Transcription
Bake the station. It's the first week of July, and we have a huge week of news this week. The world's largest financial institutions just launched a brand new stablecoin co-op to compete with Circle and Tether, calling it OpenUSD from Open Standard. Names like Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock, Google, Coinbase, 60-plus names. Circle dropped 17% on the news. Is this the first USD killer to come on the scene in a while, or just the world's biggest letter of intent?
We also have a continuation of the Michael Saylor story. Is that whole thing going to unwind? Possibly a bookend. Possibly a bookend. Maybe a book. He, he, um, deferred it even longer. They, uh, just raised, I don't know, one to two billion more. We'll talk about how that happened and whether that can get them out of this current predicament.
There's also Robinhood Chain. There was an event from Robinhood in London where they announced and launched Robinhood Chain. So many things to talk about. Tokenized stocks trading on Uniswap, 7% stablecoin yield. Per via Lighter, really just the rise of Robinhood Chain and also the rise of Ethereum institutional. That's another thing that launched this week. The second org to roll out of the EF in two weeks. Specialization or talent sprawl?
Nice. I like what you did there, David. All right, we also have Venice. We're going to talk about, and I want you to get me to fill me in on Trump, all the money Trump made, and we get to see just, we get to quantify how much was possibly grifted from the crypto industry.
Big story there. Who would you rather be, all of crypto companies or Donald Trump? Who made more money? Yeah, we're going to get to all this and more, but before we do, we got to talk about OKX, uh, the internal exchange. This is a hot week to talk about this, uh, which is the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. They backed OKX at a $25 billion valuation to launch tokenized New York Stock Exchange stocks and derivatives later this year on OKX. That's TRDFI and DeFi all in the same place. The DeFi mullet all on one head. Uh, trusted by over 120 million users globally. Uh, OKX is bringing products to the US market that Wall Street has been dreaming of for years, and OKX is finally delivering them through their new money app. If you are not yet on OKX, you can get a 6% deposit match using the link in the show notes, unless you are from Texas or New York. So, if you're from Texas or New York, don't do that. Uh, not investment advice. Uh, let's go ahead and get right into it. Okay.
Uh, Ryan, Bitcoin started the week $61,000, dropped to a new low. It broke through new lows of $57,800. Right now, at the time of recording, it is actually higher than it started the week at $62,000. Same story for ETH. ETH is up 2% on the week. It started the week just below $1,700. It hit a new low, new low in like years of $1,500, and is ending the week at just above $17. I think there's a decent probability that that was the bottom for both for crypto for the for the blue chips. I think that could have been the bottom.
What probability? I agree that's a decent probability, but I'm curious what probability you'd assign versus what I would assign.
40 to 50% probability that that was the that that was the bottom. Yeah.
Oh, interesting. Okay. That's lower than I thought you'd be, 'cause you sounded a bit more bullish. I would assign it. That's pretty bullish.
Really? Okay. I thought from the sound of your voice I was like, "Oh, David's like 80%, 90% that this is the bottom."
You can never be that high. [laughter]
You can never be that high. I'm I'm probably pretty close. 40 to 50% that that was the bottom. But that
Yeah.
You know, leaves 50% probability. A coin flip that it wasn't, and that we're actually going to go lower. I I want to. Does this sound right? Bitcoin went down in 2018 from the high.
Mhm.
In 2022, 76%.
Mhm.
With this new low, 2026, it would be 54%.
Mhm.
Doesn't it feel like if you want these numbers to kind of line up symmetrically, kind of map, and the and the time range to line up as well, 12 months of a bear in each of these that we hit the lows. 12 months of a bear, we hit the lows. We're not yet 12 months. We're nine months. And doesn't it look like this instead of 54%? Just like squint. Look at this. Doesn't it look like it should be in the 60s? 60, 62, 63, maybe 65% from the high of the previous cycle. Like look at it.
It depends on whether you're a cycle maxi and you don't care about anything.
There is no other choice. [laughter] Like historically, if you are not a cycle maxi, then you have been washed out of these markets because you've overleveraged yourself or you've been disappointed and you just like quit these markets. Most people still remaining are cycle maxis, or at least they should be if they're on their like third or fourth cycle. Like this keeps happening, guys. What do you think it means? You think it means it could happen again? Yes, I do.
Clearly, clearly, I'm talking to a cycle maxi here. [laughter]
Uh, look, Saylor, we're going to talk about this in a second. Saylor bought himself like almost 20 months of cash USD runway for dividend payments.
Yeah. And so the only other bottom I could see is like when we start to when that starts to like evaporate and we get down to like eight months of cash runway, and then the market starts to really care about what Saylor does. But we got 12 months before we get to that point. Now, bear markets last about 12 months. So maybe we hit another bottom at the tail end of the bear market, and that's the bottom, and then we rocket upwards because Saylor, Saylor was forced to cough up Bitcoin. What I the re I would give the recent bottom a higher probability of being the bottom if Saylor coughed up Bitcoin, but he didn't. He just dumped MSTR. And so I I will give you that that like I Saylor didn't cough up Bitcoin. And so, you know, he hasn't eaten his humble pie. He's still thinking that he can hold on to every single Satoshi that he ever bought. And that is what worries me. But Ryan, he's got 20 months of runway. That's a long time.
Okay. But this isn't just about Saylor, right? There's other the other things that are bigger than Saylor, okay? Uh, including Bitcoin, of course, but including macro. And
Um, there is a question as to what the Fed does next.
People think that it will be maybe a in the middle type Fed, not overly dovish, not overly hawkish. You mean a Fed that's just balanced and responsible and does their job?
Kind of is not just doing what Trump wants and just slashing rates, but is like thinking whether we should raise them or not. That's still in the water. If it turns out that Walsh is a bit more hawkish than the market expects, that could turn things on a dime, and that could cause equities to go down. If equities go down, let's say David, the NASDAQ went down 20 to 25%. You think Bitcoin remains, you know, like $60k? No. No.
There's lots there's chum in the water for those types of things to be catalysts for us to hit the final capitulation zone and the final bottom. And I think that's that's remaining. In fact, I think we're up a little bit.
The stock market is quite high and has a lot to fall if it does if it does decide to fall.
There you go. There you go. And I do think we're up a little bit, at least on the day, because
We're up on the week. The the SPY, the S&P 500 is up 2.5% this week. NASDAQ up 2% this week. Oil prices continue their decline. They are WTI and Brent down 3.5%. WTI traded below $70 this week.
