Well, GM, GM, everyone. We are without Farooq again
today. I think he's on his way to
Austin right now for the F1's. Pretty nice being Baroque.
We have replaced him with OSF, who's Back and NFT Stats.
Actually, just going by sand now, you're retiring the NFT
part of your name, which is, I think, sad to see, but good to
have. You It changes every day.
Yeah, it changes every day. 3. Different.
Forget your roots, man. My roots are punk ape stats.
That was my original. Name.
Ohh Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that.
Yeah, you should go back to. That that was cool, Yeah.
Anyway, that's you know each different text that.
Yeah just just update it for the for the new flavour of the day.
Yeah, we're going to do our normal show today so it's gonna
be 5 main topics. We are sponsored as per usual by
cracking NFT. They've actually got a mint live
at the moment. Worth going to check that out.
We're gonna have them show tomorrow.
We're gonna go through everything then.
But they have been sponsoring the show for the last month.
You can check them out at kraken.com/rug radio.
Right. We'll get straight into things.
It's been a relatively eventful 24 hours.
I think Bitcoin topped out like 28.7.
You've got hammered down and then seemed to bounce a little
bit, but we're all a bit lower today.
What did you, what have you been making of macro markets at the
moment OSF? So I think the thing to watch
out for a macro at the moment, it's interest rates.
Interest rates have blown all the way out to.
Basically back to year to date highs which are.
The same as 12 months which is the same as like multi decade
highs depending on where looking on the curve but we're out to
like 5.2% on two year or up to 4.9% on 10 year.
I don't think there was any specific data, maybe there's
something to miss, I'm not sure that caused it.
But we obviously rallied a bit on the Israel, Palestine,
Palestine stuff and then we just seem to have sold off.
Oils up decent amount, all up to $88 per hour as well so.
That's the thing, that's the one thing that kind of concerns me
about UH risk assets right now just interest rates keep keep
going higher and higher and we're still probably about two
weeks out from the FOMC. But I think it's a bit of a
concern here and that seems to be weighing on on macro right
now. That's weighing on macro
obviously oil pot again yesterday, I think it's about
two or three percent today. And then there was that story
out about NVIDIA. I don't know if you saw that
they're gonna be blocked from their their chip sales.
So they're down about 7% I think over the last two sessions,
which is quite a big deal. Like if they're not able to sell
their chips to various different countries, I think that's maybe
gonna hurt the like general stock market because obviously
it's all been carried by pretty much just NVIDIA and a couple of
others so far. So yeah, it's definitely not a
great 24 hours I would say, for macro.
And then in crypto, Bitcoin dominance just kept going.
It seems to have reversed slightly this morning, but there
was a point yesterday where I think it was if you exclude all
the stable coins, it was like 5758% and everyone just piling
in on Earth. It seems like everyone's, you
know, the usual commentary about, oh, it's not working,
everyone should just go back to Bitcoin.
It did feel like to me when I saw the time yesterday, it felt
like peak. It felt like peak bearishness on
ether versus Bitcoin. I don't know about you, but it
definitely felt like everyone was like throwing in the towel
yesterday. Yeah, I think so.
It's. It's a funny one because like
every time you get a glimpse of hope, everyone gets really
excited and then it just gets stripped away from you.
And at first it was like, it gets stripped away from you in a
week. Then it was like in a few days
and it was in a day. And now it's like intra day you
just get that hope stripped away from you.
And I think people were kind of throwing in the towel.
But I feel like, I don't know, just like everything's feels
quite cleared out. Like everyone who's my timeline
is like mostly now people who I think are constructive for the
next few months and I think. The last few days was an eye
opener for that so. I don't know.
It doesn't. It doesn't feel as capitulated
to me as it did last week. It feels like there's some some
hope back in the in the game now, yeah.
What do you reckon, Sam? What do you think of general
macro here? I think it's weird that you
know, with interest rates where they are, with all this tension
and geopolitical tension that you know, equities just continue
to be really strong. Like you know, VIX is below its
five year median right now. It just feels like there's a lot
of. I mean.
On the one hand, uncertainty. On the other hand, like you know
that the economy feels hot, which tends in the past would
would be a negative given that interest rates are what drive
stock markets. But we continue to be resilient.
So I don't know. I still a lot of money.
It's stocks. But I definitely wake up nervous
every day and I feel like I'm adding a little bit to my like,
oil exposure. Yeah, it feels as though
everyone is pushing crypto right now.
Is isn't bullish because of the NASDAQ, they're bullish because
of gold. They feel like everything's
about to turn to ship rather than writing this new tech wave
I. Think happens.
You know, I feel like we always hope that Bitcoin is going to
follow a lot of the narratives that that are the reasons people
are bullish on them. But then at the end of the day,
Bitcoin so frequently tends to trade like a risk asset.
