Episode 30: Tether on the Brink? Crypto’s Stability Crisis & The Rise of Self-Custody

00:00

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode. This is JR, Founding CEO of Social Market. Hey, my name’s Leon Hitchens and I’m the Chief Marketing Officer here at Social Market.  Right, one of these weeks.  Right, well I don’t know if there’s a C-suite position for software chief officer or something, but that’d be kind of interesting. Well anyways, this is Social Ledger Report. Yo, CTO? I mean that’s  probably best way to put it. More or less, yeah. Right, uh yeah, so this is Social Ledger Report.

00:28

or where we talk about crypto stuff. Leon, you told me about Stather. You know, it was  almost becoming insolvent, right? Do you want to talk about that? Because I don’t know the full story. Yeah, so there’s this  interesting um post out here. So  S &P, which is like, you know, you know it as S &P 500, but they’re  like a credit rating agency too. What’s the Stanford battery? The S &P.  Oh dude, I don’t know. The Pore  something.

00:57

uh… let’s go look it up  uh…  people are like these guys are fucking amateurs they don’t know what that means i don’t actually know what they stand for uh the p stands for poor but i know what the  s  stands for  and i know it’s the parent company of the smp five hundred that everyone  loves to refer to as far as being a pro investor standard and poor’s

01:21

Okay, standard, that’s what it fucking is. Yeah, standard and pours. So they do like a bunch of market indices and then they do credit rating. Right. So really big organization essentially like America’s even had like downgraded credit ratings in the past. Okay. Pretty serious thing because like also, you know, it’s just like a normal credit rating.

01:46

The lower you are, the more risk  that you are to anybody buying, the more risk to institutions that are investing or  lending out to you.  This is the interesting part. And the math is what this guy’s making a claim here. It’s like $184 billion backbone of crypto markets has crashed away from insolvency. essentially what he’s saying is Bitcoin holdings are  the risk, which is like a 5.6.5.

02:15

3.6 percent of reserves and then there’s a safety buffer of 3.9 percent. Essentially the risk here is a decline in Bitcoin’s value. You could lead to USDT being under collateralized. So it’s all around Bitcoin speculation. If Bitcoin slipped further during that drop, so we went all the way down to I believe as low as 82,000 on Bitcoin.

02:45

that could cause USDTC to have a problem of they’re not collateralized with enough money. And then also there’s a bunch of risks that, you know, like they wouldn’t be able to even go get loans or anything to kind of pull them together. They’ve also had like a bunch of issues in the past with like the attorney general, you know, was backed by 27.6 % of days examined during a 26 month period.

03:15

That Tc is fun. The CFTC has find them um in in the the past, you know, they’re not reforming They’re not doing this like I saw a bunch of the all-in podcast folks talking about how they should hold bonds and treasuries which which I think makes a lot of sense like  You there’s stable Yes, you see does that yes, like that’s that’s why a lot of people are just saying

03:42

that tether is kind of like a risk because it’s non-american um essentially. so  that makes sense. uh Shit. So essentially TLDR,  you know,  in crayon eating terms, uh USDT could essentially become insolvent  if there’s no collateral  to anything. Yeah, and I know that they’re like…

04:10

So this is the weird part of their histories. I believe they’re American based, but they’re based in El Salvador now. uh Okay. I don’t really, you know, again, like why are they out in El Salvador? You know,  what is it? They’re a very old company too. They’re like 11 years old. uh So there’s a lot of questions here. Oh yeah. Like I think 2014 is when they came out. uh

04:37

Yeah, so that’s ancient. Well, basically, it was in 2012, so it’s around that time. Yeah, let’s look to see what else people are talking about, too. Central banks. I’ve seen this, too. Tether’s purchased 26 tons of gold in Q3 2025, surpassing all central bank buying. That’s massive. But more gold. So they’re not…

05:03

We got off the gold standard for a reason because people needed more money and the government decided to everyone up by saying let’s just print more of it and let’s just not have it, you know, nothing to collateralize it. Which it’s good to have a standard which is gold. It works because inflation isn’t as high as it is now, but

05:26

Why don’t they just do  bonds? kind of puts everyone in the same place. mean, inflation is just going to be followed by the US dollar inflation because the US dollar inflation is just thin air  money, essentially. But I mean, it’s still kind of deal because nothing is collateralizing USDT, which is essentially similar to the dollar, I guess. Is that kind of the situation? Yes, but the dollar is backed by the full force of $800 billion of the US military. OK, yeah.

