Episode 11: Crypto Chaos, AI Talent Wars, and Brave vs Big Tech

00:00

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode. This is JR, founder and CEO of Social Market. Hey, my name is Leann Hitchens. I’m the CMO of Social Market and this week we’ve got  some pretty exciting stories. There’s five of them  that we want to cover this week. If you weren’t under a rock this week, there’s another potential war happening in the Middle East, which is actually kind of a way to start off the episode because  it’s actually impacting the markets quite a lot.

00:22

and there’s a lot of uncertainty. The markets have been taking a large hit because of all the commotion and all of the uncertainty of what is going to happen between Israel and Iran. Not to turn this into political, but it actually does have like a ricochet effect on the markets, like anything political that happens to the world. Let’s show you what is happening on social market. Okay, so with social market, this is kind of like an overview of what’s happening in the markets right now. So on their market overview, right now it’s still Bitcoin season. The scale is

00:51

is tilting more on the Bitcoin side. It ties to one of  our conversations to this  episode about  pumped up fun.  So  it really is Bitcoin season right now. Yeah. So pumped up fun, more on that later. It’s actually possibly getting banned in the US. So because of that, that’s probably like what over 80 % of Solonar’s volume,  which is like in the

01:13

in the millions, hundreds of millions. With all that said, know, there’s still fear and greed. It’s about 50-50%. People really don’t know how to feel. You know, it was just last week when the fear and greed index was like at 60. So there was more greed in the markets. Inflation is at about 2.4%, which is considered acceptable in the U.S. and the bull market index. It’s looking a bit more bearish as of this week. And these indexes are a little bit more based on the weekly basis as well. Bitcoin in the last week.

01:43

has actually gone down a little bit. it was maybe at 108,000 and now it’s closer to 103,000. So as you can see in the chart, it’s kind of bouncing up and down. We’ll hopefully have more certainty in the coming weeks as far as what’s going to happen with Israel or Iran. And hopefully, you know, we don’t get to World War III. I think that’s what we’re all hoping we don’t get to. Yeah. I also think as the genius act passes, Congress gets signed into

02:13

into the  into  law,  we’re going to get some really good  motion upward for the for crypto. And then just normal market fluctuations when when conflict breaks out in anywhere,  the like institutional money always  pulls back and looks for what’s happening.  And I think that’s really causing crypto to follow the market more than it used to ever before.  So good and bad of of institutions being in

02:42

the crypto markets, it’s going to start moving  with Wall Street more and more. I was talking to a few friends this week about like the state of crypto and including your Leon. And now that crypto is getting  mind you, it’s getting the regulation needed, but it’s also simply getting regulated. So are we going to have to, know, for businesses  start considering about getting all these kinds of licenses? Are we going to have to start?

03:05

paying like hundreds of thousands or even thousands in compliance every year. Do we have to renew any kind of license? You know, that’s kind of like the fear that we’re starting to get.  However, because  of the background of Brian and other industry leaders who have been pushing for this act, including the Winklevoss twins from Gemini and the founder and the current CEO of Robinhood, they’ve been pushing the crypto narrative in Capitol Hill. I believe that even though

03:31

It’s  looking a bit like, oh, are these things going to get as regulated as banks?  It’s looking like  because of the software and decentralized nature of crypto, how it may not just be like that. It may just be that, hey, know, anyone who has the knowledge can go and create an app  and they can embed a button that says, hey, I’m going to buy Bitcoin right now with  Apple Pay. And I don’t really have to worry about, you know, any kind of license  on the side of the business.

03:58

What I see in a lot of industries is what they call regulatory capture, where a few large players say regulate us  very heavily, and then that regulatory capture is essentially nobody else smaller can come into it because it’s so cost prohibitive.  It doesn’t look like Brian Armstrong is doing that. Like  yesterday you sent me an update, he’s building out these  SDKs, he’s building out these APIs,  and all of these tools to become like an infrastructure.

