Episode 37: The Death of Retail Crypto? Mark Cuban’s Exit, Tokenized Stock Risks & Solana Alpenlow

0:01

Yo yo yo, welcome back to the channel. This is JR

0:05

>> and I’m Leon. Also trying to text, but uh

0:09

>> oh, now you’re good. So, we’ve been away for a while. We’ve been both productive

0:15

in our own ends, trying to survive the job market right now. But anyways, we’re

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here to give you some price actions here on Bitcoin. So, and a and a bunch of

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other things that we’re going to talk about like Mark Cuban sells his Bitcoin.

0:29

People are losing their minds on crypto Twitter tokenized stocks. They’re having

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some issues with regulatory um acceptance for lack of a better word.

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Like there’s a lot of regulatory scrutiny. And then YC and Batches are

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putting more money into the crypto startup ecosystems including Bankerbot

0:48

which I want to talk about Bankerbot for quite a bit there. And then Hyperliquid,

0:53

its ecosystem is also expanding and you know expanding with several features and

0:58

Solana’s openlow um I’m not entirely sure what that is. We’re going to learn

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about it together but it’s also making a lot of noise. The co-founder and Natalie

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and the team behind Salana are optimistic about the main the mainet

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rollout as early as quarter 3 this year. So we have quite a few things to talk

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about. Um, have you heard of any

1:19

>> I think I’m gonna have a very negative take on most of this stuff. So, let’s

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let’s get into it.

1:26

>> We we need to have different opinions. So, you know, let’s get into it. Now,

1:29

I’ve been developing some features on Mintlock, which we have some things to

1:34

share here. So, this is the app.

1:37

>> I I realized we left this on live.

1:41

>> Wait, wait, what?

1:43

>> I forgot that we left this on live. What do you mean?

1:47

>> It’s live on Twitter.

1:50

>> Oh, nice. Do you want to leave it? Do you want to drop it?

1:54

>> I’m open to either. Like, we can have Cory edit this, but

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>> we’ll do it live. [ __ ] it. Do it live. I can I’ll write it and we’ll do it live.

2:03

>> Let’s just roll with it. Uh I just hopped onto Twitter and I was like, “Oh,

2:07

hey, wait. The Boost Network is live.

2:09

>> [ __ ] it.” All right. So, this is the Mint Lock

2:14

app. very early. We’ve had some We’ve talked to some customers in the past.

2:18

They want X features. Some of them want a Bloomberg terminal of like true DeFi

2:22

Dgens. So, we’re just here trying to identify our ICPs, but in the meantime,

2:27

we’re still going to be building while we talk to ICPS. So, this is Midlog. The

2:32

original plan is you can automate your B your finances on Bitcoin autonomously

2:36

with a behavior, meaning you can connect well down the road we’re going to enable

2:40

Telegram connection so that way you can easily text it. I’m also planning on

2:45

turning this into some sort of terminal and have it a bit a bit more complex of

2:50

a product just because most people who don’t want to deal with that all the

2:54

complexity they can ideally text the agent that is the lock agent and handle

2:59

all their finances through natural language processing. So let’s talk about

3:04

the markets in this case Bitcoin. So this is kind of like the new feature

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that I’m also showing you Leon. So, let’s see.

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Uh, happy to get your feedback. By the way, I’ve been building this for the

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last week and a half. So, right now we have the price of Bitcoin. It’s hitting

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about 76,600 give or take. The sentiment with the

3:26

market is at 38% fear or I’m sorry, 38. So, it’s at the fear level. And it

3:31

actually makes sense based on what we’re going to talk about here today. Let’s

3:35

look at some predictions. you know, it seems very unlikely that Bitcoin will

3:39

reach 100,000, let alone 150. And if we look at the macro, we’re seeing that a

3:45

US recession um it is unlikely to go into a recession by the end of 2026. Um

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I don’t think China

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>> I don’t think we can do a recession because essentially our our uh debt is

3:58

bigger than the GDP right now or our debt payments will be bigger than GDP.

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So there there are some economists that say like if if we do have a recession

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essentially like the world economy kind of hurts.

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It’s it’s disconnected from it now.

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>> How does that correlate to the price of Bitcoin? Maybe you can tell us or tell

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me. So this is the harder one is essentially and this kind of ties to

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like Cuban a little bit

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>> but

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>> the the all these assets are disconnected from the traditional

4:39

economy now. Even Bitcoin is disconnected from like what the reason

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why it flew and the reason why it crashed so heavily is like price action

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was dependent on essentially some small movers. Now it’s

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all institutional and

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>> y

4:58

>> the same premise of like Bitcoin’s not going to fly and Bitcoin’s not going to

5:03

crash is tied to GDP worth and how how that ties into how the economy keeps you

5:10

know stocks keep going up even though

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>> like the the regular economy isn’t growing like at the same pace like

5:19

employees wages everyone feels things are expensive like that it’s all

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disconnected from the traditional economy. It’s It’s because institutions

5:27

move the money, not people anymore. Same thing Bitcoin. Yeah. Is it’s not so

5:32

much. Also, like

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>> Mark Cuban sold Facebook at like $30 a share and watched it fly to 380. So that

5:38

that guy’s not the brightest in terms of buying and selling stocks or crypto at

5:44

all these days. Well, in I’m not here trying to defend him, but at least he’s

5:50

still on Ethereum, so it it I feel like he still has some capacity of belief in

5:55

the in the technology and maybe in the ecosystem, but I guess he’s just he’s

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just disappointed in Bitcoin’s price action because I also thought for a

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while, man, given everything with like the [ __ ] war happening in Iran,

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what’s stopping Bitcoin from reaching 100,000? But, you know, I guess I was

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wrong. So, but I want to test something. So,

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>> yeah.

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>> Sorry. Go ahead. Go

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>> for it.

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>> Okay. So, I I want to test something real quick. So, I integrated an LLM and

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I fed it a bunch of data points, predictions, the price action, the

6:29

sentiment, all these different APIs and I can generate us a market context on

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what is driving the price of Bitcoin. So, I’m here asking the agent, it’s

6:39

reading the market and then it’ll give us a feed where we can read it. Um, I’ve

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been playing with this, so let me know what you think if this is like a bunch

6:47

of LLM garbage, but I’m fairly confident it can at least give us a sense of

6:53

direction of where we’re at and why. Uh, so here it is. So, Bitcoin is

6:59

sitting just a touch below its average price over the last few weeks and also

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just under its average over the last 100 days. So that’s kind of like the finance

7:08

uh quantified version of it, which together paint a picture of a market

7:12

that has been drifting slightly bel. The fear and greed index reads at 38,

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which falls in the fear territory, meaning general mood among participants

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right now leans cautious rather than excited. The 30-day price change of

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roughly negative -2% reflects the same quiet softness. Um, you can read the

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rest if you’d like, but um, one cool thing that I want to share is I was able

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to translate this as well into Spanish just because some of our latam users,

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you know, crypto is largely more favorable favorable in South America or

7:48

just anywhere outside of the out of the US. Funny enough, I mean, hype is

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largely available or hyperlquid is largely available outside of the US and

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it’s far more popular and far more successful than Coinbase. So, you know,

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how about them apples? Um, were you going to say something now, Leon?

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>> No, I was just reading it. Uh, I would love more bullet points than that.

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>> Okay.

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>> Like, like I I think I really like that. I just paragraphs are, you know, we’re

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all a [ __ ] goldfish and we’re all

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>> all there. I would love like a couple bullet points of like summer, you know,

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the TLDDR version of it, even though that is pretty short. Um the classic uh

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in court Elon Musk I didn’t I didn’t read it and then the lawyer saying it

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was three pages and it it still stands. I didn’t read it.