05:56

What is Tether backed by other than some dude in El Salvador saying this is all okay and maybe some crypto chain? The difference is the United States government came off of it in 91 or 92 is when Nixon took them off. Sorry, not 90, but 71 or 72. Yeah, they called it It was Nixon.

06:25

There’s a lot of questions here that I have and I see like people  debating it ah out there like… The economic ninja, that guy is kind of big on X. The US government’s secret plan to dominate the world’s market, the crypto company Tether to buy up all gold without rattling? Sort of a big deal. You know Tether, the USDT stablecoin?

06:47

That company now owns more gold than Hungary and South Korea. It’s absolutely staggering the rate that they’re buying it at. Check this out. Tether just added 26 tons of gold in the third quarter alone,  outpacing any central bank in the world. Its reserves now include 7 % gold worth over $12.9 billion.  I don’t think people can appreciate the fact. That’s huge deal.

07:13

Do you know about the guy in the 70s who bought up all the silver and was able to play the silver markets? I read something about that. Funny enough, I’m usually on TikTok learning this cool shit. That’s my feed. If you look at it.  essentially it correct me if wrong, but this guy had so much silver that he could essentially I mean, he was a whale and he could affect the value of silver because how much he had. Yes, yes. Like it was it was so much. think he held like

07:42

80 % of  all  stuff. this is an interesting, know, tether buying gold is one good for them. Stability,  need something to be collateralized. Yeah, because you need a liquidity push out there.  So  if they don’t have something backing it, what’s the trust in the system? Like, the trust in the system for the world is, you know, this

08:10

Military will control it. You know, that’s why you have like Argentinian, you know dollars crashing and stuff So that often the the public just doesn’t have faith in their government. That’s that’s when the currencies fall apart So I did a Google search while you were talking and I asked What is the most used stable coin? Tethers number one by a market cap of almost a hundred and eighty five billion Fiat currency and other assets

08:39

That’s the primary backing  and just the key feature why everyone is using it is because it has the highest trading volume and it’s mostly  used globally. So it’s  widely available  and fiat currency and other assets, which we’ve already saw like gold. But I mean, why is it going insolvency again? it like just because?  It’s because of their Bitcoin price. So if their Bitcoin price slips, that…

09:08

amount is what  they need to have a buffer of like 3.9 percent. Their Bitcoin reserve is like 5.6 percent.  And if that slips, they could go insolvent very quickly. So  Jason, I thought, had a really good take again. You know, sell 100 percent of Bitcoin, own 100 percent of treasuries, get one, not two, but two audits done by an American firms.  I think these two are very valid. I do think  as a

09:39

Treasury  for something out there Bitcoin is a little too unstable. They need to buy something that

09:48

Right now in the foreseeable future like I don’t see Bitcoin being stable at all  like in the next ten years If I was gonna keep increasing in value  at rates and then dropping in values at rates that most assets cannot not tackle You know like that’s why you take us treasuries  their values  their value more or less  no, so okay, everything makes sense  and

10:17

Bitcoin is, I think, good  long term. But  here’s my question.  Why don’t companies just instead of using Bitcoin, well, obviously not only Bitcoin, we’re seeing now why they should only rely on Bitcoin. But why don’t people just  hold or companies hold Bitcoin right now and then  use it as collateral in the future when it’s worth more than their original purchasing price? Because

10:46

We had market crash in… I think you can do that.  And the reason I’m jumping in is I think you can do that. And any publicly traded company can do that. If they can buy Bitcoin with like free flowing cash. Like look, MicroStrategy’s had this like weird crisis last week too when the price was dropping where people were talking about moving them from indexes to something else. ah But MicroStrategy, whatever they’re calling themselves.