04:27

Just like AWS, just like Cloudflare is for the internet,  Coinbase could become the infrastructure of the crypto internet. They’re helping onboard all of these companies. Also,  Coinbase, the amount of startups that are coming from alumni from Coinbase that are in the crypto world,  huge number. You don’t  see that too often from these companies anymore just because they want to stay, they don’t want to leave, the money is comfy and…

04:55

And you know, competing against like a Google or a Metta, you don’t get another company that’s coming out in the same industry. Like they might go build something cool off the side that’s not competing, but essentially these companies are, are sort of competing with Coinbase in a quasi way, but they’re just an overlay to what Coinbase does. then it expands out because Coinbase with base is giving us the infrastructure and, within social market, giving us the infrastructure to allow you to build easier, faster, and then us to like,

05:25

not worry about the product as much or  how do we get funds into a wallet? How do we deal with  all of these different  headaches  that were kind of insurmountable before?  Well, yeah, think Coinbase is trying to become  a new kind of bank.  they first became a thing, I know Brian wanted to name it BitBank, but there was a lot of regulatory compliance required by having to name bank in your name. So they pivoted to Coinbase as we’re starting to see more and more, you especially once clarity becomes more clear.

05:55

Who knows, maybe it’ll be  so that anyone who has a crypto based app or company, can potentially become a neo kind of bank.  And maybe they just won’t have the need to be  as regulatory compliant because, um, I mean, this is all just a possibility,  but because of the nature  and  of decentralization and crypto only time will tell. But  in this post from Twitter, you know, you can see that, uh, quoted  a post from Farrier  Shewrap.

06:24

She’s that I don’t know how to butcher that guy’s name my apologies, but he said that hey I’m excited to see the genius act pass for stable coins So in the very least we’re starting to see clarity on stable coins because they’re becoming mass adopted in mass use across the world And then he goes and thank leader John Thune and every other senator who you know was responsible for allowing this to happen But the genius act has passed the Senate with 68 and 30. It was a bipartisan pass and it would have

06:53

like a filibuster and stuff too so that’s that’s quite a push to say that like everybody is supporting this more or less like the 30 I’m not sure why the 30 voted no I would be curious to hear their opinions on did they like just say no because they don’t believe in this did they say no because they don’t believe some of the languages is right or

07:21

or there needs to be more rules around it. Like I’m kind of curious to hear the opposing side of this because  the Twitter bubble really only gives me the  push to get the sign, the push to get this over the hump. And then David Sachs is  consistently very bullish on this bill getting passed. Elizabeth Warren, she was the one who actually appointed Gary Gensler, which he’s kind of like the boogie man of the crypto space.

07:48

given the tenure he had in 2021 to 2024 with under Joe Biden.  As long as we don’t get more people like them, I think we’re going to be fine.  I think Elizabeth Warren just for whatever reason hates crypto. But then again, typical senators can’t even tell you how to use the Internet. So only take their words  with a grain of salt. Let the experts talk about crypto and maybe give their opinions. But senators just  stick to other things.

08:18

But yeah, I think that’s pretty much as far as it goes with the genius act. On our next story, we’re actually going to talk about  Brave. If you’ve used the Brave browser  and you’ve used Twitch,  well, with Brave browser, it has a native  feature where can do ad blocks and it’s, I use it, you you’re actually seeing  what it looks like on my browser. Like  from what you’re seeing on screen, that’s the Brave browser.  Brave allowed  users to block all Twitch ads  within the platform.  And this actually stirred a…

08:47

Quite a bit of commotion on Twitter as well as  with Twitch. I first came across into this story with PirateNation.  Great guy. He talks about trends on technology and with video games.  But he said this, Brave now blocks Twitch ads by default on all platforms. So you can kind of see how it looks like on the UI or the screenshot. Literally just got strike on YouTube for using Brave browser on stream. This is  unreal. Team YouTube, your support team has been very vague with decisions because of this. Give me a break.

09:16

Let me read this real quick. Oh, this is so fascinating. Out of all the things that like YouTube could be mad for, I’m kind of like annoyed at this, but not surprised. Like  YouTube’s whole thing and like  Chrome,  you block, you’re not allowed to use Ublock on Chrome anymore.  The ad blockers on Chrome are all just like nerfed little versions to stop like  crazy, crazy annoying, annoying ads. They allow like a bunch of stuff through,  but them doing this, wow.

