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Why Monad? (ft. @Levr_Bet)
Recorded: Aug. 7, 2025 Duration: 1:15:48Space Recording
Short Summary
Lever is launching a groundbreaking leveraged sports betting protocol, backed by strategic partnerships and significant fundraising efforts, aiming to capture the attention of crypto enthusiasts and sports bettors alike.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Cause he's on his vacation far away. Come around and talk it over.
So many things that I want to say.
You know I like my girls a little bit older.
I just want to use your love tonight.
I just want to lose your love tonight
I don't want to lose your love tonight.
I don't want to lose your love tonight Thank you. I just want to use your love tonight.
Yeah.
I don't want to lose your love tonight.
Yeah.
I just want to use your love tonight.
I don't want to use your love tonight! Thank you. Tonight. Tonight.
Tonight.
Tonight. One, two, oh,
oh, oh, oh, oh, singing songs We'll be right back. We've all got a blue When the sky's on blue
We've all got a blue
But I'm coming for you Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Now when I get you done about me, there's no conscience for you to talk to.
We are Alabama, where the skies are blue.
We are Alabama, What I'm coming for
To you have gone
Come on Thank you. I Now my first shows, it's got a small place.
They've been known for the fall too.
They give me arms so much.
They pick me up when I feel no one about you.
Sweet Lord, I'm alone.
Where the skies are blue. sweet Sweet home, Alabama, sweet home. Oh, God, I'm going to win the country too.
Sweet home, Alabama, road.
Oh, and I'm coming home too.
Come on, come on to stop it. so
. This is a good one. Now that I'm getting older, so much older. I love those songs I take.
With a girl like you.
With a girl like you.
Lord knows there are things we can do, baby.
Just me and you.
Come on.
It's so good. Come on, it hurts so good.
Come on, baby, it hurts so good.
Sometimes love don't feel like it's true.
Hey, it hurts so good.
Don't have to be so excited
Just kind of give myself a little bit of fun
I always look so in the body
You ain't as green as you are yours
Hey baby, it's you
Come on girl, I want you Thank you. Make it up so good, sometimes love Don't feel like you're here, baby
I'm here, so good
I ain't talkin' no big deals
I ain't made no play with my face
I ain't talkin' no high heels
They want me to be walkin' around
All day long.
Walking around all day long.
What's so good?
Come on, baby. Make it hurt so good. Oh, Come on, baby, come on, baby, make it hurt, don't do it, sometimes love don't feel like it's true, baby, let's do it. One more song.
One more song. One more song one more song dude everyone everyone in the audience is chanting one more song
i love the idea that everyone in the audience is hearing these songs for the first time and like
wow awesome song for the first time and they
all the comments are like your music is terrible why are you playing this song can you please play
like uptown funk by bruno mars or something heavy uf roe williams
wait all right we have officially as of this week our third co-host is now nick lachey nick welcome thank you thank you thank you good music
wait nick are you is that confirmed are you now third co-host or is this
you're gonna dip your toes see what happens i'm just curious how you're approaching this
i think it's kind of like a let's see how it goes yeah right right yeah wait so nick tell me about
yourself like who are you oh funny enough funny enough here's some alpha and here's how i met my
future wife and i used to i used to use this line all the time on girls i would just walk up to them
all the time on girls.
I would just walk up to them.
This is going to sound so bad,
but I'd say,
I'd say,
who are you?
I would drop that line.
Those three words goes pretty hard.
That might sound creepy at first,
but it's,
you know,
it's kind of,
it's not,
it's not always what you say.
It's how you say it.
But I have found to walk up,
say,
who are you?
They,
they will,
they'll get,
they'll be caught off guard and it starts good
conversation so nick not to be flirting with you but um yeah who are you i mean outside of being
your future husband i guess this conversation uh yeah so i think i'm probably older than most people kind of in this space.
So a boomer, but also American, but not living in the States anymore.
So that's as much like demographic information as I'm willing to share.
Interesting.
Why did you leave?
Just, yeah, I worked in kind of the corporate consulting side for a long time but yeah I just
want to do something different so kind of left the country been out of the country now for a few years
almost three now but it had nothing to do with like politics or the state of the country I don't
think it was anything like that it's's just kind of, you know,
I wanted to kind of work in a different sector,
kind of doing something I wanted to do and enjoy.
So yeah, I saw it.
Are you a dual citizen or you don't have U.S. citizenship anymore?
No, I'm still a U.S. citizen, but then I just had a residency.
Yeah.
So I still pay taxes to America, which is great.
Nah. All right. Well, that's good um that's good yeah hell yeah what um what's your lore like how did you get into crypto
uh i think for me it's through poker so back when i guess hold'em was getting really popular in the
states like post the moneymaker boom posts like like hold cams, all that stuff.
What happened a bit after that, kind of, I guess, still in the early, I guess the mid 2000s was Black Friday.
And so what that meant was anyone that sort of played online in the States, whether recreationally or professionally, because everyone was bad back then and didn't know the math.
There wasn't really an option for you to do anything. And all your fun sort of got
either frozen, depending on which platform you were on, so you can get that off.
And there was really nowhere for you to play. So at that time, what started to pop up was stuff with,
or kind of a bit after that so post black friday um happening
so poke boom happened that black friday happened and then you saw stuff like seals with clubs um
my kind of those guys were trying to stand up poker software that ran on bitcoin which at that
time was kind of it just seemed really shady to be honest uh because of what it was associated with um but yeah so those sites around
where they would actually rake bitcoin um and so i think that was my first like knowledge
of what it was but i wasn't like a maxi i wasn't like this is the future of currency or the future
of fiat or money or like the next great thing i just thought it was an interesting shady way
that people could subvert
or get around the legislation that it passed. So that was kind of my introduction. And then,
yeah, so I think a bit after that, kind of dabbled in stuff. And then I've always generally
just been a holder. So held some stuff over the years, got more interested because of Ethereum,
just in terms of the mechanics of it and decentralization.
