AMA with Snuggle.Fi (DeFi Cashflow on Steriods)

D. There we go. Hello. Uh, testing one, two, you would think as people who work on the computer all day long, you would know how to do this. I had to free up some space, but we are here. Uh, can you hear me? Can you see me? And can you see Alex? And can you hear him? What up, Alex?

>> Testing, testing. One, two, three. Hey, Lucas. How you doing, man?

>> I can hear you well. I'm good, dude. I'm good. I'm excited to talk about strategy. Um, what's up? What's up? Uh, as we come in, uh, where are you from? Because I'm always fascinated by the globaless of not just UI Fastrackk, but like YouTube. It's like, hey, I'm in this country. I'm in Europe. I'm in Australia. I'm in South America. And then countries and cities that I have never heard of. It's fun to like look it up after and be like, "Wow, this is really freaking cool." Uh, Peter, hello. Josh, hello. Ohio from Peter.

>> You >> I'm from Ohio. Yeah.

>> You're from Ohio >> originally. Yeah. I first 30 years of my life in Toledo, Ohio.

>> I did not know that. I did not know that. Um and two, as y'all's come in, I know snuggle has been a word that some of y'all have heard. If you've been in the UI, you've heard it what, probably two years ago. Um but it's also talked about on YouTube. and Alex came along and automated that process. So he was he was he was doing the snuggle strategy for himself, then he automated that strategy and then eventually he built uh some really cool tech around it. So on today's call, we want to talk about that. Quick disclaimer before we get into it. Um me and Alex are friends. We met uh

>> I don't know our first I think we kind of like got to know each other on a live we did. I think we talked a little bit before, but that was probably three years ago.

>> Yeah, our first live was three years ago and we had talked a little bit a year or two before that. So, we've known each other quite some time now.

>> Alex has has helped us a ton in the UI. Um, helped in FastTrack, helped with clients in Fastrackk, helped build DeFi buddy, and then eventually went on to build Snuggle. I just want to do a disclaimer because I know this will come up. Um, I don't get paid. Uh, we don't get a piece of Snuggle. I'm not saying to use SnuggleFi or to put everything into SnuggleFy. just like anything else I'd ever mentioned. There's like Alex is the friend and I support him and I'm excited for him. That's over here. And then there's the like, okay, and then more on the on the on the biz slash on the crypto side of things. I want to make sure that we treat this project like any other project whether I know the person or not. So, personally, big fan of Alex, what he's doing, what he's building. I would trust Alex with my freaking newborn and my Lambo and a stack of millions of dollars. I know everything would be better off if I came back after. But that's that's don't let that blur your judgment on any investment, any tech, any smart contracts, anything you do. Doesn't matter if it's me talking about it or anyone else. Do your own research. Always start slow. Um, always start with a couple bucks. Like, I don't care who it is. It could be I don't know who the pope is. Is it like a John Paul? I don't know. But anyways, it could be the pope. It could be it could be um it could be my mom who launches something and I'd still say, "Yo, do your due diligence and um don't let that cloud your judgment. Can I just get a thumb up? Can I get a heard? Can I get a sweet from everyone in the comments here? Um we don't do these often because I don't want that to ever get in the way of like, oh, you know, if I use it, I'll talk about it." We use VFAT and it's always the same disclaimer of like, yo, you're taking on extra work. There's always smart contract risk. There's always risk. Do your research. I don't even care if it's a we saw what happened to a is arguably well, it's massive. And obviously, it wasn't directly a, but there was there was things outside of their control. I mean, maybe they could have done a little bit better due diligence on some of their ideas, but it was out of their control. So, just know that. Can I can I just get a thumb up? If anyone is new to this space, just understand that um education, watching these videos, starting smaller is really important. So, that disclaimer and we don't get a kickback from Snuggle. I didn't want that. Uh, we don't do their affiliate link. Snuggle has an affiliate link. I on purpose don't use it because I just don't want that to cloud our I just I just I want to be really honest and upfront about that deal. Everyone good? On the same page? Perfect. Alex, what's up?

I I want to kind of um maybe just just kind of set the stage here. You helped build well before Defi Buddy it was you were helping in FastTrack. You were UIG. You were doing your crypto thing before I was I think like you were doing content around crypto starting probably five years ago.

>> Yeah. I've been interviewing founders and developers in the space for a long time and I've been bringing my software engineering perspective to those projects looking at their smart contracts and sharing with my audience like what those smart contracts mean and what they can actually do and that really had a you know that that allowed me to get a a great following. Um and then we crossed paths when liquidity

>> Yeah. Well, you were doing the Karma Sanctuary and I know a big thing that you were doing back then was a lot of the funds or the money you were making from crypto was helping fund that project and that was kind of a unique uh

>> thing that you brought to the table. So, I think we connected on that and the interview was kind of around that and and Karma Farms or Karma Sanctuary.

>> Karma Karma Farm Sanctuary. It's a it's a registered 501c3 charity in the state of Florida where I am now. So, I'm down here now around Tampa, Florida. And yeah, last bull cycle I made a lot um of money from lading out at the right time like we always teach. And I had been liquidity farming all throughout leading up to that. And I made a big chunk of money. And

>> so that had to be three years ago. Three, four years ago.

>> Yeah. About Yeah. four four years ago. A little maybe a little more. And I put a I put the majority of that into starting an animal sanctuary, which by the way, it's like buying a boat. It just leaks money. So I just taking money >> throwing everything I had at it. And the YouTube channel was great because we had so many supporters donate and we've rescued hundreds of animals from animal cruelty situations, given them, a lot of them forever homes there. And now we have a full staff, full volunteer staff as well,

>> um, running all the day-to-day operations. And then after that, I know you went um with all due respect, of course, you went a little bit crazy with the with the vegan bodybuilding stuff, and I'm making fun because I'm a meat eater. I just like love steak and meat. And Alex is like complete opposite. But you went heavy into the bodybuilding, dude. I saw a photo of you that I think we used on our thumbnail or we had something. You were like your face was round. You were just like jacked. Like you were like

>> Yeah.