09:43

What did YouTube say on that tweet  back? it just like a canned message? Team YouTube,  we know how important this is for you. Mind sharing the video URL and questions so we can take a closer look.  And then the guy follows up later and says, any updates?  Of course  not. Of course not. That’s peak Twitter. God damn it. This is interesting because I was using Arc browser for a little bit and I loved that until the browser company…

10:11

you know essentially nerfed it they went to that new dot the at the a dial whatever they’re calling it. I’m to butcher the name and I I’ve been like looking for a new browser and honestly brave never really popped up to me but it might. it like like I think brave when it first came out it was really cool. I also love that you know it’s crypto like the ads are all kind of crypto out wise like

10:41

There’s a lot of cool stuff in them. I’m actually downloading it right this second. Yeah, this is not an endorsement, but I just, I like to recommend to my friends and to people things that I use. You know, I bounce between Safari, Chrome, Firefox, you name it. I still recommend Firefox for most people, but if you’re a little bit more, you know, tech-esque. But you using a whole different rendering engine and like the dev tools for it sock, like they do, they do.

11:08

With Brave, it’s actually a lot of it is Chromium based. So if you use Chrome a lot, then Brave is probably a more private form of Chrome. Let me share with you guys a bit of a short story here. So with Chrome, if you’re paying for their ads, even if they’re scam ads, they’ll still push it. They don’t verify all of their ads or at least they didn’t used to back then. This happened to me in 2022. I had like $5,000 in Bitcoin at one point.

11:35

I tried to log into Coinbase to actually move some of that money.  And because I was on Chrome,  when I searched Coinbase  on  Google and you populate all the results with links, I click on the top most, which actually turned out to be a phishing link. They created a clone login of Coinbase. And when I gave them my login, they got into my account. And this was way before Coinbase  won with the subscription. So my money was pretty much lost in the ether.

12:05

They couldn’t do anything and I think all of this is due because  I clicked on a phishing link which it was super convincing. So I’m like, you know what? Screw Chrome. I’m going to go into something else. And then I’ve been using Brave since and actually it’s really good at, you know, telling me, you know, it blocks trackers. It blocks,  you know, scam links like the Brave  is as good as it gets as far as  browsers in my opinion. So I, I, I’ve

12:32

never gone back to anything else if I’m being honest. is kind of interesting.  Granted,  know how bad  ads can be  sometimes, especially these display ads.  man, it’s the internet.  So much better. One more thing I’ll say is,  if you decide to,  and I think this is the best way to incorporate  ad models in any business,

12:56

Brave does an excellent job with it. So they created their own token called Basic Attention Token or BAT. If you go into their settings and you choose to watch their ads, they’ll actually pay you with that token. Right now the token is worth like a couple of pennies, but the more the more ads you watch, the more money you accumulate. I’ve already accumulated like at least $30 since 2022, which is not a lot of money. But I mean, in  just by accumulating, that’s like at least a cup of coffee.

13:23

So  I like what Brave is doing. I’m with you. I’m going to check it out again. It’s been like,  well, I guess since pre-COVID, since I checked it out. Back to the Twitch thing real quick.  I wonder how long that will last. Like how long can  Amazon  like  allow that?

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And then even like YouTube, like how long before  these platforms start to  find workarounds and nerf them or altogether,  they just start blocking the browser. Like  that is a real  threat that could happen. They just say, Hey,  like we’re just not going to allow this browser when you’re on Twitch.  Like I’ve seen it happen when you have certain ad blockers on.  They won’t like certain new sites won’t let you even view the website. Yeah. Well, it’s funny that you mentioned that because it looks like Twitch has retaliated to this.

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announcement but not letting brave users sign in.  So this is a post from Twitter from Galaxy Red when he’s sharing a screenshot that is kind of replying to the brave announcement.

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The screenshot says, your browser is not currently supported.  Please use the recommended browser or learn more here.  And  it looks like he’s using Brave. On the comments, I  don’t think  Twitch replied to any of these, but I know in the past  with Pirate Nation, Brave replied saying, hey, I appreciate getting the word out.  But I haven’t seen Twitch make any commentary on anything, so  it’s kind of interesting.

14:48

This is why it’s important to  practice safety, practice security with your usage on the internet because  it’s not illegal, but companies find  it annoying so they’ll just block your usage of it. It’s like…

15:03

At one point Coinbase, if you had a VPN or some sort of  IP change tool, they would actually get mad at it or they would detect it as some sort of an issue, which is just you being  safe. If you have a VPN, you’re more than likely very techie. You more than likely  understand the importance of  online security. So you just keep doing you. These companies are going to have to comply at some point.