And then my background sort of in work is in sort of data science and AI. So there's sort of a natural
kind of desire to understand more about the encryption side, also about how kind of a leverage
into the space that was growing. So yeah, so that's kind of like just background. I think it's kind of
growing so yeah so that's kind of like just background i think it's kind of
sort of hobby interest combined with professional interest eventually um and then i guess more
recently the only reason i sort of got back into the space one is because i left corporate so now
there's more time like more of my free time so it allows me to like do stuff whereas before like a few years ago before I
left there was no free time so I held assets but I wasn't involved at all it
was just kind of like an investment but now it's kind of like there's more free
time some people to participate in stuff and things like that so and that time
we sort of worked with some of the monad stuff as well. So I dove more into that, and now I'm on a space that's being asked about it.
Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice.
All right, well, you're officially new co-host, so welcome.
I feel like you're the scarce right curve of the Nats.
So, you know, we need to follow your lead.
And then on the other side, we have someone like John W. Richkid,
who's probably the dumbest person I've ever met in my entire life.
So welcome, Mr. John W.
Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here.
And honestly, it's a pleasure to have the title of dumbest person you've ever met.
Because honestly, I think that actually takes some level of skill behind it.
Because, you know, you've met a lot of dumb people.
Like, you know, like KB, for example.
I'm sorry, KB.
I didn't mean to pick on you.
That was...
Well, I knew you were going to say that. I was watchingp i didn't mean to pick on you that was that was i was just looking at the audience i was like ah who's gonna i like i'm not gonna say mike webb
right i'm not gonna say you know nick lachi i'm not gonna say kenobi or sapphire i'm sorry
i thought it was nick lachi you are the dumbest. No, no.
Oh, okay.
See, you know, I've always been saying Lachey in my head.
But I guess Lachey makes sense.
But, you know, that's actually, that's just my accent from Gary, Indiana.
That's how we say things.
John is a 98 Degrees fan, confirmed.
All right, all right, all right, all right.
John, I have a question for you yeah what's up who do you think is the best dev in crypto it's a good question tunes um i'd say like of all the
devs in crypto i i genuinely think it's got to be james because you know if you think about it
like he worked at jump um he's a cto for those of you who don't know, Chief Technology Officer.
He's quite literally, he's building a team.
He can tweet, like many people, but he can tweet.
And he also can trade.
He can trade.
So, like, it's more about, like, you know, what can't this guy do in reality?
He can't code.
Wait, wait, can I join guy do in reality? He can't code. Wait, wait.
Can I join James' trading group?
I know.
Anyways, anyways.
Put me in the chat.
Put me in the chat.
Okay, KB.
Why?
What?
I'm like.
You joined so randomly.
Like, what is your.
What determines if you're joining or not I literally
have I have no idea um honestly it's random because I like kind of forget or I have like
a million things going on um today Nick Latchey reminded me And then also when I saw that it was Leverbet,
I do love the boys at Leverbet.
Shout out Blue One and TB.
We hung out at the Foundry.
So I just wanted to come up and also congratulate them
and felt like I could contribute slightly to the combo also like
sometimes you're kind of annoying when you do these spaces so I don't know if I want to like
spend like half my day listening to like random music but yeah I felt like this one might have
been interesting and I was around nice nice how was your wasn't your birthday last week or something
Nice. Nice. How was your, wasn't it your birthday last week or something?
Yeah. Oh yeah. I came on my birthday during brunch and you guys, and you sang me happy birthday.
That was actually so nice. Yeah. I'm a nice guy, aren't I?
You are. You are a nice guy. It was good. It was good. We just, you know, had brunch and all that stuff.
But I was actually kind of working.
I was helping with the Solana summer series.
They do, like, a summer camp.
And they did one in Keith.
Wait, wait.
You're switching up on us?
No, I didn't switch up.
That's crazy.
That's actually great.
You're switching up on us for Solana?
I was just slightly.
You love Solana, first of all actually yeah i was just
like slightly contracted to help them because what you're playing for the opposing team that's
crazy hey at least it's not like sonic you know what i'm saying like at least at least it's like
solana like i actually use their chain and I've actually made money on Solana.
No, the thing is we can't talk about Sonic.
Because Andre will like clip this.
And then make a tweet.
And then write like two paragraphs about why I'm an idiot.
And I'll get a thousand likes.
And then everyone will be mad at me.
So we can't talk about them.
Also, I see you're just engagement farming my my tweet which would you rather have i feel
like my question was way better like because listen ten thousand dollars and ten thousand
followers really can't get you that much like 10k is not shit anymore you have to be at like a 50k
follower to and then and so the best comparison would be
a like 100k salary and so like it's interesting to see like who is going where because in theory
a 10k can't get you the proper brand deals that somebody at 50k could get you and so 10 and $10,000
like you know it's like I think if on that on that spectrum I
would rather just get $10,000 because 10k like doesn't mean shit to me but like on and so like
it's a better question where you're like okay well 50k followers if you hustled and you did good
content you could get more than a six-figure salary in brand deals if you hustle, right?
So like you can get probably more money, more opportunities doing 50k followers.
But if you're not a content creator, if that's not your steeze, if you don't really care
and you have a job with six figures, like a six-figure salary,
then like that might be a better option for you.
So it just really depends on like where you're at with things.
But if you hustle, you're a good content creator,
you could make more money with the 50K followers.
That's my theory.
With 10K to 10K, like you can't do shit with 10K followers
and you can't do anything with $10,000.
So your question was actually worse than mine.
