Coinbase CEO Reveals Why He Sued The SEC | Market Bubble #12

Welcome back to Market Bubble, a show about investing in yourself, where we feel an overwhelming majority of young men today are in a losing position. How are we positioned? Find out today and every Thursday live on twitch.tv/fazebanks as well as Twitter as well as my beautiful Dude, you look so [__] good today. See, look at that lighting.

I'm shining. I'm shining.

They did some crazy shit with the lighting today. Listen, we're at episode 12. I want you guys to go back—just the clips. Don't look at the vase in the clips from episode 1 to episode 12, bro. Progressively, every episode, darker and darker.

Dial the production trolling. Production loves trolling. [Laughter] It's insane, dude. Listen, today's going to be a fucking good one, bro. We got a lot of good shit planned. We're interviewing Brian Armstrong today, as well as Kendrick Perkins, Boston Celtics legend. A lot of good shit, and I'm fucking excited. I'm just feeling extra grateful today. How are you feeling?

Same, bro. I'm feeling extremely grateful. It seems like at the beginning, people were kind of iffy on the show, and then as it's developed and we've done more and more, people feel like they're getting good content out of it and are really appreciating it. That's been awesome to see.

I feel like we have a diverse range of guests that we've brought on. We've done the deep AI tech shit, the culture shit, and the market shit. We've given some good trades on here. We pretty much covered everything, which is exactly how I wanted it to look.

It's been cool to see the vision come together. I'm excited for how we keep building it out, to be honest.

Just seeing more.

I'm reading, and we're starting to read—

Which is even crazier.

We are starting to read. We'll get to that in a second. We're starting a little book club, being proper 40-year-old men over here. [Laughter]

But, yeah, on that note, I just want to say thank you to everybody who's showing up and supporting the show. It's flipped pretty fairly quickly. When we dropped the show initially, people were kind of memeing it. You were seeing Bald Leonidas doing his funny little cartoons, and people were posting that infamous clip of you talking about not owning Bitcoin or Solana. It turned out to be right about that, and you've been right a lot on the show up to this point.

You get guys like him. This is kind of a full-circle moment for me. I've been following him since I joined crypto, and he's somebody whose opinion I really respect. He's definitely one of my quants, and him talking about watching the show regularly and vouching for it has been really cool to see. There's been a lot of positive sentiment around the show. People are seeing it, the vision's coming together, and I couldn't be more grateful for it, to be honest.

We're really trying to continue curating this community with things like the commercial contest. You're hosting the graffiti thing right now, the book club, the things that we're doing with chat, airdropping chat, and bringing on more partners who see the vision. It's coming together. We're 12 episodes in, and, yeah, I'm fucking stoked.

On that note, should we crown the winners of the commercial contest?

Yeah, let's do it. Can we watch some of them? We got them on here.

Yeah, I think so. I think we can do that. I think we just posted one on Market Bubble, if I'm not mistaken. I think one of them posted one. Let me pull it up.

Yeah, we have them. I think we have them here, right?

Yeah, they're all here.

Actually, I haven't watched this one yet.

Have you seen this? We got some cracked people in the community. Like, what the fuck?

This shit is hard, bro. This shit is hard.

It made me so fat.

It makes me kind of sick. I look fat. I have 11% body fat, bro.

I did not see this part. Yeah, bro, what the fuck? It's fucking dope. This is insane.

Hurry the fuck up. You're hosting Market Bubble in 5 minutes.

Looking at other robot shit again.

Robot.

That's too good.

Yeah, she's crazy.

Hard as fuck, bro. Shout-out Fatty Bags. I love the robot girl. I love that she's slowly becoming the mascot of the show, Bubbles. [Laughter]

Formally announcing Fatty Bags, AI Bald King—I saw that one coming from a mile away—Venice or Vince Reyes, Burden, and Dawn Rock 1987. Five winners. You guys are all getting airdropped $1,000. Anom, thank you guys so much for participating. We want to do things like this regularly on the show. Quick little commercial competition. It was super fun. I really enjoyed watching these.

Obviously, Z, you have the graffiti thing running right now, right? For another week?

Yeah, bro. I tried to get it up. I was having some errors doing the bounties on Pump, but it's going to be up. I haven't put it up yet, but it's going to be up.

Wow. Pump fumbling the bag. What else is new? I'm just kidding. [Laughter]

We do have one more little internal show announcement. It's the book club thing. We joked about it two episodes ago and then talked about actually doing it and following through with it. You tweeted something today, right?

Yep. I put it up. I think one of them is winning pretty clearly.

Oh, is it? Where?

You have to go down a little bit more. There you go.

Right here. I wonder which one's winning. I want to take a guess before I vote. I want to read On the Edge by Nate Silver. That's what I personally want to read.

That's the politics guy, right?

Yeah, but he went from being a professional poker player to a politics guy, and he was kind of betting on politics. He had Trump winning—

He had Trump at 28% when pretty much everybody else had him at 13%.

Yeah, I remember that. Oh, Market Wizards. I haven't read that. I'm with it. I'm down.

It's a good number of votes. This will be up for a full day, guys. Whatever wins in the next day, we're just going to fire it up. Feel free to order the book and read it.

Who wrote Market Wizards?

I don't know. We'll try to figure it out. It would be cool if we got into the habit of reading a book with our community and our chats, and then having the author come on the show for 15 or 20 minutes.

Jack Swagger.

Yeah. That'd be cool. Go vote on that. Let's all get smarter together. Let's be productive. A stout young, stoic gentleman—some of us younger than others—but hopefully we stick to this. I'm down. I'm with it. Let's do it.

Yeah, no, we are. We have to. We can't just talk all this shit about consuming brain rot. [Laughter]

We have to put in the work. It's worth it, though. I was really in the habit of reading last year, but I fell off when we started producing this show, because that's just how life goes. I'm super excited to get back into it. Have you read any of these books?

No. Market Wizards—I definitely have read some of it for sure, but the other ones I haven't.

I'm down to revisit it. I'm down to read that one. I feel like it's important. Everyone always talks about it.

Yeah.

But, yeah, that's it for the show announcements. Let's get into it.

Oh yeah. Um Venice, one of our partners, is doing that AI film festival Lumara. Just a good opportunity to highlight that here. The AI Film Festival. Everybody who won our thing, Bald King, you got to get in there. Fatty Bags, lock the [__] in because you could obviously do this.

The prizes for this are way higher than what we're giving away, right?

I think it's 100 bands, isn't it?

Yeah. Something crazy.

Am I bugging?

I think I might be getting my numbers mixed up. Don't quote me.

Check the awards. It's top right.

Look at Z, by the way, transforming into the Black Bull again.

Yeah. 100K.

Oh, yeah. 100 bands.

W memory.

And then also I think we're going to be judges on this, and I think we're going to host the winner on the show and watch a trailer of it, like a compressed version of it, on the show. This could kickstart somebody's entire career. We preach a lot on the show about locking the [__] in, opening your laptop, and just making something happen for yourself. I know a lot of you [__] are unemployed.

1. NFT talk + Ansem's bull market call

Lock the [__] in. Learn a new skill. Join the Lumara effort. It's MoonPay and Venice. These guys are two titans of this industry making an effort to try to push this industry forward. We love it. Sign up. All the information is all over the screen.

Brian Armstrong, I'm excited, bro. You came through. You guys talked a little bit, and you got him locked in on the show. He's coming on the show in an hour and a half, two hours.

Yeah. He's the GOAT, bro. I think people kind of underrate how much Coinbase has contributed to the industry. They were here in, I believe, 2012, and Coinbase is one of, if not the most important, U.S. companies for crypto when it comes to pushing regulation forward and onboarding people.

The first time I bought Bitcoin, it was through Coinbase in 2017. I think Bitcoin was probably around $3,000 or $4,000. They recently have gotten a lot of shade for not doing as well with on-chain support, and for their on-chain coins not performing as well as Solana and other chains, but they're doing a ton of other things in other areas that are really contributing to the crypto economy. I think it's going to be good to have Brian on. I think having Jesse on was good. Chat loved Jesse. Brian should be the same.

The CT shit-title is crazy: “Armstrong is innocent.” That's so funny.

Shit production. [laughter]

That's hilarious. CT has this recurring issue of being very cannibalistic. Again, like you said, Brian Armstrong and Coinbase have done so much for crypto.

Coinbase is one of those products that everybody has. I went to the movies last night and saw The Odyssey. Highly recommend it to everybody in chat. Phenomenal movie. We were with a few girls, and I brought up the interview. One of the guys at the table was like, “Yeah, I mean, every fucking girl at this table probably has a Coinbase. Everyone has a Coinbase.” Three of the 4 girls we were with had Coinbase accounts.

CT is so hyper-focused on the day-to-day and often gets caught up in wanting their price to go up and their bags to be pumped. Brian—poor Brian—got caught up in this PFP controversy. Obviously, you saw that this week.

Yeah.

So insane.

CT is tough, bro. He's operating on a very different time scale than a lot of CT, but he has to be much more aware of how what he does impacts on-chain. I think the post he put out was decent, but it showed that he wasn't aware of how much what he's doing is impacting things. When you're in a position like that, you have to be more aware of what's going on on-chain.

It does catch you off guard when you first realize what's happening, though. It even caught me off guard when Pump.fun blew up the first time and I was talking about Solana and Solana memecoins. At one point, everything I tweeted was a meme. Everything I posted was a meme—every image, every word, everything was a meme.

If you're not aware of or trading the $10,000, $20,000, and $50,000 market-cap coins, you have no idea any of this is happening. For somebody like Brian, who's super busy all the time, he definitely isn't paying attention to the low-cap stuff. I feel like he could have definitely avoided this.