15:26

I know a bunch of companies  even can detect VPNs now. They’re just avoiding all of that.  I’m interested to see where this fight goes. I want to of circle back on this in a month or two  and just  see what Brave has done, see what Twitch has done and where it goes.  These big companies, they’re their own beast and I’m sure it’s going to take a few weeks for them to  get to the person to approve some sort of workaround  that’s larger.  Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s as far as it

15:56

with Brave  and in this whole fiasco but I think it is a good leeway to our next story which is  Meta trying to poach OpenAI’s software engineers or their AI engineers. The reason why we’re covering is because it kind of also should indicate you how the state of the markets are affecting even to people who work  a nine-to-five or something.  This actually also was kind of a big big

16:20

Big story because you everyone knows both meta and open AI, but there’s a post from Twitter from Ivan.  If you have deep skills in AI, the poaching talent has started.  Meta  offering a hundred million dollars to top talent from open AI.  So there’s a couple of things here, but just to finish off this article, it’s from Forden on the  screenshot.  Metas a hundred million dollars siding bonus for open AI staff are just the latest sign of extreme  AI talent war.

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Big tech is showing our jaw dropping compensation amid fierce AI talent war.  Meta is even offering a hundred million signing bonus. So we’ve already seen that. It’s really interesting. So I think this first came out from Sam Altman  kind of just announcing it.  So, so Sam Altman’s brother is actually doing a podcast and I think Sam Altman was the  one of the early guests, if not the first guest  who attended this podcast. And that’s where he kind of unveiled  the whole story. This person says Meta is offering open AI staff a hundred million signing bonus. And that is just a bonus.

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It proves how important AI is and how competitive it is. So this is a video from Sam Altman. I’m gonna play it. They started making these like giant offers to a lot of people on our team. know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that comp per year. It’s crazy. And actually it is crazy. I’m really happy that at least so far.

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none of our best people have decided to pick them up on that.  think that people sort of look at the two paths and say, all right, opening eyes got a really good shot, much better shot at actually delivering on super intelligence  and also may eventually be the more valuable company. But I think the strategy of a ton of upfront guaranteed comp, and that being the reason you tell someone to join, like really the degree to which they’re focused on that and not the work and not the mission.  I don’t think that’s going to set up  a great

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culture.  And,  you know, I hope that we can be the best place in the world to do this kind of research.  It’s,  it’s just like a crazy amount of money.  I know he’s talking about culture and everything.  I,  I think sometimes  culture at a workplace is  like over indexed. Like,  I don’t disagree that it’s important to like enjoy where you work and all of that, but

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The fact that it is like, oh hey you do that now.  I do think he has a point about the money

18:44

Yes.

19:14

different  administration. I’m also surprised that these people aren’t taking some of these offers. Like  if Meta offered a hundred million…

19:23

And you knew you could negotiate what you wanted there  to like work on llama and like set you up for this like hey I want the next five years and I want this budget and I want these people  and these resources like the things you could do I guess you could go and tell you know Sam Altman like hey dude this guy just offered me hundred million like would you like give me all of these resources and I’m sure Sam’s just probably like yeah  you want like  a supercomputer and  we have to go to like Sweden to buy it and like  it’s gonna be a billion dollars

19:53

sure whatever dude yeah I mean especially the fact that Sam Altman  you know kind of restructured the company in recent time like it started as a nonprofit it’s the specific tax code I forget but

20:06

They’re now struck trying to become like a more for-profit model and who knows they’re probably gonna try to I feel you got mixed like what do you mix like nicks like it got killed like that Oh for restructuring they dropped it after Elon made made an offer to buy the company which like

20:25

I guess overvalued it so it made it harder for them to turn into a for-profit company. And I’m just like,  I’m probably butchering some of these facts.  But they then turned around and dropped the thing to go  into a for-profit company and said that they would stay a nonprofit.  But I chalked that up to Elon  and his antics there  for it.

20:48

That whole nonprofit for-profit thing, also think was like a really bad look for them.  Um, you know, even Microsoft’s like standing here holding the bag and just kind of like arguing with them constantly.  just, think for a perspective of like who’s, who’s kind of better culture, like, you know,  I could see meta having it in the end.  Uh, but also like,  I.