11:15

There’s still a $500 million a year business with uh a treasury that’s Bitcoin. Tether is a currency that needs to be backed by something. It’s not a business that’s free flowing cash. That  makes sense. Tesla tomorrow bought another $20 million worth of crypto and they said, we bought it with our profits. It’s like, oh, okay, cool.  There’s no risk. There’s no risk that, oh,

11:45

Tesla is going to go insolvent because they’re using that as a, as just a bank account. It’s like, no, but Tether is literally trying to say we’re a stable coin with something that is not tied to the U S dollar. Like  I a hundred percent believe they need to be in more treasuries. Like they should be buying  T bills, at least at least T bills for the short term. And then you buy treasury bonds for the longterm. You can buy,  I forget what the medium term is or the, the, the, think they’re notes.

12:15

It goes T-bills, it goes T-bills, T-notes, and then T-bonds. So T-bills, T-notes, T-bonds. That’s what treasuries are. like- gold, they spent, again, a shit ton of money on gold. Is that just not gonna help them at all? Is it only supposed to be T-bills and that’s it? Because like- That’s a good question. Half of it is T-bills.

12:44

We can look it up here on Google, right? like,  yeah, uh I would ask it like.

12:53

What is it? How much does USCC have in? Well, okay, so the provider of USCC is Circle. So could probably get a better result if you specify that. I’m gonna ask. I wanna see the general thing, what happens. Yep. So it should be by Circle. I wanna see it was smart enough to know that too. Okay, so that’s good point. Everyone is hyping up LLMs. This is a little side note, but I think LLMs are just…

13:22

more hyped up than they should be. It’s just mimicking  knowledge, but at the same time it hallucinates so much. Dude, what the fuck? See, this is my problem with Grok. Shit like this.  Like I get this a lot.  Really?  It just bothers me sometimes. Like I don’t get timed out on like Claude or even Perplexity or ChatGPT, but constantly with  X and Grok, I run into so many issues and problems.

13:52

You know what? I’ve seen the difference as well. have  Grok on my Tesla  and when I just want to talk about it for whatever shit that  goes in my head,  it just fucks up halfway.  It slows down. It just doesn’t think it.  It’s supposed to be one of the smartest LLMs too. So go figure.

14:14

Like I think the problem that I have with tether too is like they’re not very transparent on all of their parts, you know, like they, they’re, they’re, they have it, but it’s, not there. like in circulation, can’t see it openly like circle here. Yeah. Like 73.8 billion and USDC. And then the reserves is more than what they have. Um, let’s see.

14:42

Wow. Okay. So, so here’s the thing. Like, and this is before Genius Act, right? So the thing with, with the Genius Bill is it  makes these  USD or stable coin issuers  a framework for them to stay compliant, which was nonexistent with the last administration and with Gary Gensler. He would just sue people, sue companies, give them no reason. So this is obviously a better step in the right direction.

15:09

At what point does USDT need to comply with that?  Obviously they’re not in the US, so that probably is the major reason, but at this rate they’re gonna fuck up,  make themselves go insolvent.  If  they’re not gonna establish…  You know, I think,  largely put,  USA is ahead on the crypto market just because of this framework  of regulation that I don’t think the genius type of act or even the Clarity Act exists anywhere else in the world, so…

15:39

The US is saying, hey dude, we have this open market, it’s very big.  We invite you to create a crypto company with us.  Here’s a guideline of rules for you to follow.  And you already have the established presence.

15:54

So what’s all this? okay, so they have total reserve is $118 billion. Okay. Okay. But they have 180, they have 184 billion in circulation. So they have a 60, roughly $60 billion part. The problem with this, and this is not, this is not uncommon to even for like banks to not keep all of their money on hand. Banks, I believe.

16:22

need to have 20 % of all deposits on hand for stuff because like essentially what happened during the Great Depression was there was a run on banks and gold was the reserve and then they just didn’t have enough cash on hand to give it to everybody. if there’s a crypto nightmare and let’s say Bitcoin drops to $50,000 tomorrow and there’s a run on USDT,

16:51

they might not have enough money to fulfill their, you know, the total amount of their, their, their, yeah, like the liquidity of it. Like they would run into liquidity and have an insolvency crisis. So there’s definitely a very big like part here that is, that is what if, but this is what happened in 2008. This is like, again, over and over is like, what if the worst thing happens? It’s no different than that recent bank, the Silicon Valley bank.

17:20

What was it called?  SVB Silicon Valley Bank.  So there was essentially the same thing run on the bank. The bank fell apart like USDT. The USDT could have the same thing happen to them is if a run happens and crypto has a bad week, they could go and solve it very quickly. That’s why I will. I never wanted to use USDT for anything.  I have been very adamantly against them from the start.