We all only have 24 hours in a day. Maybe I'm being too charitable here; I don't know. But it's funny to me to see this guy who's worth $8 billion, right? You have people drumming up these narratives and running with this whole thing of Brian pumping and dumping a fucking $5 million coin. He's probably not doing that. He's 100% not doing that, for sure.

That's so ridiculous, so silly, but it's very engaging. It's a tweet that'll get a lot of likes, right? That's kind of the fucking game that we're stuck in.

I mean, you just spoke a little bit to it, but it got so bad that people were really crossing boundaries and lines, hitting up your family members on Facebook, trying to figure out what the fuck your new cat's name was so they could—

Exactly. Like, fucking crazy. Yeah.

Brian Armstrong is currently in Washington, D.C., at the White House, trying to get the CLARITY Act pushed through, and people are jumping all over him and harping on him for doing some dumb shit with his PFP. He had a fake Punk as his PFP for a while. I get it. I understand.

Not anymore, though. He officially changed it. I'd like to think we had maybe something to do with it. He changed it to an actual real Punk—a hoodie. A sick one. This is a good one. I know you're not really a big NFT guy.

No, it's a good one. I know the lore on the Hoodie Punks.

Yeah, sick. He changed to that. I don't know, it was just really funny to see CT up in arms for 48 straight hours about Brian Armstrong's PFP. It's ridiculous crypto bullshit. But we're going to get into the weeds with him, and it's going to be a good interview. Really excited about that.

On that note, I saw you tweet something.

Are NFTs low-key making a comeback?

Low-key, bro. They low-key are.

NFTs low-key are making a comeback. I said this—the one that I personally am supporting and talking about the most. One of the guys was like, “How am I going to support people who build things around the Ansem ecosystem?” Somebody made an NFT collection, and they were like, “With 100% of the mint revenue, we're going to buy back Ansem.”

They launched this Bullpen NFT collection and bought back Ansem with all the mint proceeds and everything. It was actually number 1 on Solana for transaction volume over the past few days. I believe a ton of people on the timeline were talking about it. I didn't know they were launching it beforehand and had nothing to do with it.

It was just somebody who was like, “How do I contribute value to the Ansem ecosystem? I want to benefit from all this marketing these guys have on the timeline, but I'm going to build something that they haven't built yet.” I think that's really cool to see.

NFTs obviously have been a way of aligning community, and I don't have any PFP connected to the coin or anything like that. It's been cool to see people do that.

Somebody in the chat said, “NFTs in the big 2026 sounds crazy.” I agree. I think we need a rebrand. I think we need to—

I think they need to not be called NFTs anymore.

What should we call them?

NFTs is so negative. I don't know. I really don't. But there's cool shit happening. I think this is currently the number 1 traded one on Solana, or is it the—

Highest market cap? I think. Yeah, it's the highest market cap.

A random Solana NFT project is just on Amazon Prime—the Clan.

What is happening, bro? That's crazy.

It's like a real series on Amazon Prime.

There's something to this IP-NFT thing. We all saw it—we all, a lot of us, bought into it. I just think we were a little too early in terms of actually seeing real use cases or real utility. That word “utility” was thrown around so often.

But one thing I will say: the NFT meta and NFT era were undefeated. I don't give a fuck what anybody says. Peak, peak crypto for me.

Fuck.

You might disagree, but it was just WAGMI. It was WAGMI culture—“everyone's going to make it.” It was all so positive. Everybody was so excited to see people make it.

I think how liquid NFTs were was really healthy for charts and healthy for trading. It wasn't as easy to get out of your position in NFTs because they're just illiquid. There was this element where you see people shamelessly pumping random small-cap memes on the timeline for 2 days, and then they never talk about them again. You didn't actually believe anything you said. You were quite literally just trying to pump your own bags.

But somebody buying an NFT, throwing it on their PFP, making it part of their identity, getting a fucking rug made of it, and putting it in a picture frame in their house—that's real community-building shit.

Yeah. I think the reason the NFTs were so cool—peak crypto—was because—

They performed a lot better because everybody was like, “We're going to hold these for an extended period of time. We're a part of this community. We feel really aligned with everybody in the community, and we're going to hold them.” That's why a lot of them did so well: people weren't thinking about flipping them the next day or the next day and a half.

I think that's been one of the downsides of memes in general. With the sheer amount of memes and memecoins out there, everybody's looking to flip them extremely quickly, but buy-and-hold is actually how people made a lot of money.

Correct. We talk a lot about this on the show, and we're going to get into it a little more deeply later, but celebrities and crypto don't mix. We talk about this a lot. We debated skipping over it in this episode entirely because there's something we want to bring up, and we're going to bring it up.

But this was one outlying example of celebrities actually finding their way into crypto and NFTs. They were welcomed with open arms. I didn't really see any drama around it, again, because of the layers of it.

With Pump.fun, you can go on Pump.fun, create a ticker, and launch a coin today. I could do that right now. Andrew Tate does it twice a week. There are people who can go and do that.

Yeah, but there's this clip of me, a little bit fatter than I am today, talking about Gary Vee. I'd be surprised if people hadn't heard about this story by this point, but we could watch it.

Flyfish Club?

No, it's when Gary Vee called me. Gary Vee—

He really did change my life that year. He's the man, and he didn't have to do this. He didn't gain anything from this, but he called me. He's like, “Banks, I know you're into the art and this and that, internet shit. This NFT”—this was before anybody knew what the fuck an NFT was. Gary Vee called me, MrBeast, Logan Paul, a bunch of us, and just pilled me on CryptoPunks.

Honestly, it was some of the best financial advice I've ever gotten in my life. I went and aped it. That was the first real money I put on-chain. I put $200,000 on-chain.

Oh, wow.

I bought Ethereum with it, and I bought a bunch of Punks, apes, CyberKongz, things like that. My whole portfolio today can be rooted back to that, and it really did change my whole life.

You know why I think it was different with the NFTs? Celebrities in crypto typically were doing things where they didn't have to take any risk. When you launch a coin, you take zero risk. You talk about it once and then whatever, you're done with it.

But with NFTs, they were spending large amounts of capital to join these crypto-native communities that already existed. If you were buying a Punk for $100,000 or $200,000, you were deliberately risking your capital to join that community. I think that's the difference between what does work and what doesn't work when people join crypto. When you're not putting up any risk, it's a very different situation than when you're actually putting your capital at risk to join things or buy coins.

People who buy Bitcoin, take payment in Bitcoin, and evangelize Bitcoin are very different popular people from the ones who are trying to grift off whatever project.

It's extremely transparent, too. You're signaling to everybody else what community you back and what you're a part of. You don't really need to question it or go far to see how someone's aligned and how their interests are aligned.

With some of these tweets, it's like, “What's the angle?” This person is either bull-posting or bear-posting some random ticker. The question is why. On the back end, buried in tweets or whatever, on-chain, they could be shorting it or longing it. That could be where, if somebody has a Bored Ape Yacht Club ape as their PFP and they're speaking about apes, you know why.

Exactly.

That's a good point. I never thought about it like that. That's interesting.

It just makes a lot of things healthier and easier. It was good vibes, too. I just remember it being good vibes. It was really easy meta, too. Everybody was making so much money.

Yeah. On that note, I'm just going to ask you straight up, because you keep talking about it and we're all waiting for it. I feel like it's split 50/50, but—wrong tab—when bull market, bro?

I'm going to say 3 to 6 months. I think the bottom is already in for crypto, but I think the bull market is actually going to start, and it will be agreed upon that it's starting, in 3 to 6 months.

The reason I say that is because it usually takes a little bit of time for these bottoms to form. Even if we already saw peak capitulation and fear around seller selling, I think that was the peak bottom. I think the lows are already in, but we're going to have a choppy period where prices move sideways and continue ranging.

During that period, I think it's going to be the best time to position before the rest of the population actually agrees that we're in a bull market. I think that's when you're going to find the best opportunities to position in early-stage projects. You're going to get great discounts on coins, which we have right now.

Generally, that's how I'm thinking about it. I think 3 to 6 months is when it's going to be like, “Oh, now we're in a bull market for crypto.” If I'm right and the bottom is now, there are a lot of people waiting to buy in Q4. A lot of the crypto-native people betting on the 4-year cycle think we're going to bottom in Q4.

If we get to Q4 and we haven't put in new lows beneath the lows that we currently have, those people who aren't allocated yet are going to start allocating. I think that's going to add momentum to the upside, especially if we're already trending.

You guys heard it here.

Heard it here first: the Black Bull.

I saw this tweet from Qwerty, and I think it's a pretty healthy thought experiment. I know a lot of people would be curious about your response. He said, “What is the biggest piece of advice you are carrying with you into the next cycle from the previous one? Share for a beginner, veteran, or just yourself to read.”

You want to go first?

I mean, I responded. No, I can. I responded. I said:

Number 1: I'm done trading and holding bags for the culture. I did this a lot in NFTs. I went and minted projects and just held shit to zero. Bought shit, held shit to zero. Farmed Ws in random Discord chats and got pumped full of dopamine: “We love you. We're all going to make it.”

MLG is the best example of this in my life. I loved what they were doing. I loved everything about that community and what was going on. I saw it and bought it. FaZe Banks buying into a gamer-culture coin kind of made it the gamer-culture coin, and I loved that. Obviously, they made me the de facto mascot, the face of this thing.

The shit ran to $250 million. When I initially bought this thing at $3 million, I said I was going to start clipping profits at $100 million. I felt that was inappropriate because of my role in the MLG community and how people perceived me in that community. So instead, I top-blasted all the way up and lost six figures on that.

I somehow played a huge role in it running to where it ran, and then I got blamed when Trump and Melania happened, everything got sucked out, and the shit went to zero because of the Adin Ross stream. So this whole “for the culture” thing—I'm done with that. I'm not making trades or investing money for the culture. It's the worst possible position you could be in.