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>> No, it’s fair. So, how about maybe have a TLDDR at the top and then maybe just

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break it down into bullets in the bottom.

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>> Do you think that’s better readability? I like Okay,

8:48

>> cool. I’ll play with that. So, yeah, this is the price of action of Bitcoin

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shared here on mintlock. You can learn more at mintlock.com.

8:57

If you’re watching this live on Twitter, let us know what you think. You love it

9:01

or hate it. Happy to get your feedback. All right, so why don’t we have a little

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bit of fun? I usually like to trade on events here with Bitcoin or in Ky, but

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at least not with Bitcoin. So, in the next 15 minute mark, which I guess the

9:17

market just ended, we’ll probably circle back here once it’s back live. But in

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the meantime, I want to share with you a post that I saw from Koshi Twitter.

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So, I’m going to share that here in a moment.

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All right. So, Koshi crypto is pretty cool. Just in 60% chance Bitcoin drops

9:37

below 60,000 this year. Michael Sailor did not buy Bitcoin this this week. And

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$180 million worth of shorts liquidated from the crypto market in the past 30

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minutes. All this is pretty much aligned with the sentiment. Everyone is fearful.

9:51

Everyone is withdrawing their money. Funny enough, um Mark Cuban said, and I

9:55

can show you the interview here in a moment. Like I was able to pull it out.

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Um uh he was saying how gold has actually

10:02

done better than, you know, anything. So I think it makes sense. For a moment, I

10:09

thought about maybe I should put my money on gold, but I’d be following the

10:13

herd because everybody’s doing it now. And gold is also very volatile. Like

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people think, oh, crypto is where all the volatility is. I disagree. Bit uh

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gold is also very volatile and silver maybe not as much, but I mean everyone

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is now moving their money to gold and this is something that Mark Cuban said.

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So I don’t know if you have any thoughts about that. Leo,

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>> is gold pretty volatile? Like

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>> it really is. I mean you can [ __ ] you can look at the price action right now.

10:41

Yeah, check it out. So

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>> like I think it’s less volatile than Bitcoin though,

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>> perhaps. I I think I still think Bitcoin is very volatile, but my argument is

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people thinks gold is not volatile. I disagree. I think it’s Well, I’m I’ve

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seen on the markets it’s very volatile, but not as volatile as Bitcoin, per se.

11:04

>> Yeah, cuz like, you know, if you look at gold over the past five years, it’s like

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up 138%.

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>> Yeah. So, that makes sense. I’m not I’m not sure why they don’t have

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a gold ticker here on Twitter, but let’s go back to Mark Cuban’s interview. Let

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me know if you can hear it or not.

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>> I think Bitcoin has lost the plot. Um, and

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>> cool.

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>> When I started buying Bitcoin, and I’ve sold all of it, um, except not all of

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it, most of it. Um, it was because when all the [ __ ] hit the fan, um, with the

11:41

Iran war and, you know, Bitcoin was always the best alternative to fiat

11:46

currency losing its value. And I always thought it was a better version of gold

11:51

than gold. Well, gold just blew up and went, you know, to $5,000, Bitcoin

11:56

dropped. And every time the dollar dropped, Bitcoin should have gone up,

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you know, because if it’s priced in dollars, it was cheaper. So anybody from

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around the world could go pay in dollar and it just didn’t do that.

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>> Not such a hedge.

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>> No, it’s not not the hedge that I expected to be. And that was really

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disappointing. And so I’ I’d say I’m more disappointed in Bitcoin, not as

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disappointed in Ethereum. Um and the restme

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hasn’t moved in like five years.

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>> It’s been the same almost. So if you invested

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about whatever amount in 2020 or 2021

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>> 2021 I guess

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>> you would actually have lost from five years ago you would have lost money $39

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over the f past five years.

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>> Yeah because it was like 5,000 and now it’s like half of that. So you would

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have lost

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>> but if you bought May 29th May 29th 2021 it was 2400. Today it’s

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20.98. You would have lost money if you would have bought it one year or five

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years ago around this time.

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>> Look at that [ __ ] chart. So yeah, like the alltime high roughly

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>> was November 13.

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>> Probably have lost money on Ethereum. This is why I don’t I don’t quite

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understand his his take because Ethereum’s a worse performer than

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Bitcoin in theory because if you look at it 5 years ago for Bitcoin, you you at

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least have some gain on your money whereas Ethereum you actually lose

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money. I think he might be

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I don’t think he’s bearish on crypto. I think he’s just bearish on Bitcoin as a

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as a long-term strategy. Um I mean people still say that Bitcoin could

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reach a million dollars per token and I think that’s right if you look at the

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mechanisms of it like the having the you know price action or like the sentiment

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I guess right now we’re just at the what I like to call the Bitcoin bare cycle

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where people are just bearish on it. I mean just last year it reached 127,000

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so you know we’ll probably see something similar after the having.

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>> I think Mark Cuban has made a lot of bad bets over the past 20 years. Like I

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think if you look at look at his

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>> his view on stuff like he he loses more than he wins.

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>> Oh man. It’s just like um what’s that dude on CNBC? The

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>> the Kramer. I He’s just as bad as Kramer.

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>> Wow. I respect that take. Um, I don’t have enough in a lot of ways, but man,

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he he’s been he’s he sold the Mavs when they were doing their best and he was

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like, “Oh, I thought that they would have stewarded the team better.” Like he

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he has made a lot of very very bad bets since he sold to Yahoo. He got lucky

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with Yahoo. He got lucky Yahoo.

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>> Well, he hedged Yahoo, but but he got lucky. His company sold to Yahoo.

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Yeah, like he actually made more money if I I looked this up. He made more

15:03

money shorting Yahoo than he actually got from the stocks he got from Yahoo.

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So, I mean that’s funny, but I guess I see your point. Um, real quick, if you

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had bought gold, you know, if you had bought one one gold ounce, I guess you

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would have you would have 100xed or

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>> what’s the [ __ ] uh you would have 4x%. Yeah. Like you would have one 1.4x,

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you know, over the past five years.

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>> But like e Ether like I I just don’t get his his take on ETH at all. like it I

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think it nullifies this Bitcoin [ __ ] and but it’s also the argument I’ve made

15:44

about Bitcoin over the past year is Bitcoin acts more like a new tech stock

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that just IPOed that hasn’t made its full way around the market than it does

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as a gold hedge as like a commodity out there like it’s not acting like that and

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that’s why you know even when we look at strategies a lot of strategies don’t

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work out because gold it doesn’t act like gold and it doesn’t act like the

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the S&P 500, it acts more like an pre newly tech IPOed stock.

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>> When we were first working on Midlock, I was very I was I I don’t know what sauce

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I was in, but I was telling you like, dude, we got to push this Mint lock

16:25

strategy with EMA with a 20 and 100 day difference.

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I was very wrong. You know, Bitcoin is still a new asset. that strategy would

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work with something like gold or even silver, but those are more established.

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So, there’s a lot of data that backs it up. Like, hey, these quantitative

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strategies would work on certain assets. Bitcoin is just not one of them. And I

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don’t think it would work with crypto as a whole because the oldest is Bitcoin.

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And even if Bitcoin is too old and is largely accepted by mom and dad, you

16:55

know, it’s it’s still going to be hard to quantify the invest a good investing

17:01

strategy on Bitcoin. Like I wouldn’t be surprised if Arc Invest, Citadel, Jane

17:06

Street, if any of those guys like create a meaningful strategy that lets you have

17:14

more access more success investing in Bitcoin.