17:50

Stable coins also kind of broke my brain until you like circle really was like kind of moving  it makes more sense to me now but still at the same time I’m kind of like  Like this is this like the right thing like you know  No, it makes sense  I’ll be honest you as you see  I trusted more not just because well even more after what we discussed today, but also

18:16

I know Coinbase largely pushes for USDC and I actually trust Coinbase uh as a crypto company more than I do a lot of other companies, even more than Binance if I’m being honest.  And I’ve used both, right? um I do have some USDT but honestly,  I do not feel comfortable owning USDT after today.  So I’m probably just gonna switch it.  I totally would. I’d recommend getting out of it. Like my  investing strategy recently has been

18:47

USDC  in  a like, you know, high yield checking account acting as my high yield savings account. USDC is my,  like high yield savings account. I have it on,  on a Coinbase  or maybe I, oh no, actually I have it mostly on base.  And then um I have some money that’s, that’s out, uh loaned out via Coinbase’s  USDC loan program thing.

19:15

So you’re getting like 8 % back.  And then my other strategy is buy more Bitcoin always. That’s kind of like 40 % of all of my holdings is always going to be Bitcoin. Ethereum is another hot one I really like.  I’ve really jumped on the Solana train recently, especially with Phantom Wallet’s hyper liquid staking, where you get PSOL instead of regular SOL, you trade it  for that.

19:44

I really like that, especially, you know, the the the rate that you get, is like six or seven percent. So it’s almost like, yeah, so I’ve I’ve really pushed into Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana is the core ones. And then USDC is like pulled my US dollars somewhere that I believe is better. But. Tied to all of that. And I think also kind of like a unvarnished ad for us  is we could talk about that a bit hack real quick.

20:13

The BitHack, which one is it again? The Upbit. Upbit. It’s an exchange. Did this happen this week? I swear, I feel like a little bit out of it. So the TLDR is almost $30 million in Solana assets have been stolen from Upbit. They’re the South Korean’s largest crypto exchange. And again, this is the part and this is the part that I think is happening fast in crypto is consolidation and

20:44

single people holding um crypto is a really big risk. think Coinbase tries to mitigate it. think Kraken tries to mitigate it. All of them try to mitigate it by having reserves and all of this. But it’s really hard to  protect everything and keep this there. ah Here’s the other thing. um Alpid is what? central exchange?  Yes, they’re a central exchange. They’re the largest in South Korea.

21:13

Okay, so I’m going to rant for a uh brief moment. So, you know, warning, but we’ve talked to customers Leon, we’re like, Hey dude, we have a self custody wallet is called social market, which the name is going to get rebranded next year. So keep an eye out for that. um Social market is a self custody wallet that has automated security  and we’re adding automated trading and auto balancing. We’re using an agent system, which  IP, so we can’t really get into that.

21:42

So that’s the context.  And  we’ve interviewed some customers  and these people are either smooth brain or they just don’t give a shit about their security  because  they’re like, well, I have a lot of money on the central exchange like Coinbase. Why should I even care about this?  This is why.  And you know why?  If Coinbase or Upbit, in this case Upbit lost all their money, how are they gonna get the money? How can they pay back all these customers?  And  the bright side to this one is that they have enough

22:11

in the reserves to cover that. So at the moment,  I’m sure they have they have insurance and stuff  for it. Yeah, they should because  I think that essentially they’re there. But this isn’t the first time  I believe that they’ve been embroiled in problems. know ah there was three  like leaders of the exchange back in like 2018 that were charged with

22:39

like some sort of fraud and making fake orders. And then also I believe there was some sort of hack or something around that time where they had some money lost. Oh, it was the Ethereum hack in 2019. I just looked it up. They lost 48.5 million of Ethereum. So they are like targeted consistently. And honestly, I don’t know why anybody keeps their money here. here’s the thing. When I was

23:08

Just to finish my thought real quick and I’ll let you finish yours. But  you know,  I’ve heard this argument saying like, dude, if Coinbase falls, the crypto market as we know it should cease to exist. And I think that’s a very large oversimplification and kind of a naive thought because crypto is so decentralized and it’s becoming more centralized as we speak, which is kind of bad, but uh crypto is so big at this point, it’s not gonna fail overnight. And I also don’t think Coinbase would fail overnight as easily.