21:12

Meta is like  always a quiet mover, you know, like look at the meta sunglasses, you know, like  they’ve got meta AI in it and  Surprisingly, it’s gotten a lot better like  Before it was really slow to answer all this stuff  It kind of like told you you were looking at the wrong thing It told you the wrong things  and now you do it and it’s  pretty accurate and it’s  really fast Yeah, it makes sense. I think meta is usually  considered the shark out of all these

21:42

Well, if you know fang like Facebook, what was once Facebook, it was Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google. Now it’s become like  Mango,  which is like Meta, Apple, Nvidia,  Google and then OpenAI. So Mango  instead of fang. All these top  tech  companies.

22:04

I believe Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have been the more sharky. They’re more like doing acquisitions. They’re, you know, doing aggressive product development, aggressive product market fit. They try to  buy some of their competitors and when they say no, they’ll also replicate them  or they’ll take their features kind of like with Snapchat.  So and then, you know, this whole threads as well with Twitter. I think it takes  a special kind of person to  like Mark Zuckerberg to run a company like Metta has become.

22:33

But speaking of Mark Zuckerberg, so this is  a kind of a thread and I’ll, we’ll link  all of these relevant, you know, posts on the, on the video here, but  this is a thread that kind of encapsulates the whole history with, with OpenAI and Mark Zuckerberg and Meta,  because  we see here what Zuckerberg is doing  to OpenAI, what he has done to past competitors.

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Meta has slowly become kind of a behemoth of a company. They’re trying to do everything  all at once,  including AI.  So in 2024, Google and OpenAI stole Meta’s top engineers. Instead of recruiting new talent, Zuckerberg started personally emailing rival employees.  His offer?  Not one million, not five million,  but a hundred million.  Here’s what he’s giving them instead. So.

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Well, in this case, it was 100 million with OpenAI, but  he kind of just talks about like, I’m only going to read maybe like  two, two threads here, but you can read it all.

23:32

This guy Fernando Chao, he did really good here. And it’s not just Mark Zuckerberg as you just read, you know, these other companies are the ones who are taking talent and  this kind of talent is  scarce.  really hard to obtain.  You know, there’s a reason why the biggest  startup unicorns we’re seeing come from,  you know, they come from software engineers. So these are kind of like the same  level of talent that we’re talking about. At least, and this is  one post from the thread, at least 10 million per year.

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went into eight figures, not job descriptions, not specific roles,  just we want you in a number that could buy a mansion.  So Met offered one AI research at least 10 million to join up. This is  something that I want to highlight this post here because  we’re starting to see AI become  a much more  understood  and used  and  highly desired  subject. When I was in college back in

24:32

In 2018-2019 I was just barely getting into AI research  and  studying.  It was very small.  Like, I could tell you the classroom levels were like maybe five to eight people at most. Now,  that’s probably triple if not quadruple the amount.  Because everybody’s like, oh, I want to be an AI engineer now. One more post that I’ll  use to kind of highlight the situation here.  This is from Bindu Ready.

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Meta, the same company that said they are going to replace mid-level engineers  with AI by mid-2025,  is now offering $100 million for every AI engineer. Meanwhile, Alibaba, ByteDance, and DeepSeek are paying them like normal engineers and overtaking Google and OpenAI.  So  we’re starting to see kind of a trend here where if you have  very high skill, you’re almost going to become unreplaceable.

25:24

which is why we’re starting to see like a shift from software engineers maybe starting a transition into AI engineers.  If not, we’re going to start to see that more because of these kind of offers.  So it is kind of exciting,  but it’s also kind of scary  because  what’s going happen to the rest of us?  People who don’t have that kind of  It also looks like a bubble.  Like  it is very much a bubble man. This isn’t sustainable granted.

25:51

I also think we’re super far from like  AI being as advanced as we want it to be. I believe it was Stanford University saying that like AI usage makes us a little dumber.  Yes.  There’s also research coming out that, you know, like we’re not as close to AGI as anybody saying. It’s essentially just  really good pattern recognition from the AIs.  There’s just a lot of this like NFTs. I could see this blowing over a little bit more.