17:16

>> Yeah, I think it’s a lot like um like Forex, like when you’re doing currency

17:21

exchanges, you’re you’re doing it on like high frequency

17:25

like large set trades. Like they were doing it on the Japanese yen for a

17:29

while. Uh there there’s a bunch of them that do that. And I think Bitcoin and

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Ethereum are starting to act more like currencies in terms of price movement.

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It’s it’s moving very very like little some drops, but I think the problem that

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most people don’t understand is where does Bitcoin get its value from? It’s

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it’s still kind of intangible. like a lot of it is it’s marketing that’s out

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there, you know, like the more people that market it, the more people say it’s

17:59

go to a million, the the higher chance that it it has. Um, obviously it’s a

18:04

it’s a commodity that doesn’t um, you know, there’s no more of it. It gets

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mined. It takes, you know, to get the other half

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to get the other half of Bitcoin, you know, it’s 134 years. I think there’s a

18:17

lot of upside to it, but I do think there’s it’s going to act more like the

18:21

US dollar. I think it’s going to act more like these other currencies around

18:25

the world. And then I don’t see Ethereum flying in any capacity out there.

18:33

I like the ecosystems. There’s a lot of L2s that I prefer over Ethereum. So

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that’s where I’m coming from. And maybe that’s the correlation I made with Mark

18:41

Cuban’s opinion. But, you know, I guess time will tell. But um why don’t we talk

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about tokenized stocks? There’s a lot of noise going around there.

18:52

Um, so one thing we’ve been very bullish on personally as well is tokenized

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stocks. I think the biggest problem that we’re seeing with the current stock

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market, whether you’re in China, US, Japan, you name it. One, they’re

19:07

geolocked. you know, if you’re in if you’re outside of the US, you cannot

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capitalize on investing in Anthropic when they IPO or even SpaceX or even

19:16

some of the more established ones like Google or you know um Tesla. So, it

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being tokenized makes it so anyone around the world can invest in these

19:28

companies and also you know us in here in America, we can invest in Japanese or

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Chinese stocks, you name it. So, so that’s one very bullish thing about it.

19:38

Also, the liquidation, I don’t think it’s any different because you know

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stocks have high liquidity, but um the other thing is is they would be

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available 24/7. You don’t need to wait for market hours to open

19:51

>> in order for you to

19:52

>> I don’t think anybody wants that.

19:55

>> I don’t think any company wants a 24hour because you have like companies all the

20:01

time, even even the United States plays economic warfare. The reason why the

20:06

Iran war pauses during the week is so the economy can fly and then takes off

20:11

over the weekend because the stocks are closed. You can’t trade and you don’t

20:16

crash a whole economy. I I think the tokenized stocks is is a real risk to

20:21

some of these companies. For example, if you can dump stocks on a Saturday at 10

20:27

p.m. and and you know, Microsoft gets hit with some sort of zero to hack, like

20:32

you could create a whole company overnight. I think a lot of these

20:36

companies are looking at how do they protect their investors and how do you

20:42

actually deal with this? Like the whole US economy is based around how the stock

20:47

market trades from so often to so often. It’s extended more and more after hours

20:53

and all that to retail traders, but traditionally it’s like 8:00 am to 5:00

20:58

pm, you know, 9 to 6 roughly, you know, East Coast time. And if there are are

21:06

trades that essentially take the S&P far too far down, there’s trip wires. If

21:10

it’s like 20% down, it stops all trading. Like how do you do that with

21:14

tokenized assets to prevent the US economy from cratering like 19 you know

21:19

in the 1900s with the the uh black you know black Friday or whatever it was

21:24

where the whole stock market crashed and everything

21:27

>> black not enough protections in these tokeniz Yeah. Uh no it’s it’s the Black

21:33

Friday like uh 1929 um is it 1929 when the stock market crashed it up real

21:40

quick.

21:40

>> Yeah. for the the beginning of the recession. Everyone was borrowing money

21:44

to buy stocks.

21:47

>> Black.

21:47

>> Yes. The depression.

21:49

>> Uhhuh.

21:51

>> 1929. Um the post holiday emotional there. It’s

21:57

low effect all all of that stuff. the the stock market crashed and everything

22:03

essentially cratered you know the great depression and it all came from there

22:07

was the black Thursday were traded on exchange and they were

22:11

mostly sold. So, how do you prevent something like that happening with a

22:15

tokenized asset? Like the US economy is not one of free trade completely. It is

22:21

controlled trade. So, I’m generally a very optimistic

22:25

person and I think it’s good having you in my corner because you’re like the

22:29

reality check kind of guy and I think it works. You know, I think it’s good to

22:34

have both, you know, dynamics when it comes to a subject. And with tokenized

22:39

stocks, I realize there’s not as much as I know based on you, based on what you

22:43

said. I’m like, man, I wasn’t even thinking about that. Um, it sounds like

22:47

having high frequency and high access to stocks, meaning it becoming globally

22:53

accessible, it would only increase um frequency as well as the liquidation or

22:58

just access. I guess that’s actually counterintuitive and therefore I mean

23:05

part of the reason why these companies are pushing back because as far as I

23:09

know I always thought companies would only push back because they just don’t

23:13

want their more more people to have access more

23:17

equity for lack of a better word on their company because when you buy stock

23:21

you obviously hold a small percentage of that equity but

23:27

I guess that’s just not the only No, I think there’s a lot more to it.

23:32

Like if you if you creator a stock like sometimes, you know, you have loans out

23:37

against those stocks. Sometimes there’s all these like mechanics around stocks

23:41

that that are there. There’s voting rights. How do you control voting

23:45

rights? How do you do that? I think some of that stuff would work much much

23:48

better on tokenized stocks, but I think the parts that these companies are more

23:54

worried about is how do you prevent synthetic stocks, wrapped versions of

23:57

them? How do you prevent

23:59

>> um bad actors from buying these without KYC’s? Because you could like

24:03

essentially if somebody’s buying up a bunch of shares,

24:06

>> there’s poison pills to stop people from taking over a company. There are

24:11

mechanisms to make sure that you know who’s buying 5% of a share. Like the

24:16

whole thing around Twitter was and the whole fight about Twitter being a public

24:20

company was Elon was buying up shares didn’t disclose it and then he had

24:26

controlling interest in some capacity and they they were about to poison pill

24:30

him you know stop.

24:32

>> So like there’s a lot of these these mechanisms that are built around you

24:37

know hundred years of trading. I don’t think it’s it’s it’s wrong to want

24:42

innovation and I don’t think it’s there. I do think the one time is okay, how do

24:47

you stop all that? Because essentially, if you let a tokenized stock, you know,

24:51

go out there, you could secretly buy it up. Like, do you still have the same

24:55

rules on those tokenized stocks on disclosing that you own 5%. you know,

24:59

like all these things. I think you need somebody to go and say, “Hey, like the

25:04

NASDAQ, hey, if you want to tokenize your stock and all of our, you know,

25:08

blockchain, you know, the whole the whole essential exchange is now

25:13

tokenized, I think that’s the way to do it. But again, you need the ability to

25:17

pause trading. You need the ability to to allow for poison pills. You need the

25:23

ability for these companies to KYC everybody. I think there’s a lot of

25:27

protections that are built into normal stocks that are not going to be on the

25:32

tokenized side. Okay. So, a couple of things

25:42

you mentioned a while ago and we’ve talked about this extensively. You

25:46

mentioned I what you think and where I’m actually agreeing with you is

25:51

maybe this would be more accessible given all these, you know,

25:56

legal concerns, especially with like the the way a company would operate. Maybe

26:01

we have some giant provider like the NASDAQ or, you know, the NYSE

26:08

being the ones issuing the tokenized version of that. Maybe like a NASDAQ

26:12

wrapped version of a stock. I think that would be more acceptable in a public

26:18

sentiment. I mean public sentiment is, you know, hey, I I can buy I can buy

26:23

Google on my on my Phantom wallet, but it coming from an issuer that is

26:29

established like that would make it so, hey, you know, this is actually a

26:32

legitimate thing. There won’t be any issues the the ones that you mentioned

26:37

because it’s within a legal framework. Yeah, I think I think that’s the big

26:41

part here is because the traditional finance experts warn removing trades

26:47

from established exchanges like the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange could