Okay.
I'm not going to like it.
I don't know.
He's speechless.
Well, I just kind of, dude, I have this, okay.
So I have this, um, first world problem where my, I have this DoorDash driver and his name
is Mamadou.
He definitely doesn't speak any English.
I get him every single time.
I swear to God, every single time. I swear to God, every single.
I'll being like,
where are you?
Like.
Made this mistake multiple times.
And I just,
I just spammed 20.
Like I just spammed.
I just sent him 45 messages in a row.
Of just spamming at him because of how frustrating this is. So that's my first road problem that I wanted to share with everyone.
But yeah, anyways.
Wait, blue, are you?
I think blue like doesn't is like having trouble or something.
I'm here.
I'm here.
Oh, let's go.
Let's go.
Hey, wait, wait.
Hold on a second.
Hold on.
Everyone give it up for Blue.
Congratulations.
Congratulations.
You are amazing.
Congrats.
How do you feel today?
I'm feeling pretty good, man.
Feeling pretty good.
Always a happy day in the Monad ecosystem if you know where to look and what to do, right? And so today, I guess, the shine is on
us for the tremendous amount of work that both myself and our team put in to get this closed.
So yeah, feeling pretty saucy about it. And before we get going too far, I want to give a special shout out to KB, my Lububu plug, for hooking it up and making some little blues very happy.
Yeah, how was that?
I wanted to ask, like, did they get some good colors?
Were they happy?
Not exactly what they wanted, and they sleep with them every night.
So little demon stuffed animals are sitting in little blue beds right now.
I love that.
That makes me really happy.
I'm happy they got the color they wanted.
Yes, I greatly appreciate it.
For those that don't know, even your boy gets rug pulled sometimes and went to the actual Pop Mart store to try and buy some LaBooBoos.
And they gave me the fakes from the store, guys.
From the store.
So always keep your head on a swivel. You never know where your rug pull is going store guys from the store. So, uh,
always keep your head on a swivel.
You know,
you never know where your rug pull is going to come from.
Wow.
Wow.
Okay.
Okay.
Blue,
tell us,
just walk us,
walk us through.
all right.
Give it,
give it,
give it,
can you,
can you give us a quick,
what is lever?
And then like,
how did you get here?
And then, like, what's next?
Yeah, so Lever is the first leveraged sports betting protocol.
Think of us as a mix between your favorite sports book and your favorite perp decks.
The way we got started on that is, quite literally, I was a very large perp decks trader back in the, I guess it was the second DeFi summer.
And I was quite literally looking at a baseball game, listening to my partner talk about his
sports betting fund. And I was pushing some crypto around for their LP and just struck me in my head
as I'm sitting here and I'm longing Bitcoin on GMX. Why can't I long the
pirates to beat the Rangers today, right? And looked around quite heavily in the ecosystem of
Web3 and the cross-section of sports betting, found, you know, like Augur, SX Network, a few
other kind of just general sports betting apps. It didn't seem like there was much going on beyond simple prediction market
style stuff and copy and paste sports books. And to me, that looked like a
market opening. And so when your boy sees a market opening and
I got some steez ready to spill, I decided to take my shot at it.
Use some PhDs
that my partner has access to that were very, very competent in sports betting
to help us try and solve if we could run leverage for sports gambling
and walked away with a white paper that said we could.
I also want to give a special shout out to GCR, who had posted at one point,
where's my leverage sports betting?
And so that kind of helped push us in the right direction there.
And, you know, it's taken a long point for us to get here.
Two raises, two years, 10 employees plus now,
and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.
But we're very excited to be where we're at.
And, you know, we found Monad back in, I want to say, summer 2023.
Intern reached out to us, had our first conversation, our BD guy, Crypto Cubano knew him.
And I don't even think we understood what Monad was at the time, but we liked Intern enough to
say, hey, we should probably keep in touch with this kid. And so after a while, it became clear to us that if you're looking to build a retail product
and you want it to work in the manner of like a Web2 app,
fast, functional, seamless, without a lot of headache
and really be able to provide consumer-ready apps
to the public that are backed by blockchain.
If you're building EVM, there really is no other place,
but in our opinion, Monad to do that. And so we're very, very happy to be a part of the ecosystem.
It's kind of a match made in heaven for us. We don't want to stand up our own L1. We don't want
to be on an L2 where we're getting our sequencer fees captured by some third party that we could
just be doing ourselves, right? And also really, really strong on wanting to be a part of the evm ecosystem is i just think
it's the best architecture has the best network effects and so that all culminates in really
monad being the place and um since we've gotten on testnet and been spinning through stuff we've
kind of been proven right in our own mind on it and And so we went to raise what is our second round.
We did a pre-seed round previously.
Shout out my boy Will Pat who led that round, our first true believer.
We started our seed raise, and the VCs were just very, very receptive
to the fact that we were going to go on to Monad
and that that was going
to be our home base. Everybody looked at it as kind of like the right place for us to be. So
gave us a lot more confidence in it. And a little lore for those that don't know, I actually got the
call from Maven 11 boys telling us that they were solid on participation while I was at Monad
Madness the first day I had showed
up there. So if you saw me while I was there, I had a little bit of swagger under my step. It was
wind in the sails from getting that phone call from the boys. So yeah, just really excited to
bring something new to the marketplace, right? We don't want to, we want to innovate. We don't
want to iterate, right? So we wanted to bring something fresh, something hot that wasn't in existence yet and power it off of some crypto rails. And here we are.
me like and it's also just the it's the perfect vector to onboard people to crypto because i feel
like the demographic that are most willing to like get into crypto especially when things like
really heat up are people who kind of like like to gamble in one way or another on their phones
and it's like and are kind of like young males like
18 to 30 and that's literally just like sports better it's like people who like like playing
fantasy football people who bet on sports and it's it's kind of wild because like i myself
am a sports better like i'm not i'm not a crazy sports better i don't like that meaningful amounts
of money but i like placing parlays and i
also actually really like live betting and for me when i live bet it's always like it'll be like
the the like it'll be like the second quarter talking about like nfl american football here
for all you euros in the audience but it'll be like the second quarter.
