you have the three-day unlock if you want to get out of that stake token yeah that that's yeah the the doomsday for me would be funding flips massively the wrong way on minor
and then you're stuck kind of holding the position and the other three-day unlock yeah
i mean that makes sense it's not terrible unless funding just goes absolutely silly which i don't by the way the funding rates have been ridiculous i mean i i had i had a bitcoin and eth trade on
for a while and the funding rate on bitcoin was was horrendous for like a couple days um
like horrendously meaning like you were getting a lot to be long yeah yeah yeah
back to kind of normalized,
which is good news,
but still.
I mean,
I'll ask maybe the question directly.
So you hold both Bitcoin and hype,
I believe,
fairly large positions.
And which,
do you see one strongly outperforming in 2026?
Or like on a one to two year time horizon
yeah i think um i mean if i like my own portfolio i have more hype than i do bitcoin right now um
it's maybe close maybe like within 10 of the liquid crypto portfolio um personally i feel like
i'm so biased to want to say hype just because of the last year, two years of performance.
And Bitcoin is so much more boring to own.
Like, my gut says hype, but I still feel like I have to own a lot of Bitcoin anyway, just as like a person in the space who thinks that that's like the safest store of value.
My problem is when I get into Bitcoin punks, like that's where I start.
The other day when Bitcoin was a punk was getting close to 50k, I honestly was like,
fuck, I maybe should swap a Bitcoin for a punk.
And I didn't do it.
But I still think like that too much. I'm like,
okay, yeah, like Bitcoin store value, punk is store value. Punk is a more volatile store value.
If Bitcoin goes to 30k, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if my punk is 20k or God forbid less,
but Bitcoin goes back up over 100k, I would think my punk likely to be over 100k. So I'm still working through that because I with the hoodie, you have such a premium punk that it doesn't equate to one Bitcoin. It equates to, I don't know, my hoodie in my head is like 10 Bitcoin at current prices, if not more. So it's hard to accurately figure out exactly how I want that spread to be. But yeah, it is close to the
point where I'm holding hype for revenue, fundamental stuff. I'm holding Bitcoin because
it's digital rock store wealth. And I want a lot of both of them because I feel like once you get
to a certain point in your portfolio, you're not necessarily trying to take bigger risks to hit like 10 to 20 Xs.
Like holding a bunch of hype in Bitcoin is so easy to sleep at night. I don't really stress
about it at all. I get to like spend time with my kid and not stress about the charts. And that's
worth more than trying to eke out whatever potential extra gains I could. Well, 10 Xs,
that's what we hold tokens like Bank for banker yeah that's how we bought
banker that's why i bought some other stuff that is a way lower market captain banker
that has not got up 10x yet we don't have to get into those but you know even in what was
a terrible week for banker to create for a terrible week my thought process behind banker
last week was um tibber
was sitting at that 150 million floor banker was getting a ton of adoption and hype and i just
thought like i don't have any really reason to own this tibber when banker exists for uh i think at
the time banker was like 50 mil or something so started to sold the rest of my tibber put put
that into banker and then put a little bit more into banker and a couple other wallets um and it's been easy to hold i feel like the the dev is
super active and that always makes me happy like when i'm on twitter and dude's building in public
every day but yeah you can see some of the hype from that initial uh last week run is is dying
off so they did announce that they're making their own launch pad
and cutting out Clanker.
I think that announcement was why it pumped last night,
or it felt like that was why it pumped.
But yeah, I think it's the most interesting ecosystem token
that we've had this year.
And it's been around for a while.
It's not like it just came out this year but it's
finally um the combination of just the right things going on with the right products available
now it's getting attention i think this is one where like the the old adage that like luck is
like preparation meets opportunity or something along those lines, right? This team has been building in public and working on this app for over a year.
Token's been live the entire time.
And then they were in the right place when this latest open call AI agent explosion happened
on chain.
And it turned out that their launchpad made sense.