Yeah. And we had some we had some, um, I guess good news recently on the week there for markets, at least. Uh, Fed Chair Walsh had a a meeting at the ECB. It was just a forum, and he said expectations of inflation have actually come down. You can see that in oil prices that you mentioned earlier. Inflation risks have come down, which if if they're coming down, then the Fed doesn't have to raise rates. Certainly could leave them where they are, could could think about decreasing them in the future, and I think the markets got some bullish catalyst on that. There was also a pretty good jobs report. The poly market on the next Fed decision, which happens at the end of July, you know, um, peaked up a little bit, like the the probability of no change went from something like 75% to something like 90%. So the market is anticipating that Walsh is not going to do anything in the next meeting either, um, up or down. But let's get back to Saylor. Okay. So where we left things last week was he had this three-body problem.
He has MSTR holders, he has the SDRC holders, and then he has Bitcoin, and they're all kind of orbiting one another, and you know, which course will he take? They're all they're all pulling on one another. So what's he going to do? So what did he do that on the week?
He released the Digital Credit Capital Framework, which is just strategy speak for, "We're a hedge fund now."
What do you mean? What do you mean with Saylor and strategy? They are such a force and they need to keep their cards close to their chest to preserve maximum optionality that they are starting to look like the Fed when it comes to Bitcoin. And so there's like, you know, Fed speak versus like real language. So I'm going to do my best to put everything into real language.
Yeah. What was the language? At least
"We're a hedge fund now." "We're a hedge fund now."
They didn't say that. They didn't say that.
No, they said they said they released a Digital Credit Capital Framework. I'm saying that what they are saying we should interpret this as they are just a hedge fund. And so here's some of the just the the core measures that they did. Uh, they increased their USD reserves to $2.55 billion. That's 17.5 months of dividend coverage.
That was up from last week. We added a little bit. Yeah, they added a little bit more than a billion dollars. And so they more than doubled their time that they have to pay for stretch. And was that MSTR ATM sales?
That I can only imagine because
He did not sell Bitcoin.
He did not sell Bitcoin. So I had But Ryan, they gave themselves a formal authorization to sell $1.25 billion of Bitcoin.
Wait, they gave themselves permission to sell.
This was always allowed. This is kind [laughter] of my issue with this is like they were always allowed to sell Bitcoin.
It's called forward guidance, right?
Yes. Yes. Exactly. Guidance to everybody who
But they're not going to sell more than $1.25 billion of Bitcoin. So if you are worried, if you're a Bitcoin holder and you're worried that they're going to sell more than $1.25 billion, you are allied.
Well, unless they give themselves permission to sell authoriz Yeah. Right. Okay. So the f the funky math that they get to do with this is that you get to add $1.25 billion worth of Bitcoin to their dividend coverage. So now their math is, you add these things together, they have $3.8 billion of reserves. If you add the funny money, $1.25 billion.
Funny Bitcoin they haven't sold yet.
But this gives them 26 months of dividend coverage. So because of their authorization, they are authorized to add on a fake nine months of of dividend coverage because they've authorized it.
Well, it was always real. They just are acknowledging that it's an option, I suppose. But yes, I I get your point. 26 months is a long time though.
Is is a long time. Yeah. And then they increase the stretch dividend yield from 11.5% to 12%. What this does is that informs the market that they are going to try and keep their capital market window open to them by trying to get Stretch back up to $100 so that they can issue more Stretch to buy more Bitcoin.
They want SDRC holders to be happy.
They want SDRC. Yeah. Also, they're kind of backed up against the wall because of all of the promotion and marketing that Saylor has done around Stretch. And so, they really want Stretch holders to not be unhappy in case they get sued.
Sure.
Yeah. Uh, and then they also have a, um, a buyback program for Stretch and Convertible Notes or MSTR. They say like, "Hey, if we want to, we can buy these things back." Which once again was always allowed.
More punishing, I can imagine, to the MSTR holders on the week, right? With some, uh, additional inflation of MSTR. The big
Yeah, but it was it was above MNAV anyways. And so I mean MSTR, it bottomed out at $82. Yesterday it got up to $104. Now it's now at $99. Okay. So it has recovered, and also so has Stretch. So Stretch is at $88. You know, it it bottomed around $70 to $73. So it's it's walking its way closer.
It was a buying opportunity last week then. STRC at least, right? I mean, that would have been a good one to lock in.
If you if you like this, 'cause this was
Very likely what Michael Saylor was going to do. He was going to run the ATM as hot as he could. Yes.
And then give some indication that, hey, like, if you like, we we're willing to sell Bitcoin, too. The thing about selling Bitcoin, though, is it does I think you made the point last week that there's this social contract that Saylor has established. "Never sell." "Mortgage a second home, mortgage a third home." Like
Sell a kidney. Yeah. Uh, like do whatever you have to to hold Bitcoin. And so he has been doing that over the past four years, and it breaks that social construct.
He has three social contracts. Pay Stretch dividend holders their money. Have it trade at 100. Uh, don't dilute MSTR holders below one of MNAV, and don't sell Bitcoin. And he hasn't broken any of those social contracts other than selling the 32 Bitcoin, which I don't think counts because it was so small.
Yeah. Yeah, just to know about the three-body problem, like all three bodies do orbit one another. It's just the orbits are unpredictable. So it's
But there are there are like solutions to the three-body problem. There's like 20 or 30, and like, you know, you have three in a circle there, it's perfectly balanced solution. You can't. That's the whole thing with the three-body problem, you can't predict.
In a vacuum, in a mathematical vacuum, you there are constructions of the three-body
Problem about this after.
Yeah, go for it. I mean, there there's a there's a graphic I can I can send you, but it's like one of those things where it's like such a perfect mathematical vacuum that it's actually impossible.
I see. So it's theoretically possible, not possible. Anyway, aside from that, this is not the death spiral. This is not the the three bodies spinning out of, like, it doesn't look like that's the case, and that's more confirmation this week.
That's right.
Um, should we talk about Robinhood Chain, or should we wait for the
Dude, big news of the week. Let's see how far we're
I think we need time. I think we need more time. We need more air time. So next, we're going to we got to talk about on-chain tokenized stocks, 24/7, 365 markets, 7% APY deposits, AI agents to trade.
It's pretty big.
Uniswap on Robinhood Chain. Arbitrum is a big winner here. Lighter is
You're already talking about it. Let's save it.
Okay.
We'll be right back. Talking about Robinhood, talking about Venice, also, uh, the new stablecoin that just USD.
Yeah, OUSD, all that. But before we do, we got to thank the sponsors that made this possible.
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Tokenized stocks. I knew that was coming on tokenized Robinhood tokenized stocks.
Which enables them to do 24/7, 365 marketplaces.
And these are real stocks. Like what? These aren't these aren't the weird synthetics that don't have any backing. Like, are these actual stocks?
Like more details about how Robinhood actually tokenized, but they are a brokerage.