And like my team will have gone down by like 10 points.
And I'm kind of like in that moment,
what I'm doing in my head is I'm saying like,
I think that like,
there's like a deviation from like,
like almost like this is a fluke.
And I feel like they're,
they're about to just come back and score.
Like in my mind,
I'm actually kind of calling bottom on a chart, right?
And so when you actually visualize that, and then you add leverage to the equation, it's
almost like it's like free money in my mind, right?
Because I'm basically saying like, I think this is the bottom.
I want to buy it.
And so why wouldn't I in that moment just take the free leverage, right?
Like my team goes down by another
touchdown I'm like clearly I was wrong and I get liquidated right and that's that's fair to me
and it's just it's just so obvious to me and so clear and I I feel like if you're in crypto and
you don't sports bet you it might not make as much sense to you but to a sports better it's
it's so it's actually such a clear
net new use case and something that's actually unlocked by crypto so it's really it's really
cool to me is that so i'll check out to you mr blue oh yeah that's kind of almost exactly
our sentiments right and so um just analogous to trading crypto if i'm gonna make a bet today that
bitcoin is gonna rise right i i think hey hey, we've hit the bottom of this.
There's something coming up here for the next week, two days, 24 hours, whatever it is.
I think the price of BTC or ETH or SOL or whatever is going to pop up.
I'm not just buying spot, right?
I want to go in.
I want to use some leverage.
I want to hop on to Hyperliquid or GMX or Binance or wherever.
I have cash sitting in and I want to put my long in.
I want to put my short in.
It's short-term trading.
And that's what sports are.
Yeah, exactly, right?
They're like these one, two, three-hour windows of a trade when you bet, right? Yeah, yeah. Sorry, you keep going. It is. No, I mean when you, when you bet. Right. Yeah. Sorry.
You keep going.
It is. No, you're, I mean, you're correct. That's exactly what it is. Right.
Especially like live during the game. We do this frequently.
We probably sports bet a little bit more than your average crypto crew.
Right. And frequently we'll be out in Vegas or at a casino and we say, Hey,
you know, it's the middle of the game.
The the pats are down, two touchdowns here. We don't think they're going to end the game at that.
What kind of value can we get right now? Let's go smash it and and see if we can ride the comeback.
Right. And especially with you talk about stuff like spread bets, we might not even have to have them win.
You know, the odds can get out of whack pretty frequently there as people load into the other side, as they're in a lead. And so for us, we thought, why not
make that more degenerate, put more power behind your dollars. And as our slogan says, let you bet
less to win more by adding leverage to it. And so for us, that's exactly what we're looking to bring to market, right, is to empower users to be able to spend their dollars with more impact versus what they're currently getting.
And we think this is the perfect kind of product to push users that are not crypto native onto crypto products and give them a good taste in their mouth about it.
to crypto products and give them a good taste in their mouth about it.
Right. And so, you know, I kind of think the whole of Monads kind of the best stuff that's going to come out of Monad is going to be gambling.
And I think gambling is going to be what leads the next cycle is the natural evolution.
Now, and I think kind of the blocker there has been that the products weren't highly functional.
They didn't have deep liquidity.
They were a little bit more slow and clunky to use than your average everyday sports betting
product like going on FanDuel or Bovada or whatnot. I think that time has passed in a large
part. It'll be due to Monad's good technology to allow us to build products like this. But
if you look at the rest of the gambling ecosystem, including ourselves in Monad,
I think there's a real chance there to onboard users
into something that they can use
that feels like a functional fast product
that they don't have to think about being on crypto.
And that's how you convert users.
And sports betting in general to me
is the perfect cohort of users to try and transfer over
because they're not risk averse.
Otherwise they wouldn't be sports betting.
They're already degenerate, right?
They're already part of our ilk. We just have to get them, uh, into,
to our neck of the woods to let them play around with some really,
really good products.
And, uh, we hope to bring that to the masses.
Yeah.
It's, it's very, it's very cool.
And how it, or Nick, you can go.
Yeah. I was going to say, I do think what's interesting with lever and with the different sports betting mechanisms now is even when you look at polymarket obviously like they don't have a ton of options
outside of kind of because the way they're set up in an order book fashion but even for sports bets
what's nice about it is the odds
even now are generally better than sports books
for the most part, and especially live odds
because it's based on an order book
and it is based on a house calculating
like their additional edge.
And so I think we already see that in like a very simple
format of like a win loss or a spread.
And so that exists in sort of like a better odds format
because you sort of lose the house edge
and you just have sort of like the same way you have
an order book and two sides of it.
I think with, like when I think about Leverbet,
the way that I kind of think about it is
it's sort of like that concept,
but a lot of times when people place parlays,
which tunes you said you like, I also like them,
but I also know that realistically, if you're a Sharp, you don't do parlays because they have more house edge than any straight bet.
But I think the concept of lever is sort of that you get to get like parlay type odds, but probably in a more balanced scenario.
And I think that's the unlock for me for a lot of the sports betting components that have come out like polymarket, etc.
for me for a lot of the sports betting components that have come out like polymarket etc it's not
so much that it's super different but at that one it reduces sort of like somewhat of like the house
purposely getting an edge to some degree or setting lines that are maybe a bit worse than they should
be in things like a parlay so yeah i think that's the cool thing it's sort of you're trying to up your
variance or your gamble in it but trying to minimize sort of how much you're getting taken advantage of and so i think that's the beauty of when crypto native stuff is coming
into the space um yeah yeah i mean you're right and so think the way that i look at it is uh
anybody who's ever been to a casino if there's triple zero on a roulette wheel, you're getting a really bad deal.