26:51

cause price divergence resulting in uneven pricing for the same underlying

26:55

asset. I think that’s the biggest part because once you take it and you you

27:00

know you have a tokenized asset in a in a self-custody wallet like how do you

27:04

you know h how do you make sure that price stays there? you’re gonna have all

27:09

these exchanges doing it. And then the lost shareholder rights, I think that’s

27:13

a big one.

27:14

>> Investor pro protections and oversightes like

27:17

>> I think and I hate to say this in many ways. I do think you need to have all of

27:24

this here to make sure tomorrow that like you know that whole Gamestock run,

27:30

you know, like that that whole thing on GameStop

27:33

like there was essentially synthetic shares of GameStop, you know, out there

27:37

and people were trying to squeeze Citadel, people were trying to squeeze

27:40

all of these providers like that stuff could happen way way more often out here

27:47

and

27:47

>> that’s a good point. I like the SEC is correct to pause and reflect. The crypto

27:51

space is full of scammers and incompetent people who totally screw

27:54

this up. Give them too much slack. This process needs to be methodical to

27:59

protect the capital of retail institutions from the unscrupulous

28:03

morons.

28:03

>> I I don’t totally disagree with this. I do think Yeah, me neither.

28:08

>> There’s a degenerate part of the internet

28:11

>> and and you see it every single time. If you ask the internet to name a school,

28:15

you name a boat, anything, you’re going to you’re going to get it to be named

28:19

Mcboie McBoat face or Mc School McK school face. Like

28:23

>> literally

28:24

>> like just going to not take it seriously. And I could see this going

28:29

very bad. And essentially, you know, an insurance stock, somebody gets mad at

28:34

insurance, the retail investors could go buy all of it and then dump it and screw

28:38

everybody and screw, you know, not only a large class of of institutional

28:44

investors, but cause these these these large third world effects from that one

28:50

failure. So I I think there needs to be a lot of protections to ensure the

28:55

economies of the world which is the United States government keeps on

28:58

flowing.

29:00

>> I mean fintech is one of the most largest highly regulated industries in

29:04

the world more so than like healthcare in some ways.

29:08

>> Yeah.

29:08

>> Um when you’re dealing with people’s money

29:12

stakes are high. And it makes sense. We were talking a while ago and this is

29:17

probably my last point about when we were talking to some of

29:21

the ICPs, some of the customers for Mintlock, we discovered that a lot of

29:25

them just simply don’t want DeFi. Anything that is outside of Bitcoin,

29:28

maybe this is for the Bitcoin maxes. Um, they just don’t believe in the financial

29:33

system, but yet they still use a bank account. They still rely on these other

29:37

things that is heavily regulated. I think we can wish for this anarchy type

29:44

of financial ecosystem, but you’re going to have to be outside

29:48

of the grid for that because you just can’t operate on a day-to-day

29:53

basis, which is, you know, having a financial system that gives you immense

29:59

freedom. In many ways, there’s not enough freedom, but it keeps everything

30:03

on check. It keeps the world running, and that’s just how it is. And if people

30:07

don’t like that, then they can just go to Madagascar or go to some other

30:13

place, you know, outside of the ecosystem. I don’t know why I thought

30:16

Madagascar, but

30:17

>> you do need rules. Like I think rules and regulation and all of that. It

30:22

sounds bad and there’s there’s possibility for regulatory capture where

30:27

key companies, you know, you you regulate too heavy and you know, key

30:31

companies win. But to protect the broader e economy, you

30:36

need to ensure that like three kids and you know like Russia aren’t going to

30:42

take down the whole economy with some post and you know tokenized stock buys

30:47

and leverage out there like you have to vet it. You have to look at this on

30:52

there. I think once these these exchanges figure it out and they

30:58

centralize it in some capacity, tokenization makes a ton of sense. You

31:02

know, the fact that you want to know who buys everything, when it was sold, when

31:06

it was bought, who bought it, you know, who votes, a blockchain makes a ton of

31:11

sense. It’s just you need to make sure it’s controlled very tightly. And I

31:16

could see, you know, one chain winning like chain link and it being the only

31:20

one that that you’re allowed to do it. and they control and centralize it very

31:24

heavily.

31:27

>> Well, they would win largely because their infrastructure and everyone is

31:30

using them and they’re also doing a lot of things that are convenient like

31:34

enabling crosschain liquidity and crosschain assets to be interoperable.

31:39

So, it makes sense. I think chain lick would be one of the top winners. I don’t

31:43

know if their token would reflect that just because it’s always it’s token

31:48

hasn’t done a lot. Funny enough, hype has done so much better, which we can

31:51

get more here later, but um I think that’s about it for tokenized stocks.

31:56

We’ll see what happens. Meanwhile, I want to talk about base patches and I

32:01

want to also talk about YC, Bankerbot. This is kind of like the little bubble

32:06

that I live in. So, I want to share a little bit of what goes inside of my

32:09

bubble. But, I mean, probably I’m not the only one. Probably it’s the Silicon

32:12

Valley people who are very into this world. So anyways, uh I’m going to share

32:19

this. Give me a moment. There we go. Okay. So,

32:28

a few days ago this week, Base Batches, it’s their third iteration of all the

32:33

Bass Batches. They had a lot of companies who were part of the

32:37

accelerator pitching their company talking about their influence on base

32:42

and just kind of what kind of value they’re bringing to retail investors and

32:46

perhaps some businesses because some of these are also B2B. So,

32:51

um I’m guessing this guy was in the audience. We see Brian Armstrong who was

32:57

also presenting which I thought was pretty cool. I know um Jesse the founder

33:02

of bass is also was also there. Um here are some of the companies that were on

33:07

the bass batch. A lot of them you can guess are doing aenic some sort of

33:12

prediction inner layer uh onto base and

33:17

>> not heard of about single one of these crazy

33:21

>> um there are some notable ones I think opal flow onsite onsite is predictions

33:29

flow if I’m not mistaken it’s peerto-peer payments opal it’s um kind

33:33

of like an exchange on base again I could be wrong so I need to double check

33:37

that But um it wasn’t some sort I mean I’ve been in I’ve been in some

33:44

some accelerators and not accelerators. I’ve been in some uh startup programs

33:51

and it this didn’t seem like some sort of pitch competition. It seemed more of

33:57

like YC demo day where you go upstage, you have a lot of investors sitting on

34:02

the crowd and they just find investments which is really cool. I think that

34:07

formula is very sticky. I think it works in this in this side of the world

34:12

because I mean YC, you know, it’s one of the largest accelerators in the world.

34:16

It’s kind of like more than that too at this point. But uh demo day is what

34:21

happened and it was pretty cool from what it seems. I

34:25

don’t think there was any large follow-ups.

