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UNDER EXPOSED: Macro Latest, Gold & Bitcoin 📈, and Crypto Banks
Recorded: April 22, 2025 Duration: 1:13:30Space Recording
Short Summary
In a lively discussion, crypto enthusiasts explored the latest trends and growth in the market, highlighting significant token launches, partnerships, and the rising popularity of various cryptocurrencies. Key insights included Wallet Connect's new token campaign, Circle's innovative payment platform, and the emergence of Fartcoin as a leading meme coin.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. All right, GM, GM, everyone, thank you for joining us here this morning, this afternoon, wherever you're at.
We're going to start the show here in just a minute.
Finishing getting our speakers up on stage while we wait, a couple shout outs.
Cyber Nomad, JD Black, GM, thanks for joining us.
T, Minik, Misk, Crypto Queen, GM, GM, Google it, John Ashlad, Goodrich, Temp.N. Thank you for joining us
here this morning.
I think we've got
our speakers up on stage.
Sims, whenever you're ready.
Let's kick it. so This is a production of WGBH. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to episode 22 of Underexposed, our weekly macro show,
hitting all of the biggest topics and trends impacting crypto and Web3.
Today, today is Tuesday, April 22nd.
Spring has finally sprung.
The sun is shining.
Easter weekend is behind us.
The NBA playoffs are underway.
Folks, stocks and macro are on a rollercoaster ride.
It looks to be going downwards, but there's some green on the board today.
And folks, crypto rallying big time with several of our favorite coins up nicely on the week.
And now, once again, we are asking, is this rally real or will it fail like the others?
We're going to get into it on today's show. I'm your host, Tyler Dean.
I've got my co-hosts in the house, starting with
Deez, art collector, coin stacker, and trader. And folks, he is no longer underexposed to creatine.
Deez, Jim, how are you doing? We're being influenced by Big Creatine on Twitter. I feel
like there's been a two to four week marketing ad every time I would have the app. You got to be
taking like 75 grams of creatine every
10 minutes if you want max brain power now.
It's great. I've not
seen a more viral product
marketing campaign than what has happened
for creatine in the last two weeks
on Twitter. I don't even know how it got on my Twitter.
I'm not on BitTwit
or whatever it's called, but
still, creatine
everywhere. It's permeated all the corners of Twitter.
So whoever's behind Big Creatine, our hats are off to you.
How do we long creatine?
Is there not like a token for this?
There is a creatine token.
Who has the creatine shitcoin?
There is a creatine shitcoin.
It hasn't been doing all that well, surprisingly.
But I think you bought some, I've bought some,
and I've been like casually taking it
off and on for 20 years but i was like hey maybe i'll get deeper into it why not the product
marketing is working folks we're gonna talk about more than creating we've also got peter jennings
on the show he's a founder of several companies still finds time to spend with us and uh his
nuggets are in for a real fight, these NBA playoffs.
Peter, how are you doing?
Doing great.
Yeah, this is one of my favorite times of the year.
NBA playoffs are awesome, and the Nuggets series has been by far the best so far, too.
Incredible games.
Jokic showing why he's the best player in the world, and it's really cool to see Kawhi Leonard
healthy for the playoffs.
He had a historic performance last night, 15-19 from the field.
So really been enjoying that 1-1.
We'll see how that series goes.
And excited to chat some different things.
A lot going on in the economy, a lot going on in crypto.
So excited to dive in.
Excited to have you with us.
And folks, we've also got Jeeves on.
Early stage crypto VC dabbles in internet capital markets.
Wears a whole lot of hats.
Jeeves, GM, how are you doing?
Good GM.
Kawhi Leonard is a bad man.
I showed that last night.
But man, markets look great.
CNBC headlines right now. Dow rebounds a thousand
points on hopes of trade fight de-escalation. Then you look at other places, Wall Street
Journals touting some positive headlines, Yahoo Finance touting positive headlines.
It feels like the winds potentially could be shifting here. I'm pumped to dive into it with
you guys. I'm excited to dive into that as well. Before we do, folks, 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.
If you want to learn more, follow at Wallet Connect on X and Telegram to stay ahead of what's next.
New out of Wallet Connect here this past week.
So they have launched a new campaign with Layer 3 with 200,000 other WCT tokens up for grabs for those who stake.
So go take a look at that.
That WCT token, by the way, still trading at a $400 million FDV.
So congrats to that Wallet Connect team again on a huge loss.
Love partnering with them.
And folks, before we get started on the show, one 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, and 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, now let's get into it here on today's show.
I'm going to fire up the screen share for those who are in the stream, and we will get that stream link shared out here very shortly.
So bear with us there. I'm starting with this tweet from Deez, just to set the stage from how
different things are over the last two weeks. Two weeks ago, Bitcoin, 75K. ETH, 1450. Soul,
under 100. Hype was under $10.
Now this morning, if you haven't taken a look at the coin board,
Bitcoin at $91,000.
ETH at $1,700.
Sold at $145.
Hype near $19.
And Farcoin, over $1.
It's been quite the turnaround.
Of course, this comes in a bit of a divergence from the equity markets. So stocks are still down over the past five days. The S&P is up today. I think Jeev just mentioned a big rally,
but the S&P is still down 2% on the week. The dollar has been dropping. It's up today, but still down about 1.5% or so on the week.
10-year, hanging out at 4.38%.
One of the biggest headlines of the past week has been gold.
So gold has just been rocketing.
Hit $3,500 an ounce yesterday.
It's up 6% on the week, now up nearly 30% on the year, outperforming just about everything.
In the crypto space, we do have some nice headlines. So Bitcoin has been outperforming.
People are dancing around the decoupling term. We don't necessarily have to go there
here today. Institutions are driving a lot of this run. So MetaPlanet, the Japanese microstrategy,
they keep buying. They're over $400 million. Saylor bought another $555 million last week.
And those ETFs yesterday, $381 million in net inflows across the Bitcoin ETFs, folks. That's
the highest daily total since January 31st. So nearly a three-month high there. And it's not just Bitcoin.
So Solana has been catching some love in this as well, perhaps at the expense of Ethereum.
Mike Nubberg's Galaxy just swapped $100 million in each position over to Solana. We've got some
other Solana headlines, like a new publicly traded company,
Upexi, raising $100 million
to build a corporate treasury of Solana.
So Solana definitely catching some love,
as is one of its leading meme coins.
Fartcoin now breaking into the top five.
Love this coverage here from Decrypt,
overtaking Bonk, closing in on Trump as it goes over $1, $1.05 here as we look at the chart this morning.
So stocks down, chopping, Bitcoin, crypto, perhaps outperforming.
Peter, I'll toss it to you.