Number 2: We've talked about this on the show, but I'm done being Captain Save-a-Hoe with celebrities and influencers. I don't care what they're doing, and I don't care what their opinion is on things. It's not my place to go and save somebody.

Who's the guy who hits up all the celebrities to try to launch for them? Sahil.

Sahil, bro. He's the demon.

He's the demon. I used to see that shit reaching out and engaging with celebrities, and I would try to get ahead of it by contacting their managers and saying, “Hey, tell him to give me a call.”

I can't tell you how many times I jumped on the phone with people from my industry—creators, influencers, or celebrities—and it never pans out well. We've talked about this on the show, too.

Number 3: I know this is the boring answer, but it's removing emotions from trading and always taking profits. I'm trying to be completely emotionally removed and always take profit. You can't time the market. You're not going to beat the market, and you shouldn't ever try to time the bottom or the top.

That's how people round-trip shit and get smoked. I've been a victim of that many times. So, yeah, I defer to you. What's the biggest piece of advice you're carrying into the next cycle in crypto?

The biggest piece of advice I would give to somebody going into their first cycle of crypto, or whatever the next cycle in crypto is, is to segment your portfolio into 2 or 3 different buckets.

One is your safer portfolio. I think that can be a combination of stocks and safer crypto assets that you're comfortable holding over a 6-month-plus or 12-month-plus time frame. Bitcoin, ETH, SOL, and the majors—HYPE, those coins—should be 60% to 70% of your portfolio. If you have a 9-to-5 and you're working on a consistent basis, whenever you put some money aside in savings and put some money aside to buy stocks, also put some money aside to buy some crypto majors. You don't have to pay that much attention to it, but it's best to accumulate when prices are down 50% to 70% or more, which is where they currently are now.

With the 30% to 40% of your portfolio, this is the degen part of your portfolio. That's where you have fun on-chain. You're buying microcaps. You're aping shit that's trending. You're doing your perp trading with leverage and all that stuff. These are positions where you have a shorter time frame. You may be holding shit for a week, or you may be holding shit for a few months, but these are positions where you're riding momentum or profiting off trends that you're not so confident are going to be around in a year, but you think you can still make money on in the short term.

There are a lot of these opportunities in crypto, especially on-chain. You do want to have a small part of your portfolio dedicated to this kind of trading because it can amplify the safer part of your portfolio. That's the main thing I would say.

I always say this, but always journal. Journal your trades and how you're thinking about the market. Even if you're just learning about the market, journal how you're learning about the market, what you're reading, what videos you're watching—all of that process. Having that on paper, even better than online, I would say, is really important because you'll see, when you're taking the trades, what your thought process was and how you were thinking about it.

Then, as the trade is happening, you'll see whether you actually followed through with that process and it worked, whether you followed through with the process and it didn't work, why it worked, why it didn't work—all these different things. It'll make you a lot better as a trader. It's actually how I got a lot better as a trader in 2020 and 2021. It's also part of how my account blew up in the first place, because people saw my process happening in real time and how I was thinking about the market. It didn't matter whether I was right or whether I was wrong; it was that I had a thesis and a thought process for what I was doing, what I was trading, and what all my invalidations were. Those are the 2 main pieces of advice I would give.

W's, W's in the chat. Great advice. That's why they pay you the big bucks, brother.

Yeah.

Yeah. Everybody's different, right? Everybody's playing to their own skill set and their own interests. I think that's also very important.

2. Cyrus NFT: the World Cup money glitch

Something I wanted to talk about on the show was a buddy of mine, Cyrus NFT. He's a guy who I've hung out with in person, around Frank and Thread Guy, et cetera. We've done some stuff together. I think we all did Leap's birthday at Nōu together. I just think he's a particularly interesting guy who specializes in what I call money glitches. He finds little money glitches online, exhausts them, and takes advantage of these random arbitrages in the most random scenarios.

You go to his Twitter and he'll give somebody a loan, for example, on a CryptoPunk. He gave somebody a $365,000 loan on this zombie. Worst-case scenario, he gets paid back 34K over 180 days. Not bad on the loan. Best-case scenario, he gets a fucking zombie punk for 300 bands. You know, it's a fucking million-dollar asset. If they default, right, it's kind of a win-win.

You just don't see people—I feel like a mistake people make in joining crypto is thinking that they're limited to having to trade meme coins in trenches and spin the slot machine, and that's the only opportunity there is.

But this guy finds opportunities all over the place.

We were originally going to get into this. He found this sponsor for the World Cup, this random shitty prediction market. We'll ask Cyrus when he comes on, because, spoiler, we're having him come on the show. This random prediction market raised, I think, $100 million specifically to sponsor the World Cup. Their platform sucks, their product sucks, so nobody fucking joined it or jumped on it. There was just too much of a barrier, like, “What the fuck is this?”

But not Cyrus. Cyrus went on and saw they were offering some cool deals for new signups and to encourage people to sign up and use their platform. He went on the website and farmed 40 free tickets to the World Cup. World Cup money glitch. He farmed 40 free tickets, went to 13 games, gave away $125,000 worth of tickets to friends, family, and random people on Twitter, sold 75 bands' worth of tickets, used 50K himself, and is in profit on the app—20 bands.

So, yeah, he found a way to farm, through the World Cup, a quarter of a million dollars. I think he's doxxing himself for the first time ever on the show on some rowdy shit. Without further ado, I'll just let him explain it to you guys. Bring Cyrus in here.

The NFT Ho.

What's up, folks?

What's good, brother? How are you?

I'm good, man. Thanks for gassing me up so much.

Yeah. Production, I can hear him twice. There's a little bit of an echo. If you guys can fix that. I don't know if you heard my introduction for you, but give it to us in your own words. Who are you? What are you doing? And let's get into this World Cup money glitch, because it's honestly insane.

Okay. Yeah, I'll keep the “who I am” brief. I bought a little bit of crypto in 2017 and kind of followed along on CT. I didn't really dive super deep until 2020, when Top Shot happened. From there, I dove into NFTs.

I quit my job as a dev. Probably the dumbest thing you could do—quit your job to do NFTs—but it worked out for me. From there, I was basically one of the highest-volume NFT traders. I was super late. I thought BAYC was the dumbest thing ever during its mint.

There's a crazy echo. I'm just going to pause you because production needs to fix it. I thought only I could hear it, but the whole chat's spamming it.

Am I good now?

Yeah, you are good now, I think.

Okay, no more echo. Good.

Yes.

Okay, sweet. But, yeah. I was like, “Man, there is an echo still there.”

There is an echo. Fuck.

Production, man. Lots of trolls on the show. They just want me to light this place on fire and blow shit up.

There is no pop-up on my screen.

See it?

Hello.

I try now. Cyrus—

I clicked it.

Ah, there we go.

There we go. Yes, yes, yes. We're good. All right, chat, ignore everything that was just said. Let's take it from the top.

Cyrus, I just did my own little introduction for you. Give it to us in your own words. Where are you from? What do you do? How the fuck did you get into this position that you're in? Because it's a very unique position. You're this weird glitch hunter in crypto who goes and finds all these weird opportunities to make money, and you're really good at it. Explain.

Okay. Yeah, I don't know if I'll call myself a glitch hunter, but I started out mostly in NFTs. I took a really small ETH balance to a big one by essentially just playing the spread on NFTs, like the biggest collections. What most people were doing during that time was chasing the new hot collection, trying to buy a bunch of it and ride it up. I was just playing this huge spread that was in NFTs, mostly because OpenSea was the only place you could trade them, and there was like a 10% spread plus a 5% royalty and fee you had to pay.

I would go into these Discord servers, buy on OpenSea at the bid, go into those Discord servers, and sell OTC—15%, 15%, 15%, 15%—a couple dozen times a day. It quickly compounded my bankroll. That's what led me to quit my job and do crypto full-time, because it really speed-ran a small balance into enough to leave my job.

Sick.

From there, I've kind of just been doing weird shit on-chain. I think the difference between what I do and what most people in crypto do is that they look for these things, find something interesting, and try to tell as many people as possible about it. They're incentivized to do that because the more people who know, the more buying pressure flows to whatever they're talking about.

What I do is try to find these small little edges where I can repeatedly make 2% to 5% over and over and over again and not tell anyone.

That’s what I mean by the glitch, by the way—the money glitch.

Yeah. I mean, it’s not really—yeah, I guess that’s a nice way to put it. But yeah, that’s basically what I do now.

So, this World Cup thing—take us from the top. How did you even—I'm curious, how do you even begin to discover opportunities like this? How does your brain work to where you consistently, in different areas and different categories, find these things, find these arbitrages? How did this one happen?

This one was really weird. I was just watching the World Cup and saw these billboards that were like Visa, Saudi Aramco, Qatar Airways—the biggest companies in the world. Clearly, these guys all pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a sponsorship. Then I saw Azuro Prediction Market, and I was like, “Is that a prediction market? I spend hours on crypto every day, and I’ve never heard of it.”

I logged on and saw that there wasn’t a lot of volume going through it. I saw the incentive program, and I was like, “I’m going to start messing around.” Then I realized that a really small amount of betting could get you high up on the leaderboard.

I spent a lot of hours on there, and eventually I found this market maker that was giving odds on Mexico to win the group at 64%, even though they’d already won the group and nobody was betting on it. I thought it was a glitch or something. I thought it was a UI thing.

There’s that word.

Yeah, I guess. Then I bought the entire market and took it to 100%. I closed my laptop, and then my friends started hitting me up like, “Yo, are you seeing this Mexico shit? You can buy at 64%.” I was like, “Yeah, I already bought all of it.”

Then they told me that the market maker was refilling that ask every 5 minutes. So I logged in, and we spent all night buying that.

What the fuck?

Yeah. I think we bought a shitload of that. Because of that, my volume went all the way up. I was number 1 on their leaderboard. I beat 50,000 accounts. I was number 1.