So you know. Certainly, you know, hope
springs eternal for that though like I would definitely like
crypto does feel like an interesting asset right now.
It kind of as as you and I were talking about like if we get to
a world where limited supply stuff kind of just becomes the
focus, like yeah, it's certainly a decent play out thing.
Yeah, we. Should what you been giving up
with on Etherium though? Like what?
What has changed with Etherium that suddenly has created a new
narrative that's different from the past two to three years?
You know what? I I don't know what it is, but I
think a couple of things have happened recently which have
changed is that the whole of the L2 infrastructure got built out
and that wasn't really with us 12 months ago.
And that has meant that over the course of the merge, we've gone
from deflationary now to inflationary.
So the whole idea that ETH would be deflationary now looks like
it's going to be very, very difficult for it to achieve
that. You can have a lot more activity
happening on L1 that we'll get into it.
But even like for example, the Pokémon cards drop that was
done, that would have been 1-12 months ago, 18 months ago and
now this is on L2. Like it doesn't affect gas.
So all the activity is being driven to these L twos and that
just means that ETH is no longer inflation, is no longer a
deflationary. And the second thing is it's
purely just an ETF thing. Like I was looking before at
what's caused the big rallies this year in crypto.
You could really be banging your head against a wall because it's
really been like very small pockets, like two or three days
of really big rips. And then we just slowly go down
for like two or three months. So we rip and then we go slowly
go down for two or three months. And each one of those rips was
essentially scored by the ETS, like it was news about the ETS
or that we're going to get close to that.
And I feel like that's that's just got the dominant narrative
at the moment that that somehow that's going to lead to some
massive inflow. And the ETH futures ETF I think
is only had 17 million of AUM at the moment.
Like it really disappointed in terms of institutional demand.
So people are somehow thinking that the Bitcoin one is gonna be
is where all the demand comes in.
So I think it's an easy thing just to bash at the moment
rather than it actually being bad.
I think the way the ether is created is perfect.
I'm big Maxi when it comes to its long term potential, but I
do think that, yeah, in the short term people just gonna
keep on going at it. I think the the ETF stuff is
probably. Being the biggest driver of
Bitcoin price action this year. Um, maybe a couple of other
things as well. But I think post Bitcoin you
will see spot ETF applications as well and they're already are
some that exist. So I just think the narratives
that are pushing Bitcoin right now and there are some that are
unique to Bitcoin, like. The bank stuff that happened
this year and maybe this idea of like flight to quality of people
trying to off ramp sucking like war zones and stuff like that,
but. I think the bigger reason as to
why Bitcoin. Is rallying translate to ETH and
potentially other parts of crypto as well eventually?
I just think this is not this now feels like more like a the
start of a traditional cycle where Bitcoin rise 1st and then
things follow suit. Because the the money coming
into Bitcoin seems like it's outside of crypto right now.
Yeah. I think I think as I said
yesterday the the next 90 days I think they're going owns it and
then we can see after that. But it does feel like on the
timeline yesterday everyone was in the same trade.
Everyone was in the same trade if right and you've actually
seen eh open interest rise over this period.
People are shorting at this stage to like versus their
Bitcoin longs and I can just see one day without really goes
against what the market thinks. It just felt so consensus on the
timeline. Bitcoin was about to go to like
6070% dominance and you know as we know that the most expected
stuff that happens. The other stuff on my time
yesterday was pretty rific. We kind of go into the second
bit of this but for Rd got annoyed at this last week but I
don't know was it the death of citizens journalism you think
last night the last 24 hours have been have been pretty
horrific. And I would say that right now
my Twitter experience is not one which I'm enjoying and it's not
just from the lack of like the style of content.
I think it's the sorry like what's actually going on in the
world. I think it's the style of
content being written, like it's the debating and it's the lack
of back in fact checking and just need to be first.
Like we had a small taste of this.
What happened with Telegraph overnight and then we've had
kind of another taste of it the last 24 hours.
But how do you fix this? Is this is just the way that
Twitter is going to go? There was some, yeah.
I mean, Elon still focused on bots, but like this.
This feels like now that everyone's being paid,
everyone's being paid to be as quick and as sensationalist as
possible. I think it's really hurting
Twitter, if I'm honest. Frustrating, isn't it?
You just see. You either see a lot of fake
news, or you see a lot of content that are clearly
designed to. Create engagement Um.
And especially with this whole like ability to create photos
and videos from AI and deep fake and all that kind of stuff, you
just don't even really know what's real out there anymore.
And it's not like stuff. Citizen journalism that's posted
on Twitter is not regulated. Or people posting it maybe don't
have a reputation to uphold compared to if it's like BBC
News or the New York Post or whatever it is that's like.