Just reactions to this macro, where stocks are going, where crypto is going.
How are you feeling here late April 2025?
Well, it's always nice when you have a green day.
It certainly feels better than a lot of the red days that we've had.
I mean, every week emphasizing piercing volatility.
That's been the case both to the upside and to the downside.
I think the most interesting thing to note is just kind of the flee from
where a lot of capital has been hanging out
in the Magnificent Seven.
Obviously, those charts are up today,
but broadly, it's been a really bad chart
for the Mag-7.
And that capital is looking to go elsewhere.
And gold has been a huge beneficiary.
That's an incredible move for gold.
It's moving almost like a crypto asset at this point in time. I imagine that will slow down at
some point, but definitely something that I've been monitoring really closely. And then, of course,
we're happy to see Bitcoin and crypto soak up some of that capital as well. I think Bitcoin's trading somewhat similar to
kind of a mix of the QQQs and gold, which is hopefully what, you know, over time,
we're hopeful that it trades more and more like digital gold. And then the 10-year is probably
the most concerning thing to me. We've had all this market sell off and everything else in the
10-year is just stubbornly high. So the bond market's telling you, um, you know, the Trump administration, even with a weaker
dollars, not getting what they want with a lower 10 year. So tons of risks still out there. Um,
it's really hard, uh, from a capital allocation standpoint, knowing where to go. Uh, it's easy
to feel smart over the last couple of being long gold being long bitcoin but uh
who knows what's going to happen going forward it's it's a really tricky environment allocate
capital but uh yeah days like today do give you some some hope and uh it's definitely good to see
something like fart coin trade well uh when you can have alpha in a specific sector um that feels
nice so farquins getting a lot of love on the timeline i'm not
sure that's a good thing necessarily i don't know how do you guys feel about farquins i know we
normally see that for the end but uh i'm really struggling with what to do with that i'm happy
i'm back in in the mix i still think farquins a lot of asymmetry but it is getting touted like
crazy so curious how you guys think about farcoin
just alone in the fear and greed world right now yeah i share those concerns so of course
i'm very happy to see the performance up over 5x off the bottom now um was chatting with the
fomo our crew after the show this morning and it's like is it it too consensus? Like, is everyone in on this trade now?
Which is kind of how it feels when you look at the timeline.
But the flip side is that the timeline is still incredibly quiet right now.
A lot of people are just gone, checked out.
So while it may feel like it's a consensus trade,
there still isn't necessarily consensus capital behind it just yet.
And still no central exchange listings
on this thing. So there are still catalysts
to come. One thing too, just to remember
our algorithm, since we type Fartcoin and we look at Fartcoin tweets
it's heavily incentivized to show us more fartcoin stuff too.
We are seeing it everywhere, but it's also because we've been talking about it for a while.
Personally, I still haven't sold any.
And I'd be waiting for more of an explosive weekly move where the price just doubles again.
more of like a explosive weekly move where the price just doubles again.
And then I would probably be selling what I have left or taking profit off
the table,
but I'm still holding it here.
So maybe that's a sign that you should sell some here since I'm still
holding it.
Like let's look at these weekly moves on the top of the meme leaderboard.
Farcoins up 21%.
It's kind of in line.
So like Pepe is up 18% on the week.
You've got Bonk, Floki up 14%.
Whiff is up 18%.
So it's not even like it's really outperforming the broader sector all that much.
So I think that's a sign perhaps that it's
not an overblown
rally just yet.
And again, maybe this
is a meme. Maybe this is just me talking out
my ass.
Farcoin doesn't feel like it should be the fifth meme
in this list.
It feels like a substantial spot is higher.
Just wait for that next Murad list
to come out where Farartcoin's on it,
and then that's when you sell some.
Jeeps, how are you feeling?
It's beautiful.
I love seeing all of the folks who are calling for the death of meme coins.
Just look at these charts ripping.
Just look at these charts ripping.
Like you said, look at this seven days.
Like you said, look at this seven days.
14%.
The average here is probably 14% to 16%.
It's incredible.
Memes are not going anywhere.
Memes are a consumer and retail product.
And people love them.
People love to invest in them.
They see outsized returns from them.
I think they realize a lot of the companies that have real businesses in crypto are already really expensive. And
look, there's no ceiling for Farcoin. Price out Farcoin for me. Give me a cashflow model here.
I'm with you.
My bull case is I think it can be the number one meme.
A lot has to go right for that scenario. I think flipping Pepe as a near-term target makes a whole lot of sense.
And then as soon as that happens,
it's Shiba's squarely in the crosshairs.
For those listening, Doge is at
25 billion FDV. Shiba's at 7.6 billion. Pepe's at three and a half. So Farcorn would flip Pepe
if it gets past $3.50. That's 30% higher than it's already moved. In a previous all-time high,
it would need to go about 3x higher to flip Shiba there at current levels. It feels pie in the sky,
but it feels less pie in the sky at a dollar than it did at 30 cents just a
month or so ago.
And it's got pretty tremendous backing.
I'm curious,
Peter,
are you,
are you still in commerce?
Is it still coming up organically in conversations that you're in?
I don't know if you're still doing the poker game.
Oh yeah, no, it's everywhere. That's, that's why I? I don't know if you're still doing the poker game. Oh, yeah.
No, it's everywhere.
That's why I'm interested.
And I do think Dees makes a good point that the timeline is biased.
It's certainly the thing I'm searching the most on my phone, actively sweating.
That's probably the first thing I check in the morning.
It's like Fartcoin and Bitcoin prices.
So there's definitely a bias there,
but yeah,
I just think the biggest thing that works in its favor,
and I'm trying to just have a good gauge around is when TradFi is talking
about it and it's like,
fart coin is predicting what's going to happen.
It's a safe haven and all the jokes about fart coin are coming out.
So I'm seeing some of that.
And then hopefully we see more of it.
It's been fun watching Fartcoin have its run here.
But, yeah, from a macro perspective, just kind of going back,
I think the big news right now to me is just this flight of capital and people are looking for a a home and gold having this move is wild.
Specifically when you watch Asian markets open up, gold just is getting a constant bid.
So, yeah, there's a lot going on.
I know we're going to get into some of these other things.
I do not like Trump going after Powell, calling him a major loser, just childish.
childish. I really don't love to see that. I think one of the worst things that could happen right
I really don't love to see that.
now is if Powell was kicked out, which I don't think Trump has the authority to do, but we will
certainly see. I think Powell has done a really good job overall. He was a little late with
inflation, but navigated COVID extremely well. And I do think deserves credit pre uh Trump getting inaugurated
and coming into office I think they had landed the plane with a soft landing I mean what do you
guys think I mean that from my perspective seemed like the soft landing was kind of in place
yeah I agree Peter Powell was really orchestrating things well uh and then obviously got a wrench
thrown into his plans there.