34:28

I’m going to see if I can find more about it here in a moment. Um,

34:33

but the thing that I want to get here is there’s a lot of movement happening on

34:37

the crypto side of startups. I think if YC is doing if

34:45

if VCs and YC do one thing, everybody follows suit. Right now, everyone is

34:51

pouring a lot of money into agents into AI. Funny enough, the top firms like

34:57

OpenAI, Anthropic, I want to say Grock, XAI, they took 80% of all VC capital in

35:04

the last few years. So that’s kind of massive. Um, that means everybody wants

35:09

to be early on on on AI, but also everyone is kind of doing

35:14

the same thing to an extent or another. So I’m guessing this is one company,

35:18

Blockr Run AI. Yeah, this is one company, Blockr Run AI. Um,

35:24

this one’s pretty cool. Right now, agents can’t make phone call or buy a

35:27

premium API as credit cards block them. Blockr run AI uses X42 plus USDC on base

35:34

to settle per call. One of my favorite base batch teams. So, it’s pretty cool.

35:40

It’s like doing kind of like niche peer-to-peer payments or enabling B2B

35:46

businesses. I’m sorry, B2B uh token or API usage with USDC, which I thought it

35:54

was already accessible. I mean, AWS recently came out saying they now enable

35:59

X42 USDC payments. So,

36:03

>> yeah, maybe these guys are streamlining.

36:04

>> I think all the agent stuff is going to be enterprise. I don’t think you’re

36:08

going to see very much stuff on the consumer side. Like nobody wants micro

36:12

payments to be, you know, every time you read a thing 35 cents, you know, 30 40

36:18

cents, like nobody wants to do that. I think

36:21

>> Yeah. No,

36:22

>> I also think there’s a hype cycle here on the agents and stuff. I I think if

36:28

you ask most people like I think when you when you saw it recently, everyone

36:32

talking about AI at the commencement speeches during colleges,

36:38

it getting booze out there and all of that. I think there’s some part of this

36:42

is is going to be

36:44

>> you know electricity scared everybody horse horses to cars scared everybody

36:49

>> the internet did it to some extent but I think this is the first real time where

36:55

everybody’s just like oh no I don’t think we want this everywhere and I

37:00

think tech is just shoving it down everyone’s throats and we’re going to

37:04

land with it and I love AI and use it and all of that but I I can see some of

37:09

this being just landing on the enterprise side. Like nobody’s going to

37:14

be, you know, using it to pay, you know, micro payment for your your electricity

37:19

every single moment of the day. Like I I don’t see that happening. I I see it

37:25

>> happening maybe on like API calls and you know, Twilio, all of all of the

37:30

backend things where, you know, businesses do it, but man, businesses

37:34

still want cash flow. like if they’re having to pay for every single time they

37:39

use the the API versus, you know, loading some money up and keeping, you

37:43

know, on hand, I’m going to, you know, I’m very

37:48

skeptical right now where it lands. I do think there’s a usage to it, but I I’m

37:53

very interested in like all of this stuff because it’s all going enterprise

37:57

side and I’m like, man, where is the consumer stuff for this?

38:02

You know, I saw on Twitter here and there that people

38:07

Jesse Pollock was on an interview and he was saying how, you know, again kind of

38:12

like announc kind of like echoing the sentiment that they’re doing, which is a

38:18

gonna agents are going to run the all our money and everything. I still think

38:22

that maybe these people are playing 4D chess or that they have like 20 30

38:27

vision because you know people who are the most evangelical about whatever

38:33

thing they’re building, they sometimes end up being the most successful ones

38:36

down the road because they had enough conviction. So maybe in the future we’ll

38:41

find out. Maybe we’re just not smart enough to realize it. But I do think

38:47

still that people still want to worry. they don’t want to pay with Doge or they

38:53

don’t want to pay with Salana to get their groceries. Maybe that’s very few

38:58

amount of people who are very understanding of what tool they’re

39:02

using. But for your average Joe’s and Janes, which is what everybody’s

39:05

building for on crypto, like they want to on board the next billion people on

39:08

crypto, I think we still fail to understand that people sometimes just

39:13

want cash flow. to your point, not just businesses, but also most retail people,

39:18

they just they want to buy groceries, you know, not with like Dogecoin or

39:23

whatever. And if you do, that’s a very sub, you know, it’s a very small

39:28

category of people who want to do that, but most people just don’t care is my

39:32

argument. But why don’t we dissect, you know, here what some of these teams are

39:37

on base. We applied, but we didn’t get in. So, I want to see who who made it on

39:42

base. I’m CEO of Liinal. We’re building a new

39:46

kind of bank.

39:46

>> My name is Akash. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Formica.

39:50

>> And I’m Michael. I’m co-founder and CTO.

39:52

>> We’re building the clearing layer for agent microtransaction.

39:55

>> I’m Jaten from the founding team of Agent. We are the routing and settlement

39:59

layer for the agent economy.

40:00

>> My name is Vicki, founder of Run. I’m building a agent payment gateway.

40:05

>> I’m Alex from Flow Labs. I’m co-founder and CEO. We’re building credit layer and

40:11

working capital for AI agents. My name is Joey Roth. I’m building Forecast, a

40:16

leverage layer for prediction markets.

40:18

>> I’m Danny, co-founder and CEO of JPEG. We’re building a social prediction game

40:21

on base.

40:22

>> This is Nico, co-founder of Nevo onchain FX hedging platforms.

40:26

>> My name is Tommy, the founder here at Onsite and we’re building the social

40:29

layer for predation markets.

40:30

>> My name is Clemens and I’m the CEO and co-founder of Opel, a privacy first

40:35

perpetual DEX on base.

40:37

>> I’m Abi and I’m one of the co-founders of tomorrow, a fully onchain credit

40:41

marketplace. That was pretty cool. I like their their

40:47

u visuals, but I think uh four labs is the one that I was kind of massive on. I

40:53

saw it earlier this week and they’re doing onchain credit. I actually thought

40:58

I wanted to build something similar back in 2023, but

41:03

um I mean I ended up building something else, but I think onchain credit is

41:05

actually kind of massive because people want to leverage some of their assets.

41:08

Like people want to leverage their Bitcoin to buy houses. Getting a loan

41:12

against your Bitcoin was very hard until recently. So, onchain credit could be

41:16

massive. You know, that’s one thing that I’d be very bullish on compared to most

41:19

of these people. Um, there’s another thing that I want to

41:23

talk about and it’s YC and crypto recently. So, let me see if I can find

41:29

it.

41:30

>> I have thoughts on this too.

41:34

>> So, before you get to that, this is recently from YC. We’re now providing

41:39

crypto deals to support fintech builders funded by YC. Support on tools like

41:43

wallets, on-ramps, audits, blockchains, onchain data. So, what’s interesting and

41:50

Phantom was never funded by YC. Rainbow wallet was funded by YC. So, I’m

41:55

surprised they didn’t include it there. Um, and instead they included some of

41:59

these tools that are not even provided by YC. So, I don’t know. I I found that

42:04

very interesting. I don’t know. I have thoughts, but

42:07

>> um

42:07

>> I’m not too surprised. Like I think it’s probably companies that have enough

42:12

ability to, you know, do stuff. But also, doesn’t YC have a fund afterwards

42:19

that they like, you know, outside of their main fund? Like you don’t have to

42:22

go through YC to get funded by YC? Sometimes,

42:26

>> uh there’s several options as far as I know. I don’t know the specifics, but to

42:30

say to say the least, yes. So, I mean, if you want to look at this,

42:36

you want to read this, you’re more than welcome. Uh, they have a Google Google

42:39

sheet, a Google form on their starter pack and deals.