26:21

stay machine learning, know, it’s the evolution of machine learning. But I don’t think it’s going to be like the answer end all be all. It’s just like everyone’s saying that supercomputers can crush Bitcoin here in the next five years. I just sometimes think

26:39

these trends go a little too fast and then people realize, hey, we’re 10, 15 years away from like the good usage. Just like the iPhone, like the iPhone from launching till today, it’s magical, but it took them almost 10 years to really get there. Yeah, I agree. So with the iPhone, actually, a lot of people disregarded it. It was like a trend and that people always loved their tactical buttons on the phone. But now, I mean, everyone has phones.

27:09

that have like no buttons in it, if not just  the volume and maybe  the camera button with the latest iPhone model.  So  we’ll see what happens. know,  AI is kind of a scary topic.  I thought the bubble popped with DeepSeek coming out. I thought, hey, you know, it actually turns out.

27:28

VCs and investors don’t need to pour in  hundreds of millions, if not billions, to a company when they’re fundraising.  I think OpenAI’s last fundraiser model was into billions.  So  that was ridiculous. I mean, we’ll see what happens.  It’s still kind of fresh.  I think this is going to impact the market as well as far as  what kind of money people are bringing in.

27:53

for at least top level engineers. we’ll see what happens. Onto our next topic. We’re to be talking about  pump.fun.  Pump.fun  has maybe 80 % volume  of the entire Solana network,  which we’re talking about hundreds of millions.  Well, they may just be banned from the US,  which  is not good for Solana.  And I’m here to spread FUD, but  you know,  pump.fun is kind of a casino.

28:21

platform where people launch their own token. Just to give you a quick TLDR,  pump the fund, you launch your own token on the Solana blockchain.  Solana  is used because it’s low fees and it’s very fast.  It’s probably the best one at that in the market right now.

28:36

And when people launch their tokens, people can see like a feed of new tokens.  And what usually happens is people pour in a lot of money, hoping to  multiply their  earnings or their return.  And people who  already have a lot more money there, they usually just sell  and beat anyone else who’s trying to do that. So it’s kind of like a dog eat dog kind of world. This wasn’t just Pumped Up Fawn.  I looked it up a little bit. It was 20 plus crypto related sites. It was like GM, GM.

29:06

Bull X really trading like a lot of these  meme coin platforms were suspended right also the the co-founders count all  a lon  Cohen’s account was  was suspended and like  a lot of people were saying that it was third-party API spam platforms and all that but

29:26

I didn’t realize there was so many like lawsuits already happening. Like the UK have an FCA ban already in place  on the stuff.  There’s a class action  lawsuit from Jan 2025, facilitated unregistered security sales through high volatility meme coins and  collected nearly 500 million in unpaid feeds.  And then there’s potential SEC action.  Some alleged the US securities exchange commission is probing the platform and then ex did it,  did those suspensions.

29:56

Essentially kind of at the bequest of the SEC and that was all  tied to it. So  I Think you call it a casinos the nice way  to say it I I think it’s just really a scam platform in the end for them Yeah for a majority of the stuff  like I think there’s some things but again I never really got the utility  or the purpose around a mean coin like  the Trump mean coin kind of made sense now like you get a meet with him in there but like  yep

30:27

you just a random person like the Kanye coin like it was just  to rip people off the  the hot to a coin to rip people off like  none of these really were  based in  hey I’m launching a coin to raise some money and these are the  the features you get kind of like a patreon  or a go fund me hey I’m raising money  via this coin this is what you’re gonna get  the more you hold the more access you get to me the better you know resources you have for me like if you’re the

30:57

largest holder,  you and I will hang out a week a year. I  could see that being useful, but  there was just a,  hey, do this and this is what you get.  You get  money lost and you’re fucked half the time.  I still to a large degree enjoy the concept of meme coins, but when it’s to the level  of…

31:20

you know, early, so the earliest you can to scam the rest, that’s just very bad for the industry, it’s bad for the economy, it’s bad for people. I don’t think Palm.Fund is gonna learn anything. They’re just gonna continue doing whatever generates the most money as a platform,  which unfortunately impacts Solana in a really, really good way because  with any  financial system there is, the more volume, the more money is moving in that financial system, the more money everyone makes.  So if you…

31:48

want to indulge on meme coins or in pom.fond just be very careful people lose a lot of money there  and you know there’s probably better alternatives hell you can probably learn how to count cards at blackjockey you can probably make more money there  than you can with pom.fund so  we’ll see what happens too like i i really think this is all looming around the one billion dollar token sale they brought eyeballs to them  via that one billion dollar token sale rumor