I think the big question I'm wondering is, where does the Fed put and the Trump put stand currently?
Do you see the Fed put happening anytime soon?
Or do you think they'll sort of hold steady?
Or do you think they're forced?
What are your thoughts?
It's a great question.
If you had the answer, you could make a lot of money.
So we'll see.
I think it's from a probability perspective.
I think they want to wait and see,
especially given how they've telegraphed most of their moves.
And I thought Powell and his last time he spoke was somewhat hawkish.
So I think they want to see what transpires.
And these tariffs are a real wrench and really tough to kind of gauge all the implications.
So I know Trump is yearning for lower rates and calling Powell a loser.
But I would assume that they stay somewhat steady here.
And I think the probabilities are kind of in range.
Maybe we see 25 bips here in June like this is suggesting.
But it's tough.
It's a really tough thing to gauge.
And I would love to see the 10-year going down.
I mean, I trust the bond market over pretty much any market in the world.
Yeah, for sure. I think the thing
that I've been trying to figure out lately is we've obviously had a lot of turmoil within the
tariffs. We've had a lot of turmoil with trade partners. It seems like Vance is over in India
right now trying to clear out a deal, which seems really positive. I'm trying to figure out where we go from a tax reform standpoint and what
type of either easing on taxes we see on the corporate or personal level.
That's, that's currently the curve ball that I think is in play at this moment.
You guys have any thoughts on that?
I don't know if I have any deep thoughts.
It feels like that's where Trump wants to go.
Probably maybe on both.
I think certainly on the personal level,
he's been telegraphing that for a while.
So I would be surprised if within two years before midterms,
there hasn't been some development there.
I have less of a pulse on the,
on the corporate level,
but that also seems to be perhaps in line with some broader deregulation and
ways to, to stimulate onshore business development,
which does also seem to be in line with what they're trying to do.
So I feel like it's going to happen,
but at the same time we've had a person come out and say,
I would be silly to go through these efforts of trying to cut spending and then also cut revenue.
So they have to figure out a way to finesse that calculus.
The biggest win and the obvious win that I think we'll see is deregulation specifically for banking.
And they kind of telegraphed that.
And that's going to be a huge buyer of treasuries.
We'll talk more about stable coins.
That's another thing that I think we'll see a ton of regulation around, which actually kind of works like deregulation normally would. I know that sounds contradictory, but I think clear
rules and incentives around some of these stable coins will actually encourage some of the biggest
actors to get in the space. That plus easing on the banking regulations should put a lot of capital
back into play, specifically to buy treasuries and other things. So I think that's the lowest hanging fruit. And then we have other complicated situations, tariffs. That's a
whole really, really big can of worms, really complicated overall. I don't have a strong view.
There's certainly a lot of strong views out there. You can consume that content. China's the big,
big one there. We'll see what transpires. And then, you know, we have
all these wars, which I know Jeeb Jeeb pointed out kind of, you know, a couple months ago,
those could be another bull case. If we do get peace, specifically with Russia and Ukraine,
somehow we maintain peace with China. I think one big risk to the downside would be an invasion of
Taiwan. So you have the geopolitical stuff as well, that's kind of hanging in the balance. So there's a lot of cross-currents. It's really tricky to figure out. But I do think there
are some kind of layup bets. And I think deregulation specifically in banking will be
very helpful to the economy and specifically with the bond market. And then also, I think
one thing we're closer to is stablecoin legislation, which I think is inevitable somewhat too.
Yeah, both of the acts for sure.
We can hop into those.
I've been diving in a bit.
But yeah, on the Russia-Ukraine side, it seems like Putin wants to get to the table with Zelensky here soon.
As to whether or not that's true or how true it is, really unclear.
True, it is. Really unclear.
But on the other side of it, it sounds like the U.S. potentially wants to back up a bit of their discussions here because they're not seeing progress.
I have no read on how that one de-escalates at this point.
It's a tough one.
Yeah.
Trump said this week. Who knows if that's true?
Let's hope he's right.
I think that's another potential catalyst.
You start talking about banking deregulation.
Maybe we go there a bit deeper and tie this to the broader stablecoin discussion.
One of the big headlines from the past week, from the past month,
are banks expanding their crypto operations.
So you've got Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered. This came out yesterday. They're going to banks expanding their crypto operations. So you've got Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered.
This came out yesterday.
They're going to be expanding their crypto operations in the U.S.
At the same time, kind of on the flip side,
Coinbase and Circle are reportedly seeking banking charters.
So the Wall Street Journal published this yesterday.
Banking licenses would allow Circle and Coinbase to hold customer funds directly without intermediaries.
It gives them access to the Fed payment rails.
They can issue stable coins with more legitimacy.
They can potentially get into offering yield-based products and more of the flexibility that comes with that banking charter.
So, geez, maybe I'll toss this one to you and go around the horn.
Kind of curious for your reactions to this,
perhaps the broader implications,
either of traditional banks coming into crypto
or crypto-native institutions getting into banking.
Yeah. I mean, competition is heating up in this space.
You have the consortium around USDG forming, right? That's like Robinhood, Visa, and some other folks. Clearly, Coinbase and Circle are aligning very closely and trying to really be that next large neobank that exists.
that next large neobank that exists.
Competition's heating up in the space
and they need to move fast.
They know they have first mover advantage.
They know they have scale,
but people see this as one of the biggest opportunities
in the space right now.
On the venture side of the house,
seeing whether it's stablecoin companies,
neobanks, money movement via APIs
and or a lot of folks targeting LATAM and Southeast Asia
for direct consumer product neobanks.
This is becoming a massive sector.
And this is banking 2.0, if you want to call it that.
So from my standpoint, I think this is great.
I think you're just going to continue to see people innovate.
You're going to continue to see these players move in this direction for
being banks.
I want to ask a direct follow-up here specifically on Coinbase.
Like one of the perhaps issues with Coinbase that doesn't get discussed a
ton is there the whole security risks, ongoing scams?
I can speak for personal experience.
I get once or a couple times a week,
scam text from a fake Coinbase security team,
fake email, fake phone call.
And it's one thing when it's your crypto holdings.
I feel like that risk is much bigger if it was your bank account,
like your, your, your savings.
Are you, do you think they're ready to make that?
Yeah.
It's a good question, Tyler. Are they ready? Who's ever ready?
You know, it's like, it's like that old saying of like,
is the president ready to be the president
when they get elected?
It's like, no, they just step into that role.