Because there's, it's essentially three numbers added in that could bust you out that equal house edge, right?
And so to me, that's a parlay where because you're taking the parlay, they don't give you a better deal.
where because you're taking the parlay, they don't give you a better deal.
Most of the time, if you bet game A, game B, and game C
and rolled your winnings over into a bet from game A to game B to game C,
you get about the same odds, probably a little worse than you would
if you were taking a parlay.
And so that's a lot of house edge.
That's just not a good deal for the sports bettors most of the time. It looks cool and
it feels great because you get to win a bigger pot. But at the same time, you're paying a lot
of risk there and a lot of house edge. And it just a natural progression from that into the
crypto space for us is to start knocking off some of that edge.
One of the things that we do is we try and have as close to zero VIG on the lines that we offer as possible.
One of our data providers, OpticOdds, shout out my guys there, they actually let us calculate this in the back end of their system so that we can average out a handful of leading books, knock off the VIG, and then that's the line that we offer to the public.
Because quite frankly, we can run a little bit leaner than your average sportsbook.
We can run a little bit more above board without VIG than your average place. So you'll see that a lot right now. We're not the
only ones that are trying to reduce VIG. I know there's a lot of Web3 books, a lot of Web3
casinos, and what they're trying to bring to market right now is reduced VIG and a better
opportunity for the bettors to make cash on what they're putting down. And so for us, that's one of the unlocks,
right? Just think about it naturally. If you're going to go and you're going to spend cash
somewhere and you got a dozen options to do it, are you going to go to the place that charges you
a higher fee? Are you going to go to the place that charges you a lower fee? In almost every
walk of life, no matter what it is, you're going to go to the place that charges you a lower fee
just because you're going to get a better deal, right?
And in the age of the internet, that's kind of the information is going to flow
to allow users to do that as quickly as possible.
And so we hope to be right there at the forefront of not only innovating
and offering a new bet type, but also bringing a better product to the users
where they get hit less than they otherwise would have with erroneous fees and
house edge. Because quite frankly, we just don't need it to make a good return for us and for the
house pool. We do have Bram here we welcome bram hello yes my boy from maven 11 i want to give a
special shout out i got before he gets going i want to tell you guys a story
um back in the early days of mr blue Blue, we had zero investors.
Nobody believed in us. And we went to ETH Denver and had a request for a meeting from the Maven 11 guys.
It was the first real pitch that I did for any VC fund.
We were definitely too early for kind of their thesis uh but they were really hyped about it
kept in contact with us and uh watched us grow from the time where i don't even think we had a
logo yet we were just shilling out a white paper that was a a latex doc right and uh they believed
in us and when we we announced this raise they said hey you guys are probably uh probably ready
for us to start talking to you now and so that has culminated in them being the co-lead of this
new round so greatly appreciate the maven 11 dudes they showed interest in faith from early on
although we were a little bit you know timing mismatch on it um good stuff comes back around
and we were able to seal the deal yeah um hello guys if you can hear me hopefully you can
so indeed yeah we met early on I think 2022 it was in Denver and
basically what we search for in applications is something that makes you
go fuck yeah that's cool right I think in crypto
and especially in like basically any type of a consumer product, you want something that can just blow up. And I think blow up in a good sense, right? And I think the from the first moment we heard about leverage force betting, that click was made.
a lot of things to figure out uh like how do you handle liquidations how can you make sure that
yeah you cannot be be arbitraged and so on um but if anyone can crack that code we were actually
from the get-go quite confident that this team was was able to do that because they basically
live and breathe this stuff right like there's a lot of people that try to do things because it sounds cool to them but
they have like zero clue and how to execute on it and i have a full trust that um that everyone at
lever actually has that like dog in them to to make this work and especially for a product like
this where you need to engage your user base need to engage basically everyone from people on the Monad ecosystem, from users towards
even people that want to provide capital for this.
I do think they have cracked that code already and very excited to see what will happen in
the next few months, basically.
So, Bram, tell us about what it's like to be a VC in crypto.
I get asked that often.
And also, are all VCs evil?
Yeah, I wanted to actually start with that.
I think VCs get just a bad rap.
But in the end, you have to think like if you see as a
as a horizon of like five to ten years depending on which you see you are um that's longer than
most of your um your token holders your airdrop token holders right so if you if you try to do
this in the best possible way it's just making long-term bets instead of smaller opportunistic ones.
And I think that's definitely the cool thing.
You can think about things longer term and not just go with the latest craze like a DAT or something, you know.
And then everyone invests in that.
And two years later, it's gone. Same thing with like restaking.
Back in the day, everyone did restaking.
And then like a year later no one's
talking about that again and people are pivoting so it's really trying to identify that and i think
that that's kind of cool and and you just meet a lot of cool people right like for example here
with lever it's a great one you meet someone you think well this is cool but let's just wait
and then a year later you see the progress that they've made and you're finally able to
invest in that i think that that's kind of cool to have.
So, like, what percent of VC investments go to zero?
And of those, what percent, and I'm talking in crypto specifically, what percent end up never even launching a token?
Depends, again, from fund to fund.
I think, like, if you're a paradigm or something, that's probably higher.
They make more concentrated bets and they basically fund you into success with all the money that they have.
with all the money that they have I hope no one from Paradigm is here but if you
I hope no one from Paradigm is here.
are I think sort of like more general like a mid-sized fund I think that
ratio is somewhere between yeah 80% ties down over time 20% is somewhat of a
success launching tokens yeah I think a lot of there's a lot of more predatory VCs that push for launching a token.