32:15

Yeah, so I did jump a little bit ahead here on my screen, but pump.fun came back so The the timestamp was June 16 when it got suspended from the platform and then like June 17th the day after it came back  It’s kind of weird what’s happening in the platform, man Yeah, like it’s so weird though because  some allegation comes after you

32:38

and then you just get banned and then maybe the next day or the day after the next day you come back. That’s where I’m like, okay, what is happening? What?  How does the moderation here happen? Yeah, so pump.fun is back. Yeah, that guy’s like, all right, how many hits should I take? So I can, I don’t know.  I don’t know what they do, but  yeah, they’re back  and the comments here, it’s Twitter, Twitter energy.  Super.  It’s funny. I like the memes, but

33:08

I think the founder also came back. So he’s also back.  Maybe they just abused the API and then  something happened. this will be an interesting watch because I think  for  crypto to be  a main…

33:25

focus  of the United States government is they need to stop the spam and like  the casino type stuff a little bit  and make it more regulated like the betting pot forms  a  Polymarket and stuff like that where there’s some control and  not just a  pump and dump left and right  I agree, but that’s pretty much been for

33:49

pumped up fun so we’ll see what happens in the coming weeks.  Will the Salana ecosystem be impacted yet again?  That will remain to be seen.  But something that is being impacted  with the markets is the war in Iran and  in Israel,  which there’s a lot to cover for there. So  let’s get on with it.  So it all started, you know,  when Iran bombed Israel and then Israel retaliated.  Or no, I think it was Israel who bombed Iran first.

34:18

in recent and then Iran retaliated  and they launched a lot of their older missiles and then that kind of got rid of Israel’s  Iron Dome and then we actually saw actual missiles hitting the capital of Israel.

34:34

And you can find a lot of that content online right now.  the context of that is  actually not so much that the Iron Dome  munitions were depleted. was that  supposedly Iran was using the hypersonic missiles and  any ICBM when it goes up, when it’s coming back down, they generally hit hypersonic speeds.  the Iron Dome isn’t meant for that. There’s another,  it’s like a Patriot system  that can take them out.

35:04

But they have to make decisions on what to hit  what to prevent and stuff and you know, it’s unclear What’s happening, but we know that the United States government is helping defend  Israel. There’s three systems There’s like a small one  that protects it There’s a bigger one and then a one that can  reach like  all the way to the Iranian airspace, you know as they’re launching them It’s super interesting that they’re able to intercept these but it’s also like,  you know, what what is  You know, where are these missiles from like, you know?

35:33

What are they capable of and  how many do they have?  Israel took out a ton on their initial attack.  Iran just had a  massive failure  of  military  intelligence. They  kept people together. They weren’t in bunkers. Iran  just kind of fell apart fairly quickly, though they’re still operating.  The war is heating up and it’s unclear, like,  is America going to get involved? All of that. And then to the polymarket comment here.

36:03

Yeah, so the Polymarket at the grand high level, it is still gambling. You know, at this point, probably the best use case with crypto has been gambling as far as generating revenue.

36:16

But Polymarket does a really good job at also kind of highlighting what is happening in the world because people are betting  on trends, in this case the war,  potential war I should say. Don’t want to say it’s a war yet, I hope not.  But  Polymarket here posted, the odds of a nuclear bomb being detonated this year continue to rise now at 18%. And that is something people are betting, which is alarming.  Yeah,  and the  bet is  not so much that actually I believe Iran  launches

36:46

something that it’s unclear that if they do have nuclear weapons and all that  but it is actually that the United States dropped bunker busters into the underground nuclear site  and  those bunker busters can disable like the you know like essentially just put a bunch of rubble in the tunnels and everything and the only way to get it is to use the bunker busters initially they’re like 30,000 pounds  and then to use a tactical nuke to wipe out that nuclear site completely  that’s that’s the  Twitter rumors

37:16

that  they’re talking about and the military folks that  say, this might be the only way to  definitely knock out  the Iranian nuclear program fully.

37:29

Yeah, we’ll see what happens. There’s  definitely several stories that come  the conflict online. So we’ll try to in the coming weeks,  you know, keep you updated with that and see if any more clarity comes out. This comment from this post mentioned, I don’t think betting money on a new going off is a good investment.  And I’m like, man, that’s true. And then Polymarket responded.  What about betting that it won’t go off?  So I would take the it’s not going off.  But yeah, me too.  Pretty long.