Yeah. So if they're a brokerage, they just they're piped right in.
We're going to say it is. We're going to say this is real deal stocks, stocks. Yeah. Uh, so they have, uh, Bitstamp, which they purchased, right? Which has perpetual futures and the exchange, and so they get to, uh, use some of Bitstamp to do 24/7, 365 markets, but they also Lighter, the ZK L2 on Ethereum. Lighter built a brand new instance of Lighter on the Robinhood Chain, on which is an Arbitrum Orbit chain, and so there's now now two Lighters, and so a lot of the Robinhood tokenized stocks will go onto their chain and get per access directly through Lighter right on the exchange.
What's the explanation for why? I know why Lighter would be warming up to Robinhood. Why would Robinhood be warming up to Lighter? Is it is is there anything like, well, we're all part of the Ethereum community, like why not Hyperliquid?
Robinhood invested in Lighter at their last round.
Okay.
Uh, uh, and so they are they are Lighter investors. The Lighter engineering team is like straight up cracked. They have a lot of, uh, forward-deployed engineers which built this Lighter instance on the Robinhood Chain. Why does Robinhood want that on the Robinhood Chain? Just tons of of block space consumption from
So they're kind of making a decision. And hey, this is our favorite among the, you know, DeFi purp. What other perp exchange would be able to build a a new instance directly on the Robinhood Chain? Like I'm sure
Hyperliquid could if you asked.
I don't think they would. I don't think they would do that. They want everything to go on the Hyperliquid platform.
Okay. Okay. Yeah, I see.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so big win for Lighter. Uh, and then also they have just part of the announcement is like just region and jurisdiction expansion. So they're in 160 countries. Lot a lot of stuff not in the United States, Ryan. A lot of stuff is excluded from the United States.
Oh, all the tokenized stock stuff is excluded.
Yes, the stock tokens, the per futures. Uh, and then also non-crypto per non-crypto pers were announced. So
Can we blame Gensler for this? Why is why can't we have tokenized stocks in 2026?
Because we just don't have clarity. And I think Mike Selig from the CFTC is like trying to get us clarity.
Clarity, the literal act. Are you saying the clarity?
No, just more more clarity from the CFTC from regulators.
Yeah. So, I don't expect that to be a long-standing issue in the grand scheme of things.
By the end of the year, you think maybe we'll be clear to trade here?
By 2027. In 2027.
Okay. Jeez.
Vlad. Vlad from Lighter. So, we have Vlad from Robinhood. Vlad Tenev, the CEO of Robinhood.
That's why they're together. They're both. They're both named Vlad. Vlad from Lighter. He is on like the CFTC advisory board, and so he talks to like Mike Selig, and so like he's in the loop, and like Lighter is explicitly going for a US license, and so that's why Robinhood chose them is like they they can work with them to be compliant. Okay, so that's that. Um, a lot of this was both the the launch of the Robinhood Chain, but also the glowing up of the Robinhood Wallet. The first time we ever talked to Vlad, Ryan, was at Permissionless number one, where they launched where Robinhood launched Robinhood Wallet. Remember that?
And that was a a self-custodial DeFi type wallet, almost like a MetaMask competitor, but mobile-first, and we were very excited about their ability to bring the Robinhood level UX to crypto and DeFi.
Exactly. Still the case. It's been pretty vanilla so far. It's just like a vanilla, a very sexy vanilla self-custodial wallet.
They are doing, let me just like tell you a bunch of things and see if it reminds you of anything. So first, we have Robinhood Wallet. Now we have Robinhood Chain.
The self-custodial thing.
The self-custodial.
We're not talking about Robinhood the app.
New new app. New brand new app. Wow. Self-custodial wallet on the Robinhood Chain.
Okay.
7% depositors for the Robinhood stablecoin, which is USDG issued by Paxos.
Not USD. Yeah. Uh-huh. Not USDT or USDC. So, Robinhood gets the yield for all of the stablecoins on the Robinhood Chain, and they are giving 7% more than 6% issued by a competitor who rhymes with Schwin Mace [laughter] and they're giving 7% using Morpho. So, Morpho's hooked into the back end here.
So they're making Paxos their USDC like
Because because Paxos will pass back the yield because that's how it works. That's how that's how it works.
Okay. Okay. Go on. Does that just remind you of any other tech stack? Maybe a blue-chip tech stack.
I mean, this is the coin, this is the Coinbase and Base tech stack. So, we have Base and the Coinbase Wallet. And, you know, we have the And then we have, um, USDC, which is the Coinbase stablecoin equivalent, and we have the an equivalent stack on the Robinhood side, but with tokenized stocks.
Yeah, with tokenized stocks in the EU. Uh, and so you can get up to 10% 10x leverage on gold, QQQ, uh, the EuroUSD pair, ETFs, and foreign exchange if you're in the EU. And then that all it gets served to you on Lighter. There's also an 11 million Lighter token incentive, uh, program. So, if you go and trade perp in the Robinhood wallet, you get some Lighter tokens.
This is exciting. I'm excited about this.
So, I think the big question is like, who are the big winners here? Uh, so there's a bunch of different partners. Arbitrum is literally the chain provider. There's like murmurs of just like, will the Robinhood Chain be Robinhood's like 14th $100 million revenue yearly product that they have? Will Robinhood be the 14th one of those?
Sure.
Well, if it is, like Rob Arbitrum gets 10% of that. So, Arbitrum is very clearly a winner here. Let me pull up in CoinGecko.
Token up 3% on the news.
Well, that was yesterday. Let me let me let me look at it today. Let me look at it today. Uh, 3% 3% [laughter] 3%. [gasps] Okay. What about Uniswap? So Uniswap is deployed, and that's pretty cool because that is got to there's tokenized stocks on Uniswap on Robinhood Chain. That's pretty cool. That's really cool. I just like to note. Okay, so this is a whole thread about the, um, total value locked that the Robinhood Chain launched with. There's a Dune board for this, and [clears throat] it launched with some pretty big numbers, like $100 million in stablecoins already that was day one launch.
You know, $4.4 million in DEX liquidity. That was from Uniswap, right? Morpho, it's like these DeFi blue chips in the Ethereum economy that are benefiting from this big launch.
Yeah. Uh, Uniswap when I put in my notes yesterday was only up 2.5%, but today it is up 12%. So maybe some delayed price.
That's what I'm talking about. Double digit. Thank you.
Chainlink is a big oracle provider. Chainlink up 5% in the last day here. Uh, Morpho, Morpho, which is the yield supplier for that 7% uh, of the stablecoin, and among other things, uh, up 3%. Up 3% respectable. And then Lighter, which is the perp DEX supplier, got a huge boost up 17%. That's 17%. And I saw I I see in the notes, Hood itself was up 8% on the news.