Um, posting something. So yeah, it's a bit like, I
think it's a bit scary really. Like I try not to look at any of
it, but. It's generally not to trust.
Yeah, that's what I feel. I just feel a bit scary.
Like, this isn't just your classic, you know, cultural
wars. Like when you're in the middle
of, like actual wars. This can really have
ramifications, I think. And I think we're very close to
maybe some of that sort of stuff happening.
So just be careful out there on the time we have to go into it
too much. But I think there is a lot of
misinformation on every single side of this at this point.
So just take a breather whenever you see something online and
just and just take some time to work out what's true and not or
like just give it time for it to become more clear.
Because I think at the moment, you know, you will, you will
read something and it will literally just tear your heart
apart reading it. And then an hour later you
realised that that wasn't true or or that was different or, you
know, it was actually. I see it all the time.
And this happened, this happened with Bitcoin, this happened with
financial markets, has now happened with people's lives.
And I think that's just something to be aware of all the
timeline. Is I mean you got you got the
change in incentive structure right like with people getting
paid to tweet like it can get addictive and you start to
figure out what are the formulas that actually work for getting
people to read your stuff, follow your stuff, comment on
your stuff. And I think it's a little at
some level that incentive structure has always been there
because in the past engagement farming is not new to
monetization of Twitter like this was their long before Elon
engagement farming like none of that is new, but I think at
least before the Gold Star was just trying to build your
followers and get more. Powers and stuff that was
inflammatory, like sometimes it engagement firm, but it didn't
always work. Whereas right now I think people
are just more focused on getting more views on their tweets and
getting more comments because that's what ultimately gets them
paid. So I do think like there I think
at least the Twitter structure and I've seen it in NFT's.
I remember there was a big narrative around how frank
delegates like about somewhere around D gods.
When degats tanked from like 7 to 3/8, there was this narrative
that they just did it for the royalties, which is like the
dumbest thing you could ever say because you know, 2 days of
royalties. Is never good for your long term
inflow of capital for a company that has hired people.
Like, it's ridiculous. But also the numbers that were
being cited were completely wrong.
Like people were literally just getting the numbers wrong.
And I would go in and comment on this, make your data is
terrible. And they give me the shrug
emoji, you know, it's like there isn't that like integrity where
you're like, oh fuck, I gotta, I gotta go delete that tweet
because I don't want to be the source of bad information.
Like these guys are like that's kind of the game I'm in, you
know. And I don't know.
Again, I don't think this is necessarily new.
I think this has been around for three or four or five.
Years, but I do feel like you're you're at the margin, you're
seeing just kind of a change in incentive structure.
Yeah, I think the incentive, I mean the incentives aren't even
that big. Like it's not like everyone, I
mean they were big at the start. I think everyone's seen a slight
decrease in their amounts. But yeah, just don't know.
That's what I feel like the timeline is right now.
I think it's very, very tough. It's a tough dopamine choice to
hit. It's a tough dopamine space.
Like, I mean I think I got like $50 last week and I went and
spent like about like a 12 pack and a bottle of wine for an
event I was going to and like there goes two weeks of work,
you know? So I kind of stopped giving a
shit about about like those Twitter inflows, but like in
that, you know, for for people who are out there playing that
game, though, I think it's real. Yeah, yeah, maybe.
I think some people will get a few 1000 bucks, you know, it's
not nothing for sure. The big thing in NFT, well was
this was this Yuga Labs CEO came out, Daniel Legre put out a big,
big tweet thread about the future of Yuga Labs.
I feel like this is not the first time I've seen things like
this from the Unilabs team recently.
Like they've definitely feel internally like they've lost
their way. So there's a lot of this sort of
commentary like we need to take it back.
They obviously went through restructuring.
The long and short of that I felt like was they are really
going to focus on other side. There was some talk about more
focus on the IRL events and like tease that the fact that they
will do an actual clubhouse at some stage, which I think is
I've been saying for a long time, I think is really, really
important. But they also recognise that,
you know, they haven't really done anything with me bits, and
that some of the other bits that business have been have been
under invested and just really cared about.
I thought it was honest. I thought it was it was a, it
was a fair reflection of what's been going on.
But I I don't know, Did you come away from it feeling bullish
that they'd be able to change it?
I didn't know if the like the remedy was maybe what I would
have gone for. I don't know.
I think it's, I think the thing that I think is positive about
it is that the CEO, Dan and we had him on the show.
I think he's acknowledged the situation that they're in.
I think it's acknowledged how difficult it is to appease an
NFT community that's very like. You know, demanding or angry or
whatever it is and I think he's acknowledged that's a very tough
environment. So you know sometimes for people
to turn things around or improve or.