42:44

So, I guess to answer your question earlier, here’s one example. YC deals

42:49

offered to teams already accepted or funded by YC only. We encourage these

42:54

deals to have the following: at least $10,000 in value with a two-year

42:58

expiration, one year free services, and a 50% discount for two years. Um, I I

43:04

think this applies for some of these tools. I think it’s cool. Um,

43:10

you had some thoughts you wanted to share.

43:14

>> No, I I just I think it’s really interesting like

43:20

essentially they’re just I think this is the same thing as the OpenAI stuff. Like

43:23

I think YC is going to use all this data and kind of like fund the next future of

43:29

things. Like

43:31

>> you know, you might be a YC company right now, but

43:34

>> they’re going to fund your competitors more and more. Like I I think that’s all

43:38

they’re going to end up doing.

43:41

>> Whatever makes the most noise. I know A6C, you mentioned it, you told me

43:45

before that A6C is one of those VCs where um or I don’t know where I found

43:51

this, but they fund you and if you are not making enough, I guess movement or

44:00

hitting your goals and everything, they’re just going to stop supporting

44:02

you and they’ll kind of just drop you. I kind of saw this with Diesel back in the

44:06

day when I was building on it. Um, I can’t say much beyond that, but I think

44:11

that’s just the way these these organizations operate. If you’re not

44:14

providing enough value, if you’re not moving forward with your company,

44:17

eventually they’re just gonna, you know, stop.

44:20

>> They bet on the more and more they bet on, you know, they they no longer just

44:23

bet on one company that could capture all of it. They’re betting on all three.

44:28

You know, it’s just like everybody’s invested in Anthropic and Open AI. Like

44:33

everybody’s betting on that company in there. Like before, you know, you would

44:37

only bet on Coinbase. You would never invest in Kraken, too. But now they’re

44:42

investing in Kraken and Coinbase and Crypto.com and all, you know, like

44:46

they’re they’re investing in every single one uh of of you

44:51

>> hedging 101 startup edition.

44:54

>> Yeah, it

44:55

>> um more common.

44:58

>> Yeah. So, that makes sense, I guess. Um it’s just not very obvious, so you kind

45:02

of just need to understand and if you know, you know. So the last thing I want

45:06

to talk about in this subject is bankerbot. In the base ecosystem,

45:10

bankerbot is this agenic I’ve used it before. Um it’s an agenic uh trading

45:15

tool where it’s kind of like a wallet, but you can do a lot more than that.

45:18

Like you can in natural LLM way. You can tell it to swap a token, maybe put some

45:27

some swaps as well, some TWWAPs. Um and it’ll do it for you. And if it fails, it

45:33

fails. It’ll tell you why. and then you can follow up on that. I think it’s a

45:36

pretty cool product, kind of like the vision that I have for Mint Lock, but

45:41

um more strategyoriented, more less leaving it on your hands, more,

45:49

hey, we’re here to help you. If you want to save up for a goal such as buying a

45:53

car, maybe saving up for a vacation, you can do it here. You can just tell us

45:59

what your goals are and then we can give you like some sort of strategy to get to

46:02

that. and then you pay $5 a month. All said and done. That’s kind of like the

46:08

vision what we’re doing. So, anyways, um I’m having a hard time finding it. I

46:11

guess I didn’t save it, but uh Bankerbot did Bankerbot released a

46:19

they’re committing money and capital to companies building on the Bankerbot

46:23

ecosystem on base. So, I think that’s cool. And it’s kind

46:28

of like the whole the whole point here I’m trying to make with talking about

46:32

like all this capital and all this investments into crypto is

46:37

if you were building crypto back in 2023 or 2022 nobody would have given you

46:43

money. Now it seems like there’s a influx of capital going into crypto and

46:48

fintech startups which I think it’s largely influenced by AI because agents

46:52

moving money is very appealing very appetizing.

46:56

You know, if you read that 2025 state of crypto from A16C, that’s where they’re

47:01

moving. So, I think it makes sense why we’re seeing again an influx into

47:05

capital into crypto. But I believe the influx of capital isn’t actually an

47:10

influx. I I believe um dollars are mostly down in in VC crypto, right? Like

47:19

VCs are cutting fewer checks and doing larger sums, but the number is down.

47:25

Yeah, definitely. Like if you compare it directly like 101 with AI, people are

47:30

going to be be putting more money into crypto. Um, excuse me, into AI.

47:35

>> Yeah, but I I believe over over the arch of all VC money, it’s actually down in

47:41

general.

47:42

>> It really is

47:43

>> for for crypto.

47:45

>> It really is,

47:45

>> right? However, I think it’s really cool how some of these

47:50

smaller fish outside of VC outside of VCs um they’re actually putting capital

47:54

into companies. So, here’s an example uh kind of what I was going to show

47:58

earlier. So, deployer, he’s the guy who built bankerbot, which is really cool.

48:03

So, Banker Ecosystem, I mean, this is just volume, but I’m

48:08

trying to find the the post. Cannot find it for the life of me. This is from

48:13

Deployer. He actually made a post about it recently. Uh,

48:17

>> okay. So, I was wrong. I asked Claude. Way up. 2025 was a year for crypto

48:22

fundraising. Total raise was 25 28 billion, 60% up from 2022. So, it’s

48:31

there. This year, it’s on track to do about 40 billion.

48:36

>> So, that’s growing as much. Yeah. Like capital is growing in crypto now.

48:40

>> Yeah. But deal count is still deal count. I was right on this part. Deal

48:44

count has actually declined 40%. So there’s more money flowing in but

48:50

less to less people.

48:54

>> Okay. So that makes sense. I mean that’s just natural VC flow. I guess they’re

48:59

not going to give their money to everyone only to like those who prove

49:03

themselves. I suppose

49:04

>> it’s institutional money. It’s bigger rounds because they they want to do it

49:08

and the space has matured you know significantly.

49:12

Absolutely. So, this is what I was trying to find. Deployer, who’s the

49:15

founder again of Bankerbot. We’re planning to launch the Banker Fund where

49:18

we invest real capital into top banker ecosystem projects, hoping to make our

49:23

first investment in the coming weeks. It’s pretty cool. Um, I saw there were a

49:29

few people here building their own thing like this guy here. We’re building

49:33

Clerk, an AI native legal data layer on base. 500 million plus US federal court

49:39

records, excuse me, court records. Here’s some examples. Via simple HTTP

49:45

API launched on Bankerbot. So, that’s kind of cool. It seems like it seems

49:50

like Bankerbot is this kind of engine.

49:52

>> Mhm.

49:52

>> Yeah. B2B that’s like a core B2B thing there. Like I could see a law firm

49:56

wanting to pay for that versus, you know, like having to pay a huge massive

50:02

subscription for that, paying, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars a

50:06

month versus you could just do HTTP every time you need it and then you pay

50:11

per per request.

50:14

>> Yeah. So So that’s pretty cool. Um I couldn’t find similar people. I mean,

50:20

mad respect to this guy like selling his product out there. Guess not many are

50:24

doing that. Um but yeah, I mean I guess the takeaway for this is people are

50:28

putting their money on crypto or I guess um investments are coming into crypto

50:33

again. Maybe smaller checks check quantity but there’s still capital

50:37

there. So if you’re building something in crypto, don’t stop.

50:42

Probably just echoing my own sentiment. Um

50:48

where we at?

50:51

>> We’re about an hour in. Do you want to keep going?