Like they invest and they basically next question we see them ask in the investor chat is like when TGE.
And those are like the worst.
I think a token makes sense a lot of the times, but it has to be done correctly and at the right time.
And yeah, I think there are so many examples out there like a poly chain for
example poly market for example they did almost no revenue for years on end if they would have
launched a token in that uh in that time yeah they wouldn't have had the success they have today
um so yeah token is necessary but at the right time um and yeah i think most of them i think maybe 30 percent
launches a token or something in the end okay and then what do you think about revenue in general
like i think everyone thinks revenue is good um how do you think about like should revenue go a
token buyback or should it go to just the business to basically fund operations to help themselves grow?
Like, I feel like people really like the idea of buybacks.
It's like a hot thing these days.
And it's funny because you can just like zoom out and look at the traditional stock market.
And it's like, you know, stocks, they do buybacks all the time.
But like, at the end of the day, it's like you know stocks they do buybacks all the time um but like at the end of the day it's a business and if you are bullish on the business you want the business to grow
and if you want the business to grow the the business needs money to fund operations hire
people do research whatever um yeah i guess my question more is just like what do you
whatever um yeah i guess my question more is just like what do you if the crypto business has
revenue how do you think about how that revenue should be used like should it just go to buybacks
or should it fund operations or should it be some sort of mix of both yeah maybe first of all i think
when i when i first started uh like five years ago or something it used to be a
no-go to do buybacks because the SEC would come after you with all their
might right because you are then in security and nobody wanted to do that
basically now with more of the regulatory clarity I think that has
opened up the Avenue and the market seems to be reacting quite good to it
there are different ways to do that, though.
I think if you immediately distribute it back to just buybacks,
you cannot do that really strategically
because people expect that one-on-one relationship
between your revenue and then immediately trying to buy back your token.
I think if you have some type of mix, that's typically ideal
where there is some sense
of a linear relationship between your revenue and and some type of give back to to your token or to
your community but also if you could use part of that for indeed operations but also for like
strategic deployment whenever needed for example in a bear market right it would be good to to be
able to actually have some flexibility
to do stuff there.
I think that that's more ideal than just a simple
one-on-one relationship between revenue and buyback.
Got it. Very cool.
And then last question, then we can go back to talking more
specifically about lever.
When you are judging projects like what like what percent are you waiting towards the idea
and what percent are you waiting towards the team because the way i think about it is like
i think there are a lot of successful team a good example of this is Zora where I saw some tweet I won't be able to find it it's like a few weeks
ago and it was telling the story of Zora and like I think they started out as
like an NFT marketplace or something like like three years ago and they
pivoted like four or five times and each pivot was kind of like more towards the
direction of what they are now and now they have zora and it's like you know it's pushed super hard by base
has a lot of creator coins but i'm not saying that like i'm bullish on zora but like just the
idea of like you know this was a team that launched a completely different product
and then pivoted like five times and now they landed at zora which is like somewhat successful so um yeah i guess like how how when you're doing your dd like
i don't i don't know like are you guys trying to find the best founders are you trying to find the
best ideas yeah i think that has also shifted over the years i think now more we're looking
for great founders.
What we have to come to notice is that like founders that you do not like to want to grab a beer with at a conference, for example, right?
Like over time, those will also go bad because that also exudes to other things like doing BD growth, that sort of stuff, you know.
Good founders in general are way more important than the id but the id needs to
be like solid as well like the id cannot just be we're gonna do just a fork of what is done 15
times already it needs to be something novel but then like if there are question marks with regards
to execution with regards to yeah can they basically deliver on that promise? Then the founder quality is like the biggest thing.
The times that we've been pitched the same idea over and over and over again,
and we eventually decided on like that idea still, but with a great founder,
those are the times that we actually saw the most success.
And I think that that's just, yeah, logical, right?
As I said, we work long-term.
You have to work with these people for 5 to 8 to 10 years.
Then you want just a great founder that can indeed pivot if necessary
instead of running their project into the ground.
So I think that's definitely important.
Okay, and then when you're judging a founder,
how much are you weighing their experience?
Experience is relative, right?
Like I said here with Lever, they have experience in their domain, but they weren't initially very knowledgeable about the crypto market in general.
So that's not really necessary just like a drive to learn
and the drive to maybe hire those people or get the right people on board to write investors
advisors and so on that's more important i think in crypto and most of the people listening probably
can relate to this you can learn so fast uh from all the resources that are out there and there's always
stuff to learn so just the ability to want to just keep learning and keep taking advice is way more
important than any type of experience you might already have in my opinion got it um cool and
then yeah could you just everything we talked about like how did you guys how did you guys make the decision on lever like what was the thought process
um i remember me and a couple of guys from the venture team trying out the app during the past
nfl season and it was like because we were in based in europe it was like three o'clock four
o'clock at night and i was liquidating um my my peers. And that moment it clicked for us, basically, right?
That this is just a fun thing to do.
This is not just a crypto app where you can try our riches, right?
But it's actually fun to use.
And I think that click was for us important.
I think also the product is just fun to use.
That was also not something present the year before.
And I think that for us was the most
most exciting factor next to
just liking to
work with the guys at Leverer
I think everyone there
is just great
and just also great to talk with
and they're very open to feedback
and I think those things are super important
so that was for us the major decision
with then also their previous experience in the sports betting world And I think those things are super important. So that was for us the major decision.
With then also, yeah, their previous experience in the sports betting world.
I think if they say that this thing can work and that there will be a lot of demand for this because of their experience, I 100% believe them.
And I fully underwrite that then as well.
Got it.