You know, pull some magic out the air.
You have to just have an understanding or acknowledgement
of the situation that you're in. And I think he gets it.
And I think they get it as well like I do.
I do genuinely believe that. I think they understand.
Some of the mistakes they've made or where they've gone wrong
and where they can improve, so can they actually, you know, be
successful in turning it around and doing well out of it, You
know, well that will remain to be seen because it's a it's a
much different they're trying to achieve now compared to when
they just started out, but I think so far.
They have made the right steps and I I actually like him.
I like he's he's a proper CEO and I know there's lots of like
criticism or animosity to people who are coming into this space
who are not native to the space. But I also think he hasn't come
in saying like oh I'm like really smart.
I know this this and this. I have all this experience so
I'm right. I think it's coming in saying
like ohh shit I need to like understand the space and listen
to you guys and maybe I can overlay that with my expertise
and and try and get some success here so like.
It's difficult to come away from that thing.
Ohh, I'm really bullish. I'm really bearish, but I think
it's, you know, moderate, modestly constructive.
That I think they have an awareness of the situation and I
think that's a starting point for for improvement in my
opinion. Yeah.
What do you think, Sam? Man I have a lot of thoughts.
I I think on the one hand there's kind of like this core
problem right. Like which is that the way that
Apes got to where they are was through kind of you know it's
there guys like Pharaoh going on clubhouse and like making ape
sounds into a clubhouse room and then you know then Gordon Goner
dropping Fucket mutant Saturday and like the Founders going into
the Discord and everyone like holy shit.
Like there was this whole vibe that got apes to where they are
and then you know, gets you get to, you, got to 144, whatever.
To a peak is also waiting for eight point waiting for other
deed. You you know you did a $4
billion valuation fundraise and then you bring in a team that's
trying to turn that into a real business.
The problem, the problem is like what got you here was something
just so different and now you have this these huge shoes to
fill and you're trying to shoehorn it with something that
may or may not work. And I think, I just think that's
a monumental task for for someone to come into what I
thought was really interesting about this tweet.
About the tweet was like the whole thing had such as Co
feeling like it was very kind of like Cos and then at the then
like then the second tweet was such a was such a degen tweet it
was like PS also clubhouse it was like I'm going to give you a
I mean that reminded me of like fucking mutant Saturday.
It's like just like build this anticipation, give you something
that like is not explained that has mystery that's like so kind
of like the gas that fuels NFT's.
And it I just thought was so funny how you had those two
tweets side by side. The third thing I say about me,
but I was kind of bummed about the music comment just cause
Danny Green is like a very good friend of mine.
I went to college with him and you know we we go back 20 years
and he got let go like 3 days ago.
So I was a little bit bomb that like a couple days after Danny
got let go, there was a comment that's like this has been the
failure or something like that. Because you know, I know, I know
Danny's putting his heart and soul into it.
And to have someone like come build up, you know, what was a
larva Labs AirDrop and just you know, 20,000 NFT's in this
market and something big is very hard.
So I was a little disappointed by that.
But that's just like a personal thing and probably like
Unrelated and me, just like kind of bringing my more players into
it. I think they said, you know that
that me bits had just been like they haven't flourished it, but
I thought the comments around crypto punks was maybe even more
interesting. Like you said, the relationship
between function and you go when I joined was, I have to say,
strained. What we continually heard was
that you didn't care, but at the same time there's a strong
desire to be left alone. Like, what do you think happens
with that brand going forward? Like, do you think that stays
with Yuga Labs? I can imagine that then they're
even selling that down the line. Like it does feel like a
slightly poisoned chalice of an IP for them to have, because it
feels as though it's still not. They're not quite accepted by
the punks and I saw some well known punks even discussing that
yesterday, as well as with the medias like so Jito I think came
out and said. Made some, you know, not
disparaging, but like basically saying, you know.
It doesn't know how the feature of me, but it's just gonna go.
It's always felt like a weird combination at some level and
they don't get paid for crypto. I mean they they at least have
you know presume I mean royalties don't exist anymore
but on crypto punks it's always 0%.
They just own a few hundred of them which is their full
exposure. I mean it it always kind of felt
like a weird combination at some level when they bought him but
they bought him at such a different time, that strained
relationship he was talking about.
Like I've seen that from the start like right when they
bought him you had a bunch of like OG crypto punks who were
saying like yeah like you know and Noah when Noah joined the
first representative for you to talk about crypto punks he, I
remember we were at a breakfast for crypto punks and Gordon was
there and guard was there and he got on a on a on a table and
said we're not going to do anything with crypto books.