Was up 8% on the news.
Crypto is bullish again.
Crypto is bullish again. Yeah, this was a big deal. This was a very I don't think too many people saw this coming, even though like Robinhood has been like telegraphing this for forever.
So this compares to Base. It's kind of a lot of equivalencies, but just with tokenized stocks, I might say. Are there other like it's a or uh the Arbitrum, uh, stack rather than rather than
Stack rather than OP Stack? Yeah. I did see that, um, they're actually using Ethereum for data availability, too. Just in case you're an L2B nut.
There's some some like Ethereum is winning here as well.
Well, it's and you could clearly see Ethereum winning DA, whatever aside, right? That's some net benefit for the Ethereum ecosystem. They're believing the L2 roadmap. This is a partial. This is a this is a big victory for the L2 roadmap. We don't we don't talk about victories in this day and age for the L2 roadmap. The way that this is a big victory for Ethereum and ETH specifically is if Robinhood tokenized stocks can migrate off the chain and onto the layer 1.
Yes.
And that that is a question I have when I record with Johan, the VP of Crypto of Robinhood, in like three hours.
Oh, cool. Three hours. Okay. Uh, I'm looking forward to that episode then. Okay. So, not just that, though. It's that, but it's very clearly a boon to Ethereum DeFi.
I would I would say, which does, especially if the stocks can come off the chain.
But even if not, if it is successful, Uniswap wins, Morpho wins, like Ethereum blue chip wins. And then also, I would say, I think Ethereum has
A new wallet on the scene that I mean, Robinhood has been there, but like now they're incentivized to make improvements in it. And, you know, Phantom has been a fantastic competitor in the in the Solana ecosystem. Good to have another wallet on the scene.
That's right. That's right. And also, I think you just have to also give a a tip of the hat to Paxos. Paxos wasn't trade, but like they they won Robinhood with a stablecoin deal. So, like Paxos gets a dub here. Overall, like everyone was just pretty thrilled. Like, no one really had any bad things. No, no one had anything bad to say about anything.
The Hyperliquid people are coping a little bit about Lighter, but that's okay. [laughter]
Yeah, they don't like to lose, do they? Um, let's talk about the another story this week, which is, uh, Venice AI became a unicorn. So, valuation of Venice now north of $1 billion, and this was
At $11 billion.
Okay. At $1 billion. This was on the back of a raise that was announced. So what happened here?
$65 million raise, Series A, led by Dragonfly, along with North Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, uh, Morgan Creek, uh, for for Venice. Uh, and so this was this was a hybrid equity token. Uh, there's a token warrant here, but this is also an equity deal. Uh, Eric Vorhees, the the founder CEO of Venice, of course, um, just tweeted out some actual bangers. Uh, the a line that he wrote in his article about like the motivations for Venice and the importance of privacy in the world of AI is, "We are going to use this capital to uphold the first and fourth amendments to the constitution as they relate to mankind's interaction with AI." I just got shivers.
Unrestricted intelligence, right? Self-sovereign AI. This is part of the story of Venice, and it's not completely self-sovereign AI, but it gets us a big step closer, I would say.
I I somewhat wonder if Vorhees is at some point in time going to find himself in Venice in, uh, regulator crosshairs once again, going toe-to-toe with the state. I think like Eric is like, "I know what to do here." Like,
Well, had a problem with self-sovereign money. You think they're going to have a problem with self-sovereign intelligence?
I mean, probably.
Yeah. I mean, the the US government
I hope he does go toe-to-toe. That's that's what I'm rooting for.
It's very versed the state again. Let's [ __ ] go.
Yeah, it's going to be, and it's like you can already see the state cracking down on delaying like Mythos, restricting that, delaying the the newest ChatGPT model. Anyway, go on. So, that's his mission. That's what Venice is all about. That's what they're doing. So, what else does he say? Yeah, they they got an article in TechCrunch, which is what pumped the token a little bit. So the the raise was announced, and like the VVV token pumps like 14%. It's retraced because this has spawned a whole conversation about equity token misalignment, which is a story that we have seen before. Eric knows this, and he kind of got ahead of it when he did the raise announcement in in a tweet thread. He said, "To raise such capital, this $65 million, we could have either sold some of Venice's treasury of VVV directly to the market or sold equity. We chose the latter. Despite the VVV token equity, not VVV."
Correct? Yes. Despite, uh, VVV being up 700% year to date, we don't want to sell the token. Venice, the company, uh, remains the largest holder of VVV, owning more than 30 million out of today's 80 million supply. The company and team each hold more today than at genesis. The company has not sold any date. So the the details of the capital raise, Series A investors, they with the $65 million that they raised, they bought 9% of the company and a vesting grant of 1.5 million VVV token. So part, uh, equity, part token, and they also bought a right to buy 5 million more VVV over the next eight years.
So they did buy some token, too. It wasn't just equity.
Correct. Yeah, yeah, you're right. They It was It was hybrid. It was both. They sold equity and tokens and also a right to buy future tokens. Uh, and so I think Eric knows the equity token misalignment problem. His solution seems to be, A, the company holds a lot of tokens, and B, also doesn't want to sell tokens, which like, if the company wants to not sell tokens, that's bullish. That's bullish in my mind because they value their tokens. They consider their tokens precious, so they'd rather sell equity than tokens. That's that's a bullish token interpretation. Uh, and so the fact that he's like lumping everything together, and he's preserving alignment by keeping a large supply of the tokens inside of the equity
Does align incentives more than if they were completely dislocated.
But the problem is that's a fixed, you know, point in time. They're aligned now, but they're different instruments, and they don't have to stay in that exact configuration, do they?
Yeah. Yeah. So I take Eric's point that he's making, which is if the equity owns the token, there's alignment, which I think is correct, and that's more alignment than there's been in the last
But then also, if the equity owns the token, why have a token?
Right. [laughter] Uh, so this is what this is the conversation that has spawned. Mikeo just tweeted out, "Dual token equity structures do not work. Two owners, one pie. Shareholders get Delaware law, token holders get a pinky promise." You know, tokens are junior
Equity. That's a hot line, because the problem with tokens to date has been lack of shareholder rights that Delaware SE Corps have. The problem with Delaware SE Corps is they're not digitally native, cryptonative, and they're kind of shitty for smart contracts and all sorts of things, and they're they're they're walled inside. So it's a worse rails, but it's better in terms of, uh, shareholder governance. A lot better, in fact. In fact, I name me a token project that has like succeeded with the split, um, ownership structure, equity and like some of them have partially succeeded. Maybe you could point to like an A or Uniswap, but like
A lot of them have failed colossally. Uh, BNB is an example of Binance, the company, and BNB, the token. But what did Binance do? They burned a crap ton of BNB, and CZ owns a ton of BNB.