>> You had an extra I don't know how much weight on you, but you were you were

>> 60 pounds. An extra pound. Yeah.

>> And it's funny what that does to the face. like you actually I'm sure you noticed that. Not in a good or bad way. I'm just saying that you were like puffy and

>> I look like a bulldog like yeah

>> you were like a strong man and then you went on a big cut. I know you're you're super shredded etc. But you went you went you were super passionate about the vegan stuff.

>> Um I know you kind of pivoted the channel. You were doing a lot of content on that and then I think we kind of started collaborating and UIG and Fastrack was growing like crazy and we're like man we need to find really smart people who've been doing this a long time. We'd love extra support and so you were supporting us and our clients. Um I think I don't want to that's the right chronological series of events that happened so far, right? Is

>> Yeah. Yeah. Is Yeah, that's pretty pretty good. Yeah.

>> And then I know I know like we all go through things in life. I won't I won't talk personally on anything you don't want to talk about, but I know life gets challenging. you exited that season and then we kind of um you kind of started getting back into crypto and we started building some you you you were helping us build um DeFi buddy we were looking for someone who really understood stuff uh we were in conversation around it said hey maybe this would be cool to build we started building that and then from there as that project wrapped up you were I don't want to make this up so you tell the story but you were starting to automate some of your strategies for your personal portfolio and you found some stuff around snuggle so let's talk about the genesis of snuggle and where the idea to automate it came from.

>> Absolutely. And yeah, your timeline's great. I've always in that gap there where I kind of disappeared from YouTube for a while. I was basically living off of LP farming and software engineering jobs. Um, but I just wasn't posting at that time.

>> YouTube's a hard game, man. To be consistent in YouTube.

>> Yeah.

>> And to consistently show up, like it's a hard game. It's hard like because life you change as a person and you're like and like I go through the same thing as a creator and it almost feels like you have to like restart because you're like I just don't want to talk about that stuff no more. But you turn that knowledge into something really cool. So let's let's talk about that. So I know um I don't even know where Chad went dude but we had a member in the UI who was like hey

>> I don't know but I I gotta find him. He's a one of our members. So so much cool shit's born within the UI but it was like he had an idea he called it snuggle and it was a really cool concept and then I think it was fleshed out and then I know um so so let's like talk like beyond that where did you start using it and then you improved it and then you automated and then you built something really cool out of it. So I want to kind of talk about the genesis there.

>> Yeah. So I got into liquidity farming back in full range liquidity days back before 2021. the yields were much lower. Uh the mechanics were very different. Then in 2021, unis swap came out with concentrated liquidity pools and we all saw our yield go way through the roof and it's been fantastic. Now the trick with concentrated liquidity is rebalancing. There are a lot of factors about how you rebalance that can either make or break a strategy. Uh some strategies are more forgiving, but if you're doing a traditional rebalance where you swap half your tokens for the other token to get back into range, you get hit with a lot of hidden costs that materialize as additional impermanent loss like swap fees, slippage, price impact, mev extraction, and then doing it that way, there's about 40 to 50% more impermanent loss approximately compared to doing what Chadcoin Snuggle rebalancing. Now, that concept, you know,

>> what is this snuggle? I know I know some people here will know, but like just like let's teach it because you literally know a ton about it, seeing you built some cool tech around it.

>> So, I've been using the snuggle rebalancing technique for years. Uh Chad, like you said, coined that phrase and then did a bunch of math to really prove its efficiency as basically the most capital efficient way to consistently rebalance a position over time. And what it does is let's say the blue line is the price of your assets. Let's say I don't know Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin. And you're you're providing liquidity right here. And the price is moving around in your range. We're earning fees. We're super happy. But then let's say the price moves up all the way up to here. We're no longer in range earning fees. We have to rebalance.

>> We're no longer happy. We're no longer happy.

>> We're no longer happy. We want we want to get that cash flow. So, no. Traditionally, what you would have to do is swap half of your tokens to get back centered into your range earning fees again. Great. But did you see that big jump I did? That's a big jump. And you have all the all the hidden costs of swapping involved there, plus like this big of a gap of impermanent loss. Now, with a snuggle rebalance, let's say the price is chopping around here, moves up to that spot, you just snuggle the range right up next to the current price. There's actually no swap involved in this process. So, you don't pay swap fees, you don't pay slippage, you don't get hit with price impact, uh, MEB extraction, and then your impermanent loss going from here to here is like that much. It's much smaller, sometimes

>> less than half as much impermanent loss. And then when you factor out all those other fees, like, you know, swap fees can be on a let's say on a 1% fee to your pool. That's 1% you're paying on half of your principal. That's half a percent off of your principal that's gone forever.

>> And on top of that,

>> double click on one thing here because I I want people to understand

>> actually in the comments, are we on the same page here? Are we following Alex along here?

>> There's still a permanent loss and there's still this isn't like a there is no secret sauce to remove impermanent loss. there's strategies that we can mitigate it and strategies layer on strategies like I mean what Alex is talking about is saving on fees swap fees etc. Um, obviously there's head strategies, there's many different things you can do, but the point is, you know, imper your impermanent loss won't disappear. So, there's still some strategy to it, which Alex is going to walk us through. But basically, Alex, what you're saying is um the math on the snuggle and the snuggle technique is the most capital efficient way to get back into range if that's what you choose to do and if that's the strategy for your LP. So, you're willing to lock in the impermanent loss. you kind of have an idea of where the price is going on a position and it makes sense to snuggle so you snuggle and it's the most capital efficient way to do it. That's ultimately what we're kind of summing up

>> exactly and it was really born in the UIG and that is where I really refined and perfected all of the mechanics and understanding of the best ways to do it and how to programmatically do it to uh a perfect level of execution on the blockchain because I taught it to our FastTrack members. I I coached hundreds of FastTrack members. I helped them deploy tens of millions of dollars on into crypto and LPS and once they got to a certain level of you know once they became very advanced

>> and they understood the best way to do things they always would snuggle rebalance once you get to that level it's like okay you're out of range you wait a certain period of time whatever you're comfortable with that's something you've always taught which it is brilliant it's like let's wait 24 hours and just how snuggled you can the user can program this into it that I freaking love that like they can choose how to do it which we'll talk about in a sec here.