Yeah, I think you had a core word which is like fun like it's like everything is so complicated and technical and big words but then it's just like
yeah the app is like fun and that's why you guys invested so um i think it's really cool uh blue
can i ask you like who came up with the idea and like i think i've seen a quote or
something it says like the best founders build for themselves um so i mean it's like i know you guys
everyone i've met from lever likes to bet on sports um like yeah did did are you guys building
this for yourselves like is it are you like, this would just be really fun?
And like, as you're testing the product out,
you're like having fun.
Is that kind of like what's going on?
I mean, just truthfully, yeah, right.
I just said, hey, this is something that I would use.
I'm a sports better and a perp dex trader.
I want to see the marriage of the two
because I feel like that's a sports betting product
that I would get more excitement out of and use more.
I know my other co-founders, Eternal, our CTO, and Q, the sports betting quant that we have are both kind of in the same boat there.
And then we roll down and everybody on our team is psyched and uses the product so from our devs to
the you know the mod that does our discord uh tv kaz everybody is got interest in sports betting
and almost everybody uses the product and i i think uh two things here too one of the one of
the like aha moments for us was the very first time that we were able to functionally test the product on the NFL.
I was doing my fantasy football, watching my stuff like I always do every year for it.
I was betting on Lever and I was watching, I believe it was a Niners game.
I'm a Niners or one of my teams and I got like an overrush of dopamine hit, right? Well,
like one of my guys scored, my bet just bounced above liquidation, didn't get clipped and went
way up. And then I got to watch the game live and I kind of told myself like, we've got lightning
in a bottle here, right? If it's this fun to integrate it into just my average sports watching experience.
I think everybody else will like it.
And that's kind of, for me, one of the important things with the VCs, right?
VCs kind of get a bad rap sometimes.
I get it as a guy that's not a founder point of view,
but from a founder's point of view, at least mine, I love VCs, right?
They're what gives us the power to
build crazy stuff and really go out there on a limb and think that we can do something.
So shout out to every one of the VCs that's in our round and that we've talked to and participates
in the space and is helping push good projects forward. But really the thing that we looked for,
But really, the thing that we looked for, and I think I've said this before on one of the videos that got posted today, is we looked for VCs that would use the product because there is a sharp divide there.
blockchain capital, shout out Sterling and Jonah there. Just if you gave access to them,
and they use the product, they would immediately come back going, that thing's awesome. Here's
some feedback. How do I do X, Y, or Z? Right. And it was a really sharp difference from the VCs that
that we gave access to that never even bothered to go look at the product.
we gave access to that never even bothered to go look at the product. Right. And so for us,
And so for us, we had a little bit more than we could take in there as far as VCs,
right, on the investors on this round.
And so we looked at it and said, you know, here's the top teams that actually used our
product and actually came back to us excited about it with some feedback.
And to me, that was a real big differentiator.
I'm like, all right, these guys are going to be able to get with us long-term. If they're not even willing
to jump into the project to scout around on it before they tell us they want to invest or not,
probably not the right guys for us. So little piece of advice for aspiring founders there.
If you give them access to the beta or the MVP and they don't come back to you with feedback or they haven't used it, probably want to think twice about that.
And then just to cap off something, you guys were talking about the revenue stuff.
I always get a kick out of this because to me, we're at the point right now in crypto.
For those that watch the Silicon Valley TV show, there was a VC in there named Russ Hanneman.
And at one point, the guys
from Pied Piper start talking about getting revenue in, and he starts freaking out, going,
revenue? What do you mean revenue? If you do revenue, you're no longer a pure play.
It'll never be enough. I think we're at that point right now with crypto tokens,
producing revenue payback to users or buybacks, right?
If you look at the pure plays, so to speak,
stuff like the poly markets prior to the ICO, the pump funds,
when you're in that position where nobody knows what you're going to do,
you have a lot more power than after you actually make that leap. And I always find it humorous that it kind of pegs back to that show from like
10 years ago being right in a weird way
yeah actually it was i want to create that show but for crypto um
yeah okay wait so i have a question james is in the audience
i'm gonna imagine what the question james wants to ask and i'll ask it for him um
what the question James wants to ask and I'll ask it for him. Okay. So like fundamentally what
lever is, is it's like a step in the direction towards like, you know, I sure somebody started
an article, like the, the casino vacation of everything almost like, it's just like every
part of our life becomes financialized in some way. Like you're always betting on everything.
Like you don't like watch sports anymore. You're like participating in it. Cause you're gambling
on it. I feel like this is like a real step in that direction. And I say that in the best way
possible. Um, so, right. So it's like a step in the direction towards like, I'm watching something.
I want to bet on it basically. And sports is perfect vehicle for that like live bet live trade whatever um how do you how do you go okay so imagine fast forward 18 months or whatever and lever is
actually like super successful and like tons of people around the world actually use this thing
all the time right and they're showing you that they have this behavior of like i want to just
bet on everything kind of or it's like i
want to just always be trading like when that person's watching the game and all that they can
do is bet on the live odds like how do you take it a step further so that you get even more granular
and you can bet on even more things and what i mean by this is like can i bet on if this is going
to be a first down or not you know what i mean can i bet on if it'll be a catch a catch or drop
can i bet on if my favorite player is going to get a touchdown like i i know that that is probably
like a world away but i'm just curious have you guys ever thought about that kind of stuff because
james has talked to me about that kind of stuff basically of like that's kind of like how he sees
the future what the future is heading towards.
Yeah, James and Q would get along real well.
So our lead sports betting quant, the guy who runs the sports betting fund, we lovingly refer to him as Q.
This is what he wants to see us do next, right?
He's real hard on this.