You know we're not in the famous line was we're not going to give
you lunch boxes and everyone's kind of like you know and some
people love that. People love that because they
like. And I was kind of like I
wouldn't mind getting some point if you if you got a little bit
extra around but I'd totally be down with that.
But you know they're always kind of was that conflict within of
like some people were like well maybe you can you know, I don't
know. Like I still haven't figured out
what like do something means even in the NFT space and
certainly not for something like punks.
It's it's just kind of a weird word that we throw around.
And I, you know and I don't even know what like the best examples
of people doing something with the PFP project have been in the
past. But I agree with you though I
wouldn't be surprised if if this is.
I mean, I certainly don't think this is like a permanent
relationship. Although Natalie Stone, but they
brought in has been really active and I think she's doing
all she can do. She's like get content out there
like make more people aware of the crypto punk story, like talk
about crypto punks owners talk about the history like that's
the best thing punks have like just and I do think that you go
like they're hiring one or two people to do that.
They're saying this is our contribution, it's not going
over the top and I don't know. I think that's I I kind of take
my hat off to it. I don't think it's been it's.
I think it's hard to frame it as negative, although some people
do. Yeah, I think they put it to
what what what They are blocked team have basically done with
squiggles. They've just got to try and make
it feel like as much as possible, put it in as many
places as possible, but at the same time they're not making any
money from it clearly. And they seemingly are going to
piss off their community whenever they try to do anything
so. It is a is a peculiar one that
like I can see that maybe not same with you forever, but I
don't know who would buy it because you don't ever buy it if
you had some form of commercial need for it, right?
I feel like you could bought it so that they would be seen as #1
and that kind of now cements them.
But other than that, I don't really advise Parks would you
buy when they bought them. It was also like, first of all
there was this huge punk versus thing going on at the time and
were worth more than punks. And like, one of the big
narratives was like, well, now punks will never be worth more
than apes because you go will always make sure that apes are
#1. Like, that was one of the big
narratives going on back then. Like, also Matt and John from
Larva Labs, like, just didn't want to run a big company.
Like, I think they were uncomfortable with how many.
I talked to Matt about this once.
He's like, I like, couldn't sleep at night.
I had too many punks on my Ledger.
Like it just it just like, I couldn't like it.
Just it was not what I was meant to do.
So for him to get rid of, like, you know, people were going
after them for V1 punks. People had gone after them about
IP nonstop. People were selling and slamming
the door on the way out. And John, just like this is just
like our project like this is not what we bargained for.
So but yeah, it was such a different time back then.
You know apes were worth like 7080 E Punk Floors like 50 E the
you know everything. Things have changed so much
since then. They do own 4 or 500 of them
like that. That was like that's the really
only kind of financial exposure is the fact that like Yuga got
all of Matt and John's punks other than 10.
So they do have that financial exposure.
Yeah, that's true. They do own them.
I wonder what happens if they just sell them.
How would they ever monetize them if?
I'm not really sure. I think with that thing you just
gotta get on like a plan. Like people always talk about
how this project, this idea of owning your own NFTS doesn't
work because people fudge you when you sell.
I think like you just say, hey guys, on the 15th of every month
we're going to list one at the floor.
Like that's not us funding. This is just, that's the only
way we can afford to pay Natalie to work here.
Like I I feel like that there are ways you could just throw
this system like you know the the market can digest a few
every month like you don't have to.
It doesn't have to be this this huge thing if that's the
business model that like you're stuck.
Yeah, I mean. Good thing we don't own loads of
rec guys then, huh? Hey, we have Are you guys doing
the. I prefer your approach.
We have a museum coming. We have a a right guy gallery.
Coming. Well, the Hell's Who else?
Who the Hell's gonna accept a rec guy museum?
Which city? We put in that in.
We're just going to moments like, hey, we've got over the
last five years we've acquired 5332 rec guys, here you go.
Maybe they bought him. I think he'd get somebody
friendly inside, maybe donate a few to get a little taste, and
then look up a wing, a great guy wing, when he goes to 10,000.
Right. The other thing that's going on
in the crypto NFT space is what's going on in Reddit.
So, Reddit spin. Making a few different forays
into crypto they. Its manatees, the avatars, which
they continue to sell pretty well.
They also had these community points tokens, which I think ran
all the way up to about $50 million market cap.
One of them, the most famous ones were moon and brick.
Um, they you would get them. It was basically seen as part
ownership of your. Subreddit.
Video channel and it was kind of in the wake of all the Wall
Street bets stuff. So each different subreddit had
its own token and obviously the most famous for these moon and
brick ones. They said yesterday that they
are shutting this down. They said they were going to get
rid of all the community points. They were.
They were on arbitrium. They could be redeemed for all
these different things. But they basically said due to
regulatory uncertainty, they're going to have to shut them down.