>> Um, but sorry, keep going. I'm getting excited.

>> And so yeah, and I took uh a lot of that from you and the other coaches that I was coaching with as we were refining this whole process for overall LP portfolio management. And you know the 24 to 48 hour rule, you go out of range and you just wait. A lot of times the price just comes right back into your range. No rebalance required. zero impermanent loss locked in in that equation. So I built that in from day one with this with the Snuggle technology. You can set your rebalance delay exactly as you want and you can even look at a chart, put it on like a 4hour candle and you can see these price wicks

>> and you can kind of average out and say, "Hey, a 12hour waiting period would eliminate 90% of those price wicks that you don't want to rebalance on." And then you can really dial that in for your strategy on any pair. So, thank you for for teaching a lot of that stuff and um making that more mainstream. You're one of the first published speakers, content creators, authors on Snuggle Rebalancing and and the UIG is really where it all came from. So, I always have to give credit where it's due.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, you took it and you you 10xed it here because I'm guessing what happened is as you were managing your portfolio, you were probably the question came up is could I automate this so I don't have to be doing this manually? And I think you started running back tests and started doing just some basic stuff for yourself and you're like, hey, this actually works.

>> Talk about that and then we'll talk about the birth of Snugglefi.

>> All right. So, this is kind of a cool story. Over the last year, year and a half, you and I have been building DeFi buddy together. And DeFi buddy is a big enterprise level piece of software at this point for DeFi analytics, uh, simulations, portfolio tracking, everything. And I was putting a lot of engineering time into building that system. But I was still spending about 10 hours a week managing just three or four bluechip positions. And every week I would do the exact same thing. And I I've been doing this for years. I'd go out of range. I would hem and haw over the price chart. And then I'd be like, should I snuggle rebalance now or no? No. Okay, I'll wait. And that would that whole process of just manually snuggle rebalancing my positions took me about 10 hours of analysis, decisions, and execution.

>> And I wanted to put that 10 hours towards developing DeFi Buddy so we could get as further ahead of the market as we could with that product. So I decided to spend some time in my in the evenings in the middle of the night building Snuggle onchain. I knew the exact algorithm that needed to happen for that and I built the prototype. I did a bunch of internal security audits before I even put my own money into it. But then I put my money into it and I just let it run and my results were even better than I was getting manually snuggle rebalancing.

>> Why is that? because it was getting the perfect timing versus you sometimes you'd miss the perfect mark.

>> Exactly. So, it took a lot of the emotion out of it where I would be hemming and hawing beyond what was actually optimal for a specific pair or strategy.

>> And what I used to do manually, I would go out of range. I might have caught it out of range six hours after it'd already been out of range, but I would set a 24-hour alarm on my phone.

>> The next day it would go off. I'd come back at two in the morning, you know,

>> you don't want to do

>> makes sense.

>> So, there's a lot of inefficiency there in execution and timing. This just does it like clockwork. Boom, boom, exactly as you said it. And then I don't even really have to look at my portfolio. In fact, that's better for me because if the market's dipping, I just won't even look. I know the system's doing what I've planned and I won't emotionally overreact and do things at the wrong time like, you know,

>> uh, sell low and buy high. This just I just don't even look at it. And then every once in a while, I check in and I just make sure two things. Am I outperforming hodddling the assets? And are the fees I'm earning outperforming the impermanent loss I'm realizing? If those things are true, I am accumulating free tokens for my long-term four-year cycle strategies of accumulating assets all along the way and then lading out in the peak of the bull run. That's it. That simp is as simple as I can make it. And Snuggle allows me to do that in the most capital efficient, automated way possible that gives me my time back to build DeFi, buddy, and do other cool things like talk with you here today,

>> like have a life, have a life,

>> like have a family and stuff. Yeah.

>> Like have a family, have kids, and all the complexity that comes with that. Okay. So,

>> yeah,

>> you ran it, you back tested it, you you tested it for yourself, you were like, "Yo, this is actually better because it's removing emotion. It's removing timing. It's removing all that stuff. um where did the idea or when did the idea happen to like hey if this is really helping me maybe this can help other people and then after that I want to doubleclick on just some strategy behind it because users do have the options on how they want to set this thing up. This is not just something where people put their money in and say I'm good. I'm sure there's some default settings but there's a little strategy. I want to talk a bit about that and then I want to ask the audience a question of like yo I'm I'm I'm willing to like I played with it and invested snuggle but we're thinking of doing a series where I'll invest a sizable amount and like maybe we could just track it every two weeks four weeks no like just raw raw numbers of like yo this is the performance over the last 30 days really put Alex's um money where his mouth is which he's more than willing to do because this tech is great but just like yo this is it and we'll do real time updates on it and um maybe make a couple hundred grand. That would be nice. So, let's let's talk about that. When did you think about putting Snuggleify out to the public? And was there any like worries about like dude like

>> I could see that being a bit stressful. Like you're putting something out there that's working for you, but it's like there's a lot of complexity, audits, security. You probably I would worry about that still to this day of like damn. Um like you're public, dude. Like you're not hiding. like if something gets [ __ ] you're people are not gonna like you. Like that's got to be a bit of a stress if I can if I can like I just wanted to see how you think through that.

>> So the way I think through it is first off, I'd rather be the man in the arena than the critic or the cynic. I would rather take a chance on myself doing something really great. And if it fails, it's on me. If it succeeds, it's on me. So first off, I wanted to get in the arena. Second off, DeFi as a whole, as an industry, needs more public builders. How many of these projects are we using these protocols where we don't actually know who owns and runs those smart contracts? They could rug pull at any time and it's just some random avatar with a fake name that disappears into the night. So I wanted to come out here with my face and my name and say I'm the guy behind this so that way there can be more trust in this space. That's the second thing. And the third thing is I eat my own dog food as they say in software engineering. I use what I build.