50:54

>> Yeah, maybe just kind of speedrun through these last ones. So, the last

50:57

two that I want to talk about, maybe this is more newsy, but I think it’s

51:01

pretty cool. So, you ever use Hype Hyperlid?

51:06

>> Not really. I I think like it it’s hard to use in the United

51:12

States. So,

51:13

>> Yep. not not really used it ever, but um some

51:18

of it looks really cool for like the lending and like the DeFi apps, the EMV

51:23

on it. But um like I like their like buyback burn system and all that, but

51:31

also Hype is again it’s just hard to use like there’s a lot of commodities and

51:35

stuff on it.

51:38

>> Yeah. So, uh, Hyperlquid, all it really does is perpetuals on chain, which I

51:45

forgot the gap that they were building, but the founder is a very smart guy who

51:48

was in the in the Bay Area and he um I don’t know if he’s from he’s in

51:54

Singapore now, but he built this tool because he saw this gap and he worked at

52:00

a financial institution. So, he actually had that market founder fit and I

52:04

believe that’s largely why this company is very successful. So,

52:08

recently. Um, they’re having some hip three and hip four. I’m not exactly

52:14

sure what that is, but I think it’s very interesting. Uh, HIP 3 growth previously

52:19

pushed pushed it back. Well, I cannot talk anymore. Um, so Hype has actually

52:25

like the value of the token Hype has actually grown in value since these

52:28

announcements. Hip 3’s growth previously pushed it past $26 and then uh the

52:34

moment has since shifted focus to Hyperliquid X’s next major upgrade, HIP

52:39

4. So, it’s just like uh upgrades in the in the protocol that is pushing the

52:45

price action here from what it seems. Not going to go super into it, but I’m

52:50

going to ask Grock like if we can break it down more.

52:54

Um just because I’m learning along with you guys on this. I’ve used Hyperlquid

52:58

like sparingly. I don’t like the whole idea. Well, it’s just a bit of a drag. I

53:03

got to use a VPN kind of like Poly Market and then access it and then do

53:07

all those perpetual trades and then move my US my USDC in and out from there.

53:14

So, uh if we look at Grock, I don’t know if you can read it.

53:19

>> So, I was looking up. They are uh they’re a Cayman Island company

53:25

>> with Delaware entity but they are primarily out of Singapore and then they

53:31

have a corporate office in New York but like

53:35

this is the same thing Poly Market did to

53:39

>> you know avoid US regulation so just small part of it

53:46

>> okay so the spotlight the upcoming HIPP 4 as the next catalyst expanding into

53:51

fully collaterized prediction markets and event excuse me an event-based

53:55

trading for outcome comes like elections, sports, and macro events all

53:59

composable with existing perpetuals. Man, everybody is just

54:04

expanding on prediction markets. And it makes sense. It’s like this new asset

54:07

class at this point. Before it was some sort of commodity little little gambling

54:12

thing people could do, but now given its influence, it’s actually becoming an

54:16

asset class in of itself. So I asked it, what’s HIP 3 and HIPP 4? Um, they’re

54:22

just improvement proposals. Hyperlid improvement proposals. That’s

54:26

what HIPP stands for. So, HIP 3 builder deploy perpetuals is what you could do

54:32

before it activated it in October 25, 2025. It makes perpetual market creation

54:40

permissionless. So, it’s pretty much on chain. And then HIP 4 is outcome

54:46

markets, predictions, and event trading. So, I’m guessing you can do perpetuals

54:50

now, not just permissionlessly, but now on prediction markets. And it’s pretty

54:56

much it really. And it comes out um it came out early 2026, May 2026.

55:02

It introduces fully collaterized outcome contracts, a new primitive for

55:07

event-based trading. That’s pretty cool. No leverage or

55:11

liquidations, fully collaterized, lower risk profile. Damn, that’s actually kind

55:16

of massive because

55:18

>> yeah, I think I think this stuff is cool and I think these prediction markets are

55:23

interesting. I think once you take the sports out of it, I think there’s much

55:27

more interest for me. Like

55:29

>> for sure

55:30

>> if you can trade on like outcomes of wars and outcomes of

55:36

all that, like I I think that makes more sense. I think when you layer in sports,

55:42

it it’s just sports betting with with, you know, largely no house. So, like

55:47

there’s some more positives to it, but I don’t like the sports betting aspects of

55:51

of prediction markets right now.

55:54

>> Well, I think it’s a low hanging fruit. Like they’re just capitalizing on an

55:57

existing business part of like their, you know, business operations.

56:01

>> Yeah, which is fine. I just I think sports betting is an emotional thing and

56:05

it ruins more lives than it helps.

56:08

>> Yeah. I mean, DraftKings and I forget who else, that’s all they do now. Like,

56:12

well, not now, but like they’ve incorporated prediction markets. Um, to

56:16

stay ahead of business, I guess. Um, they’re actually making a lot of money

56:20

from that, too. So, it makes sense. Um, so yeah, I mean, if you want to read

56:24

this more, here’s like a comparison table on what HIP 3, HIPP 4 is. It’s

56:28

pretty much it for hype. I think it’s pretty cool one that highlighted.

56:32

And the last one that I want to talk about is Solana’s Alpenlow. I think

56:37

that’s how you pronounce it, which is a major consensus overhaul replacing proof

56:41

of history. It targets 100 to 150 millisecond or excuse me, microcond

56:47

transaction finality, which seems to be like a 100x improvement. This is just

56:52

based on what I’m reading on my notes.

56:54

>> Yeah,

56:54

>> currently it’s in test net with community validator testing. So, it’s

56:58

kind of like the Robin Hood chain earlier this year where it was on test

57:01

net and people were testing on it and you know it reached like I think like

57:08

one 10 million in like the first week if I’m not mistaken. Um, Agave

57:14

is a client so that’s pretty cool. I don’t know if it’s I’ve never heard of

57:19

agave. I thought it was a but I’m guessing there’s an agave and it’s

57:23

expected to roll out in Q3 this year. So, why don’t we talk about that for a

57:30

moment? Do you use Salana?

57:34

>> Not really. Like, I kind of I I’ve gone way more to just

57:40

Bitcoin more and more. Like the Salana stuff’s interesting, but

57:46

they went heavy memecoin and then now that they’re making like a stable coin

57:52

push. Like I I feel like Salana’s just been kind of following the the hype a

57:57

little bit. So truthfully, what I’m waiting for is for all this to kind of

58:01

shake out and see where a lot of this lands. I think this year has become the

58:06

DeFi like decision make making year for what what actually ends up being good

58:13

and what doesn’t. Like I think Hyperlid is going to come out on top for majority

58:17

of stuff. Like I think Salana is is an interesting like spot at the moment.

58:27

I do have some thoughts about that. I think there was a lot of speculation

58:31

before which is really all that was all that we had at the time in 2021. Um just

58:37

because people were talking about oh you know this [ __ ] shitcoin that I made

58:42

on well not on pump fund that was later but you know some [ __ ] coins would come

58:47

out and on Ethereum and people would think it was going to be like Bitcoin

58:51

where it was going to just infinitely grow and that wasn’t the case. A lot of

58:55

people lost money and were rockpooled and I mean obviously that hurt a lot of

58:59

people. So now they’re very cautious where they put their money and this year

59:03

has been very definitive whether people should rely on DeFi. I think it is more

59:10

popular outside of the US and maybe outside of our bubbles because you know

59:14

people would talk about it’s either USDC for payments settlements or Bitcoin and

59:21

maybe Ethereum or Salana but like you know people have their opinions. I mean

59:25

I have my opinions. I think the reason why Hyperlquid will succeed is because

59:30

they’re building they’re they’re pretty much using crypto for what it is, for

59:34

what I believe it is, which is making money more accessible, you know, not

59:39

having to settle payments in 3 days or business days or just waiting for market

59:45

hours to open. Like you have access to liquidity whenever you want. And the way

59:50

Hyperlid is doing it with perpetuals and now with prediction markets, I think

59:53

it’s doing it very well. I haven’t used the predictions to market aspect for

59:57

like hyperlquid. Um, but I think it’s largely why it’s going to succeed and

1:00:02

the same could be said for poly market and koshi whenever they adapt it into

1:00:06

crypto because they do plan to doing it on on crypto as well. Um, I think this

1:00:11

is where crypto succeeds, you know, improving an existing financial aspect

1:00:16

or an asset into its own technology. Yeah, I think it’s going to become all

1:00:22

infrastructure more and more.