Then, from there, I just had a bunch of tickets in my account, and I was like, “All right, I guess they’re spending the month traveling the U.S.”

That’s fucking fire, bro. What the fuck? That’s so cool.

See, bro, people just don’t pay attention. You really just find a good spot and slam the spot. When you find a spot, you slam the spot. That’s definitely something you should know in crypto, because there are a lot of spots like that in crypto.

Trump, for example, was a spot like that. You had about an hour, to be honest, where it was like, this tweet came directly from the president on Truth Social, got posted on Twitter, and it was like, wait—this is it. The president just launched a coin. Everybody was kind of hesitating, but the people who were ready just fucking slammed it. There are a lot of spots like that in crypto, for sure.

The most interesting bar that you said, and kind of what I took away from the article that you posted on this, was that your whole method is counterproductive to talking about what you’re doing. The more people who know about what you’re doing, the less of an edge and opportunity you have, whereas it’s the exact opposite of how people are trading crypto today.

It’s buy memecoin, spam a tweet, pump the memecoin, and it’s all about attention. People are obsessed with the attention part of it and kind of ignore everything else. What are some other cool stories you have in that regard?

A lot of it was NFTs. Now I’m the biggest NFT lender by—I guess TVL is the word. I give loans on a bunch of NFTs and capture 2% to 3% a month just lending on NFTs of decent size. Nothing sexy, but it works, and there’s not much competition.

I could give a fun story on Blast. When Blast came out, they had the leaderboard going, and I was one of the guys who was pretty vocal about thinking it was a big opportunity. This was right after Pacman had done the whole thing with Blur, and anybody who bought into that leaderboard and spent time farming it made a ton of money.

His second baby, basically, was Blast, and I spent a lot of time on that. I was talking about it a lot. I was telling all my friends to get on it.

I think I actually bought some NFTs for you on there. When we first met, you were on a plane or something, and you hit me up like, “Can you buy me these Pluto Cats, bro?” or something like that. I bought them for you.

That’s so—yeah, that did happen. I forgot about that.

Long story short, I got a huge airdrop for that. I felt weird about selling because of how much I talked about it, so I bag-held. Eventually, about a year ago, when that tariff stuff was going on, I was moving the airdrop from one wallet to another, and I sent it to the liquidity pool.

So it was a $750,000 airdrop that I once had, and I sent it straight to—

No.

Yeah. That was the sickest feeling I’ve ever had in my life. But yeah—

I think people think that one’s pretty funny.

That’s fucking brutal.

That’s terrible.

That’s awful.

See, bro, trading anything for the culture is never the move. We were literally just talking about that.

That shit happened to me with Friend.tech, bro. I was literally the loudest bull on Friend.tech, number 1 on Friend.tech for the longest period of time. I was super bullish on the idea of social tokens and trading people, and giving people access to exclusive stuff. People will pay for that with people that they fuck with.

I was super bullish on this idea. So the FRIEND airdrop eventually happened. My airdrop was over $1 million at one point. I think it was $1.5 million or something like that. But I looked at it and was so bullish on the idea. I was like, “This is going infinite. I’m number 1 on the Friend platform. I’m going to keep talking about this. I think this is a great idea. I think they’re going to execute on it really well. When V2 comes out, it’s going to get even better and improve.”

That was not what happened. Friend peaked that day, or the second day that week, and it was at 2-point-something at one point. I literally sold none of it. I held it all the way to zero. Literal, literal thesis. I was so bullish on the idea—that was part of it.

One of the only times I’ve ever found a discrepancy, or an arbitrage, in markets was with Creeps. Creeps is an NFT project. Cyrus, I’m sure you’re familiar with it. They were trading below a 1 ETH floor or whatever. I bought a few of them because I liked them. I liked the community, and I liked the way they looked.

They had this mechanism where you could stake them and farm LUMI, I think, which was the token—their native token. The only way you could earn LUMI was by doing that or just buying it on the secondary market. You could capture the discrepancy between how much a Creep cost and how much LUMI you would get just by staking a Creep for a day or 2.

You’d stake a Creep for a day or 2, and it would pay for the Creep. Obviously, that’s fucking insane. I went and bought 40 of these things and started blasting it. I made the mistake you don’t make, Cyrus: I blasted it all over the place.

The floor ran to 9 ETH. I was like, “Holy shit, I found this money glitch. This is crazy. We need to go buy these.” Eventually, the floor caught up. They ran up to around 9 ETH, and I think I had a similar number—$800,000 or $900,000 worth of LUMI—just by staking Creepz because I kept buying them and staking them.

Those guys dumped Lumi for cash during all the hype and completely fucked up the market. I had to ride it to zero because I talked about it so much.

I made no money on it. I literally just rode it to zero.

It’s kind of hard to balance what you do and don’t talk about when you’re buying stuff and have some sort of a following, because there’s that moral, weird fine line: Can I sell? Can I not sell? Am I fucking people over by talking about it and then selling? That’s why—

Even take it a step further. You could go the right way and do it right and not sell, but just by talking about it, now you’re directly associated with its success or with its demise. If shit goes the wrong way, you’re fucking blamed for it, regardless of how. It’s never worth it. It’s literally never worth it.

I kind of pulled this off pretty well with Solana this past cycle. I was like, “You can have whatever percentage of your portfolio in the safe stuff, whatever percentage of your portfolio in the degen stuff. This is what I’m doing.”

I let people know ahead of time: when I’m selling, I’m going to let you know that I’m selling. I have certain targets in mind. I’m going to flip, but it’s going to be public, and I’m going to tell you.

And I did an entire thread on Solana that cycle. It was a month-to-month thing. It started at around $20 and went to $260 or whatever it was—$297. But when I sold, I let people know that I was selling. I told you guys at the bottom, I gave you the prices all the way up. I said, “I think it’s the top now; I’m selling.” I let people know, and that’s pretty transparent.

I think that’s kind of the way that you can do it with majors. With on-chain coins, it’s obviously way different. For on-chain coins, they need to go way, way higher for it to be cool for you to do anything crazy with that. But with majors, it’s a lot easier, I think.

Yeah, I think something I did that made it easier for me was the way my account got any sort of following. I wrote a thread about my entire strategy on NFTs. I had around 500 followers in 2022. I wrote a thread one day because I was like, “All right, I found something that actually works. I’m just going to write about it.” Huge mistake, because the next day everyone else was using that strategy. My margins went down 75%, but I didn’t know that. I was naive.

I wrote this thread, and I woke up with around 30,000 followers overnight. All these Discords I was going into to sell NFTs over the counter were filled with dozens of new people. That was kind of a pain in the ass, and I lost a lot of edge there. But the good thing was that everybody knew me as the guy who was buying an NFT and immediately looking to resell it.

So you can’t really get mad at me if I’m buying something and saying, “Oh, I bought—”

Infinite. You bought infinite goodwill and trust in that specific niche.

Yeah, because I was saying what I was doing. I was saying what I was doing, and people still get mad, though. You buy an NFT and sell it the same day, and people are like, “Well, fuck you. Get out of here.”

Yeah, bro. The NFT communities were die-hard. They did not like people selling at all. They did not like that shit.

It’s healthy, though. Bring that shit back. That was really the only negative part of NFTs. Everything else was “wagmi.” Everybody was awesome—sunshine and rainbows, funny little cartoons. It was kind of gay, but it was cool.

Cyrus, what’s the best investment you’ve ever made? What’s the worst investment you’ve ever made?

Best investment? It’s hard, because my kingmaker trade was that NFT strategy, where I turned a small amount of ETH into a couple thousand ETH and held the ETH all the way up. I didn’t sell enough of it above $4,000, but that was really my kingmaker. It was those small NFT trades.

Buying Hyperliquid on day 1 was a big one. Having high conviction in NFT lending also paid off. That’s tens of thousands of transactions, but that’s another thing.

Your bread and butter.

Yeah, exactly. I feel like I know what I’m good at, and I stick to that. I try not to stray away from it. I don’t really trade memes. I’m not trading perps like crazy or anything. I’ll take some swings here and there, but I’m not risking a real percentage of my book on stuff that I don’t have conviction in.

I guess you’d be the right person to ask that. We talked about this before you jumped on, but are NFTs back?

What are the statistics saying? I see you’re about to say no.

I mean, it depends what you mean by “are NFTs back?” I don’t think they’re ever going to have the volume and liquidity that they had back then. I don’t think anything’s ever going to run from $100 to $500,000 again.

I mean, it would have to be a big gaming studio that fully goes all-in on NFTs, and there would have to be a brand-new user base trading these things. Seeing how trading cards are going right now gives me some hope, but—

But it’s tough.

I don’t think the gaming studio, game, or platform necessarily has to be all-in on crypto and NFTs. I think they just have to make it available. You have to make it an available option.

If GTA 6 allows me to walk around as a fucking zombie CryptoPunk, I could definitely see shit going fucking nuts.

Oh, yeah. It could go crazier, I think.

Or somebody earns something on GTA and sells it for even a few thousand bucks. I could see that going crazy viral. “I played GTA, built this little fort or whatever, and earned this crown that I sold for $5,000.”

Polymarket bought the biggest skyscraper in Adin Ross’s server for $20 million. I could see it. I could see the headline. I could see the degen tweet right now.

Yeah, I don’t think it’s a super-high probability of happening, but if it were to happen, that would be what it looks like.

See, that’s crazy. I think it’s guaranteed. I think it’s fucking guaranteed. I don’t think it’s a matter of if. I really do, and I’m positioned accordingly.

Maybe it’s because of my history and background in gaming, but NFTs were not hard for me to wrap my head around, buy into, or take the pill on because of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins. I heard about this, took a glance at it, and it immediately clicked for me. I knew it didn’t blow my mind the way I feel like it blew a lot of other people’s minds, because I witnessed in real time, years prior, Factory New Dragon Lores being sold for $10,000 or $20,000.