>> So I have my own money in here. Tens of thousands of dollars in Snuggle and MaxFi. And MaxFi is just Snuggle but with different pairs. Um, so I have my own money in here. I'm using it. I'm taking that same smart contract security risk along with everybody else. And initially when I first built this, that weighed heavy heavy on me. I always prioritized security over everything else. So before I even put my own money in, I went through 30 rounds of internal audits using all the best audit tools, testing tools, and everything. And then I hired four or five different independent researchers to try to hack it. They couldn't. And then after that, I hired one of the best auditing firms in the space, Valve Security, to do a full independent third party audit.

>> What What this is, what company was that?

>> Valves Security.

>> You guys do your research. That's why I'm bringing this up is like I want everyone in here before a dollar goes into any freaking thing. Even Bitcoin, by the way, you read the white papers. You did your research. like you like just don't we work hard to make our money. Don't piss it away. And and again, Alex is a friend, but I'm just drawing the line there of like I'm just acting I don't know Alex. I don't trust him. He's from Florida. He's going to run like he's just not a good dude. All right, let's just let's just let's just approach it with that. Like let's let's verify first.

>> Um

>> always

>> do your research on it and then make

>> and diversify. Yeah. and diversify like

>> so you did the audits, you did the research, you had independent people try to break it, you put your own money in there. That's the thing that would worry me the most if I was building what you're building. So it sounds like you check those boxes. How did you overcome the like, okay, I'm going to put this out there and you know like we're all building in public, but this is um it's it's I think different when you are in some way, shape or form responsible for people's money in a way. Like I know it's not a fund and you don't have access and custody of it and all that like it's a pass through or whatever you call it but

>> um how did you overcome that or was it just like yo I'm in the arena I know my heart and I know I can sleep well at night knowing like I've done everything possible and the rest is kind of out of my control. Um obviously it's super tight either way but talk about that just a bit and then I want to move on.

>> So my own due diligence in terms of how I designed the system. I like you said created as a pass through system where the positions aren't in a managed fund. They're actually on the DEX itself. You can go see your positions on Uniswap. You can click the little button and it'll open up your position on Uniswap. You can see your position there. So the position isn't in a shared vault, which is one of the things that gets exploited out here in DeFi are these shared vaults. This is thousands of different positions on the different dexes. And then when it needs rebalance, that's when Snuggle steps in, rebalances your position, and that's it.

>> So that was the first not have custody of anyone's funds.

>> Technically, I do not, but the Snuggle smart contract does.

>> Smart contract does. That's right.

>> It it needs to to be able to rebalance the positions.

>> Correct.

>> So, good to know. And also the no swap technology and architecture removes 70 or 80% of the most common exploits off the table immediately. Most of the exploits happen during a swap transaction where somebody will do a flash loan attack, uh some kind of sandwich attack or other MEV technique to manipulate the prices during that block and basically get you to trade your tokens for next to nothing and they walk away with with the whole bag.

>> So I a lot actually like big ass platforms have fallen victim to that many times.

>> Big ones. Big ones like hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah.

>> So, I said, "No matter what, I'm not doing any swaps. Just not even going to do it." And the auditing company even told me, "Because you're not doing any swaps, this is one of the most secure protocols we've ever audited." And then, and then the auditors put their money in here. So, that was a good signal to me. Um,

>> very cool.

>> But it was stressful, especially in the beginning of figuring all that out

>> before I ever brought this to the public. I talked to you about this many months ago back in I forget when um and some other

>> I was sitting on my truck because we went for a walk and I was like sitting on the back of my truck. I remember that. Anyway,

>> and I talked to a few other close friends in DeFi and they said the amount of value this brings to this space is so huge that you should do it because I will use it if you build it. And I thought about it more and more and I said this needs to exist. So, I went through all of the trouble, the hassle, the work, the time, and the money to bring it to the public with the best due diligence, and with my best earnest effort that I can. And as another trust factor, I'm putting myself out there publicly instead of doing this anonymously like so many others do in this space because I really do want to lift the crypto and DeFi space up to a more serious level where people are out here building publicly and we need more of that. Imagine just like imagine you were just one of those I see this happen now like AI can recreate the face so like scammers over can act white in like an office or whatever and they're just like you but then they like they put their hand over their face that's like the tell and like something distorts. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about. People are starting that

>> you know what I'm talking about. It's like maybe this actually isn't Alex. Just kidding. Um

>> here.

>> Okay. So people are doing their due You did Yeah. Right. Okay. He's real. He's real. You did your due diligence. You did all that. By the way, if anyone has questions for Alex, drop them in the comments below. We will be doing a round two, round three, round four of all this as we um as we as we see the adventures of Snuggle expand. But you launched it, then you launched it to the public. Um it had a really quick start. A lot of people wanted to put their money into it. It grew really quick. Word of mouth, which means, hey, there's something here. Why would someone use snuggle? Like if someone wants to use the snuggle technique in their portfolio, why would someone use snuggle and not do it manually? And how do you take fees? Because I like the way you do it because I think it's really fair and honest, but why would someone do it and and basically pay the fee for it?

>> Great questions. So, um, somebody would want to use Snuggle or MaxFi, which somebody asked what's the difference between Snuggle and Maxfi. They're the exact same smart contracts. Uh, I control everything, uh, with those projects. Max Buy is just for having more pairs for like meme coins and degen stuff, more like frontier DeFi level degenerate stuff for people who are interested in more of that more of the high-risk high return stuff. And it's also positioned for some enterprise level teams and projects coming who are going to be deploying their treasuries into the system for their projects as a revenue engine. So that's what that's positioned as. And Snuggle is very blue chip, very talking about it because we stick to like, yo, blue chips only, there's a reason I do it is because most people um until you really understand what you're doing. And I'm not saying like I think people can agree to disagree on things, which is why I love the maturity level of like guys like Alex. And we're not like I disagree with you so we can't. It's just like when when it comes to the meme coins and the DJ and the gambly stuff, we just keep it off our radar. Not there's a time and place for it. And I think people should have fun and experiment with it, but um over a long period of time um I'll always bet on on blue chip type plays and longevity.