1:00:24

>> Yes.

1:00:25

>> Like,

1:00:26

>> and I think that’s why a lot of people are like, I’m out of crypto because the

1:00:30

it’s no longer just like a fun DGEN thing. It’s no longer just a, you know,

1:00:34

way to make money and, you know, do all of it. It’s going to become

1:00:38

infrastructure. You know, when you buy a house, it’s going to be a tokenized um

1:00:44

tokenized uh title to it. when you buy a car, it’s going to be a tokenized title

1:00:48

that the state runs. I I think all of that’s going to be there. You’re not

1:00:52

going to think, “Oh, my my thing’s on Salana.” You’re just going to go, “Oh,

1:00:56

my my car’s title’s tokenized on the Texas, you know,

1:01:02

blockchain thing. You’re like, you’re not going to know it’s Chain Link or

1:01:06

Salana or whatever.” Yeah. You’re just going to know

1:01:08

>> that it’s tokenized on there and that you have a an an ID number that it’s

1:01:13

tied to. Just like your VIN, it’s going to be a VIN that’s tokenized on some

1:01:17

blockchain. Same thing. You’re not going to know, you know, what what currency.

1:01:22

It’s just like currencies. You know, you don’t you don’t pay you, you know, it’s

1:01:25

US dollar. You know, if you go to Mexico, it’s the peso. In in the future,

1:01:30

you’re going to be like, oh, I know, you know, everything’s tokenized on chain

1:01:34

link or everything’s tokenized on Salana for this one thing. That’s all you’re

1:01:38

going to know.

1:01:39

>> Yep. Um, and I think that’s what a lot of these retail people want outside of

1:01:44

the Bay Area bubble. Going back to our point earlier. Hey, how’s it going? I

1:01:51

think we’re seeing a post or a comment here on Twitter.

1:01:55

>> Was a couple minutes ago.

1:01:57

>> Oh, you showed it was a couple minutes ago. Oh, my bad.

1:01:59

>> It was 211 on YouTube.

1:02:02

>> Oh [ __ ] How’s it going? Sorry, we didn’t see it just until now. Appreciate

1:02:06

all the comments. Let us know what you think of the cadence. right hand side on

1:02:09

Riverside has a chat for you.

1:02:12

>> Oh, I wasn’t even I guess. Okay, I I should probably expand and improve my

1:02:17

little setup here because I’m doing it on my MacBook and you know I only have

1:02:21

one screen and you saw my monitor. It’s like massive and I should be using it

1:02:26

more. So anyways, um I guess for now just to kind of end this, I want to

1:02:31

share this video that I found on Twitter from Solana

1:02:36

giving a bit more of an insight on Alen glow. It’s an interesting word. I’m

1:02:40

guessing that’s the version that they’re improving to kind of like how Mac OS has

1:02:45

like Sierra and then Monterey and Tahoe, you name it. So anyways, uh I’m going to

1:02:51

play this video. It’ll tell us more about Alpenlow. Glow. Alpenlow is our

1:02:56

new consensus protocol meant to lower finality with tower BFT from 12 seconds

1:03:02

to 150 milliseconds. We’re also removing things like proof of history and moving

1:03:06

voting off chain which will help eliminate vote transaction fees which

1:03:10

has been a large cost overhead to validators today.

1:03:15

And so in terms of real world performance, we’ve been running an

1:03:17

Alpenlo testnet cluster for the past eight months. In this cluster, we’re

1:03:22

measuring finality at 120 milliseconds. And the team is working really hard at

1:03:27

getting this feature upstream into the Agave repo. We’re aiming for a feature

1:03:31

activation sometime in early Q3 with Agave version 4.1.

1:03:36

Now on to Alpenlow. Alplow is our new consensus protocol meant to lower

1:03:42

finality with Tower BFT from 12 seconds to 150 milliseconds. We’re also removing

1:03:47

things like proof of history. I guess it repeated.

1:03:51

>> Yeah.

1:03:52

>> Um, sorry about that. Okay, so that’s kind

1:03:56

of cool. Maybe Gro can tell us a little bit more about it. I use Solana

1:04:02

sparingly at this point, but I wanted to get back into it with like Pokemon

1:04:06

trading NFTts. I think something you mentioned like last week was I think it

1:04:11

was last week how you buy a pack from Pokemon or if you buy like a real

1:04:17

Pokemon card, you can like mint it into a Salon NFT and then you burn or you

1:04:22

destroy your card, which may not be appealing for a lot of people, but I

1:04:28

think that’s a really cool concept. So, I wanted to play with that a little bit

1:04:30

more. So, going back to

1:04:33

>> I do like tokenized assets. It’s like if you buy something and you can own it

1:04:37

onchain and it’s the exact one to one and you transfer it and you transfer

1:04:42

that. I think that’s really cool.

1:04:44

>> Um I play Magic Eden sometimes and open like packs on Salana. Um that’s kind of

1:04:50

fun.

1:04:51

>> Mhm.

1:04:52

>> But yeah.

1:04:54

>> No, I feel that. So what Grock says, I mean aside from what it discovered in

1:05:00

this video, what was discussed in this video,

1:05:04

OX Brew, I’m guessing this the person speaking. It won’t show in my Yeah, it

1:05:09

won’t show me here. Uh accelerate a pack event explaining removal of proof of

1:05:15

history and offchain voting to eliminate vote fees and reducing validator

1:05:19

overhead. That’s pretty cool. This is aimed at engineering internet capital

1:05:23

markets. The upgrade unlocks subsecond confirmations for highfrequency onchain

1:05:28

trading and applications needing near instant settlements. I mean, I don’t

1:05:34

think this is possible like near instant settlements, that’s never possible

1:05:37

outside of crypto. So, this is why I’m very bullish on it. But, um, I think to

1:05:41

your point earlier and what I’m starting to see more is infrastructure is going

1:05:45

to be the real winner. Um, people don’t want to think about how many gas fees

1:05:50

they’re going to pay just to send their mom money or anything. They just want to

1:05:55

be able to access this capital near instantly.

1:06:00

>> Yeah.

1:06:02

>> Cool. Well, I guess that’s everything for this episode. Um, let us know what

1:06:07

you think. We’ll be around. If you guys ever have any suggestions for things you

1:06:11

want us to cover, let us know. Like, you have access to our socials. You can find

1:06:15

them below as well. Let us know what you want to talk about. Maybe if you guys

1:06:19

ever want to jump on board and have a discussion, I think we can probably set

1:06:23

up some sort of Discord and have live calls with some of our audience here.

1:06:27

So, I think that’ll be fun. Um, but if you all are interested off of that, let

1:06:30

us know. We’ll be around.

1:06:33

>> Sounds good.

1:06:35

>> Great. Hope you all have a good one.