There's one example. And like Venice, Venice wants to burn a bunch of VVV.
But it's still like up to CZ, like it's up to equity holders in terms of how much.
It's up to Eric Vorhees, and who, if there was going to be one man to just like brute force alignment without any sort of elegant solution. I agree that there's no elegant solution to solving the token and equity misalignment problem.
You sure about that? Just have a token.
Well, yeah, but that's Yes, that is the solution.
Don't have two instruments. Just kind of like force the Delaware structure into the token. I think the most important thing that you said, and I agree with, is that the equity alignment problem is like pseudo-solved in this moment of time, but this is going to become a bigger and bigger issue, especially if Venice raises more, like as time goes on, this is going to be a larger and larger problem. Also, it's being kind of it's launched in this lemon market. And by lemon, I mean like, um, you know, like a lemon car, which is just like, um,
You know, all the kind of the used cars with all the problems, those are the ones that get kind of left over. They become the lemons in the market that no one wants to buy. I mean, tokens are kind of the lemons of assets right now. Yeah.
Uh, it's because even if Vorhees and Venice does the right thing and keeps this thing aligned, you know, somehow by like just like brute force and kind of will and just like pushing it,
The rest of the tokens in the market of other assets are all lemons, and so like you're going to be grouped in with them, too. That's another problem.
Plus, at some point, uh, fiduciary duty takes over, and the fiduciary duty belongs to the shareholders, and not to the token holders. So, like, I I think Eric is going to do his best, but there's something fundamental and existential about having two vehicles.
Well, isn't it trust in Eric then here, which is kind of anti what Eric actually wants as a strong libertarian? You shouldn't have to trust me, you know, uh, you should trust in protocol, you should trust in incentives. But you're saying if one man can make it work, it's Eric. That's kind of principle. You can make it make it work for the short and medium term.
Uh, for the long term, I think there needs to be a structural change.
I know you're bullish. You have been bullish bullish on VVV, and certainly it's a great product. Um, how do you feel as an owner?
Uh, yeah, like, uh,
Would you also want to would you rather have the token or equity or both? And are you disgruntled that you just have the token?
Ah, uh, I mean, like, with a token, I get liquidity, and so that's a perk that I have.
Sure.
Um,
So you could change your mind later.
Yeah. I don't know if I would want to flip to equity.
I don't want illiquid equity. Do you? You don't want. I definitely don't want illiquid equity. Um,
But wouldn't you like to have option
Like get whatever the equity equity owners also get?
Yeah. I don't know, man. Uh, there's something there's something about tokens that I really, really like, and the fact that Eric is like very loudly defending the the structure. I don't know if he's is it a good sign? He's like fighting. Uh, I do think it's a little bit. I would like to hear him like agree that there is misalignment in the structure of equity versus token and and say that like over the long term, there needs to be a better solution. That would make me feel better. Um, I don't know, man, but I like the token. All right. I like. I still like tokens.
I know you do. I know.
I've been disappointed many times, but still like them. Still keep coming back. Uh, let's talk about OpenUSD from Open Standard. This new stablecoin with like every logo. Oh my god. I could read a few. Visa, Stripe, Master. Go down to scroll down to the section in this announcement where they just have all of the names.
Oh my god. It's just like I can't fit them on one page.
It's a wall of text.
They have Jack. Who's Jack Henry?
I have no idea. They have, uh, big banks, BlackRock, BNB. This is not alphabetical. I guess it's
BNY, not BNB.
BN [laughter] BN. They have Google. Okay. So, they have, um, they have all the big payment companies. All the
DoorDash, Samsung, IBM.
All the big banks.
Shopify, Marcato, Libre.
All the big tech companies.
Coinbase, Tempo, American Express. They got everyone. They got everyone.
So, what is it?
Uh, okay. It is basically a DAO.
This is a DAO.
You're talking about the governance. I want to. What is the actual thing? It's just a stablecoin.
No difference.
OUSD. It's OUSD. It is a stablecoin.
And this is a, um, GENSIS compliant stablecoin.
GENSIS compliant stablecoin. Stripe is at the gravitational center here. So the CEO of Open Standard is Zack Abrams, the CEO of Bridge. Yeah. Who you interviewed when when he got acquired by Stripe. Uh, so Stripe has something to do with this. Stripe says that it's making OUSD the default stablecoin for businesses transacting on Stripe.
So they're saying, "We're putting our talent."
OUSD is our stablecoin, and we are using it. We're adopting it.
Okay. But to your point, this was launched in a, um, institution, a nonprofit, uh, standards body. Joinopenstandard.com is the blog post we're reading.
Oh, is is it a nonprofit? Uh, well, whatever it is, it's not a
I don't think I don't think it's a nonprofit.
I don't know what it. What is it then? Do you know what?
I think it's it's a it's a for it's a consortium. Consortium. It's a it's a consortium. I don't know if it's like an officially a consortium, but it was just like their strategy was to list every single partner name under the sun and like just come out swinging with like, "Look how legitimate this is. Look at all the launch partners that we have."
So the equity owned by these people, or is there no equity? Is it just a, um, kind of like a shell type of, you know, like protocol structure thing that makes no money and passes off all the revenue to all of the like revenue and profits to all of the the stakeholders that we just mentioned based on their level of
The legal entity a TBD. I would like I would like to know that answer, but the latter thing that you said, like the economics of OpenUSD is exactly what you just said. So businesses can mint and redeem OpenUSD at no cost and no limits. That is like a that's different from the Tether and Circle model where there are mint and redeem fees. Uh, OUSD is designed to return most revenue generated from its reserves minus a small management fee to participants who adopt and distribute it. Exactly like Robinhood and Paxos that I just talked about. So Robinhood issues Paxos Global Dollar. Robinhood gets all the yield. Gets a little bit.
Uh, and and so the the board of Open Standard is made up of a a board of Open USD partners, ensuring decisions are made for the collective interest, not a single entity. So this is just DAO socialist vibes where like, oh, we're all get a share in the upside, and like everyone who mints gets their act their share of the the yield, and like we don't have to pay for Circle or Tether's like yield. Saying the governance feels DAO-y, and the governance vibes of like, well, it has the tragedy of the commons, like who's actually responsible? Who's going to push this thing forward? That sort of problem. But it does achieve what I I think I talked to Zack Abrams, uh, a year ago about, which is he's like, "Hey, Tether and Circle are stealing all the revenue from the apps and companies that are actually using them." And look at, look at, um, Tether's margins, right? Was like $9 to $12 billion a year with 150 people, something like that, and they're just taking it for just being Tether, and that should be passed to apps and and and users and the participants. And so that is a market force. He's just like passing this to the creators of value rather than having rent collectors kind of like take it. That would be the the argument. And I remember my comment to that was like, "Oh, really, Zach? Like, you think there'll be a world of like thousands of different stablecoins?" And at the time he said yes. Now it looks like he's looking for network effect with one particular stablecoin that
Thousands of different partners, now one stable, one stablecoin, and maybe that's for network effect reasons.