23:36

But I mean, anything can happen, right? Like look at SVP. But I think that’s the that’s the same argument that led us into 2008. I don’t disagree with you. But like if you look at the market after FTX, like look, let’s look FTX failure. It fell in 2022 and it actually crashed Bitcoin to 40,000. Yeah, like this is. Like, again, these are what’s going to happen like.

24:05

You know, so  essentially you talked about it, but  the big part is.

24:12

They will that it will recover, but it’s going to take you know, it took two three years almost or cover it actually really took an act of the president coming in to recover crypto from the Biden administration and all the problems that he was doing, you know, like, you  know, JP Morgan was unbanking people. There’s just so many issues with it. I do  agree with you that it’s just not going to fail. I think the too big to fail conversations part of the problem  is just like the Nvidia and AI stuff.

24:42

That stuff’s not too big to fail. It’s going to fail. And the reason it’s too big to fail is because the federal government is going to have to stop step in because that’s going to plunge us into a depression. Just like  if 2008 didn’t happen or 2008 was just let happen, we would have been in a great depression. Like we would have been in some sort of depression because now the U.S. government has the ability because they can just print money to turn around and do it. But I do believe like on the long term, you know, it’s going to be good.

25:12

like for  crypto and to your point, like it’s so decentralized, but also we are getting very centralized, like more and more of these  ones. Like Binance is a problem. Binance with ICOs, like  there was a study  on  Monad holding its value so well and actually increasing. In comparing that to ICOs that have launched on Binance, when Binance, they take like 12 % of all coins. When Binance launched,

25:41

launches with an ICO often they’re able to control the price and it dumps and then inevitably that ICO doesn’t do that well but if you’re not on on it and monad showed it if you’re not on Binance and they didn’t launch on it and They’re still not on that finance. I They have pretty they have pretty strong price increase and pretty strong staying power Yep, so it just kind of shows that you know

26:08

CZ and whatever he’s doing out there with Binance is a problem. He’s playing the crypto markets and there so central exchanges are a problem. For anyone who thinks if you’re watching this and then you’re like, oh, I have all my money on Coinbase or on Gemini or any central exchange, just be careful.  Okay, you can do whatever you want with your money,  but why risk it? If you don’t want to use social market, that’s fine. At least use a self custody wallet like MetaMask or Phantom Wallet. You will take yourself later.

26:38

Don’t be lazy. A lot of people compromise on their security because they’re lazy. So do your own research  if you don’t want to just take our word. I encourage you to  do your own research.  This episode, and we’ll put it in the show notes,  is about how the self custody wallets are having their neo bank moment. ah Yeah, that’s of a thing right now.

27:04

He was an early crypto,  I forget the name of his company initially, but he was an early Ethereum wallet when Ethereum first launched.  Now it’s ready.co, but he talks about  all of the stuff coming on, on network, it’s coming  via debit cards. Like for example, if you deposit $20,000 in a bank account, you’re getting a call.

27:31

They’re gonna call you, the IRS is gonna look into it, the bank’s gonna fill out paperwork on you. You deposit $20,000 into a self custody wallet,  nobody’s the fucking wiser. Now, people watch the blockchains and will look at deck scanners and stuff and see, they’re trying to attempt to know who’s the wallet is, but you deposit a billion dollars into Metamask wallet and you’re just using a debit card.  There’s no government oversight more or less.

28:00

You know, there’s some degree of information out there, but you’re pretty anonymous. Like,  I think that’s a big thing. And this podcast really talks about how  cards are becoming the essentially self custody wallets are going to become the new Neo banks. So instead of using cash app, you’re going to be using a crack, terrible name, reusing social market, using Metamask, using Phantom wallet,  and you’re going to have your money there.