And they're leaning into it.
They're adjusting their fee model, their revenue.
They're going to have more revenue coming,
and I like that personally better than like, okay,
you have a new AI agent launchpad that spins up, right,
that anyone who's half-decent can vibe code in an afternoon,
and we have seen those, and most of them have floundered
while Banker has been the primary benefactor.
And it sold off a bit last, so it made that run to $100 million.
It was kind of chopping in that $60 to $80 zone.
When Bitcoin went to $60, it sold off to $35, and that was the buy.
It doubled, and basically it rebound doubled in a day it chopped the weekend at 55
which is where again which is where i entered disclosure and i am colder now um and it's
doubled doubled since then so i got a nice little 2x on this one um which was i i actually
sold a small amount um a little over 100 just to remind myself i can sell
these things yeah just like i think i sold like five grand worth like a amount that i didn't care
if i sold it but i just wanted to sell it to tell myself like hey dumbass uh just remember you can
sell these things you have a you have a kid in the other room that's something i feel like i have to do sometimes but yeah i'm still holding by far
the majority of my bag to see what happens i do think like peter said this narrative
of ai making everything better and people just thinking about this day and night i don't think
that's gonna shift anytime soon and it could definitely shift
attention away from banker and other ai tokens or just not crypto in general but like i do think as
long as that is a predominant narrative in society then at least wow this token is um
getting the revenue and adoption it's very interesting
it's very interesting and 100 million market cap versus like i mean we just saw the the penguin get
to 100 million it's like yeah i think this bank thing's a little more interesting than the penguin
i'm trying to find this example um so like kelly claude i did want to like 180 the conversation
too but peter mentioned just being bullish on stable coins and i always go back to like 180 the conversation too, but Peter mentioned just being bullish on stable coins.
And I always go back to like how the fuck we is, you know, normal plebs with access to the same markets everyone has access to make a good bet on stable coins.
I don't want to buy circle and I don't know what options I have.
So I was curious if Peter made any, you know, stablecoin investments or has any ideas on how to put on a
better trade for stablecoin. Because I mean, we just saw even Dan and Varun from Farcaster,
they just left a joint tempo of Paradigm stablecoin chain. And that's something that
none of us can get access to. I just saw that Layer Zero today got investment from Tether.
I just saw that Layer Zero today got investment from Tether.
It was four hours ago, and then Layer Zero has a big announcement in four hours.
And people keep postulating that they're making their own chain.
And whether that's for stablecoins or everything else, I don't know.
But just curious, how the fuck do we bet on this in a clean way?
Other than we don't want to hold a bunch of stablecoins, obviously.
We need tempo in the private market we need something dude where's the pre where's the uh hyper liquid pre-market for this it's really hard to make a bet um i've been looking at circle a
little bit which that was one of my better trades of the cycle. We talked a ton about just being short circle.
That was as good of a layup as you're ever going to get.
It's at 60 bucks now.
I was looking at this and doing some math and some work.
I would be really interested in it in the twenties.
So we got some ways to go.
Got some ways to go.
Okay.
There's interesting things with tether that you could look at,
like XAUT and get some gold exposure. I don't know. That's not really like a direct things with tether that you could look at like XAUT and get some
gold exposure.
I don't know that that's not really like a direct bet on tether.
Um, it's hard.
I think you have to be in the private markets and I think it's a really saturated space
and we're, we're late.
Um, it's, it's hard to express a view outside of, uh, figuring out, you know, what applications,
um, or what other projects may benefit from stablecoin adoption skyrocketing.
A lot of love for Layer Zero today.
They partnered with Tether.
That could be a way to express that view.
They have an announcement coming here in four hours.
I am holding some Layer Zero.
Yeah, I was going back to that too.
But yeah, it's tough.
It's tough.
There's not like a clean way to make this bet on a publicly traded token or market right
now.
I don't feel like even if we all feel super strong about it, which sucks.