Yeah. Yeah. So all the attention around OUSD evoked a response from Jeremy Allaire, who put out a pretty lengthy tweet.
Well, the first thing you notice about this tweet is how long it is.
But also because Circle was down, right?
Oh, yeah. Circle dropped like 17% on the news.
Was it just this news, or do you also think it was the Paxos, uh, Robinhood news too? No, I think it was just this. Okay, I think it was just this. So, so Jeremy Allaire, summarizing his response, his very long response, is that why he's like arguing why USDC's position is defensible. Network effects, like thousands of apps already integrate USDC. Circle's own infrastructure stack, CCTP, blah, blah, blah. Liquidity network effects, USDC is the top three most liquid digital asset after Bitcoin and Tether. Uh, competitors are 10 times smaller. Regulatory entrenchment, it's just regulatory, like clear. Um, and then he rebuts OUSD's three main selling points. The free mint and burn, he calls naive. Fee-free redemption makes you an off-ramp for every competitor's stablecoin because you can just swap USDC to OUSD and use their off-ramp for free. And then it's actually just he's just that's going to benefit my network effects. Like my network effects win here.
I see.
Everyone shares in
The revenue. Circle already shares most of its income with distribution partners. I think we are well aware of that with Coinbase. Uh, but giving away all of it starves infrastructure investment and guarantees a limited platform. Feels it's like very capitalist versus socialist to me. Like, well, we're the capitalist, we're making the money and we are going to grow the business.
Um, a consortium where everyone has a voice, he says, has a dismal track record, misaligned incentives, poorly funded. Circle tried this in the early years at USC and it failed at a small scale. He says members will publicly kiss the ring, but their operating units will still partner with a market leader.
Oh, you might be right about that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, consortiums have worked a few times, right?
Visa is a consortium.
Visa is a consortium.
Was now it's a company.
Um, Zel, I believe from like the banking app. I don't know. You're I know you're a big Wells Fargo guy. I know you love Wells Fargo.
Huge Wells Fargo guy. That's a consortium banking type of protocol app standard that's been somewhat successful. So there are examples that, you know, mean that consortiums can sometimes work. They also, they deployed on Temp is is it Tempo first as far as the the chain?
No, they're deploying everywhere. They're on Solana, they're on Ethereum, they're on Tempo.
They're just not picking winners.
Okay.
So they're not picking winners. But um, yeah, except for the participants in this uh, so what do you think happens with this? Do you think this will Paulo had this tweet. Do you see this from U CEO of uh founder of Tether? Welcome O USD. Player two has entered the game.
That [laughter] is so dirty.
Obviously player two is USDC. [clears throat] USC I've never had any competition before. [laughter]
I don't even I just don't I think this is a flop. I think this is a flop.
You calling this a flop already?
I'm calling I'm calling this a flop. Why?
Cuz it has no owner. No motivated party.
Yeah. If you if you have 5,000 board members, you have zero board members. There's like who who is going to get the upside of like really winning this here?
There's it's just your problem with Dows basically. And
this Dow this is this is a trad.
Yeah. I
like maybe if there was and maybe if literally there was only tether or circle one over the other and but there are literally two competitors that they have to fight like
Paxos. There's Paxos.
We already have Paxos doing the same model and they had to do this model because they are third.
Well, the second question then is do you think that the 17% 20% price drop on Circle is justified? Does this lower their emotes? I I'll just point out what
I don't even know why Circle is still as high as it is. And so like I think the 17% price drop on Circle is justified anyways. Okay. Like if you look at the Circle chart, it's been trending down for forever now,
right? Well, I will point out that I I think this is the year that they have to renegotiate their every three years with um Coinbase and that and that deal structure and and Coinbase is named as a participant in this in this uh OSD consortium.
Coinbase signed on with OSD. That's so funny.
Well, I mean for Coinbase's perspective, just use it for negotiation leverage even if you're not going to do anything with
USD. Again, it's free to sign up.
It's got to it's got to compress some of the margins.
Banklist is a partner of [laughter] OSD. We'll put our logo on the board, too. All right, what do we have coming up?
Coming up next, we're going to talk about Ethereum institutional, another unbundling of the EF to spin out into its own uh different or also we have the exact numbers of how much money Donald Trump made from all of his cryptographs. And Ryan, I know you are you are just baiting your breath to talk about this, but um, we have the first stable coin in like years to break a hundred million market cap.
Stable coin
uh excuse me, memecoin.
Oh, those are very different. Those are very different. Those are very, very different. Uh, yes, we have a meme coin to talk about. Uh, and so we're going to get to all of that and more, but first we have to talk to these sponsors that make the show possible.
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Ethereum Institutional launches as an independent nonprofit to accelerate the institutional adoption of Ethereum. Uh, there was an announcement this week. Who's the team? David Walsh, Marius Smith, and Matthew Dawson funded by same exact setup as the ETH labs announcement that we talked about last week. Uh, Bitmine, Sharp Link, Joe Luben. This is just another spin out of the EF. These uh most of this team used to be at the EF. Now they're in their own independent org and they're funded by the DATs and Joseph Luben.
Because there was like an institutional part of the EF or that had kind of just started over the past couple of years.
And you could imagine that Vitalik's like, ah, you guys, I'm not going to find you guys anymore.
Yeah. So they spun out and now they're being and rather than looking for work elsewhere, they are now forming a another nonprofit institution similarly structured as ETH labs and also similarly funded but with a different mission. What's the mission of this group?
Uh, dedicated to accelerating the institutional adoption of Ethereum. It's layer 2's application and ecosystem overall. This means like I think part of their case is if um a large bank wants to use Ethereum.
Mhm.
Like they just can.
But like who do they talk to about that?
They need they need to talk to someone. They need to do CYA. They need to do cover your ass. And so they have to like meet with someone and have a handshake and like have a call.
Do you think that's true?
I mean, if somebody wants to use Linux, they don't have to do that.
They don't have to do any of that. They don't need like Linux evangelist.
Yeah, but they don't put they don't deposit money onto Linux.
Yeah. I I have you ever talked to these people or this group with like
I have not these individuals.
Is that on your quest list things to do?
Talk to them.
Yeah.
Are you going to talk to them?
I mean, it wouldn't hurt to just talk to them.