28:29

And then you’re going to cash out to a stable coin and then you’re going to swipe your debit card. Like that’s, that’s their belief. And they think that everything’s going to be so decentralized that, you know, nobody will be able to come in and reach into your account and say, Hey, we’re going to debank you. They’re going to go, Oh, Hey, like they’re like, maybe they turn off your debit card access, but I think this is the push and the part about, you know, this hack is, is, I’ll talk about it in a minute, but

28:58

I think it really just shows that central exchanges  are there for on and off ramping. They’re there for a reason. You should keep some of your money there.  You know, if you’re doing high frequency trades or something like, you know, I can understand it, but  we should do a crash course.  Maybe next episode Leon, we should do a crash course. That’s like, Hey, if you’re new on crypto, there’s the strategy. There’s like the main. Yeah. Yeah. Even a webinar. Cause like I have this, you know, ridge.

29:28

Cold wallet, I hardly touch it and it’s just there  and I have most of my crypto yield farming right now. Yeah, I’m just yield farming  What’s that?  I’m gonna look it up. I’ve never heard of it  the ledger Cold wallet  Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, this is the Bitcoin edition. It came out last year. It’s no longer available. So  I lucked out very  Very uh exclusive. Okay. So real quick on this on this hack, too

29:57

I think the interesting part is ah there’s some concern  that the hackers actually surmised or figured out  all the uh secret keys to the wallets. there’s a lot happening on there right now.  And the biggest and most important part is it looks like it’s a North Korean uh hacking group called  Lazarus.  Those fuckers have been everywhere, dude. Those guys  are…

30:27

just causing a lot of damage for years you know oh yeah especially especially just out there but they’re supposedly able to figure out the the cold wallets or the the self custody wall secret recovery keys by using some software and guessing uh… based on on they’re able to crack the private key from yourself custody wallet yeah i don’t know you said it yet

30:56

If that’s true, that’s kind of big. That could  jeopardize everything, even our product. So,  um, yes, right here. They, the up, it says hackers may have inferred private keys from wallet patterns.  A little key young Jew. Who the fuck is that?  Oh, my bad.  Uh, key young you, it’s the guy who posts this says only listers could likely achieve up. It says attackers might have it in third private keys by analyzing users, wallet address patterns.

31:24

If true, I doubt anyone other than North Korea hackers could do this.  Dang, that is scary. But here’s the thing. Our product offers  a type of coverage. So if some shit like this would happen to your money, you may want to check us out because it’s a shameless plug by the way, but Crypto Wallace don’t have like any,  whether you’re… I love this one.  Sorry. No,  you’re fine. does it say?

31:49

Lazer up a big hack level Lazarus my security level password 123 and a sticky note under the keyboard  Dude people I’m sorry, dude, like I hate to call people I hate to shit talk people but some people are just fucking stupid password one two three exclamation mark is the most common or not even the exclamation mark but like password one two three is the most common password and People need to start using password managers. Yeah, like this is this is something interesting to it’s hard to keep none of your thought but like

32:18

This is something that I keep hearing a discussion about blockchain transparency is good, but it’s showing that  pattern analysis can reveal more than expected. This is also discussion about companies buying Bitcoin at really high levels and people figuring out the wallet and figuring out the company behind it. And then that puts  that company at risk for hacks and everything. So  there is some parts to this like that being transparent.

32:47

fucking sucks sometimes  because people  are  just assholes. So  it’s out there. also look, imagine losing funds because your wallet pattern looked predictable.  what the fuck, you know?  That sucks. mean, here’s what I’ll say. Just my quick thought. If we look at anything that  is in the crypto market that lets you hold your money, it doesn’t come nowhere near close as far as

33:16

almost reliably storing it as a bank. Banks, they have FDIC insurance, which is backed by the government, but just in the event of a bank run, which is like the worst fear, right? There’s nothing similar in crypto. We’re actually solving something like that with social market, which, you know, shameless plug, but like, it’s just a fact. Like we see this as a big issue. No one is offering any type of coverage except for Coinbase under central exchange,  but you still got to pay for it. And I mean, that’s normal, right? But like,

33:44

You know, FDIC insurance is like kind of big  and I mean, we’re not insurance, but there’s more like a warranty with our security, but you cannot get that kind of security anywhere else. And I can say that confidently because of the way our wallet works, but  it breaks a little, right? Like right now we’re having some authentication issues just to be very transparent and clear, but we’re working on it. But you know, if you want to try it out, dude, go to socialmarket.tech. You know, if you’re  listening and made it this far, like go to socialmarket.tech, let us know what you think.