There are CS:GO skins now that are worth millions of dollars, and those are skins in a video game that are limited to that platform. They have no use outside of CS:GO.

The more time people spend online, the more I think about it. I just don’t think the concept of the metaverse is wrong. I think the technology hasn’t allowed for it to be done in any sort of meaningful, sticky way that’s going to onboard as many people as Facebook or Instagram.

But when that exists—when there’s a platform where people are walking around and have a whole second life, a whole second identity, and it’s as big as fucking Facebook—I can walk around as a fucking alien CryptoPunk. It has all this crazy history and lore of being the first tradable thing online, the Picasso of the fucking internet, and there are only 9 of them. People are seeing this in real time. You know what I’m saying?

Yeah, I see what you’re saying. I just think that when you say, “Will NFTs ever be back?” I think the level they were at back then—doing hundreds of millions of dollars of volume a day, with all the shit that was going on, like ApeCoin drops where anybody who had an NFT got a quarter-million-dollar airdrop—I don’t think we’re ever getting back to that.

The first Ape I ever bought—

The first Ape I ever bought was for over half a million dollars. It was my entire portfolio, and the only reason I bought it was because it had ApeCoin in it. The craziest arb of all time was when ApeCoin came out. You could buy Apes that were already listed, and it was like buying a Ferrari for half a million dollars, opening the door, and finding a quarter-million dollars in cash sitting on the driver’s seat.

There were no bots on that in the early days. You could manually click a button on your computer and, boom, there was a quarter-million dollars. When you say NFTs are back, I don’t think anything like that will ever happen again.

I mean more so digital tradables—digital products and things like that. I hate the word NFT. I think it’s completely broken. I think it’s minus aura. It has such a negative connotation around it.

I put “NFT” at the end of my username on Twitter. That was the biggest L of my life.

There’s always time to change it, brother. There’s always time to change it.

Well, fuck, brother. Thank you for coming on. The article was brilliant and super cool. Cyrus NFT is always a good account to follow, and it’s always good chatting with you, bro. Thank you for coming on.

Yeah, you guys are killing it. Keep doing your thing.

3. Reaction + AI talk

Thank you so much, bro. Thank you, bro. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it.

Super interesting. I just felt like that was—

Super smart, bro. Yeah, he’s a sharp kid. It’s just interesting for someone’s brain to work like that. It’s such an outlying quality to have. You just see people flock to wherever, you know?

It’s that cycle of, “I watched somebody get rich on memecoins. I’m going to go try to trade memecoins,” then they get burned on memecoins, and that’s their experience in crypto. There are so many things. There’s so much.

Yeah. Making money on the internet is literally crypto. That’s something that’s never going to go away. Honestly, what’s interesting about NFTs is how complex some of the mechanisms and designs are that people are building around NFTs, like a lot of the games and shit like that.

We haven't had that much cool mechanism speculation happen. Zero, brother. There's been zero good shit.

I think there's going to be some cool shit that people build. I don't know if it's going to be coins, NFTs, or a combination, but I would bet that what's going to drive retail interest into crypto coming up this cycle is something that people can speculate on, but it's also kind of gamified in a way. It's not just pure meme and price; it's other things that you can—or other ways that you can—play this game. The financial games, I think, are one of the coolest things.

Gamify trading—we talked about it last episode. The effort to gamify trading, I think, is a super-slept-on effort. I don't think enough people are spending enough time doing it. These boutique game studios, for example, game developers—I don't know. I think there's a fucking huge opportunity there.

I think NFTs, whatever they're called—hopefully they're not still called NFTs at that point—need a major rebrand and reform. But I don't think that shit's going anywhere. It's interesting that that's his take on it, from as close up to it as he is.

It was just so crazy, bro. There were so many random NFTs that went to $100,000-plus per NFT from nothing.

I'm like, per NFT, from nothing.

There's a direct one-to-one correlation. You could say the same thing for memecoins, like last cycle versus right now. A common theme and thread has been, “Are memecoins back?” I mean, in 2024 we saw a new runner every single day—hundreds of millions of dollars every single day.

4. Chat Q&A + market check

And now it's like, yeah, I don't know. It's definitely interesting for sure. The last-cycle stuff, I think, was definitely crazy.

Kendrick Perkins is coming on in 7 minutes. I'm going to take my quarterly show piss right now. I'm going to pass it off to Z.

Yo, what's good, chat? How are we doing? What should we talk about while the man is gone? What's up?

Do I think they're going to KYC users on Hyperliquid, and do I think Lighter is going to eat their market share? I don't know enough about it, to be honest. I wish I knew. I have no idea. But I feel like if they KYC people on Hyperliquid, wouldn't Lighter have the same issue? No.

Best YouTuber for all things crypto, stocks, and majors? Trader Mayne is pretty good. I don't know if he really does a lot of stock stuff, but his trading YouTube videos are good. They'll teach you very in-depth technical-analysis stuff, and he'll go over the different crypto majors and midcaps.

As far as stocks, I like this guy, Amit, to be honest. This guy, Amit, is investing. Where is my shit? Where is it at? Yeah, this guy. I like this guy, Amit. He's really good on stock stuff. He does fundamental reviews of different stocks. He's pretty consistent with everything.

Okay, he's talking about Google, talking about AMD, talking about Trump and the Iran situation, which is crazy, by the way, that that's still going on. They've said it's over so many times, and it just keeps not being over. I don't know how long this shit is going to go on for, but markets haven't cared that much about it still being an issue.

The main thing has been oil ripping back to like $90, I want to say.

I'm back. Yo, what's good, King?

You saw TJR crash out on Twitter?

Really? On what? About what?

Just CT on his dick about something. You saw the watch thing? I don't know if he sold ANOM or what the fuck happened, but he did something to piss CT off. CT was all over him, and he went off and just started tweeting crazy shit.

This is a tweet that I just wanted to share. CT and fuck that coin. Someone's showing him Jimothy, the raccoon, and it's just—I don't know. I saw a tweet from somebody, and I just wanted to highlight it: “CT alienates the one guy positioned to bring volume to CT because of a watch raffle or he sold a coin. Something dumb.”

It's just typical. Celebrities in crypto just don't mix, man. This isn't really even a celebrity. He trades, like, you know—he's a trader. He's like, “Fuck CT and fuck that coin.”

Yeah, I mean, CT is very abrasive. If you're not used to dealing with those people in your mentions all the time, it's going to be difficult to navigate that. People say crazy shit to me all the time, but I just know it's like 4chan, bro.

You're so cool, calm, collected, poised.

Kendrick Perkins, man. I'm nervous. This is the first time I've been even slightly nervous for a guest, bro.

Yeah.

He's a legend, bro. I'm from Boston. He's a legendary guy.

What time is it? Oh, 2:35.

When's Brian? Somebody said we need a Polymarket for how many times Banks is going to say the words “production stream.”

Let's go ahead. That's a good one.

That's fucking funny.

Someone should do the counter. Someone did a goat counter, and it was one of my favorites.

That was funny as hell, bro. That shit was funny.

You want to drop chat some stemmies?

Let's see, chat. What should we ask Kendrick? Give us a good question. You're looking beautiful. Thanks, man. You're the best. Coinbase man is coming.

What's a STEMI? Z's been airdropping his Twitter community with ANOM—like, a thousand stemmies.

What's my take on Stable joining the chain war? I feel like I've seen this. Stable is one of the L1s. It's building on top of Tether, right? This is an interesting spot. I was meaning to look into this today.

Stable is kind of—Plasma. Do you know XPL, Plasma?

Absolutely not.

5. Wrap

Yeah. Plasma is an L1 that's also kind of built on top of the Tether ecosystem. Their whole thing is focusing on payments, cards, debit cards, spending, and all that stuff. Plasma and Stable are both similar L1s trying to do similar things. It seems like Stable just launched their chain.

Yeah. Oh, that's why people are talking to me about Stable. They just launched their chain.

Why is everyone doing this now?

Trading stuff.

Is it literally because of you, by the way?

I don't know. I'm like, everybody, back up. I have no idea, to be honest. The timing of the Robinhood shit was wild. That was wild. Them supporting all the Robinhood coins and shit right after I did the ANOM shit was wild to me, because before that it was like nothing happening.

I mean, I'm usually pretty good at timing the market, to be honest. I think people are kind of looking for things to go risk-on in different ways. When you have some momentum in the market, big companies and protocols try to take advantage of that by launching stuff.

Someone said, “Thoughts on Hyperliquid?” That's a good question.

Yeah, Hyperliquid's been underperforming a lot the past couple of weeks. I'm not exactly sure what's driving it. Maybe Lighter, but I don't really think it's Lighter. I think it's more so that people are up a good chunk on Hyperliquid. It's been one of the only coins that's outperformed in crypto this year. It hit close to $80 from a bottom at like $20, so people are in profit.

I have seen some speculation around the policy stuff with the U.S. I don't know how true it is. I have no information on that, but I do know that's a concern for people—if they're going to have to deal with issues surrounding the KYC stuff. Even if people are speculating or waiting on clarity for what that looks like, that could be a reason.

More so, I think it's just profit-taking in the market. I don't think it's anything crazy. It hasn't underperformed a ton. It's still kind of in the same range, like in the $50-to-$75 range. It's not like it's underperforming a lot.

Solana has actually been outperforming Hyperliquid really well recently. I think there's a kind of repositioning where everybody was all-in on Hyperliquid because it was the only thing going up, and people are kind of diversifying.

I mean, Hyperliquid briefly flipped Solana.

Price. Yeah, price action.

Yeah.

Wow. Is he ever wrong, chat?

I'm wrong all the time, man. I'm wrong all the time. I just try to be right more than I'm wrong.

You're definitely right more than you're wrong. We're just waiting for the man, the myth, the legend, Kendrick Perkins. I think he's getting situated in the green room. Super excited and grateful to have him on.