>> But um but yeah,

>> I'll have like 90% of my LPs in blue chip LPS and maybe five or 10% spread out among a basket of like high-risisk bets that like if one of those tokens just craters tomorrow, my portfolio is not wrecked. So always size your portfolio allocations accordingly. like what they teach in the UI. Um,

>> so someone wants to use Snuggle. Why not do it manually? Why basically kind of pay you to do it? And how do the fees work? How are people getting charged for this?

>> So, two things there. The automated nature of it. You can literally set it and forget it. You can set up your strategy. You do your research. Set your strategy on that pair and pool and just let it run. And

>> what are they setting when they set their strategy? What parameters do they have that they can you guys can go play with it but what parameters do they have?

>> So first is pool selection. They'll select what pair what token pair like let's say USDCBTC. They'll select the pair which decks they want to do it on and then the two main configurations are range width.

>> Yep.

>> And rebalance delay.

>> Yep. Perfect.

>> And you have a couple other little tweaks you can do like our autoco compounding system is a 5050 autocompounding. It's no swap. So, it takes the matching tokens that you have earned as yield or fees or rewards. It takes the matching token, puts it into your principal to grow it and to offset impermanent loss over time. Takes the other half, sends it to your wallet as passive income.

>> Yep.

>> So, that is all completely automated. And like I said, it saves me about 10 hours a week of managing my portfolio. We charge a 15% performance fee on earnings only. And this is really important because somebody asked about VFAT autorebalancing. They charge a protocol fee on the principle of your of your position which cannibalizes the position very quickly over a couple rebalances and over a dozen or 100 rebalances. The principle of the position is absolutely destroyed. Y

>> and I started with that same fee model to pay for all the gas because we pay the gas on these rebalances for everybody. I started with that kind of fee model on the principle, but I quickly in all my back tests, I saw that it wasn't aligned with the user's best interests. It was hurting them more and benefiting the protocol more. And I said, what if I just charged a 15% performance fee where we only make money if you make money and we never touch the principal balance, which is the most important thing. Your principal is already fighting off impermanent loss. adding any additional strain to that equation makes succeeding that much harder in liquidity farming. So I said don't touch the principal only only charge the fee to pay for all the gas and everything as a business on the fees earned

>> and then that way they make money we make money their principle stays as healthy as possible and can even grow with autoco compounding with the right market environments and that's how I came to that conclusion and all my back testing with different fee models

>> I dialed that in specifically at where there is the most benefit to the user that still allows the business to be sustainable.

>> Good. I like this because early on in my investing career before I would consider myself an investor, I was just giving my money to mutual funds and three years later I kept getting reports on like my earnings and I was like, "Damn, dude, I'm making so much money." Then I actually looked at it and their performance or their fees were based upon the my entire portfolio, not on their performance. And I was like, that is a really misaligned way to charge your customer or client that you don't they don't care if them they don't care if your portfolio halves. They're still charging you. And then I got more into like index funds and low low fee type funds. And I obviously got into self-custody and crypto and all that. And that's always like rubbed me the wrong way when it comes to like, hey, if I'm using technology that's supposed to make me money or a mutual fund or a fund and that fund does not make money, why should I get charged for it? So, that's the piece that I liked the most is like performance fee, which is fair. you're providing a service only if they make money and no fee to you if they do not make money.

>> Um,

>> which which brings me back to like and again I want to be really fair here because Alex is a friend so I don't want to like hype anything up. I would say this whether Alex was a friend or not when it comes to something like this of like okay someone was using it for themselves. It was working for them. They put their own money in it. All checkboxes. Um, verified and doxed. Public building in public, not hiding. Perfect. Smart contracts audits. Perfect. It's checking the boxes off for me. Um, minimum million-dollar TVL, which is a reason why we didn't talk about Snuggle 5 because if it wasn't like we're just like, yo, if something doesn't have a million dollars in in TVL, it's like, don't even look at it. Um, you crossed that very quickly. And that's when I was like, okay, like I'm not a I'm not going to contradict the things that we talk about in the UI, even if Alex is a friend. Um, and then the other piece was and fees is only if it makes money, which means you believe in it enough that you know this stuff works. And if people don't make money with it, then I guess ultimately you don't make money with it, which I think is very aligned. So that to me like checks all the boxes. Um, and you guys do your own research of course on that. But that's why I like what you've got going on here.

>> Thank you. And the growth, like you said, it's been phenomenal in the first 90 days.

>> Um, we're around I think we're around a million right now. Maybe maybe we dip below with the recent market because all the positions the TVL follows the market kind of, but we we got up to like 1.3 million like a week or two ago

>> and then, you know, the market has dipped. So that's gone down slightly. But our user base and the amount of positions, it just grows every single day.

>> You talk about that because this isn't a money magic money maker is like if you know Bitcoin's down 6.8% today and ETH is down 5.3. My liquidity pool dollar values are down as well. I may hold different more of different assets. Like to me it's a long-term game. If someone comes into Snuggle just be like, "Oh, every single day I just have more money." That's not really how it works. You're still providing liquidity. You're still selecting a range. You still have a strategy and you cannot escape impermanent loss or price movements in the markets. If crypto went up by if Bitcoin shot up double tomorrow, then just like any liquidity provider, you're literally better off holding spot. So, there's always decisions you have to make in here. Um, it's not like a a magic money maker, but it's pretty [ __ ] cool if you are, excuse the language if anyone has beside them, but um, it's pretty freaking cool if someone is deploying these strategies and wants to automate them.

>> Yeah. And I think the beauty of this even in a downtrending market for for instance what's happening is yeah the dollar value of your position might fluctuate

>> but underneath the surface you are accumulating more of the tokens. So even if Bitcoin's trending down you're you're creating more Bitcoin than you started with. And if you frame your strategy along with the fouryear cycles, you have a long-term outlook, even in like a bare market like we're in now.

>> Yep.

>> You can just accumulate more and more free tokens essentially as long as you're outperforming impermanent loss.

>> Yep.