I think for this one,
that's a good point that you bring up with the scams.
I think that's just rampant across a lot of things
because, you know, all of your data
is probably sold on the dark web.
I'm sure this information is easily accessible to criminals,
but I get the same stuff that you get as well.
But it's not rampant across banking.
I don't lose any sleep that I'm going to get scammed out of my same as
accounted at JPMorgan Chase.
Yeah.
I feel like a lot of that, and identity theft does happen,
but you're right.
Like no one, I shouldn't say this, but like it's less likely, right?
Someone comes and takes money from your checking account or, you know, if they use your credit card, obviously there's, there's preventions and regulations and laws and rules and other stuff in place to, to help mitigate a lot of that.
That maybe doesn't exist here.
Cause you're right.
Someone transfers your Bitcoin out.
Sayonara.
So we'll see um
if i'm getting the coinbase stuff like just sorry to interject i'm getting the coinbase stuff multiple times a week like all it just it's it feels like it's getting worse and that's because
they're probably having success i mean i think i mean we've heard a lot about some of these hacks and I think people have gotten taken advantage of multiple times.
People are pretty dumb with their Coinbase accounts, which is why it's so prevalent.
I get just as many Coinbase ones as I do PayPal.
I get fake PayPal texts and emails every day too.
Like, oh, you're sending a payment to somebody and like no i'm not
yeah it's been bad lately i've been getting ones from um easy pass has been one of the big yeah
yeah i get those all these random ones and i'm just like folks stay vigilant out there like
don't click don't engage don't like your your bank is likely not going to text you google even
never stuff like people are constantly resetting your Google password.
Like stay vigilant, get proper training in this stuff,
know what to look out for.
Being your own bank comes with a lot of responsibility
in some ways right now.
It does.
So that was on the Coinbase side.
So another American company here, Circle, huge announcement,
launching a new product,
effectively this new payments remittance platform, 24-7 real-time global transfers using USDC and EURC, so that euro stablecoin, as they look to full-on compete with Visa and MasterCard.
So timely announcement ahead of a potential ipo and we've been talking
about that ipo over the last few weeks our initial targets were high and it kind of they shared their
financials it looked like coinbase is maybe eating some other or drinking some of their milkshake but
now they're like hey launch new products um i'll look up the visa and mastercard market caps here
behind the scenes, but James,
maybe I'll toss it to you and then we can go around the horn on this one.
Does this make you more bullish on Circle?
Or is there a reaction to this headline?
Good question.
So I had a tweet earlier this week just about how stable coin blocks,
focused blockchains are just becoming all the rage right now.
We're seeing a lot of this on the venture side. A number of companies have been funded. You can see companies like Plasma,
who are backed by Framework, and a handful of other ones that are strictly just focusing on
stablecoin payments and movements. Some of these are permissioned, some are permissionless,
and they're all going after the same market.
They want to become the new age payment rail.
I think the thing to look out for here is this is great.
I think it's great for them to go after this.
Circle and Coinbase certainly have some distribution.
But going back to USDG, they already have Visa signed up.
They already have Robinhood locked in.
If a dedicated chain is built for that payment network, I think I'm going to be a little bit more bullish there.
They have just large scale distribution at that point.
And so I think what you have to think about in all these situations is what is the distribution of this token?
How can they begin using these tokens in the back end without the users knowing?
And Robinhood is very ahead in this area.
If you listen to what Lass said over the past few weeks, as he's been on various podcasts, he's talking about how Robinhood is
using stable coins for settlement over the weekends and settlement in general. So I think
it's great to see this on the circle side, but I think you're going to see anywhere from five to
15 dedicated stable coin blockchains. Plasma being, like I said, one of the big ones right now,
Medicated stablecoin blockchains.
Plasma being, like I said, one of the big ones right now,
that's a zero-fee USDT movement chain.
Zero-fee is huge.
That's what people are used to.
So I think that's kind of where things are going to evolve to.
And Mando had that great tweet this week.
Yeah, I'm trying to pull that out.
About stablecoins.
I'll read this out.
So he said a few days ago,
I'm increasingly worried that stablecoins are just going to replace all L1 tokens as currencies,
except Bitcoin.
And all we are left with are Web3 versions of Visa and MasterCard stock trading on fee multiples.
It's an interesting one.
But reality, yeah.
I mean, reality is that corporations don't want to go buy a gas token to go move money, right?
That's part of their central operation.
It's part of their business.
I think it's why some of these blockchains are targeting zero fee or very low fee and or being able to pay the gas in whatever stable coin you have that's liquid.
I see his argument.
I see his argument.
I'm curious.
D's, maybe I'll toss it to you.
Deez, maybe I'll toss it to you.
I'm curious.
Have you historically,
when you're trading NFTs or tokens,
are you trading from the chain gas token
or are you trading to USDC?
The gas token, like 99% of the time.
I'd say the only times I really considered USD
were like in the last couple of months.
Just with Ethereum being so unreliable and me being considerably less bullish on it,
I've bought a few things just focused on USD price or Bitcoin price and not the native gas token.
But historically, it was always ETH.
And then over the last few months, it's been like, you know, I'm not really as bulled up on ETH.
But I still do think there will be a period of outperformance for ETH.
I do think new people are thinking way more in USDC, though, especially punks and stuff.
When you look at punks and you're like, oh, it's 50 ETH.
the ETH that's kind of expensive you're like okay and then you look at it and you're like oh that's
That's kind of expensive.
You're like, OK.
And then you look at it and you're like, oh, that's like 90 grand.
like 90 grand that feels like a big disconnect compared to like the historical values that people
are uh anchor biased in their head too i have made a bit of a switch like you historically i was
always gas token so ETH for nfts holding soul to trade in out of of meme coins. And then kind of just a month ago, I started using USDC.
So if I'm selling, I'm selling to USDC.
And that was largely because ETH was just going straight down.
Even Solana was going straight down, right?
Now they both are rebounding.
Solana 40% off the bottom.
So perhaps that was a mistake,
but it has been a bit of a mindset shift.
And now that you know that that is an option,
you've got the muscle memory to do it.
If you're selling to soul,
like that is an additional trade.
Like you were taking a soul position versus just.
It's always paying the ass for taxes.
When you're going into gas and out of gas tokens, that always makes taxes a bit more of a pain in the ass for taxes. When you're going into gas and out of gas tokens, that always makes
taxes a bit more of a pain in the ass.
Are you guys
saying that 1 ETH no longer equals
1 ETH?
1 ETH in 2025 equals
half an ETH in any
other world that we have in our head.