All right. Like I don't know if it's worth a podcast at this point, but like you could
Yeah.
Wouldn't hurt to talk to them, I guess. See what's up. I mean, do you think this will move the dial, I guess, is another question. Yeah. Maybe phrased differently is like, is this bullish or not?
Yeah.
Yeah. Like it's more it's more bullish than had they been at the EF. But like the most bullish thing was that the EF
just did all of this and was good at it in the first place.
Yeah.
Like this is this is a a solid second place to what would have been just like one single competent markets driven foundation. But again, that's not what Vitalik wants. And so in lie of that, this is bullish. This is a bullish reaction to that.
Well, it's interesting. Another option could have been for Bitmine or Sharlink to just pick up this team and push them forward, but this is a another
I think that is that is what they're doing. They're just not doing it internally.
I guess. So, they have then they have the option rather than to perpetually fund it internally. Okay. And that's that's probably good news. Probably good news. We'll see what they do.
Yeah. Uh, okay. Ready to talk about Donald Trump?
Always.
Okay. [laughter] What? [gasps] Okay. So, uh, June 30th, 2026, the US government, uh, Office of Ethics, which I wouldn't we have dodge for that. Whatever.
I'm [laughter] glad I'm glad it's there. Uh, they released President Donald Trump's annual financial disclosure report for 2025. Uh, a 200 927 page filing. Are you ready for the amount of money that Trump reported in cryptoreated income in 2025? Just just fiscal year 2025. He reported $1.43 billion dollar of income.
Income.
Income.
That's not in assets. That's not net worth. That's how much that's it's how much his in his net worth went up by from cryptoreated income.
He might be one of the most successful crypto entrepreneurs of all time.
I think that's correct. [laughter] Uh $635 million in royalties from celebrity coins/cic digital which is the issuer of Trump memecoin. uh and over $500 million uh from World Liberty Financial token sales and income from World Liberty Financial. Uh, the filing also showed Ryan, that's the grifty part. Maybe this is the bullish part is that he owns at least $100 million in Bitcoin and Ether.
That's it. 100 million versus 1.4 in income.
Yeah. Yeah.
Man, I guess he's keeping that money in fiat rather than recycling it back into his Bitcoin and Ether positions.
Yeah. What do you think about this? I I'll give you actually a clip. This is how it's being reported in places like CNN.
Karen, I mean, obviously we know the president has been raking in a lot of money. It's amazing to see the details. Even those Bibles he's been hawking have brought in like $200,000 plus.
Yeah, he's doing very well. The president's been very the presidency has been very good for his bottom line. And you know, as I've always said, this is a coin operated presidency really. and you just put money in and and to give to him and then he gives you other things. And this is exactly what's happening with the crypto stuff which is he he's getting a fee no matter what even though the the p the value of the crypto has gone down I don't know 83% so everybody else loses so he's taking from the people who buy it and at the same time this deal with the UAE is just astonishing. They're getting what they need for what is essentially I mean they just they're paying him in order to get something else. And so he can do this all day long. They're doing it in Kazakhstan. The New York Times had a great piece about that. They're doing it all. We reported on that last where they are.
Yeah. Right. That's another deal that that they're making in Kazakhstan that the son Trump's sons are involved with a whole bunch of other businesses related to it.
Well, everywhere. I mean, what they do is they go in advance of Trump showing up and do some kind of deal with whatever country. It doesn't matter. They go around from country to country shaking people down. This is, you know, this is very, it's a vig is what's happening here. And if you know where that term comes from, that's exactly what's happening here. He's getting a vig for everything he does as president.
Yeah. It's a lone sharking term or mafia term too.
Unfair. What do you think? Is this is this is that pretty much what's going on? Coin operated presidency. It is an extra big slap to the face that Trump made $1.5 billion dollars when Bitcoin went down like 60% or something like 50%.
I think at the same time um I mean I I think this is pretty hard to defend like if you're
Obviously
like but like I don't is anyone defending it? No, I guess I don't think any even even the position on kind of in the Trump camp is no I I've heard no one defending this.
And
yeah, I think maybe like a lack of criticism is kind of equivalent to defending it. Is like we could be more critical of Trump. The Democrats are plenty critical of Trump, but they're critical about Trump about everything and so just add this to the list. I would like to see the Republicans more critical of Donald Trump. We had said for a long time that in order to get Trump on your side, you have to pay the griff tax, right? And
tax is $1.5 billion.
Just this year, right? Yeah. Just just this year. It didn't have to be like that, but with Trump, it is like that.
I mean, he has moved uh like in positive directions in terms of like what the US's um position on crypto actually should be, but for the wrong reasons, right?
Yeah. Uh, and the only time it's it's interesting, the only time I hear crypto mentioned in mainstream media now is talking about Trump's crypto corruption, Trump Trump's crypto schemes.
That's right.
And and so, I mean, that's like that's a narrative that's going to to take some time to to resolve and and to get over. So,
yeah.
Oh, I feel like during the Trump presidency, we've constantly been asking ourselves like net good or net bad. Like
we're not going to be able to answer that question until after we have a Democratic a Democrat presidency and we see their reaction. Like hopefully they just kind of like forget about us.
Forget about going anti-crypto completely, but like they could prosecute like corruption or I mean this this should this this should not be the way our government works. Can we just say that this is this is insane?
This is Yes.
That this is how things very true. Yes. And there's going to be some amount of blowback as a result of this and hopefully it's not too bad upon us and it's only bad upon criminals.
Well, speaking of which, you wanted to talk about meme coins, David. So, [laughter] uh, what's the hottest meme coin and why are they back?
Okay, so this was this something has been brewing in Solana land. There's just a few accounts out there that are like kind of emphasizing Solana has bottomed and we need to like pump it back. So like you know Anom like famous crypto Twitter trader uh kind of spawned the whole like celebrity meme coins of last cycle.
Uh he the the meme is like they are CTOing soul.
What's CTO mean?
Um, I mean, it's it's chief technical officer, but but when you CTO a memecoin, it's like an meme coin has been abandoned ambassador of it.