>> That's the one metric you want to look for. Am I outperforming impermanent loss? Am I beating hodling?

>> And with snuggle in a lot of these strategies, you do that better than anywhere else. Yep. So it allows people in the most capital efficient manner to accumulate more and more of the assets that they want to hold going into the bull market. And my strategy personally is I'll run correlated pairs and I'll even run uh volatilestablecoin pairs like

>> yep

>> uh bitcoin USDC and on the way down I'm essentially accumulating free bitcoin

>> more and more of it. And then let's say at the end of this year I'm going to be switching a lot of my positions to more correlated pairs because I'm assuming that's about the time when things are about to change momentum to the upside. So, I'm going to be moving to like Bitcoin ETH pairs or other blue chips. A sl cake ETH. There's a lot of great XRP E. There's a lot of

>> always do well in bull markets, too, because DEX coins and tokens always seem to do really well.

>> Yeah. And and what my my strategy is there is I've accumulated more and more of these assets over the last six months and for the next six months. And then when things really start picking back up in the crypto market, I will switch to vehicles that appreciate with the market like correlated pairs that are capped to the upside. So in that case, now I'm looking at what is my anchor in this pair. For instance, if Bitcoin does a 2x and ETH does a 3x and I'm in Bitcoin ETH,

>> Bitcoin would be my anchor to the upside. I would do approximately a 2x in LP value while earning fees all along the way in more Bitcoin and ETH.

>> We've been freaking saying that. I need people to hear this because I think people doesn't matter if they're joining Snuggle or if they're using, you know, Uniswap, they like they enter a position and they see their dollar value shrink and they're like, "Shit, I'm out. I'm not making money. I'm done." And then they exit. Which is maybe why you see some fluctuation TVL and snuggle because the market spooks people out. They say, "I put $1,000 in, now it's worth 980, and this thing doesn't work." But it's like, you have to understand what's actually happening. Um, you have to understand what's actually happening. Someone is asking for a link for Snuggle. I try and stick to a rule just because there's newbies in here and you can get scammed. If anyone ever leaves a link, myself included, don't follow that link blindly because they can scam you. Uh, you guys have a Twitter. Can you share like the official Twitter page,

>> Alex? And y'alls can go on the Twitter page and find the link yourselves.

>> It's snuggle.fi. snuggle.fi ffi.

>> That's it. It's super simple. I'm so surprised that domain was available. Like

>> always go I mean obviously that is the URL, but I just we just try to train people to like if someone even Alex's snuggleify there. Alex shared it, but someone could be pretending to be Yubong in the comments and share

>> you know snuggle dot snuggl capital i e.fine. and you'll think it's snuggleified. Always go onto the platform and then always just find their socials and just verify. Go onto their Twitter and then do a loop and go back to their protocol because yeah,

>> again, Alex wouldn't do that, but someone could pretend to be Alex. So, even on our YouTube,

>> uh, we delete scammer comments, but people will be like, "Oh, Vat," and they leave vfat. io or whatever, but they it's just it's not the real link. And people like they can duplicate the website. You can connect to the smart contract saying, "Sweet, I'm going to use and then you realize it was the wrong URL. Someone tricked you. So, Alex shared it. Even if

I shared it, I'd still say go verify the socials. Just get used to doing that, especially if you're newer to the space because um people get screwed that way. Actually, quite often it happens.

Yeah. I put it, I put it right here. Snuggle.fi. I put it on my screen. But I agree. And I have hundreds now, maybe thousands of impersonators on Discord, Telegram where they change one character in the username and and they have tricked some of our users out of thousands of dollars and it's it's really unfortunate. I know you've got thousands of impersonators as well. People pay for the UIG, they join, they impersonate, and we've had it where someone reaches out pretending to be me and then they talk them into a WhatsApp convo and then they talk and I'm just like,

Yeah. We try and combat it and remind people and all this. That's why I'm so diligent on like I don't care who it is sharing the link, verify it. Um, if I reach out to you ever, which I wouldn't, but if I ever did because you're in the UI, well, in the UIG, it would, but like you'll never get a text or message or or anything from me. Um, ever asking for anything for sure, not maybe I'd celebrate something, but it's just like always verify you're actually talking to the person.

Yeah. I think newbies get effed that way in the space, unfortunately.

Big, big time. They're not like we're seasoned veterans out here. We've been through the trenches from a mile away.

Me, too. I I I I mess with the scammers sometimes just to just because I they rub me the wrong way, man.

Yeah. So, waste their time. I mean, if you're if you're wasting their time, then they're probably not talking to someone else.

Um, we're going to do a series on this. Um, more so just like you, dude, you're a builder and I want to see the success. I want to see like you guys keep growing. You're going to face a ton of challenges, a ton of obstacles like building anything. It is a business at the end of the day and it comes with all the problems that a business comes with.

Um, anyone watching, Alex is a friend, but I will still say verify. Check it out. Remember, you're still yield farming. You're not removing impermanent loss. You can't. You're going to your portfolio values will swing just like anything else. You're it's not a magic money maker just like anything else. But it's a wicked tool that I think is really, really freaking cool.

Um, you could literally try it manually yourself. And like Alex says, because of the efficiency of what was built, if you're using the snuggle technique, snuggle file around run circles around you doing it manually.

Um, so that's pretty freaking cool. I'm excited. Like next time we talk.

And I like how you're in public, dude. Like you're going to fail in public. You're going to go through TVL dips and like you've got to show up and be like, "Yo, this is what we're doing."

It's intense, man. But I wouldn't I wouldn't have it any other way. And I respect you coming out here for so many years, you know, putting your your your face, your name, your reputation on the line, and I think you've done an extraordinary job with what you've built with CryptoLabs, the UIG, and Defi Buddy and everything else.

Um, so I just see people like you lifting the space up over time, and I want to see more of us out here building in public. I want to see less of these cartoon character avatars on X live spaces and on YouTube with guys. Dude, it drives me crazy. Like guys will like do all this fancy TA stuff on their chart, act so convincing, and then the video is deleted next day or they just don't care. But it's like,

Yes. No one can predict the markets. You could you can't predict the markets, which is why I love our approach, your approach of like, yo, it's a long-term approach. the underlying asset. We're stacking our portfolio. We're looking for the next run. There's strategy involved and like that's it. And you got to play the long game. We can't predict it. We can't really trade it. It's really freaking hard to.