6. Kendrick Perkins interview

Let's bring him in. Wow, KP, I gotta be honest with you, brother. I'm nervous. I'm a [__] kid, an Irish kid from Boston. I grew up in Lawrence, Mass. It's really just a crazy, surreal experience for me right now, talking to you. Welcome, brother. Welcome to the show.

Bro, nervous for what? For what? Like, for what? I'm just— all I did was play basketball for a living. All I did was win a 2008 championship down there in the [__] Bean Town. That's all I did. Tell it, baby.

And right now, I'm in an Airbnb in Orlando. By the way, do y'all have kids?

Yeah.

I was about to say, don't have none, because they take up your whole damn life.

Like right now, I'm in Orlando at a basketball tournament. I was just in a gym with 40 courts. I had to take a thousand pictures. It was just crazy. But, you know, I got to see some good basketball. So, again, it is what it is. What's up, fellas?

Chilling.

What's good, man? Glad to have you on, bro. Appreciate you taking the time. This is sick.

Man, I appreciate y'all having me. Seriously, man. Y'all keep up the great work. You know what I mean? Keep doing what y'all doing, man.

Means a lot, man. I mean, we see a lot of this brain-rot [__] on TikTok and stuff today. I think the internet's oversaturated when it comes to these entertainment-style streams and content, and just more low-vibrational stuff. I feel like most young men today are in a pretty bad spot, and we just encourage people on the show to invest in themselves.

Obviously, AI is emerging at a fucking crazy rate. I feel like it's really important for young men today to be literate in AI, make as much money as they possibly can, and understand the attention economy. That's really more or less what we preach on the show. We talk about markets, we talk about business, and it's really cool having you here.

One of the biggest markets this week is LeBron and his next team. Obviously, you being on the show, I wanted to get your opinion on that and what you're thinking about.

Well, let me say this: I don't think we'll be getting any news anytime this weekend. So I think everybody's got to keep a cool head and focus on the WNBA All-Star Game, All-Star Weekend. I think that's what we need to focus on. I don't think we'll be getting any news here this weekend.

I know everybody's waking up every day asking, “What's going to happen with Bron? Is the decision going to happen today?” I don't believe it's happening this weekend.

But I will say this: before I give my thoughts on where I feel—or where I believe—Bron should go, I think he should take all the time in the world that he needs, right? We're talking about a guy that, in a lot of people's eyes, is the GOAT, okay? The greatest basketball player to ever touch the damn basketball.

I'm a bit biased in this case because I actually grew up with Bron. I played against him in AAU and played with him in the McDonald's All-American Game together.

Wow.

We were drafted in the same draft class, and here I am in my second chapter of my life, and he's still going. As a guy that grew up watching him, he's still doing it at this level. For him to be at this point of his career, where he's still the most powerful basketball player on this planet, think about all the things that have transpired.

Giannis Antetokounmpo was traded. Kawhi Leonard is in the process of being traded, and yet we're still here today. LeBron James is holding up the NBA. They can't even release the schedule right now because of LeBron James. Think about that for a second. They can't even schedule the schedule because they're waiting on LeBron James. You talk about powerful.

Infinite leverage is crazy.

I've been all over the place with this. At one moment, I felt like he should have gone to Philly. Another moment, I felt like he should have gone to Minnesota. The next 2 days, maybe it was Golden State or Cleveland.

But what I'm doing is the same thing Bron is probably doing right now. That's how hard this decision is for him. I feel like there have been a time or a few times where he's like, “You know what? We're going to go here.” And then all of a sudden, 2 or 3 hours later, he's like, “Let me think about it again,” and gets back to square 1.

As I think through this, I feel like Bron should go to Miami, man. I really do. I feel like it's the best destination for him right now.

Now, it's not the best shot for him to win a championship, but I think the best chance for him to have happiness and compete for a title is down there with Giannis, Pat Riley, Erik Spoelstra, and Bam Adebayo, wiggling his toes in the sand on South Beach.

Facts.

Real talk. I just do. You put Bron in that mix, they become instant title contenders.

Right now, they're knocking at the door.

But what Miami is missing is a facilitator. What happened was, it was a blessing in disguise last season, last postseason, when Luka and Austin Reaves were both out. All of a sudden, LeBron had to be that number 1 option in the playoffs. Then all of a sudden, he kicked a hole in the Rockets' ass and led the charge.

That gave him life again, bro. That literally gave him life again, to let him know, “No, I still could be that dude when it comes to being the primary ball handler.”

So if I had to give advice to LeBron James today—and I know I've been changing, because all of these situations for him are eye candy—but if you want to go from being 8 years in L.A., with sunny weather, great weather, and no real winter, to having that same type of lifestyle, Miami is the best place for him.

Man, I'm fucking sold. Say less. Make the trade. We're riding, baby. We're riding, baby.

Yeah, that makes sense. Did you see—I saw something on Twitter about Miami leaking on YouTube or something. I don't know if that was some scoop shit. I don't know how real that shit was either. I saw the clip.

Apparently, they accidentally published a YouTube video that announced him.

I mean, fuck it. So what? If I was saying this the other day on television, if I was on a squad or if I was part of an organization and I was recruiting LeBron, I'm jumping off the porch. I'm doing everything in my power to make sure that I try to get LeBron. I don't give a damn what it is. I'm getting uncomfortable.

That shit in this sport is a movie every single day.

The way this man is—his routine, his scheduling, the way things are planned out. I've watched this man wake up at 6:00 in the morning, work out at home, head out to do an appearance, make it to practice for 11:00, stay after practice, get extra shots up, go do another commercial, go back to get treatment, go home, have family time, have dinner, and watch a few games.

I've watched this man get treatment in 5-star restaurants, where he had ice bags and stim units and stuff like that. Everything he does is planned out. His weeks are planned out. His days are planned out. His months are planned out. He moves like the president.

When you talk about being in his presence, when you talk about learning the game, do you know how much guys like Giannis, Jaylen Brown, Bam, Tyrese Maxey, and those guys could learn just from being around LeBron James? And it's not just about basketball. It's about life.

It's a great point.

Real talk, bro. You gotta think like this: This is why I call LeBron James the GOAT. I know I'm going off subject, but it's all going to tie into one.

The reason that I call him the GOAT is because, one, I witnessed his journey, but two, there's no other player in sports that had the amount of pressure LeBron James had. Not one. You can't name me another player in the history of sports that had the pressure LeBron James had.

Being on the cover of Sports Illustrated, labeled “The Chosen One,” being anointed King James, coming into the league where your teammates were praying on your downfall—that's crazy. For you to exceed expectations, you can't tell me [__]. I keep Jordans on my feet. I'm a Michael Jeffrey Jordan fan. But the bias in me, watching his journey and being part of his journey, no one would ever top LeBron when it comes to—

That's actually an argument that I don't see enough people making or talking about enough. And it's very valid. It's the pressure on that guy coming into the league at 17 years old, 18 years old.

Yeah, it’s a fresh take.

I think, honestly, that’s the best argument I’ve ever heard in the conversation between him and Michael Jordan being the GOAT. I kind of dismissed the conversation. I’m a casual; obviously, my opinion doesn’t really mean anything. The way I was thinking about his next team—and again, this is just the average layman looking at it through my lens—I’m thinking, what’s his incentive here? It has to be to go get a ring.

That’s initially where my head went as far as his next team. But then I heard you talk about feet in the sand, family, et cetera. What do you think is his priority in choosing this next team? Is it winning? Is it legacy? Is it family? Is it business? Like you said, this guy has fucking infinite leverage. I think he could just go ask for a fucking piece of the NBA at this point to stay in the league for the next 10 years. You know what I’m saying? Or he could get a bag and join us in the media space and in this entire basketball space right now.

That just goes to show you he loved the game of basketball. What people don’t understand is that when basketball has been your entire life, it’s so hard to leave it behind. I was one of those ones where I didn’t retire from the NBA on my own terms. I was forced into retirement, meaning that damn phone stopped ringing. Within a 2-year span, I was in a depression.

Yeah, that’s right.

Because from the age of 11 on up, all I knew was basketball, man. All I knew was AAU tournaments. All I knew was being in the gym working out. Basketball was my life. I never thought in a million years that I could be able to live without basketball.

When you see so many guys right now—and you watch guys and you’re like, “Man, he’s supposed to be in the league”—and you watch these guys that are still trying to get in the league, you watch these veterans who just won’t give it up and go into retirement, it’s because it’s all that we know. When you think about LeBron, yes, he wants happiness. Yes, he wants to be able to contend. The thing that should be highlighted the most is his love for the game of basketball.

And is that key? Is that the X factor? Not even just in sports—basketball. Tom Brady is another clear example of what we’re talking about here. Is that the defining X factor to take a person to that GOAT status, just loving what you do?

Yes. Because once LeBron James announced and said, “It’s not about the money,” nothing’s holding him to the game of basketball but love.

Yeah.

He’s not trying to chase Michael Jordan, because if he was—and if he was trying to go for that fifth ring that fucking badly—he would’ve just gone to the San Antonio Spurs and teamed up with Wemby, right? What it goes to show you is that, yes, he’s like, “I still can play at an elite level. I’m still today a top-10 player in the NBA.” Yes, I want happiness. I want to be able to play golf. I want a lot of family time, but also, this is the game that I love.

A lot of people—I was having this conversation with a group of my friends, and we were talking about athletes, because mental health is a big thing in the world today. What’s the separation between mental health and adversity? I said, “We walk a fine line. Adversity is just when you hit some obstacles in life and you’ve got to find your way through it. Mental health is a different space.” But I don’t even want to dive into that. My point was, you find a lot of athletes, especially basketball players, find that safe place, right?