Goes back to what we were, I don't know if we were complaining about last week, but the
whole, you know, companies just wait forever to IPO or all the gains go to the private investors these days.
It's interesting that you brought up Circle Stock.
They were on my radar last week as well.
I don't know if you guys saw that rent a human protocol that allows AI agents to, to create a job board for humans.
Humans can,
can take on their task rabbits for these agents.
It's kind of tongue in cheek,
whatever.
But then the next day,
Jeremy Allaire basically said,
okay,
I'm vibe coding like our own agentic dashboard job board rather that will run
on USDC.
And like something like that,
I think could actually be really big.
And if they actually lean into that and are able to operationalize it fairly
quickly,
I think that becomes very interesting for circle beyond their kind of core
business.
So if they innovate in the agenda commerce space and they should,
they're very incentivized to with USDC, I think we could perhaps have some higher premiums.
So I'll be watching them closely.
Dees, you mentioned some protocols, some TGs.
I do want to get into this.
So I think one of the trends or themes from this past week is these tokens are launching and
they are launching at valuations we haven't seen in,
in years.
So Infinex launched.
Infinex token is trading at a $25 million market cap,
$125 million FDV.
The rainbow wallet token launched.
It's trading at a $6.6 million market cap.
$32 million FDB.
I mean, we're not even blinking at memes running to this market cap.
No, the rainbow one is crazy too,
because when they put out that,
they put something out to like acquire Clanker or something
before Clanker got acquired by Coinbase.
And the price of Clanker like shot up that day.
And the price that Clanker was at that time
is like higher than the FDB of Rainbow now,
which is very hard to believe.
But also at the end of the day,
it's like, what is the point of the token?
I feel like we're at a point where people are more looking for flows
and revenue that goes to buybacks or plans for these tokens.
And if that's not a flywheel that's available,
people just don't seem super interested,
especially when it's more of a tech or product play
that has no meme potential
show us the revenue show us your your your documents tying some automated buybacks
to the token and we'll and then we'll talk and i don't necessarily think that that is like i mean
right now that is the model the market currently rewards the most
and maybe that is the most rational model but i don't think for every token ever that is what
makes the most sense but i think like in terms of the market right now the market is pricing
those tokens like way higher or they're pricing the tokens that don't have it way lower
but i mean can someone apply the same logic to like layer zero?
So I'm not an expert in their ecosystem.
Are they using revenue to do buybacks?
Or like what's the justification for 1.76 billion on layer zero?
Yeah, I think the revenue is pretty low last I checked.
They had some days that spikes over 100 200 K but in general
it's it's low and I don't I'm not sure on the buy bags it seems like they're gonna be watching
their own chain based on all the rumors from this morning yeah there was like a leaked video that
got taken down um the price has done the classic like announcement of an announcement pump and then
retrace and then it's um it got down to like
$1.30 I think with last week I remember looking at it because I started buying it I think like $1.70
$1.80 bought some $1.90 and then last week it was like $1.30 I was like holy shit like what
what happened uh but then it kind of rebounded a bit now is selling off again
I think the one thing I do like about Layer Zero is
it looks bottomed and I know that there's still like emissions from investors,
but like I do feel like they've sold enough at significantly higher prices
that like I can tell myself just based off the chart
and some of the fundamental stuff coming up that it's a good opportunity
some of the fundamental stuff coming up that it's a good opportunity compared to other stuff um
compared to other stuff.
you know it doesn't have that long period of consolidation um and exhausted buyers
yeah i would agree it looks bottoms i mean catching bottoms on alts is not always the
no easiest thing i think layers are one of the stronger teams out there
and it's another one i mean they, they've been around forever. Everybody
who's invested in them can only
say good things about Brian and the work ethic
of the team.
I think they are
positioned in a world where
you have people using
all sorts of chains
to capture some of the flow
as people have to
cross-transact.
We'll definitely be watching
for the announcement later today.