Yeah, and there's
just a laundry list of
large NFT sales, mostly pun punks that have sold for more
ethereum than they were bought but at huge usd losses um yeah artifaction had a nice little
dutch auction on easter sunday that was something else oh what were the results of that i actually
i forgot uh sold for 300 he sold game and lost a couple hundred thousand dollars
that's right it was the zero addy punk sold for uh i think a 47 eighth gain in a 290 000 loss
yeah i woke up and was like oh what's this a dutch auction on easter that seems interesting
and then he just accepted a bid like 100 ETH under his ass.
It's crazy to see the Zero Addy move.
They're more rare than Aliens.
Yeah, they're also... Not as desirable, but...
Yeah, they're not super hot.
I think the only one that would be super desirable
would be if Brian Armstrong decides he needs one.
That would be an iconic one.
But he hasn't decided he needs one.
He decided that he could just have a bass punk
and a hard day.
I'll pull up the punk here.
Don't be hitting on the bass punks.
Just coin it.
Just coin it.
Just coin it.
Just coin it.
Maybe we go there.
So we want to talk to Zora TG.
So Zora came out with the news this weekend
that they are going to drop their token on Wednesday, tomorrow.
This comes after a large marketing spree,
perhaps a nice term for it,
where we saw Jesse Polak come out,
tell everyone to coin everything.
He launched a token basis for,
he didn't personally launch it.
I don't know if he actually did it,
but he was touting a token basis for everyone,
which pumped, sold off,
and then pumped again.
It unleashed a firestorm of debate.
Dees, kind of curious for your reactions
to kind of what played out this weekend
and then perhaps part two,
what does it mean for Zora and this TGE tomorrow?
I mean, my first reaction at the timeline
was just Omega cringe.
This idea that every thought, every breath should be coined and speculated on
feels a little unintuitive to me and almost like a Black Mirror episode.
That being said, I'm sure the Zora will get the day one Coinbase listing.
I'm not the Zora will get the day one Coinbase listing pump.
I'm not a buyer.
I'll probably sell whatever airdrop I get immediately.
They've come out and said the tokens are just for fun.
So that's always really bullish.
So I'll have a lot of fun selling it.
That's normally the most fun part about getting an airdrop in my experience is just hitting the sell button and then forgetting about it for the rest of the life uh but yeah i just think the whole coin everything shit's
really cringe um i don't really have too much else to say on it i i haven't been participating
um outside of linking bases for pimping and squirting um and memeing it
so were you deeper into zora over the last months and years no i think i used it more back when it
was more of an nft platform honestly um we had the zora guys on the pod like they were our second
episode or something like three or four years ago.
And I was more into it then than I am now.
But wish them the best of luck.
I mean, at the end of the day, I understand why these companies are doing this, right?
There's very little money for them to make an NFT.
They've raised tens of millions of dollars.
They have ex-Coinbase founders on the team.
I mean, ex-Coinbase employees as founders on the team.
They have tons of relationships with people on base and Coinbase.
Coinbase Ventures is a big investor in them.
I understand the incentives here for all parties involved.
I just... It feels a bit inauthentic and cringe to me and I would be a net seller of the token.
Yeah, so I guess for a little bit of historical context, Zora started out more as an artist-focused
platform enabling easy minting of NFTs. They then over time kind of branched into the ability to launch tokens alongside nfts and then
i think as a part of this late shift it became the default that you would launch a token trading like
a meme coin effectively anytime you went to to mint your work. Jesse has compared it to minting or tokenizing Instagram posts or,
or TikTok videos.
And now I'm sharing a tweet where he says,
every time I collect a coin,
it is a micro grant to the, the creator.
So he is sharing micro grants to those who are minting their pieces,
which is an optimistic what of looking at this transaction and transfer.
Jeebs, I'm curious if you were following this, have any reactions?
Yeah, I've been like lightly following it.
I think there might be something here.
I think it's a relatively unknown unknown at this point.
it's highly you know it's very much put into the experimentation category mike um
It's highly, you know, it's very much put into the experimentation category.
i don't butchers last time but it's a mike ipolito from from blockworks one of the blockworks founders
he had a he had a tweet just saying who's the biggest bear on zora slash token-based media
he says i'm a long-term very bullish on this space i'd love to debate on a podcast. So I'm excited for him to go
and debate someone on this specific topic. I know the Blockworks guys have been very
pro-tokenization of media. I think the one thought that I have in general about token-gated access
and or token-based media in general is that from a consumer standpoint, it's a much different model
to what we've been sort of groomed into with Web2. So for most of the services that we use right now,
it's sort of a subscription buffet. So think of Spotify, for example. I pay my monthly fee,
I get access to unlimited content, Netflix as well, right? Any type of
streaming app. And I think consumers have learned and love to love that model because it's pretty
simple. It's pretty easy. You get unlimited access, you pay your monthly fee, that's it.
Now, I think from the creator side, there's a lot of thoughts about how maybe that's not
a great model. And so I think there's this big divergence here.
And so experimentation like this, I think,
is trying to get closer to something that weighs a bit more
on the creator side of the house.
As to where this goes, I'm really not that deep in this.
I know a few folks that are way more versed in it.
And I'm going to look out for that podcast from Mike
because I'm sure he has some really strong opinions on where this is going to go. I feel like the only,
I'm all for experimentation. I feel like any bull case that you lay out for this
is somewhat disconnected from reality. We're talking about a potential global recession
right now. And at the same time, folks are going to start paying for,
for,
for pieces of content.
They're going to start paying for Instagram posts to support creators.
Like I don't buy that.
It feels out of touch with reality.
It's not a consumer behavior that I would ever execute.
Like I'm not scrolling my Instagram feed and saying,
man,
I wish I could pay for,
for this specific post right now.
And I agree with you tyler yeah i'd be curious as to if like the spotify's of the world so like we used to be able to buy individual songs on apple
before the spotify subscription model i mean compare consumption if you had to if you had
to pick and choose which songs individually you could buy versus having the unlimited.
I mean, I think most people are going to... I feel like they would consume less. If I had to pay for each individual Netflix show,
I would probably be watching a lot fewer shows.
Or pirating would maybe go up again.
I think that sort of spot, like the rise of these monthly subscription
unlimited plans
as potentially like i haven't used limewire in years right because i have access to all the
content that i want i do pay for youtube premium on a monthly basis because i just think it's a
great service no ads um and so i think you're right. Like the current format for consumers specifically is really good. And it's going to be hard for you to pull them away from that and say, hey, pay more money or paper sip or pay, you know, micro pay for to read this article. I mean, I don't see the path to how we get there, but maybe it's possible.
how we get there but maybe it's possible at the same time i i love the idea of blockchain based
media so especially when we were we're going through this fake news decade it feels like i
was going to say meta but it's more than a meta and what can you trust and having blockchain
verification to know if if a title changed if if core content was changed over time. I love that idea. I don't
know why necessarily it needs to be tradable. So there's still a difference between blockchain and
speculative tokens. Yeah. I think that there's some arguments for, let's say I'd purchase a movie.