He thinks he can create a model to where we don't need to
pull incoming odds on it we can kind of set the odds out of our own algorithm and then
so um for me i see prop bets uh live prop bets like you're saying like what's going to happen
in the next two minutes of this game? Is it going to be a touchdown?
Is the pass going to get completed?
Is the green dildo going to get thrown on the floor right now?
We should be able to bet on all that stuff.
And we will be working towards getting that up and running.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah, I'm just thinking like the more bets, the better, right?
Oh, yeah.
Always the more bets, the better, right? So like yeah. Always the more bets, the better, right?
So like the progression of the lever, we have money line bets right now, which is just who wins or loses.
When our V2 drops, we'll have over, under, and spread market.
Likely the next step we'll start working on is longer time frame prop bets because it's easier to pull odds direct from the odds providers for it.
And then we look into short-term prop bets. And all of this, we're going to try and get as much leverage involved in it as
we can. We even look at stuff like crash out games that are tied back to sports, short-term
prediction markets on leverage for like, hey, what's the price of Bitcoin going to do over the next 30 seconds to a minute? So if you can bet on it, we want to have it.
And if we can put leverage on it, we're going to.
Nice.
That's pretty cool.
I think you might be building James's dream app.
So, yeah.
Hey, James, shout out, buddy.
You built our dream chain.
So there is no Lever without you anyway.
So just throw me a DM, bro.
We'll pack it up and we'll start making it.
It's kind of wild because James figured out how to build an entire blockchain with one line of code and one commit.
So, you know, it's kind of it's pretty inspirational to a guy like me.
But yeah, cool.
No, this is great.
I actually like, Lever makes so much sense to me.
And yeah, it's just, I don't know.
I feel like I probably just sound biased because, you know, it's Monad space.
But like, I actually really, I really mean it.
Like, it's so obvious to me.
And yeah, I think this is incredible that you guys are building this.
And congrats on the fundraising milestone.
I'm sure it feels great and is a bit of a weight off your shoulders.
Yeah, I mean, closing the funding route, it's not an easy thing to do.
Especially not when you have a degenerate product that's in the vice
segment of things, right?
You probably close yourself off to over 50% of the potential investors that you could
have otherwise had when you're doing anything that's like sports gambling related, anything
that's nothing in crypto I could think of, but beer or alcohol related or stuff like
OnlyFans or
anything like that related, you just start closing yourself off. And so it really takes believers
and it really takes people who are willing to go out there on a limb and say, we think this can
work and we think it's worth the added risk that comes with having something that's of that nature.
But to me, it's natural progression of what should be being made in crypto. We should be pushing the bounds of what can happen. We should be pushing
the boundaries of product development and using the technology and quite literally the leniency
of the crypto Web3 ecosystem to adopt products that are a little bit more out there to kind of
push the space forward.
So we're excited again. I can't say it enough. We're excited again to have not only the product
getting real close to going live onto mainnet, hopefully soon, but also to have backers like
Maven11, like Blockchain Capital, like our guides at Cosmos, like our early teams with Will Patton, Big Brain, and so on.
So a very fortunate position we find ourselves in.
We're just looking to capitalize on it and do the best we can.
That's awesome.
Yeah, this is exciting.
All right, cool.
Well, it's kind of kicking it.
If anyone has anything else they want to add in, feel free to go.
Otherwise, we will probably wrap this up.
I got one more thing to add here before we hop off.
Anybody that uses our product, anybody that goes in there and sees it and has some sort of feedback for us, especially after we drop V2 here in a bit, which is getting ready to start audits,
hopefully here by about the next week or two. If you got feedback for us, please jump in the
Discord, make your voice known, let us know what the heck you're seeing, what's going wrong,
what you want to see. We take community feedback very seriously. So if I could implore everybody
to do one thing for us, it'd be to help us
build a better product for you guys. And the best way for us to do that is feedback from you.
I love it. You heard the man. All right, everyone get in there. Go test it out.
Killer app, I'll say it. All right, let's do it. Thank you all for joining Mr. Monday.
Any final things from you, Mr. Billy?
He, okay. He just left KB. Any final words?
Bye. Nick, Nick Latchy. any final words
I think I'll put in some sports
but soon can't wait for NFL season
well Americans I guess
but yeah it should be fun
nice
oh my god
Bram anything you want to add
before we end up
no thank you all for your time.
All right, and Mr. Monday, I see you're back.
Any final words?
Nothing to add on my side this week, Tunes.
Thanks, mate.
All right.
This one goes out to my buddy.
His name is James.
Wishing you the best of all ruined for you.
Yeah, see you all next week.
Take care.
Take care. Got a big day on me cause I want it all. I started out with a kid. Seven and eight and I'm tired.
It was only a kid.
It was only a kid.
Now I'm falling asleep.
And she's calling a kid.
While he's having a smoke.
And she's shaking his head.
Now I go to bed.
And my stomach is sick.
And it's all in my head.
But she's touching his head.
Now he takes off her dress
Now let me go
I just can't walk
It's killing me
Let's see if I can't This is the end in the name of destiny is calling Open up my hidden eyes
When I met the holy flood
I'm coming out of my cage and I've been doing just fine.
Gotta gotta be down because I want it all.
It started out with a kiss.
How did it end up like this?
It was only a kiss.
It was only a kiss.
Now I'm falling asleep and she's calling a cab while he's having a smoke.
And she's taking a drag. Now I'm going to bed and she's calling a cab While he's having a smoke, and she's taking a drink
Now I go in the bed, and my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head, but she's touching his chest
Now he takes off her dress
Now let me go
It's not just killer, it's killing me
It's taking control
It's taking place
It's taking place
It's taking place The places you see The things you see
The cloud of lights
The king of your love
But it's just a fight
The best of destiny
Is only to open up my eyes
The time is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one who is the one Thank you.