Yeah. And that's what people do when they see a dip in the market. They immediately go into day trader mode and they try to trade the the short-term day and swing trades and they get wrecked. they'll end up selling low and then buying back in higher uh versus just like letting their strategy run. The LP fees, especially in a downtrending market, act as a hedge themselves to make up for dollar price depreciation. However, the entire time you're stacking more of the underlying assets and that is key to making the big three or 4x cycle after cycle.

Um, and another cool thing about LP farming, especially with Snuggle, but anywhere, is that LP farming for me, I view it as a form of disciplined profit taking. A lot of people will buy tokens. They will never sell them. They will never take profits. They will skip the tops. They will come back to the bottoms. They will do this four years every single time.

And who here has round-tripped a cycle? Because you know the pain. I did my first one.

Same. My I would have refreshing my portfolio sometimes and it was like up 20 30k. Like I'd go to sleep, I'd wake up and I refresh my portfolio and I was like I am so rich and then my portfolio was worth you know call it 500 grand, 600 grand and then all of a sudden it was worth 550 and in my head I was like well [ __ ] it was worth 600 so I have lost 50. This is all on paper by the way but psychologically I was like I just want to get back to 600 because I had 600. Then it was 500, 450, 400, back to my 300, 250, 200. And I was like, I just round-tripped.

Yeah. I didn't make any money. I didn't lose any money and I lost a lot of sleep during the process. So I think what you're getting at is LPS to use it as.

Well, you can use LPS to DC.

Yeah. And it's a form of discipline profit taking where market's going sideways, it's going up, it's going down. It doesn't matter. It's taking some of those profits. And especially with the 50/50 auto compounding feature, you're always sending something to your wallet, whether that's more assets that accumulate or USDC that you can go spend or buy more assets with. Then at the same time, a cool thing about LPS is you kind of on the way down.

Uh, this goes for any pair. You actually kind of dollar cost average into the cheaper asset and then you can compound it at that at that point. Then when it comes back up, it dollar cost averages out as you're taking profits as it gets more valuable. And now you've taken some profits when it's more valuable. So it's a great way to dollar cost average in and out all along the way. And you can stack some profits aside, put it in your treasury, your bull run bag, pay your phone bill with it, your car payment, whatever.

And you can we we talked about the staggered approach like you can you can literally because I mean they're nonlinear. So like your profit taking slows down as you get converted into more and more of like let's just say USDC. But you could stack this stuff. So you could literally dollar cost average out all the way up in a market by having different positions and as you're dcaing out of that of that range so to speak, you're also earning fees which in when markets are moving and when there's a lot of volume like I'm anyone can call me out if you're calling me a scammer here, but like 80% with a wide range on blue chips is very possible.

When the markets are moving and there's a lot of volume of course. I mean 120 130% on BTC is possible in 20% plus wide ranges when there's volume.

Not right now, but when. I have a wrap I have a Bitcoin wrapped ETH position 50% wide.

Uh, and it's doing like 14 or 15% APR 50% wide that'll never rebalance like it's so and it'll just move it principal value just move with the market and then when things take off it's a perfect vehicle for capturing price appreciation plus an extra 15% on top. I mean.

Hard to beat that. And.

I have I had on Lido. I I'll share it. I'm gonna do a video on this maybe on Lido when when liquid when when when you could stake ETH. I think it was like 4% or something. I staked all my ETH. I haven't touched it ever since, dude. And I looked and I have something like 30 or 32 like basically more than 30% more ETH than I did back in the day. Now, if I look yearly returns, I was like, "Ah, this is going to take forever." I look back four years ago, I literally have 30 or whatever 30% more ETH than I did and I did nothing. That is a lot of more ETH. That is a third more for nothing. And that's at that's at single digits returns. You go into double digit returns, even low double digits, that [ __ ] compounds over time.

Um, but yeah, I love it. I love that you're out here still.

Um, someone was like, "Oh, dude, you can't make money with with DeFi." And like my simple rebuttal that cannot be challenged is there would simply be no liquidity. No one would provide liquidity if you could not make just no one would do it and there would be no DeFi. Now can you make money on the more kind of deny risky side? I mean I guess you can get lucky short term but could you do it for a long term? That's going to be really difficult. But when it comes to a lot of this blue chip wide range, if you're smart about this and you're chasing double digits, not triple digits, of course you can make money or there wouldn't again who would what kind of smart investor would put How big is DeFi right now? I haven't checked. I'm sure it's shrunk a little bit.

Defi liquidity. I'm probably like.

Couple like hundred billion.

Yeah, I know it's up in the hundred billions. Like.

That money would not be there. Just so we're all clear, like no one would do that.

Yeah. And in the bull market, it it go approaches like a trillion. It's crazy.

Yeah. I think it's I think it's shrunk, but yeah.

Um, dude, so good.

Go ahead.

Oh, and I was just going to say, and that's not even counting the liquidity on all the central exchanges, which is in the hundreds of billions.

For sure. Um, but yeah, it's it's such a fast growing space and a lot of people who have been out here for a year or two, they start to realize like how early we we actually are to this space and we're just on the beginning of that scurve of adoption of a new technology. And over the next 10 or so years, we are going to be able to catch the exponential part of that wave.

So, we're early. You guys take advantage of it. Be smart. Diversify. Don't go too degenerate. Stick with blue chips. Set your uh ranges a little wider than you might think you need. Set your rebalance delays maybe a little wide, a little longer than you think. And just watch and and just look at how you're accumulating the assets. Try to try to decouple yourself from the dollar price of the assets. Think of it big picture because let's say in 2027 to 2029, we're ripping all the way back up to the next big bull peak. And if you've got more of these blue chip assets, you're going to probably, and I'm, you know, not a financial adviser or anything like that, not financial advice, but probably going to do a two, three, 4x.