There's certain rights associated to that, that I can then go out and like rent that movie.
Potentially you see stuff like like Libby or other libraries that,
that utilize those,
those digital laws.
There's some arguments there for it,
but like you said,
Tyler,
I just,
I'm not sure it's going to be hard to change consumer behavior at this
point,
but maybe someone can do it.
With that said, zooming in on
the airdrop tomorrow and the
token going live, I believe it's
going to be 30% circulating.
So it's 10 billion tokens.
3 billion are going to be circulating.
I think the token will do well
on the first couple of days.
300 million FTV, that's 10 cents.
I'd say 300 to 500 million is probably like my base case,
and I wouldn't be surprised if it goes a little higher than that.
Do you have a ballpark range?
Where is Oritrade's day one?
Assuming a Coinbase listing.
I think I would be surprised if it goes over 500.
That seems maybe like the upper range in my head,
but I don't really know.
I haven't fully looked at the tokenomics.
How much is actually circulating of that 500?
It's an important question to ask too,
but I also don't remember what they raised at last time.
But over 500, I would definitely be a little surprised.
But I mean, we saw shit.
Wasn't Magic Eden trading over like a couple billion on day one,
if my memory serves me correctly?
Yeah, we've seen some of these tokens come out pretty high.
We've seen Kaido over a billion.
Kaido got to over two.
I think it's better to suspend disbelief and see what happens.
Because when you have a low circulating amount,
I really do think that FDB doesn't matter nearly as much.
You just have people who are like,
oh, this is getting a lot of attention right now.
I need to buy it so I can sell it.
But in my head, it's
not worth over $500 for sure, so
maybe that means it runs to over a billion
on low circulation.
Do you guys think day one
instant listing?
Yes.
I think it's more likely than not, yeah,
given all of the
incentives at play for
all the parties involved. It could be one of those delayed, maybe. And seeing some of the incentives at play for all the parties involved.
It could be one of those delayed.
And seeing some of the other.
Yeah, I don't know.
But it'll come.
I think we've seen that.
The Coinbase.
I'd be more surprised if it's not listed within the first day
than if it is listed.
I think Binance even telegraphed that it'll be on Binance too.
So it's going to be everywhere uh so expect some fireworks day one we've got about 10 uh 10
minutes left in the show i want to get deeper into our trading round table we've talked about
far coin a bit we've talked about zora tomorrow another one of our our favorites on the show, Hype, Hyperliquid.
And I'm coping on this one, on the sidelines.
So I did sell my position during the exploit around the $13 range.
It went to $9.50.
At that point, I was getting greedy.
I was really hoping to see a 7 or 8 handle and was going to attempt to buy my bag back there and just didn't.
And now it's at $18.50, 40% higher.
Then, Peter, I feel like you mentioned in our chat that this is coming up in conversations you're in.
So I'm curious what you're hearing, what people are saying, and kind of what your point of view here is on Hype.
Yeah, Hype's been such a roller coaster for me personally.
Missed the air drop, which would have been nice.
I know Jeeves is in the same boat.
Fortunately, Dee's talked me into buying.
I think I bought my first round like $6 to $8.
It was kind of like the range I bought.
I was fortunate to sell some and feeling pretty smart, you know,
in the mid to high 20s.
And then made just a bunch of errors, buying when it was going up, selling when it was going down, kind of in the mix.
Just having conviction, losing conviction because of the exploit risk.
And then basically got rid of the majority of my bag at a similar time to you, Tyler.
I have a minimum bag that I'm like, I'm staking this.
I'm not going to touch it.
If it goes to zero, it goes to zero.
But I'm going to at least have some small allocation to hype, which is where I'm sitting
now.
And this run has been extremely painful because it's something that I think we've all been
excited about.
But there really are trade-offs here.
The interesting notes, though, in terms of who reached out,
one of the best DFS players, MIT guy,
has made millions and millions of dollars.
I would guess Lifetime is up over $10 million
playing daily fantasy sports, which is truly remarkable.
There's probably five to seven people who have accomplished that.
It takes a really high amount of discipline,
intelligence, modeling, et cetera, to do that.
This person's also had a lot of success in angel investing,
owns a little bit of Bitcoin, not really a big crypto guy,
but reached out to me recently and was like,
hey, I'm long this hype token.
The person I respect most in crypto said it's one of the best things to own
and did some research and made a real bet on hype um so i took that as a signal and then
literally the next day um another friend uh who's brilliant options trader uh executes really well
kind of the delta neutral strategy um or i shouldn't say delta neutral, but is in the arbitrage game in the bond market, which is a very sophisticated market.
Extremely sharp guy, borderline savant in my eyes.
He reached out to me and was like, hey, I don't even know if he owns Bitcoin.
But it's like, oh, I started doing some research and I found out about this hype token and I made a real bet on it.
I found out about this hype token and I made a real bet on it.
So two people who are both really, really smart in different fields, not crypto native,
both reached out to me within a day about buying hype.
And of course, I'm sitting more on the sidelines than I ever have been outside of when I missed the airdrop on hype.
So I don't know. I'm still struggling.
We've talked a lot about
this. I do think there's a lot of smoke just around the security. I don't like that, you know,
the decision they made with the Jelly Jelly token. I thought that was quite bad. And I think kind of
a lot of crypto Twitter and a lot of influencers in the space have a similar view. But then at the
end of the day, I realize, and you know and we've come back to this so many times,
whether it be in crypto
or other aspects of life,
people are willing to trade their privacy
for convenience.
People are willing to give up decentralization
for convenience or just good UX.
And I think that's clearly the case here with Hype.
I don't think people really care
that it's truly not decentralized.
I wish that was more the case in some ways. I think that's a key part of what crypto set out
to be. But more and more, it just seems like there's a lot of convenience around centralization.
And I actually listened to Invest Like the Best, the podcast that came out today.
And there's some really interesting conversations just around how there are real
reasons to prefer some of the centralized things,
but you should always have a choice.
You should be able to basically,
if you want the convenience of a centralized exchange or whatever,
that's great,
but you should have a choice to get your crypto off and then be in control
of it.
So I don't know.
I rambled a lot there.
I'm struggling personally with hype.
I'm definitely coping to a degree,
but a lot of signal in terms of two really sophisticated people that
normally make good bets getting into this,
which I think is quite interesting.
I tried to make that point that people don't really care about
decentralization when it was getting flooded to shit on the show.