For a lot of basketball players, that safe place is not their mother, not their father, not Granny, not Papa, not Uncle Skip, not Auntie Kimmy—not any of that. Their safe place and their sanctuary are actually those 2½ to 3 hours that they’re on the basketball floor.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? That is our sanctuary.

When LeBron James is making this decision, and we’re talking about him going into his final years before he walks away from the game of basketball, a lot of people are getting pissed off and frustrated. But he has earned the fucking right to take his time. As students and fans of the game, we need to grant him that and give him that grace—to let him go through whatever processes he’s going through to determine where he’s going to go, and give him the benefit of the doubt that when he’s ready to let us know where he’s going, we embrace it with open arms.

Amen. Great fresh takes. Thank you.

I’m just keeping it real, man. A lot of people just don’t understand. I know we’re in that world, because I do it. We have our hot takes. We have our opinions.

And we can, but when you really dive into the realness of it and go into the whole basketball space, it gets real. It gets deep.

Yeah, and you spoke a little bit about how you had a little bit of a depression after you left the league, but you found success and found happiness in other areas. You’ve done great and done well. Could you speak a little bit about how that transition has been for you, doing other business things, and how that’s differentiated from basketball?

Man, you know what? It’s crazy, because me being in this media space right now, this wasn’t planned. I didn’t plan this when I was playing the game of basketball. When I was playing, I didn’t say, “Hey, you know what? I’m going to be in the media.” No. What I had plans on doing was getting into coaching, right?

I wanted to be one of the next big men that would be a head coach in the NBA, because I feel like big men don’t get enough credit for their IQ of the game. If you look at head coaches around the league, all of them are either point guards or shooting guards. J-Kidd, Ty Lue—the list goes on.

One day I started on X, when it was Twitter at the time, and I was tweeting out during the postseason. I remember it to this day. I was watching the Celtics game during the playoffs, and Marcus Smart had left the strong-side corner on a drive. He had helped off the strong-side corner, and the opposing team drove, kicked the ball, and knocked down the 3. I tweeted out, and I was like, “Come on, Marcus. You know better. You know you’re not supposed to leave strong-side corner.” All of a sudden, bro, I started getting direct messages from networks. Seriously.

Fox reached out, and they were like, “Hey, Perk, would you be interested in coming on Skip and Shannon: Undisputed in the next week or so?” I was like, “Yeah, fuck it.” I didn’t know. I was like, “All right, cool.” They were like, “Yeah, we’ll fly you out, man. Stay out here 3 or 4 days, do the shows.” “All right, cool.”

So I get to that point, I go out there, and I do Skip and Shannon: Undisputed. I do The Herd with Colin Cowherd. I do, at the time, Speak for Yourself with Marcellus Wiley and Jason Whitlock. I did all their shows for a 3-day span. Then all of a sudden, I get a call back from them, and they were like, “Hey, we want you for the remainder of the playoffs.” I’m like, “Me?” I’m a country boy from Beaumont, Texas, who speaks broken English. So I’m like, “All right, cool.”

To make a long story short, I end up doing that ESPN call. They were like, “Hey, you want to come on air and do the car wash?” The car wash is when you go on and start at 7 in the morning. You do SportsCenter. They call it the car wash because they’re going to put you through the car wash to see if you pass the test.

I remember I was on air with Greeny and Seth Greenberg, and we were talking about Kawhi Leonard when he was in Toronto. I came in fucking spicy. I was like, “Man, people may think I’m tripping, but Kawhi Leonard’s game mimics Michael Jordan.” That shit went viral.

See, the hooks.

Yeah, bro. So it goes viral, right? All of a sudden, I’m like, “Oh, shit.” At that time, I’m already a fan of Kawhi. They’re doing well. I’m just about to ride this whole Kawhi train.

At that time, I’m doing Fox and ESPN. I’m the only person—check this out—I’m the only person ever in the history of sports media to do First Take and Undisputed on the same day. After I did that, First Take called me and was like, “Oh, no, you can shut that shit down. We ain’t doing that, dog.”

But I rode that Kawhi Leonard train. They ended up going on and winning the NBA championship and stuff like that, man. After that, it was like no looking back. Once I got in this space and found my niche, all of a sudden I started to get a fan base. People started to gravitate toward me. Now, you still got some haters out there.

You still got trolls, but whatever, right? And, man, no lie, when I saw that I was taking off in this space, the first thing that came to my mind was, “You know what? In this media space, I’m not having any more regrets.” Meaning that in my basketball space, although I played 14 years, won an NBA championship, and went to the Finals 5 times, I still have regrets. I have regrets that I should have done more as far as working on my game.

When this chapter in media opened up for me, I was like, “I’m leaving nothing on the table.” When I leave this media game, when it’s all said and done, I want to be known as one of the best TV personalities, analysts, basketball analysts, and sports analysts to ever do it. That’s why a lot of people like to stay in their comfort zone. I get uncomfortable.

I’m transitioning. Yeah, you got to. I feel like a big part of why you had this newfound gratitude for it is because you lost something. You had to face that adversity because you had this rock bottom.

It gives you a fresh perspective. You really see things very clearly from below, and I just feel like it’s interesting how life works. I’m sure you had that moment, too, where all this is happening. Like you said, people are gravitating toward you, all these networks are reaching out, and you’re finding this new stride and kind of reinventing yourself.

The thought probably crossed your mind: “Thank God. I can’t believe I was tripping about that other thing,” because it led you here. There are so many examples of that. I feel like that’s where God lives—in that detail, in that perspective of always just feeling like, like you said, no regrets. I’m on my path, and I’m just going to cruise through life with that attitude.

You have to lose shit to really appreciate it.

We talked about this a lot. It’s very true. For sure, I think it’s what makes or breaks winners and losers. It’s the only way to really explain how people are born into nepotism with billions of dollars and wind up miserable and hate their lives, and vice versa, where people grow up in poverty and wind up founding billion-dollar businesses and become these great people who change the world.

Their approach to life is a little bit different—just accepting the bad things that happen in your life and almost being grateful for that shit because it leads you inevitably to a new all-time high. So it’s really cool and frustrating to hear you speak on that. It’s fucking awesome, bro.

Bro, real talk, let me tell y’all something: you don’t learn shit through life by winning. You learn through life by failure. That’s what you learn, because that’s what you call growth.

Yeah, that’s very true. Winning too fast can actually hinder your ability to learn a lesson. Winning too fast will fuck you up badly.

You get this ego back. You say that all the time.

Oh, for real.

Yep. And when you set your goals high, remember, when you’re trying to reach that big goal, you’re going to achieve smaller goals getting to that big goal. You know what I’m saying?

With me, my transition right now in this media space is that basketball season is over, but it doesn’t stop for me because I want to be that one athlete—I want to be versatile. I want to talk NFL.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? I’m jumping off the porch. I’m talking NFL this season. I don’t like people who stay in a safe place. I like people who get uncomfortable and people who are risk-takers.

I feel you. That’s what this media stuff is for me, too. I’m a trader and a DeFi engineer by trade. I studied computer science at Georgia Tech. The media shit kind of just happened because, as I was sharing all my trades and sharing my thoughts publicly, I got a lot of followers, and people were like, “Yo, we want to hear more from you. We need you to talk and speak on whatever your theses are on the market and all that.”

I definitely feel you. It’s been very uncomfortable for me, and I feel like I’m getting better at it now. I feel like it’s having a positive impact on my community and other people, so that’s why I stick to it and stay with it.

Do you have any advice for athletes, especially younger athletes, who, once they make their money in the league or whichever league they play in, want to know how to go about keeping it? How do you think about investing your capital once you’ve made money? Do you have any advice for athletes in that sense?

The first thing I would say to all the athletes is, make sure you watch your money. Don’t leave it up to others to watch your money. You don’t need financial advisors and all that shit to pay your bills. Don’t get that lazy. I was one of those guys, right? When you’re making $500,000 or $600,000 a month, it’s easy for somebody who has authority over your money to slide $15,000 here, $10,000 there. You don’t see that shit missing.

Damn.

One person I used to always watch was Russell Westbrook when I was with Oklahoma City. I used to walk into the practice facility, and Russ would be at breakfast with his stack of pancakes and bacon—extra bacon. That’s what he loved to eat. You better know that every 1st of the month, Russell Westbrook had his checkbook out, with envelopes, paying and writing his own bills.

We thought it was old school. People would laugh, but you think back on it, and no, that shit was him watching his money. That’s the first thing I would tell athletes: “Hey, man, you don’t need anybody to watch over your bank account unless that’s your significant other or your wife. You don’t need anybody on your bank account.”

That would be my first advice to people. My next advice is, before you invest, before you do something, don’t just take somebody’s word of mouth. Go out there and actually do your research. Do your homework. Don’t send it to somebody to do it for you. Actually do it, and ask them to show you proof that what they’re doing in the investment space is actually working.

The one thing that we athletes get all the time when you make it to the highest level is everybody’s fucking ideas. Everybody comes to you with their dreams, goals, and ideas. “Hey, man, I’ve been thinking about this. This will make us a whole lot of money.” “Oh, yeah? Have you done it yet?” You get that so much, bro. Seriously, y’all, you get that so much.

Mhm.

The next thing is, it’s so easy now to do your own research. As an athlete, my biggest thing that I didn’t do while I was playing, but that I do now since I’m in a different space, is I don’t take networking for granted.

If somebody asks me today, “Perk, I got $100 million for you, or you could take these 10 relationships that are worth about $60 billion,” give me those 10 relationships.

Because they compound. Give me those 10 relationships. Give me those 10 relationships because eventually I’m going to get to where I’m trying to go—where I want to go anyway—with those relationships.

Then there’s this quick hit with money and not knowing what to do with it. These relationships could go generations. I could pass these relationships on to my kids and my grandbabies all down the line. You know what I’m saying?