You you buy a lot of the supply and you like revitalize it. it wasn't yours, but you if you CTO, so they're trying to CTO Solana and the part of it is just because they think Solana is oversold. Uh, Soul ETH is at a particular ratio that they think is bullish. They think Solana is bullish. They think Solana is going to have a revitalization. And so, uh, they're trying to get people back into the memecoin trenches. Like the other meme that they're saying is like, you know, return to memes, like get back into the memecoin trenches. Somebody minted a token with ticker Anom, which is the name of Anom, the Black Bull, that's the name of it, sent a very large amount of the supply to Anom and Anom claimed it. And then now he gets the trading fees and he has endorsed it. And this memecoin is now up to like $160 million market cap. Uh, which is pretty crazy. Uh, in the depth of a bare market, uh $180 million fully diluted valuation. Now he's taking a very significant amount of the supply that he has and he's just airdropping it. So he's air dropped like coming up on like $10 million of this token to people in the Solana ecosystem. And the ripple effects, the reason why this is news is a when a memecoin gets to $180 million when we haven't seen anything like that in over a year, that's news. Another reason why this is news is that if you go to the uh pump dashboards, you'll see that there are tokens graduating from Pump Fund at a three to four times higher rate than they were prior. And so this is like a re a literal resurgence of memecoins growing in market cap. And downstream of all of this, Solana soul price is up like 15% versus the two and 3% of Bitcoin and uh Ether. And so there's just all I'm saying is like there's activity happening over there and it's all down from like Anom and his crew like pumping the hell out of this memecoin and then airdropping. They're trying to give like people in the trenches sty checks is the meme and so they're give dishing out all these sty checks so people can go back to the casino and go gambling again.
I want to not give any kind of like like take on this of whether it's good or bad or like any kind of moral case. I feel like um we've said things like this I still don't understand meme coins.
Well, I guess maybe my biggest question is do you think that this can be sustained just from a a buyer perspective? Um, you look at all the meme coins of the past, they are down. They have kind of like failed expectations in all sorts of ways.
Attention is back. Will this be a sustained thing or is this just a short burst of activity and you know, we won't be talking about this in uh a couple of weeks?
Probably probably the Well, I don't know about a couple weeks. Um, I'm maybe a little bit more longer term bullish than that, but like memecoins fundamentally are not sustainable. That's kind of the whole bit. But I don't think that stops anyone because everyone inv everyone if you're still in the trenches on Solana doing meme coins. That's your I I play video games.
Have you ever Have you ever playme Have you ever read a report from uh Michael Nato on on TDR about Pomp? Actually,
do you know he's a big pump bull?
I think I did know that. Yeah, cuz Yeah, I did know that.
And it's just like just be neutrally objective on kind of the casino whether it's good or bad or whatever. Pump is still like printing money
significantly.
Have you heard of the conspiracy as to why that's the case?
No.
Because it's money laundering.
Okay. Of course.
Because not not that not that the pump team is doing that, but a somebody with who needs to launder bunch of money, they will make a memecoin. They will pump their memecoin. They'll sell their memecoin to themselves and money will change hands, but it looks completely innocuous otherwise.
Interesting. It does generate a lot of revenue then.
Which which generates a ton of revenue for Pump.
H okay. Well, more to look into, but but it could also be uh money laundering aside. I I don't have the data to make an assessment on that. It could just be people like playing with memes and they like it's their form of video games and gambling.
It's their form of video games and gambling. Yeah. Uh huh. Let's talk about uh something I saw this week, David, as we uh draw this to a close, which is Cloudflare on the Cloudflare blog. You remember the episode we did a couple weeks uh months ago now with Matthew?
God, months. That was already months ago.
I don't know, feels like months. It could have been just um six weeks or something.
So, he's the founder of Cloudflare and this is a a major initiative. This is essentially Cloudflare doing executing on the road map that Matt laid out in his post, which is they are now putting uh X42 stable coin payments. They're integrating this everywhere inside of if you have an API, if you have a web page, if you have a data set, if you have any tool that you want to expose to an agent or anybody else and have kind of a pay-per-use structure, they will now they now allow that with uh stable coins. They mentioned they name check o O USD actually and USDC as settlement assets for this. So there's no sign up, no API key, nothing you really need. The payment itself is like the settlement of I just consumed some API resources. Here you go. And it's cool how they split this up, right? So like you can see behind the scenes if you have uh different API like um uh objectives like put or get or delete, you can charge different monetary units for this. So this is just Matthew and the Cloudflare team executing on something massive. Remember his core thing was like AI is stripmining the web content [clears throat] providers. It's destroying the eyeball centric business model that we've had.
Destroying the user generated content inside of the internet.
We'll lose all the content unless and we will inevitably adopt a payer uh pay-per-crawl payer consume.
Yeah, pay-per-consume X42 type model. So, this is something that's happening. I think it's pretty bullish. Cloudflare is like
very bullish.
25% of the internet, people don't know this and they're just like adopting stable coins and AI payments and X42 and they really are incented to make it work.
Yeah. The every time I see structural intertwining between AI and crypto and stable coins and or and just on the internet, I'm like, okay, I don't know how that turns into a catalyst for crypto, but that is just real good underbrush to be laying down that will one day spark. I mean, Matthew was very bullish on he was so bullish, in fact, he's like, you know, when we turn this thing on, no u blockchain in existence can handle the type of scale we're going to need from it. See, my DMs blew up from people being like, "Please connect me to Matthew Prince. I can [laughter] I can solve his problems."
That's why you ignore all DMs like I do these days.
Oh, no. I I connected them. It was the the Mega E team. I connected them to uh uh Starkware. I connected them.
You are. You are a wonderful person then. Uh, you got a meme at the end of this episode.
Okay. So, Ryan, yesterday in New York, did you see these two people who climbed the Empire State Building? My family uh showed me this that sent links to me, but it's not on my radar. But yes.
Two stunt performers, people just doing a public publicity stunt. They climbed the Empire State Building with a flag.
You didn't see them, did you? Yeah. I mean, I can't I can't actually I can see it. I But uh it's too far away. I'm in Brooklyn. And so go to go to the video. There's a video of the a helicopter circling them.
Oh my god. They had they had a flag and the flag was like, you know,
uh love love.
When the power of love beats the the love of power, the world knows peace. Wow. It's great.
Yeah. So, it's just it just makes a guy and a girl. Uh and he proposes a couple. Yeah. He proposes to her on top of the Empire State Building. Uh, they got down, they got arrested, a judge just let them go free.
Are you about to tell me there's a meme coin involved associated with
this? There's probably a memecoin, but that is not what I have to associate. So people, the internet is now obsessed with these two people, these two sun performers. Uh, and so they were crawling through the ladies history. And if you go to the the meme of the week, Ryan, uh, she was in a year's past wearing a board eight yacht club tank [laughter] top.
This is her.
This is her. This is her. And I just think it's hilarious.
One of us.
I don't know, dude. I didn't expect bored apes to become relevant downstream of the story.
Oh my gosh. It's all attention economy. You like all the way down from NFTs to stunts to meme coins. Um, let's end with this. David, I almost gave the sign off, but it's you. You sign off.
Yeah, crypto is risky. You can lose what you put in. But nonetheless, we are headed west. The frontier is not for everyone, but we are glad you are with us on the bankless journey.
Thanks a lot.