Conservatively. Yep.

Conservatively. And if you're earning yield all along the way, like you said, it's it's like DeFi on steroids.

So, but learning how to do it and learning the nuances there, the timing of the cycles, that's where you really should seek communities that are in it together, like the UI.

Um, find a lot of free stuff, too. I'm big on that. Like, just like, dude, start with the free stuff. Like, just start on you're here on this YouTube live. Like, start there. Obviously, I'm incentivized like you are to steer snuggle, to share UIG. I'm always very open about it. Of course, we run a business and I.

I'm all about like, dude, turn something you love into a business. All of us in here should be doing that. I think it's awesome. But whether you join the UI or not, I could give a [ __ ] less at the end of the day.

Um, but at least subscribe to the YouTube channel and be like, yo, like learn stuff and then when you want to take it to the next level, try stuff. Just like with I think Snuggleify and tools, like we're even big on like if you're entering and trying to learn LPS, start natively on Uniswap. So you understand the mechanics, you understand like you know what just happened so that when you do use tools like Snuggle or any other tool, you're not like you understand what's happening. So you're better at the strategy, you're better if you can't if if you're looking to use more advanced stuff, but you can't provide liquidity on aerodyome or unis swap natively and you don't really understand what's happening, then I would think that your success is probably going to be much lower than someone who's like, I know what's going on. I know exactly what's happening. I understand the mechanics behind it and now I see the value in some awesome tools.

So, just like you, Alex, you probably have frustration at times over the get-rich-quick crowd, the I want to click a button and make a ton of money because you obviously um you know that's not true and I know that's not true. And sometimes people just.

Maybe crypto has like messed with people's brains and I think that's why most people get um most people get wrecked. Unfortunately. And they're like, I want to get rich quick, which I'm all for, too. Like, why get rich slow, but if your get-rich quick is like in a ye in a week or two, whereas my get-rich quick is like four or five years.

Yeah. That's worth it. If I could four, five, six, 8x my net worth in a half a decade, that's a short period of time.

Um, if you think that's long, then we've got deeper issues we need to work through. So dude, five years like what's a four, five, six? And if you're earning yield using Snuggle or any other tools, you you you you are positioning yourself with more assets. So the the multiplier effect is greater because you have more to begin with, if that makes sense.

Yeah. And I would highly recommend unplugging from some of the social media stuff like some of the right now on X for instance, there are so many of these random anonymous accounts posting engagement rage bait about oh I just dumped I just dumped all my bags blah blah blah and it's all fake and it's for engagement to grow their accounts, get views, get likes. Look at the big picture. Look at the four-year charts.

Uh, look at the Bitcoin rainbow chart for instance.

I love looking at the 200 week, not the 200 day. Like I know the 200 day is very valuable for what we do as LPs, even the 50-day, but the 200 week for like really thinking long term.

Exactly. So, plan your strategies around that long-term strategic thinking of the cycles and don't get caught up in the hype on social media from people who are incentivized to cause hype and commotion and fear and all of this stuff. And the same happens when the price goes up. every like all those accounts switch gears to.

To it. It's all nonsense. So.

Figure out the strategy for you. Look at the big picture. Have an accumulation strategy in certain periods and have a take-profit strategy in other periods. Keep it simple.

Do we want to have Alex back? Let me know in the comments if we get if we get y'all's wanting Alex back. I'd love to do and and we could do Snuggle, but I think just like conversations around LPS, yield farming, DeFi, what's happening in DeFi. Maybe we can just do a regular every two weeks or four weeks we can talk about where's Snugglei at, what new challenges are you facing. Like I'd love to see people see behind the scenes of the building, talk about the tech, talk about the advancements, but not just make it a pitchfest for Snugglefi, which I was really clear with you. I don't I don't want to do with anyone. Like I don't think that's fair or fun for anyone, but we could talk crypto, DeFi, the markets, strategies.

Um, who'd like Alex back as a regular guest? And uh, yeah. Yep. Yep. Definitely. I vote yes.

And for the record, you guys, I tried to incentivize Lucas. I'm like, Lucas, share our referral links. You'll make a ton of money. And he's like, no. I've got a strict rule about that. So, if you guys want to talk about integrity, like he takes that stuff so seriously that like like we have a very lucrative referral program and he was just like, "Nope." And I'm like, "Wow, okay." Like, that's very.

Conflict, bro, because I see how fast money you could make.

Um, four or five years ago, we used to uh share affiliate links. That was actually part of our model. And then when projects didn't work out is a very different time back then. like what I was there hide from that.

Yeah. But when I really sat down after a while I was like this is wrong. We need to change this model. And since then I'm like we do not share affiliate links, referral links for anything because that creates a conflict of interest. And then also this is really interesting. But we don't take a dime. We don't take a dollar. And I'm conflicted at times because I'm just like, damn, dude. We can make a little bit of money here or this guy wants to do this partnership and he'd pay us for this.

Yeah. UIG, I think, is is a pretty fair monetization model month to month. If someone doesn't like it, they leave. I know some people hate course guys and membership guys and info selling guys and like whatever, but I like the model we built and that that pays the bills and we get to pay the team with that. So, I don't need to take the affiliate stuff, but I have nothing against it. So, I think it's cool that you guys have that because as other creators and people build stuff or even just peer-to-peer, um, I like it. There's an incentivization for people to share it. So, I have nothing against it. Just on our end, I just have a strict no affiliate link rule and it is what it is.

I think that adds to the quality and the honesty and transparency of your content. For sure.

Let's go. Let's go. Alex, thank you. We'll bring you back. The the the the the audience here wants you. And if you're watching the replay, do let us know what you'd like to see on the next one. Uh, do check out Snuggleify. Do your due diligence. Treat Alex like the Florida man he is. And do not trust anything he says. Do all your due diligence and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with what you find. And um, then we'll go from there. Thanks for your time, Alex.

Thank you so much for having me, Lucas. I'm I'm really honored to be here.

Thank you, sir. See y'all. We'll see you. We'll see you next week.