And I think the other launch this week
is, have you been playing around on MegaEth?
So yeah, yesterday I saw the rabbit hole
and I saw a couple of the tokens you went
and shared in another chat.
And when I found out I couldn't buy them on FOMO
when I was rocking the baby,
I didn't get a chance to go back to my computer
and eat them.
But it does seem like...
I don't know.
I didn't see anything that was jumping out
as like, oh, I need to get in and buy it.
It was more just like,
oh, here's this super funny cheat meme.
Maybe I need to check some other group chats I have muted and see what they're up to but
did you you deposited bought some of the memes and then i'm assuming just like
took a break you didn't i is there anything super exciting that
yeah i looked around a little bit i used use Kumbaya, which is their, their trading platform.
I think my read and bread has said this himself.
Like it's going to be like a slower cook.
Like they,
they launched with a few apps.
They held back a few additional apps from launching this week to either make
sure they're ready or to perhaps do a more staggered rollout and they're
not trying to do like the blast like fomo like get your money on chain first as fast as you can
um so we can run this thing up like it appears to be like okay like here's some things to do
take your time start playing around with the chain right i think a lot of it's been DeFi-related use cases and things to do.
I do like how they have this new trend of these infrastructure chains.
L1, L2 is having these landing pages.
I think it is really nice.
So you can see kind of what there is to do.
So I think right around the corner is where this starts getting interesting.
This is like the next wave of apps.
I think there's some folks waiting on Euphoria,
which is kind of a version of a kind of prediction-style game.
World markets is another one I've seen.
So I think we'll see some action around those.
And then, of course, the mega token itself will be tied to some of their KPIs, which
I thought was an interesting approach where they're not going to do the airdrop.
They're not going to roll out the token until they get their APIs across the board, which
I thought was a novel approach.
And I think more folks will likely copy that in the future, though.
I think maybe the KPIs were a little too low.
We'll see.
We'll see how quickly they are able to hit them.
I haven't checked in on the mega token.
How's it doing?
So it's kind of hanging out this $1.3 billion range.
Is that where Monat is?
Oh, wow.
Monat's significantly higher now.
They had been trading pretty in line there for a while.
So Monat's still hanging out at $2 billion.
That's kind of impressive at TBH,
given I think the amount of mindshare.
Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that.
As an investor in both, I wouldn't have guessed that.
And the one that's like shockingly low,
I guess the market's rough.
It's been pumped, right? Like Peter kind of went there. and the one that's like shockingly low i guess it's the market's rough this has been pump right
like peter kind of went there uh yeah i i pump's tough i mean i hold a little bit um feel like we
bring it up pretty often i i've thought you know for a long time i've talked about this on the show
but like i thought their moat wasn't sustainable i thought other people would just make the same thing with lower fees and that was very you know
not true um they've had a moat full time so i don't know with the token um still holding a bit
i still think about buying a bit when i go look at the metrics. Like if I want to bet on Solana, I'm probably going to buy pump rather than soul.
but I,
I don't really want to make a bigger bet on Solana right now.
So it's tough.
And the metrics are great.
The Solana mean market is very alive.
I mean,
this past weekend may be a little cooler,
but there's a hundred million dollar runner
the week before that it seems like there's been some uh off and on and there's they're still
running those buybacks so it's been a little surprise and clearly there's some big sellers
in that token but it does feel like eventually and the unlocks haven't started yet um the unlocks
for pump tge was in June, I think.
So that's another thing I do think about with Pump
is these earlier investors got in sub 200 mil.
They're going to get these unlocks,
even if it's one bill.
You're up a nice 5x plus when you got in.
They're going to sell. I mean mean i think they're gonna sell so i'm kind of worried about that
um and that's another reason i don't want to like make a big bet on pump for 20 to 26
um just because i am thinking about the unlocks that are going to come
in june i think it's june that actually makes any late q1 q2 buys pretty tough
yeah it i haven't june was in august did that that token really launch in june
i have to look it up i i know it was over the summer
all right yeah it was uh early july so okay. I mean, last year was a blur for me.