You did.
And it didn't seem like anyone wanted to hear that.
But I feel like time and time again, especially in crypto,
the stated preference versus revealed preference stuff we see
is just so drastically different.
People want decentralization.
They want this and that.
But then they use the platforms that are centralized and just you know better uh or
maybe better isn't the right word but just fits their needs and is working me and um so i i do
i'm not buying hype here but i haven't sold any um so i'm just i'm very comfortably allocated it's
um still my second biggest bag behind Bitcoin. Do you have any targets?
Peter, I have a question.
Go ahead, Jeeps.
Just one quick on Peter.
Your friend that went and bought,
is he concerned about any of these risks?
Does he not see them as risks?
Is he aware of them?
I don't think they're aware of the risks.
I asked the guy who's the DFS guy
if he'd heard about the Jelly Jelly thing
and had not heard. Definitely. Neither one of these people aware of the risks. I asked the guy who's the DFS guy if he'd heard about the Jelly Jelly thing,
had not heard. Definitely. Neither one of these people, I think, is deep in the crypto streets.
Just say, no, this is a really good business model. They're pumping a ton of the money back into the token. And even like the Thousand X guys on their podcast that just came out,
they talked about how this is what they, you they – they both are really comfy and hype.
So it seems to be kind of catching the narrative again.
One of my close friends, business partners, were aligned on a lot of things.
And I got rid of a lot of my hype kind of during this the jelly jelly
thing and he was uh buying on the way down and uh he's looking pretty smart right now so i i do have
a lot i have a lot there's a lot of coping going on for me i guess right now there is one thing like
i'm sorry we always because we're so you know i think like that the elephant we're like so close
to this elephant that
is the crypto space and we see all these faults in it and we see all these reasons not to buy things
it reminds me a little bit of just like how we all really probably missed ripple because we think
ripple is a steaming pile of centralized shit and the people who buy it are just like i was a good
narrative you know banking and stuff and it's like i'm not saying hype is a steaming pile of shit or anything, but
I'm just saying we get too caught
up sometimes being so
close to the elephant that
we don't really...
I think we flood ourselves out
of good trades
a lot because of that.
Whereas the people from the outside are just like,
well, this is a good business.
There's cash flowing back into the token.
They're growing.
They're eating up market share.
This is good.
And then that's it.
There's no like, oh, well, the decentralization risk and what if North Korea?
There's none of that.
I think you're right, Deez.
I think you're 100% right that people, one, a lot of folks that invest in crypto are a bit more surface level. They're not here. They're not paying as close attention to some of the risks. They quite frankly don't care. To them, this is a what people are looking at. This one stat, and this is probably leading a lot of inflows right now into hype.
Just click on projects on the side there and then filter a sort of annualized revenue.
Well, I've been looking at what made more in fees than Sala yesterday.
Yeah.
It's like, I think this is what folks are looking at right here.
That's a nice chart.
People care about revenue. People care about revenue.
People care about revenue generation.
People want to see that.
That's a current narrative within the crypto space.
We want product market fit,
apps that are generating fees,
and then fees that are being used for token buybacks,
burns, etc.
They rank number two behind Tron here.
Are we buying Tron now, Jeeps?
Second question.
Never again.
Not after
the Tron meme coin season.
I don't know.
There's some interesting...
When you look at this market cap
to revenue,
it does paint an interesting picture, especially
in this new world where we're
going to start valuing crypto protocols
based on more real metrics and numbers.
Hyperliquid's trading.
Pretty crazy.
If you look, you can see it.
Yeah.
If you actually click on Hyperliquid,
there's some good data in here.
They pull some comps down below for other L1s,
like other protocols that they would compete with.
It's clear that Hype is a great product.
It's clear that people like to use Hype.
Institutions are starting to use it as well.
And so, yeah, there's some risks here, but I can understand why people are purchasing it to some degree.
but I can understand why people are purchasing it to some degree.
Aerodrome looks a little cheap on this list as well as does Jupiter.
This is an interesting way of looking at it.
I need to spend more time doing this.
I think on hyperliquid, it still might just be even simpler.
If you just look at the signals.
So, Peter, you shared some strong signals
you know two very sharp individuals that you know who've chosen to
build positions and then if you look at like what are the fastest movers
over the last two weeks and Bitcoin's rebound off the bottom
Fartcoin, Hyperliquid, Solana are three that come to mind
Tau is also a big one we talked a little bit Tau. I think we can save that for another show.
But I mean,
Hyperliquid is right in that mix.
It's one of the fastest horses.
It's hard to ignore that.
Even if you just want to trade narratives,
like it's got the narrative trade.
It's got the fundamentals.
It's a good looking horse.
So I think what's my likely outcome is,
is rebuying my bag 40 to 50% higher.
Cause I don't want to be sidelined
for a potential run but it's also up 80% in the last two weeks so gonna have to look for an
entry perhaps DCA a bit Dees I'm curious do you have a sell target I think you you were fairly
public about selling some at 27 last time is Is that, are you going to unload more at that number?
Or how are you feeling about it?
I think it all just depends on the overall state of the market
when we get there, right?
Like if it just spiked up 2x while Bitcoin is like under 100k,
like if it goes like $30 and Bitcoin is still under 100k
and Solana is still under like 170 then i'd probably trim some um but if
the whole market moves and it moves it's similar to fart coin right where like if the whole market
moves with it um and it's not outperforming insanely then i'll probably just hold it like
looking at the users the revenue the fees the volume like seeing it continually grow
um especially as price goes down in some cases like that's it's hard for me to want to sell it
like i the older i get and the bigger i size into things the more i just like holding it for longer
periods of time and just like not trying to day trade it
or trade it on a short time frame.
It's like this is something that we might see once a cycle,
like a product like this in my head.
So it's very comfortable just holding it through the ebb and flows
and not trying to just optimally play it.
For me, optimally playing it, I think, is this,
because I've come to realize that I'm not the best at timing things
in bigger position sizes.
Maybe I'm better at small positions,
flipping in and out of those,
but something that's my second biggest bag that I really believe in,
it's just, I think, more plus EV for me,
and less mentally taxing just to hold it
and continue to monitor the key metrics.
Really strong advice.
I think it'd be really helpful just,
you've laid out some of the risks here.
I think the bull case is clear,
but you've laid out some risks.
It's definitely stuck with me.
There's risks in all these protocols,
but I think the audience might get some value just kind of hearing some of
the, you know, the other side,
if you were to paint a bear case running hype and just the hyperliquid
platform in general.