Both of these tokens, I'll bring them up, but they think they
dropped about 90% overnight. And this wasn't just some tiny
token like these were. These were decently priced.
Yeah. So um.
This moon token. Was down 80, well, yeah, 82%.
Ohh. Fuck.
Have you got a market cap that peaked, that peaked in August at
$54 million? And now it's all the way down to
$3,000,000. So big, big moves.
The other one was called Brick, and I forget which subreddits
these refer to, but I think one of them is the Wall Street Bets
subreddit, and one of them is another one.
Yeah, that one's down to. 47 1/2% and that one peaked at God.
Both peaked at around 50 million.
Wow. What do you think?
Like this this is? I mean, we're trying to get the
whole Reddit community on board with crypto.
This is kind of wild, I think. Um.
And obviously caused a lot of pain.
So yeah, what you guys take on this?
What my initial reaction is what will happen to the NFT's they
have as well? Will that?
Will they just stand still and just the tokens are worried
about or? I think they were worried about
the tokens being deemed security security because they were given
in response for doing things and you could redeem them for.
Or different parks, essentially on Reddit, the actual avatars
themselves haven't really moved because they're seen as just
avatar trading or owning avatars.
But this kind of points to the SEC getting involved, saving
everyone's bags, and then this sort of stuff happens.
Now arguably you could say that Reddit shouldn't have been
selling tokens like maybe like this in the 1st place, but.
I don't know, like you see all this other all these other
tokens out there, but like football clubs and then you see
stuff like this and it feels not too dissimilar.
Um, this is kind of a wild, a wild move.
I think there's a little, like, I think every token is taking,
especially in the US is taking some regulatory risk.
And I think that there's a little bit of a FAFO mindset to
it. Like let's just, you know, fuck
around and find out, let's see what happens, right.
And it gets risky when you deal with big real corporations
though you like. And I think that's like it works
like when you're something like Blur, you know, you're starting
up, you're like, let's push it, let's go.
This is our core business. This drives the entire thing.
Like let's, you know, let's make people check a box that says
they're not the US. But when you're coming like
Reddit, which probably has some lawyers who just got out of a
law firm and like, you know, and are probably more in risk
aversion mode, that risk becomes bigger and a much bigger
business is on the line. I have no idea.
I mean this like, you know, I worked at Uber for eight years
and I continue to think the biggest competitive advantage
Uber had was our willingness to break the law.
And like that was the only way we were able to disrupt an
industry that had been the same for 60 years.
But if you don't have lawyers who are willing to do that, you
can't do it. And.
And I feel like I could see that there was always this tension
between legal and the business. And I could see where in a place
like Reddit they're like, is this worth when this is such a
subset of our business, is this worth it for the for the big
ending? And I have no idea.
They mentioned regulatory kind of in their quotes though.
So that's kind of what made me, made me ask about that.
I mean, I mean this was a thing when it asked than $1,000,000
market cap. I mean these things, these
things are trading, it's only really picked up let's say in
February of this year and it was about $1,000,000 market cap for
a long, long time. It was only during August that
it just went absolutely fucking wild.
So they may have just been interested 50X.
So they met during that whole meme coin season.
So they may have just decided they didn't want to have the
headache. It was OK when it was worth
barely anything. But now?
It just left like a big, a big risk for them.
I think that's what we can imagine.
Because I agree like, yeah, you need to sometimes you need to
break the law to win things as a big corporation.
Regulatory capture is a real thing.
So I think. I I thought it was good to see
all these big, big social media giants kind of moving into
crypto. We've now seen Reddit kind of
moved back. Instagram kind of retrace
everything, right? Matter seems to be kind of going
forward still. On maybe not on Facebook, but
some of their other brands. Not Instagram or Facebook
really. But it feels like we're still
going ahead with their metaverse plans.
Twitter Twitter still seems to be pretty crypto friendly or
heading that way. So it feels like we're kind of
all our eggs are in Twitter basket this time.
And I guess Telegram, we called Telegram social media.
Is that just like a messaging app?
Telegram. I feel like it's all in at the
moment on crypto, but that's it. Telegram and Twitter is all we
have left. It feels like everyone else is
gonna. It's gonna leave us for the time
being. The final topic today was what
we've been seeing with Pokémon cards.
So we've spoken about this so many times, but real world
assets moving on blockchain, they sold another 50 grand of
Pokémon cards in I think it was a minute or something crazy like
that. And they've been doing this
fairly regularly recently. Like this isn't the first time
that they've done one of these sales.
I think this is the biggest one they've done.
Courtyard is another company they've.
They actually been around for a while.
I wasn't actually aware of that until I checked them out, but I
think we've actually been around for over a year now.