The baby stuff.
But yeah, it's somewhere around there.
We will certainly see.
I am paying attention to that hackathon they're doing
where they're investing money into projects
and their ecosystem.
I'm definitely very curious to see who they choose for that.
I think I have a couple bags.
We'll see how they do.
But I don't feel like there's that much exciting stuff
for them to invest in under 10 mil.
So I'm curious what they end up choosing.
That is going to be an important one to watch
because they'll be investing at 10 million.
I am very curious.
If they pick a token that's at like a million, are they still investing at $10 million?
I'll be curious if they add any more color to that.
Or by default, are they only taking tokens that are somehow higher than that threshold?
I don't think there's enough tokens above that threshold for it to even be interesting.
They're putting $ 250k into each
i don't yeah i don't know i feel like if they uh only put into stuff over 10 it's like not
not nearly as interesting maybe i'm just biased from the bags i've bought that are under 10
before we close out anything else you're trading or watching these days i know you're on uh you've
got some phone time when the baby's sleeping on the shoulder yeah the i'm just spending a lot of
time going on fomo and then um i'm spending a lot of time talking to claude about pokemon cards
um which is not the most fun interesting thing to say i'm using claude for but uh i'm just trying
to find discrepancies between like english and japanese pricing and buy the uh cheaper japanese cards i really like the art on that i don't really care
as much about the words on and clod's been really helpful for that yeah we got we all got to find
our own use cases but yeah that that's been my like guilty pleasure i'm like i got like 20 minutes
so i just buy there's this artist who has like 300 plus cards and I'm trying to collect every card he's made.
So that's been a fun thing of just like open up my list
and go through and see what is listed
and buy a couple cards here and there.
I think right now I have like 120 of them or something.
But it's been fun.
It's also just way cheaper way to get a dopamine fix.
I could pull open FOMO and just incinerate $1,000 on like a open claw token.
Or I can, you know, buy 20 of these cards for like $1 to $30 a piece and just get even happier.
Return to Pokemon.
Well, you got to keep yourself stimulated.
Real quick, have you been following that BZ app?
I saw they had like a million dollar day.
Yeah, they're kind of blowing up.
I thought they were on Flow for a while.
I was surprised to see they weren't on Flow.
I think they were on Flow.
They migrated to base.
And now they are one of the bigger gotchas on base.
I know they got me to try the app for the first time
because of the OpenSea rewards. They were giving out like claw vouchers for like, I don't remember,
it was like $25 claw or whatever. But yeah, I mean, they have like a $250 and a $50 option.
I don't think they have the high end gotchas that are like 1000 or 2500 like some of these
other platforms, but they are getting a lot of volume
i don't know if people are farming it for a token if they're farming it for future based token if
they're super stoked about getting the cards um probably a combo yeah i haven't used their
marketplace maybe i should go look i think that's one thing I need to use Claude Code for
is I need to make like a fucking aggregator
of all these different
graded crypto Pokemon card platforms.
Because trying to find the best deal on these cards
across all venues is a pain in the ass.
And trying to place bids on them
is even more of a pain in the ass.
Yeah, that's a good use case um well i think we went
around the horn for today we're at the top of the hour so producer charlie let's go ahead and do our
spin let's pick a winner and as always this is this will be our 500 giveaway um did bronze tier
i believe for those who enter let's go ahead and give it a spin.
Jager.
Jager. Jager.
All right.
I don't recall seeing that name at least for a while.
So I think that is a newer winner.
Our team will coordinate with you offline to get you over those $500.
Congrats.
You have won.
I want to thank our listeners as always for tuning in.
D's Peter.
Thank you for joining us.
We'll be back next Tuesday until then.
Have a great week,
everybody.
Goodbye. Thank you.