I think the biggest risk at this point is that there's maybe a bit of an illusion that it's a, that it's a DEX, that it's decentralized. And I think the jelly jelly incident really paints the picture that it's not. group of people to roll things back or change Oracle prices or, you know, whatever maybe needs
to be done to protect the home base. And so I think the biggest risk is that they showed their
cards that it's more of a centralized product than most people maybe think. And then if you,
you know, put some pieces together, you can look at this and say, maybe this is
a non-KYC Binance type product, a non-KYC trading interface. And sure, US citizens
quote unquote can't use it, but I know a lot of US citizens that use this product.
And so at the end of the day, there's some regulations
in place there for things like this. And so I think that's my biggest concern for this product
specifically. Well, I appreciate you sharing the bear cases, always trying to give level
points of view, paint a picture of both sides sides so this is a big one i think these what you did
mention that kind of stuck with me like could this be like is this a once in this a once a cycle
product you had to rank the products that could potentially get to that level i think this is up
there you know with the risks of course as a part of it but the upside is also there what are the other products like what other
products have been built like that that's the thing i keep coming back to what would we point
to as like the best products of this cycle in terms of business i'm not fun i don't know if
the product itself is the best but the business behind it has been... Oh, yeah. And Tether is a great product.
I mean, anything tied to this casino is great, right?
Yeah.
If we go back and look at that list, exactly.
It's like Pump, Jupiter, Aerodrome.
What else do we have coming out of this one?
Etherfy.
Athena's been amazing.
Wasn't it Athena?
Yeah, a lot of the rwa sort of synthetic
stable coin on-chain hedge fund strategy stuff has been great so basically just like trading
fintech exchange like that that's like is there anything else that we've that cryptos built this
like this like getting real traction that's probably the best consumer product, Tyler.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Great consumer product.
But what other consumer products have been built
and are sticky at this point?
I'm rooting for like a Farcaster or something like that to do it.
I know there's been a lot of attempts at similar things.
It doesn't really feel like anything else has crossed the chasm.
And then the other thing too with hype is just the tokenomics behind it compared to the tokenomics of everything else we talked about
a bunch of those companies raised a bunch of money
they have a bunch of insider allocations and whatnot
hype is really the only one with that immaculate conception type tokenomics structure
that's probably the best point for it, I would say.
Yeah, for sure.
It's definitely the biggest differentiator.
Yeah, it's that plus the underlying business, right?
Those two things combined is the huge bull case.
They understand the pumponomics well.
Yeah.
Jeff has made himself and a lot of others very wealthy.
They kind of pioneered
this new...
I mean, it's not new, but it feels like it's
back in vogue, the buyback meta.
And several other protocols
have started following suit, and they've
started to catch some traction. It does
seem like the Hyperliquid team
is the one who kind of got that back
front and center. I mean, the first token that ever killed me who kind of got that back front and center i mean the
first token that ever uh killed me on like the buyback or buyback and burn was bnb back in like
two cycles ago that's that was what they were known for and uh worked out well for them and
that's everyone's favorite comp yeah yeah for hyper liquid it's the only one that makes sense
right like from a token model standpoint,
oh, I own this token. Do I really want to govern anything? It's like, no, I want this token to go up. This is my perceived value in the underlying organization, right? This is my piece of stock
that I have in this underlying company. And so, yeah, I mean, the model makes sense for
crypto companies, right? When you're generating a ton of revenue, like some of these services are, that you would then go and, you know, help your holders a little.
I think we'll see more and more of that to come.
And the companies, the projects that were doing it are standing out.
I got one other one that's coming back from the dead.
I, to me, is still maybe my favorite example of a crypto project,
and it's biased towards me, but Zed is relaunching on base.
Digital horse racing, it makes so much sense.
It's so fun.
And that's actually one of my favorite NFT examples.
It's a bummer that it kind of fizzled out,
but I'm hoping we see something like that work.
Like all the NFT gaming stuff,
it'll be interesting to see if anything can take off.
But I really love Zed,
and I know a lot of people that did as well.
And base seems like a great place for that game.
So shout out to Zed.
I saw that that launched,
and maybe that can be another one of those things
that crosses like
Polymarket. We'll see.
Curiously, they chose base over
MegaEth. Having the
fastest horses on the fastest
chain there
would have been an
interesting narrative as well.
I have no incentive by
that, by the way, on this stuff at all i that was i mean i was
up so much money on zed and just just mistakes were made but not a bad one it's something you
genuinely enjoy like being a part of right it's hard to take your uh enjoyment gaming brain out
of like oh this is that then i should sell it there's a good algorithm for
for that they can crack that code it's it makes a ton of sense that'd be like there's it's a to me
that's like one of the few things that i like it should be an mft the game makes sense horse racing
has always been popular and if it can be done in a fair, cool way with a good algorithm, doing it digitally.
I thought it was silly at first.
I actually thought digital horse racing was silly.
And then I think I was at a casino
and I saw how many people were playing digital craps
or digital roulette or these games
where it's like you could go to a live table right there,
but they actively chose to go play the digital one.
That's how big I Casino is. Shout out to
another partner, Yeet. We have a lot of
mutual friends there.
They've created a lot of cool custom games.
Really rooting for their success
and people love it.
Crypto Casinos did $80 billion
in casino revenue
in 2024.
So there's demand for the product.
Man, just shout out
to the 2021 hero.
We got Top Shot
and then Zed
back to back.
Right.
So I feel like some folks
who came in for Top Shot
moved over to Zed.
And then...
And Punks.
I was up millions
between Top Shot and Zed
and did not realize the game
So I'll smell lots
Those two
People are starting to draw comparisons between 2025
And 2021
And is the summer of 25
Going to mirror
The summer of 21
When Fartcoin's at $10
There will be signs right
You know we talked about this on the last show,
but it's one of those moments where it feels like something's brewing.
It feels like something.
There's like a new emerging narrative that could sprout up soon.
And so we'll stay vigilant.
Our promise to you is if and when it bubbles up,
we will present it to you on this podcast.
That is a fact.
I think my prediction,
if Bitcoin goes to new all-time highs,
if it goes to 150K,
it is not going to do that in a silo.
There will be other pockets.
There will be a new sector or a new meta that explodes.
Maybe we don't know what it is yet.
Maybe it's an existing one.
But we are due to find out folks.
We're about 15 minutes over.
It was a really fun discussion going deep into some of these areas,
especially that the hyperliquid bull and bear case,
but we are going to wrap things up.
That will be our show.
I want to thank our listeners.
I want to thank my co-hosts.
I want to thank our partner wallet connect.
We will be back next Tuesday,
hopefully even higher than we are today.
Until then, enjoy your day.
Enjoy your week.
See you soon.
Bye. This is a production of WGBH. .