Yeah, they joined September 2021.
So they joined at the end of the of the bull market and then
they've moved into this tokenizing of Pokémon cards on
blockchain. This is easy to understand.
I can explain this to all of my friends.
Um, all they need to do is set up a crypto wallet to start
trading on it. This is the sort of stuff that I
think could could be the like the foothills of of getting
people back on blockchain. Like it's much more difficult
when he tells them to buy like monkey bit jpegs, but when it's
just. You know, it's actually just
trading different. Um.
Different Pokémon cards. I think I I can get it.
What do you guys think of? It makes a lot of sense, I
think. Um.
Don't really. There's not really.
I don't know what else to say about it.
There's not really anything particular or specific to get
excited about. In this contained context I
think, but I guess you can expand this to other like in
real life collectables et cetera.
But it's also not really anything new as it.
Well, Sammy says there are 53 billion Pokémon cards.
Only 696 K have been graded so far, and 2.3 of those are
unchanged. There's 53 billion Pokémon
cards. I was like, what the fuck?
I mean, I know I have some back at my house.
They are, they are terrible. They're like the elements to
get. I forget how to even play the
Pokémon Card game, but there were definitely some crap cards
that used to have. Lost mental I think it's
interesting. I'm like.
I see pros and cons like. I I think like the tokenization
of things like I think the best use cases are trustless use
cases. I think like that like that's
you know, when things are trust like that that's kind of the
innovation that blockchain brings.
None of this is trustless, right?
You have to count on a security team to guard the card.
You have to count on the people in the back end to not be
fraudulent. You have to count on the
gradings to be like there are all sorts of aspects you have to
count on the company not to go bankrupt that's doing the escrow
services. So I like, I don't know if
blockchain in itself and the downsides to blockchain, the
biggest one I see is just the amount of scams that we see in
our space where people get things robbed.
I think like you insert some sort of like this feels like
something where almost a centralised platform that has
more insurance, that has more fraud protection might be a
better kind of environment than a blockchain based ecosystem.
But you know, but the good thing about blockchain is we already
have so many users and you have so many people who are excited
to be part of this ecosystem and you have a global user base and
people who want to prove out these content, these use cases.
So you just get massive user bases.
Whereas if I were to go start like a web two platform that
allowed people to trade shares and loans on this stuff like
where I wouldn't where I would provide the insurance and the
fraud protection and stuff like that.
You know you you'd have to spend millions or 10s of millions of
dollars on marketing to get your user base which I I feel like
that's the biggest advantage blockchain brings.
It's just a user base that's not already here but not only
already here but very excited to to retweet Cyrus to prove this
stuff right and suddenly you actually just have a huge
marketplace whereas you know, so I don't know I see kind of pros
and cons. I I feel like there's like an
80% fit with just a little bit off because there is a whole lot
of trust you have to place in whoever these escrow agents are,
whoever does the charity to whoever is evaluating this
stuff. And that's like human to human
trust. Yeah, that's true.
Like it's this is not trustless in the same way that you know.
You trade a monkey JPEG and you can prove it.
Prove authenticity. You can prove provenance.
There is some level of trust that somebody at this escrow
house has decided that yes, it's the real deal and is tracking
all the different transfers correctly.
So it's trust. In a closed environment, let's
say, I do think there's money to be made.
They're like if you set up one of the escrow services, it feels
like that could be a trend. Is that the trend here?
We should all be setting up our own escrow services, open up
warehouses in London and and claiming that we do all the
provenance stuff. It feels like that could be the
trend if people really get behind all this stuff.
I watch out for that scam for sure.
Like the dude who's putting new escrow rookie baseball card lone
lone it on arcades sent me 88 and I'll send you 85 tomorrow.
And it's backed by a piece of cardboard.
I bet that I feel like this. The scammers are the ones who
always like, show us where the flaws are.
So. I mean, I just came up with the
idea, so maybe maybe you're going to see a scam from me
pretty soon, like. Pretty sure Gary Vee was
chatting about this like he was like, I'm open up all these
warehouses in New York and then I just haven't heard from Gabby
in three years. So.
But I do think there's a there's something to be said about
physical locations which track provenance if this stuff does
pick up with watches, with wine with.
With Pokémon cards, all these collectibles, and there's going
to be all these services that make money off the back of it.
Although I can imagine there's gonna be some hilariously
massive scams when people realise that, yeah, I tried to
redeem my. Whatever is Grade 9 Charizard
and then end up getting the Jigglypuff.
I read the book number go up. It's like the latest like Carly
Reilly had the author. It's just the latest very like
cynical book about the space and one of the things one of the
staff, I I don't remember the exact quote otherwise I would
tweet it. But it was something that the
effect of the amount of money that has been stolen from people
in crypto is more than every bank robbery in the entire
world. Times 100 per year, you know?