34:14

But anyways, I think this issue can get solved. This is an interesting take. here is the central exchanges are not banks, they’re honey pots for the world’s sophisticated predators, which is very true. Like I’m sure there is many people looking at Coinbase and their security has to be above all like the best. there’s a lot out there. I mean, I’m sure, well,

34:43

So Coinbase in the early days,  they were hacked at one point and people were able to withdraw money from, I’m guessing their reserves  because they’re an exchange. So they need to have like a reserve so that way can, customers can buy that from them. um People withdrew like a couple thousand, this one hacker and Brian Armstrong said they would have become insolvent if they hadn’t tackled that, you know, if they let that happen. So that’s scary. And a lot of people put trust on central exchanges.

35:11

Coinbase is great, don’t get me wrong, but people need to  own  up to their own custody. And it sucks because you gotta think a little bit more and people,  just want things to get done for them and that’s fine. We understand and we try to do that social market at least, but you can’t trust everyone. We’ll understand these things by principle and deliver that for you.

35:36

Yeah, it’s, it’s  sorry.  Oh, geez, killing me. But  no, it’s,  it’s a really interesting thing to see out there, you know, from Tether falling apart, possibly Bitcoin’s rebounding. So on the bright side, Bitcoin’s up.  The real question, like we were talking about earlier is, is this a bear trap? You know, like, is the market going to fall again?  You know, Trump could, you know, and this is, want to get political on it, but Trump

36:06

Trump could invade  Venezuela over the weekend.  He closed airspace with a fucking tweet, little wave of a finger,  like, airspace is closed. ah I didn’t know somebody could do that.  Only the President of the United States probably could attempt that.  But  if they invade or they attack or they bomb, whatever they do, it would be interesting to see what happens because the market  could scare and then Bitcoin could be the…

36:33

Hold a value for those folks gold could skyrocket It’s gonna be interesting thing over the next couple of weeks into the end of the year  to see what happens  You know, it’s interesting  Larry think  I’ve mentioned this a few times in the past, but  what’s that?  I fuck the guy at this point  Well, so he actually owns about 13 % of the world’s GDP. I think it’s a hundred trillion in total He owns 13 trillion with BlackRock.  So

37:01

He’s the one who says the world as we know it, every financial asset that we know is going to be tokenized. And the reason for that is because maintenance costs are going to reduce. Transaction fees are also going to reduce. It’s going to become 24 seven available because unlike stocks or you you got to wait for the you got to wait for the stock market to open with crypto. It’s open 24 seven. I could go on. That’s just kind of paint the picture. It’s just overall. It’s all moving.

37:31

Now,  I got one last thing and it’s kind  of Sure. We were talking about fucking  wallets and stuff. I just wanted to show everybody.  I love this wallet. Like I want to go buy this.  that’s cool. Great holiday  gift for any crypto people. I love that. Yeah. You see that has the Bitcoin logo right next to the ledger. ah If it’s available, I would recommend it. It’s like almost the same price as the rich wallet that you’re seeing.

38:01

So I mean, whatever you like, this thought, I wish this was sponsored. I would be raking in some money right now, but like, know, for that holiday crypto lover, go buy them the Ridge wallet. It’s only 95 bucks. That’s fun though.  I like the Bitcoin logo, but also my concern is  if someone,  I don’t know, someone who might know better, if you’re more sophisticated thief, you might see the Bitcoin logo and they’d be like, Ooh, this person has money. I’m going to take it.  I don’t know.  That’s all I have though. You pick your battles.

38:31

Exactly. I just thought it was cool.  Yeah. So I mean, that’s cool. And thanks for sharing.  So  I guess  one more thing that I want to talk about here today  is  I was looking on grok  unlike you. I was not scrolling. was  I was doom scrolling on TikTok. I’ll tell you that much. I had a little bit of free time this week, but  I went on grok  and I wanted to get some some things to talk about for today.

38:57

I was able to pull off some very unhinged comments that I kind of want to review with you and this is kind of part of what I want to want to start doing here the podcast if you guys  have stayed this long and if you want to watch that kind of stuff let us know what you think  just because um, I love the controversy on Twitter.  I  Love when motherfuckers fight. Sometimes it’s just entertaining, dude.  So  So this is from chairman and we were kind of reviewing it earlier  Whether we debated what we whether we should talk about it

39:26

um So Chairman says,  commentary account, which I think it’s interesting that X added that. says, and this is what it reminded me when we were talking about like Coinbase and everything, um central exchange  stuff. It says, the longer you stay in crypto, the more you notice how weird this game really is. Some people get a huge following and start acting like they’re untouchable, like the crowd is just a pool of liquidity. They can tap wherever they’re bored.  And they do it with a smile, like it’s all part of the entertainment.