37:59

That’s  a step too far for any nation, I believe,  I don’t think anybody would be in agreeance that it’s a good thing.  Yeah, it’s kind of reassuring seeing that most people don’t want it to go off either because people will bet yes or no, but I think a lot of the times why people bet is based on  how they feel.

38:19

On another post from Polymarket, the US strike Iran’s underground nuclear base this month. A lot of people are saying, yes, it will. More than 50 % of people are saying that it will strike Fordo nuclear facility before July. So we probably got another week or less than two weeks. And now there’s another post from Polymarket here and we’re covering Polymarket because they’re actually kind of giving us some statistics on how people are feeling about the situation. There is one in five chance nuclear bomb will go off. again,

38:49

Almost the same thing, but let’s actually use Polymarket. So the US military action against Iran by Saturday so that’s today as of recording of this video and It’s now at 8 % it started at 18 as of maybe Wednesday June 19th and It kind of just went up and down the highest it was after that was 14 % chance

39:14

And now it’s sitting right below 10. I like how Polymarket left a note here on the Middle East markets So they’re kind of covering markets across the world. It seems based on the location of the market the betting

39:27

The promise of prediction markets is to harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate, unbiased forecasts for the most important events to society.  That ability is particularly invaluable in gut-wrenching times like today. After discussing with those directly affected by the attacks who had dozens of questions, we realized that prediction markets could give them the answers they need and waste TV news and Twitter could not.  Note,  as with all the markets currently displayed on Polymarket, there are no fees  on this market.

39:56

damn so they’re not making any money here. That’s  I like that they did that. It positions them in a way.  This is the interesting part too, and I want to wrap on this.  Generally when  wars break out, and  I would say Israel and Iran isn’t a war,

40:15

gold and bonds rally like any sort of safe haven asset becomes an asset flow. like gold shirt search 78 % while oil related inflation starts. It’s interesting that that didn’t happen happened to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a digital gold and it’s not considered a safe haven asset right now. Like just based on numbers like the fact that Bitcoin is down today, know, hovering around 103 is a huge thing to kind of also talk about like as a again,

40:45

It’s not being considered a safe haven asset flow. You you’ve got the energy sector, you know, in kind of turmoil like stocks on Chevron have jumped, you know, OPEC plus, you know, let’s talk about output supplies. We’ve got airline stocks hitting. like there is a lot of escalation happening and you got to look, you know, as an investor, like what’s happening, like gold’s a safe choice, high quality bonds are a safe choice, energy equities for it.

41:15

but  crypto is not being talked about  as a safe haven. I think that’s  a huge part. Now, PolyMarket is like benefiting on this and not benefiting in the way of making money, but they’re talking about it. So it’s just a  interesting thing  to see how crypto is  staying relevant, but also not benefiting from these conflicts.  Yeah.  And I think that’s great. So funny enough, they actually have Grok enabled here. So when we click on it, it actually does a query.

41:57

President is  a US allowed to window for diplomacy before deciding Iranian warrants that severe in the intervenes and American are on the alert with deployments in region So it kind of gives you a bit more context to  some of what’s happening. I think that’s a really good way to incorporate AI  One more thing will leave here before we close this episode open AI actually

42:20

close the deal with the US government and they want to incorporate AI to improve their their OPSEC or their security.

42:28

This is  a simple Google search and it kind of gives you here that they were awarded 200 million  contract by the US Department of Defense to develop prototype artificial intelligence capabilities for the military.  It will be completed on July 20, 20 six. One thing I would keep an eye on is AI stocks,  probably military stocks as well, because we might be seeing another conflict here.  So Nvidia being the shovel to the gold rush that is the AI race.  Its stock is actually going up, you

42:58

It’s  one of the few stocks that in the last five days wasn’t impacted as much  I don’t even know when this conflict started but as of July  16th  the stock jumped  almost five dollars  and It’s just not gone down as severely as  any other asset data for all that data processing. They’re gonna need in a video

43:19

Yeah, so we’ll see what happens. We’ll keep you guys updated with the markets.  But I think that’s as far as we have to cover today.

43:49

it. This has been the Social Aging Report. Thanks for watching.