It's like absolutely mind boggling the like, you know, and
I, it's such a vulnerability in this space and like what?
So anytime people bring things on chain, I'm like, you realise
you're opening up yourself to like the greatest that system
that exists in the planet right now.
It's very true. I think it's in the billions for
sure. So far.
I think if you're going to defile ARMA, they have a total
value stolen metric and it's something like 5 trillion.
Billions. Uh, stolen so far.
Which is, yeah, it's a pretty wild wild stat.
It's true to accept. People who?
Who claimed that we that we have this perfect system like we
don't like? It's funny, I remember I was I
was out with a couple of friends when that person put in and it's
still unknown. Like I think it seems like more
and more that cryptos that was spent 1050 Ethan.
Like it increasingly feels like it increasingly feels like it
was kind of money laundered money because the buyer and
seller had been through tornado and stuff like that.
But before we knew that I was like there have, I have seen
someone sell what was at the time a $300.00 crypto or $500
crypto punk for 5.555 E because they were European and they
mistook the comma for the period and like you know and it got,
you know they listed it for 5.55 and it was worth 555.
Like, I that stuff does happen. I was with these friends one of
like very senior business guys like well, can't they do
anything about it Like like well like So what are they gonna do?
I'm like not like there is no police officer.
That shit is in some other country right now and there is
absolutely nothing you can do. I would like to the real world.
That's just so, like, weird. I was speaking to Archive
founder Ben Cowley's. Come on the Show a few times.
I We used to trade. All day, right?
Like hundreds of trades, thousands of trades each day you
would probably make a mistake on.
One in every hundred threads. Right.
And then needed to be a way that the trades actually wouldn't
settle. We had this thing of delayed
settlement. So it would take three days for
a trade to settle. So you could still in those
three days normally like? Prove that there was an error.
The issue with these immutable blocked is that like there is no
room for human error, there is just none, right?
And I know from you would be amazed how many mistakes are
made on a daily basis in trad file.
You might think it's all perfectly done.
It is a shit. Show amount of errors that get
done on trade or we booked that wrong or that's been inputted
wrong and then it gets changed and we have they have whole
systems they employ people. Look through every trade just
for those errors and even then they get, they get found out to
be wrong. So the idea that we're going to
move these all of trad file onto blockchain, like they're going
to be shitting themselves because there's no room for
errors, that sort of stuff happens or we have to have
delayed settlement in some way that we have to say that the
trade isn't actually put on the blockchain for three days or
something like that. That's the only way I can
imagine it happening. Yeah.
I mean my one of my close friends, like back in the Crypto
Punk bowl, like I was, I bought a punk and he kind of was like
got into it. He decided to buy one and he
lost it within a week, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So that's and this is a smart guy.
This guy was a very senior guy, Uber just, you know, he was a
big Bitcoin guy. But he like, saw something about
something crypto punk owners got, I got, you know, you went
to that website and signed away his bum.
Yeah, we had someone who minted like 3000 Rep guys and was like,
Oh my God, I minted them all. I got them like really cheap as
well. And we were like, no, man.
Sorry. He it was.
Who was that guy? Yeah.
Was it? Recognised?
It was something else. Record was a free mint like he
must. He was something like, yeah.
Because we definitely brought in a bunch of traps like people,
just because we knew them when we came on.
And yeah, I think, I think the about 20 to 30% of them were
dead within a week. They lost everything.
I have the same thing. I got the head of the museum
here, the Art Museum, bought an NFT.
We would always talk about 1:00 and also, you know, signed it
away within 48 hours and this guy was like this.
Guys like a museum guide, an expense of me, like, I don't
know, I've had enough experience.
I've had three normally friends who've done this, and these are
not Dum Dums like these are like it's just it's a very difficult
environment. Yeah, yeah, Stay safe out there.
Stay safe in many ways I think has been the theme of this show,
right. We're gonna end it there.
We have the rec show later today in London.
We're also doing Brett radio in an hour with Crypto ISO, so I'm
going to check that out. This has been.
Was it by cracking NFT? Go check out their min, go check
out cracker.com rug radio for everything on them.
We have them on the show tomorrow for a longer segment I
think for rock and reggae. Gonna lead that all the way from
Austin where they could be at the GP.
All right. Thanks again and yesterday.
Crypto ISO is our guest today. We've had some like we've had
some OG traders, we've had some traders on recently.
Last week we had Blood Shiller who's like I think he's really
good and then we got this week. So we'll be degens who are chart
following. I think we're going to see a lot
more Bitcoin today. All right, guys.
Well, yeah, we'll see you again tomorrow.
And thanks everyone for.