39:54

So I guess it’s referring to like the culture here on X or Twitter, um like the whole crypto throw culture. And then he goes to say, what gets me isn’t even the grifting anymore. It’s how openly the clown, the same people who trusted them or they clown the people that trusted them. Regular guys who genuinely thought they were rolling with someone’s sharp  until they get smoked and walk away feeling like idiots. Meanwhile, the influencers laugh and reset for the next wave. So it’s kind of just talking about

40:24

If you, if you couldn’t understand that TLDR, he’s essentially saying there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of  con artists here on Twitter or just anyone who you might follow in the space on, on crypto space in general. Like there’s a lot of scam artists. might seem smart at first, but then they end up finessing people and influencers. There’s just not enough  like justice here. I mean, if you remember  Kim Kardashian, she did the Ethereum max in 2021 scam.

40:54

And  she made it a post on her her Instagram and she was like not a post but it was like on her story  and we never saw it again. It was like, oh hey go check it out.  You know  my advisors told me it’s there  and people lost a shit ton of money and there was no justice on her behalf and now  everyone is cherishing her  or just  you know watching the Kim Kardashian show like nothing and feeling bad that she didn’t get her um she didn’t pass the bar because she started

41:23

trying to become a lawyer recently. But it goes to say that, you know, it follows in the end. It’s a messed up dynamic. The puppet master’s joke, the crowd blames themselves and the cycle keeps looping because no one wants to believe they were never on equal footing. I thought that was very interesting because, the reason why I wanted to mention it is because you hear a lot of times conflicting opinions on crypto. You know, we have very strong opinions like you and I are saying, hey dude,

41:52

We’ve been on this space for a while and we really have, but based on what works and we’re just trying to do the right thing for ourselves. And if you want to join us along the way, we would be happy to help you get the right thing done. Right. Like don’t put your money on a central exchange. Like do what we do. We put it on the cold wallet.  Um, but it also goes to show you like, you should just be careful. We listen to the advice too. If you feel skeptical about us, that’s totally fine, which is kind of like meta saying like, trust us, but also watch out for people who, you know, give you advice.  So.

42:22

Never listen to influencers, especially who don’t know shit about crypto like Kim Kardashian like I would not expect that from her at all or ever Yeah, cuz I went and looked at his other tweets like he he says Trump’s the prospect master that sees a guy chairman one of them.  I don’t I can’t find anything because there’s a few chairmen’s out there, but this guy’s Canadian gosh, so I’m kind of curious like, you know interesting Canadians opinion on crypto

42:52

Like,  I wonder what it is as a general thing.

42:57

People are loud on Twitter and you have to if you want to send out so I will take it as a grain of salt even but also there is some truth in what he says like some people just listen  some people just talk about  off their ass about like what the standard should be or they just want to shout out their opinions but often times it’s not good people can be very dumb 100 % but this guy’s not dumb I think his thoughts were  right on the point

43:25

Kim Kardashian talking about crypto, it was very dumb. They say that there’s not as much brain activity in her head. I don’t if you saw that. little side note. No, I was just looking up this guy a little bit more. No, no. I just saw too on Polymarket that some New Yorkers are getting 12,000 in crypto for a universal basic income experiment sponsored by Coinbase.

43:54

Polymarket some New Yorkers are getting 12,000 in crypto for a universal basic income experiment.  Damn, what do have to do to get in there?

44:07

Dude same I’m I’m gonna go to New York right now if you’re watching this on YouTube or you can kind of read the stuff But if you’re on Spotify or watching audio,  we’re just scrolling through the feed and people are just Being unhinged which we love to see that. So I actually why don’t you go to YouTube if you’re not watching this on YouTube? Like this is where the this is where the vibes are at You can always look at my five o’clock shadow,  which is not very appealing

44:36

I think we’re good. ah Thanks for listening and thanks for joining us and we’ll see you next week. Yeah, see you around guys. Be safe.