I think a lot of times we don’t do enough networking. People used to come up to me, saying, “Big Perk, what’s happening, man? I’m such-and-such. How you doing, Kendrick? I’m such-and-such. Here’s my business card.” While I was playing, I used to take that shit and throw it away. Now I’m keeping that. They may hear from me that same day or 2 days from now: “Hey, what was that you were talking about? If it interests me, what was that you were talking about?” I want to know.

It never hurts to be nice, too. I’m sure you have tons of examples of this, but coming up and living in L.A. for over a decade in this weird, strange media and content world, I have so many examples in my life where people approached me for whatever reason and wanted to network with me or establish some sort of connection with me. Then, down the line, at some point, they become this big thing or ultra-successful or whatever, and it’s like, “Oh, shit. I’m glad I was nice to that guy. I’m glad I fucking knew that guy.”

I’m sure especially in the world of sports, basketball media, and traditional media—

Sure, shit like that happens all the time, too.

But that’s why you always have to treat the janitor like you would treat the principal.

Every time. You know what I mean? The one thing I hate—real talk—I hate a Hollywood-ass athlete. For example, I’m here in Orlando right now with my sons and my organization at the PUMA tournament.

Before I walk into the gym, I train my mind and have the awareness to know that, guess what? I’m probably about to get asked to take pictures.

This is what the fuck I signed up for. When I signed up to be an NBA player, it was for the fortune and the fame. What comes with the fame is people wanting to get a picture or autograph, or whatever the case may be. Guess what? You should be honored if somebody wants to take a picture with your ass.

Yeah.

That’s how I feel.

These are the people who ultimately pay your bills at the end of the day.

I’m infinitely more grateful and enjoy the interaction between myself and a fan asking for a picture or wanting to have a short, casual conversation, as opposed to somebody trying to sell me on some shit like, “Yo, man, I had this opportunity like that, bro.” Fuck those conversations. And yeah, I can’t stand that shit. Like, “Oh, are you that one guy here? Look at my fucking new app.” Yeah, kick rocks, brother.

But somebody who’s genuinely like, “Holy shit, I’ve been watching you for 10 years. You changed my life. You’re the GOAT.” Like, fuck yeah. Thank you. God bless you. You changed my fucking life.

Yeah, you have to have that attitude.

God will take it from you if you don’t, bro. It’s real shit.

Real quick, too. Yeah, so we’ve gotten to learn and kind of speak to Kendrick Perkins—the basketball player, the media personality, the businessman. What’s your best investment ever? We ask every guest these questions. What’s the best investment you’ve ever made in your life?

The best investment that I ever made was investing in real estate. It was $250,000 back in 2011.

Right after the collapse. Right after you won that ring.

$250,000. I invested it with a group down in Miami. I don’t know if you’re familiar with E11EVEN, but it’s a big—okay, so E11EVEN and everything around that area. I actually invested in Club 11 to help build that up and everything that’s around it.

Actually, in E11EVEN? You invested in E11EVEN?

Yeah, I was a quiet owner in E11EVEN.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, you and—

Yep. And I got bought out 3 years ago. That $250,000 bought me out for like $2 million.

Yeah, I was about to say, that was a lick.

Yep, it was a lick. And I had to wait.

That’s fun, too. This finance shit can get boring sometimes, but that’s cool as fuck.

That was the biggest risk that I’ve ever taken, you know what I’m saying? So now, obviously, I’m looking for more. My wife is heavy in real estate, so obviously we’re doing more investment properties. Right now, we’re looking to start our first veteran home. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with that market, but there’s a need for people who served our country. So that’s number 1.

Mhm.

But number 2, you get a veteran home that has 4 or 5 bedrooms, and you’re able to put 6 beds in there. Each month, the government is probably paying you anywhere from $2,500 to $4,000 a month per bed. Now, you have to meet certain requirements in that process, but a lot of people don’t know that it’s an untapped market.

It’s hard to actually get those contracts—make no mistake about it. At that point, you’ve got to know some people to be able to get those contracts. But if you’re able to look into it, get blessed with a contract, and have a property that’s not your homestead, you can go in there, make sure everything’s right, make sure everything’s running, and fix certain things you have to meet. That’s residual income every fucking month. It’s not like you have to knock on somebody’s door and chase somebody down about rent money. You know what I mean? This is not one of those. On top of that, you’re actually helping out the people who served our country.

Amen. Win-win, baby. That sounds like a great spot. I’ve never thought about that. That’s a great spot.

Look into it. Like I tell a lot of people now, it’s like, “Yo, Perk, I’m going to get into these rent houses.” I’m like, “Do I really have time—”

To be fucking chasing somebody every month? You’ve got to hire somebody about my rent money?

Yeah, bro. And then, even past that, the whole eviction time and the process of that is a headache. Or do you want to open up, get you a property, and get you some guaranteed money while helping somebody? That’s how you do it.

Amen. How about the other side of the coin? Worst investment, dumbest place you ever spent money?

Oh, the strip club.

So it’s the same shit? Strip club?

It’s the same answer. Yeah, bro. It’s the real answer. People give James Harden a lot of heat in Houston because he had a jersey retired—or had a jersey retired—in this club called Dreams. But guess whose jersey was right on top of his at the time? Mine.

And look, seriously, it was the club after the club, and the vibe in there was just great. It wasn’t about the dancers because, to be honest, me and my wife used to just go. We used to be like, “Oh, 3:00, we’re at Dreams.” We ordered our wings, and it was just the after-hours spot. It was after the club. So that was my worst investment. I can’t even tell you the dollars I threw in that shit.

That’s fucking funny, bro. It’s so funny how you didn’t even hesitate and how the answer is, in a weird way, the same for the best.

Yeah. Because as you get older and you think about that shit, you be like, “What the hell was I thinking?”

So silly, bro. So silly.

It’s just one of those things that kind of comes full circle back to: you’ve got to hit rock bottom, you’ve got to learn lessons the tough way, and you’ve got to touch the stove yourself to really feel how hot it is. But we’re told our whole lives, “Hey, dude, what you’re doing is fucking stupid,” and you just don’t listen to it. Then, you know, hindsight’s always 20/20. You look back and you’re like, “Man, that was fucking stupid.”

It’s crazy about every human being. It doesn’t matter how much information is available. Obviously, AI—how do you feel about AI? Do you use AI on a day-to-day basis? How do you feel about the tech?

I don’t use it on a day-to-day basis, but I do use it. It’s so helpful. Anything you need to know is right in front of you.

It’s crazy. It’s crazy. It’s crazy where the world is today. That’s the thing—it’s crazy. But we’ve got to adjust. Actually, last episode we had ChatGPT, the new ChatGPT voice back-and-forth response. We were talking to ChatGPT, asking it questions about some stocks and crypto.

How was it?

It was cool, and we were surprised at how quick it was.

Too good, bro. It’s like intonation—she’s got a little personality. It was crazy, bro.

All this shit is crazy, and all of it is scary. So, behind the scenes, I’m a big animal guy. I’m an animal lover. I went to the zoo in San Antonio—shout-out to the San Antonio Zoo. They lost a bet with me publicly during the NBA Finals, so they took us to the zoo, and I spent like 2 or 3 hours there.

I was behind the scenes. I made a friend—a giraffe named Waffle. I fed her for hours. I’m one of those guys. But I was bringing it up because nowadays, even on your phone, if you look at one thing, it starts showing you more of it. I was on Instagram and hit a video where, in Florida, they found an alligator climbing a fence. Every post—everything I looked at after that—was about a damn alligator. I was like, “What the fuck?” But I realized that’s what it is.

Chat’s saying, “Ticker Waffle shilling Jimothy.” It’s so funny.

Hey, yeah, shout-out to Waffle, man. Waffle was cool. Waffle came up to me, you know what I’m saying? And I learned something new. Giraffes have this long-ass black tongue, and you feed them carrots and shit. You can’t really get too close—they don’t like to be touched—and then they just stick their tongue out as long as they can, just wrap it around and shit. She just stood there.

Sounds like this girl I went to dinner with last time. I mean, hey, look, it felt like me and Waffle had a connection.

You know what I'm saying? [laughter]

Listen, Perk, on that note, like I said, we speak to the youth. We try our best to speak to young men and encourage them to invest in themselves. Is there anything you want to say to the chat and the audience? It's been fucking awesome having you on. Is there anything you want to leave the audience with?

Oh, man, listen. My biggest advice to youngsters—and I tell my kids this—is that there are 2 things. One, whatever you put into something is what you're going to get out of it. If your ass isn't putting anything into what you're trying to achieve in life, don't expect to get shit from it or expect to get more than what you're putting into it.

Secondly, this goes for everybody. I tell my kids this, and I tell the players on my team this. I actually got this advice from my high school coach, Andre Bouty. When I used to have to travel and play AAU basketball, I was getting sent off with my AAU coach and the director because my grandparents, who raised me, couldn't afford to go. My high school coach used to always say before I left to go on these AAU trips, “Hey, every time before you step on that floor, always remember: You never know who's watching.”

And I take that with me in life. [clears throat] So when you step outside, when you go to these meetings, when you're walking into the grocery store, when you're walking into work, when you're walking into studios, when you're walking into galas—whatever you call them—when you're walking into these places, always remember: You never know who's watching you.

When I say that, it's because you should always be on your P's and Q's. Always leave an area, always leave somewhere, where somebody says, “You know what? Big Perk is a real good dude. I like that, man. I like the way he conducts himself. I like everything about him.” That's what I tell my kids.

Everywhere y'all go, when I see people and they say, “Man, I met your kids. They were some of the best young men I ever came across,” I'm like, “I guess they're hearing the message.” But that would be my advice to the world, to anybody out there who's listening: Everywhere you go, remember, you never know who's watching.

Leave it better than you found it. Amen.

Yeah.

Listen, listen, listen. Chat, chat. Let's get some W Perks in the chat.

Little stimmy, little—

Appreciate it for Perk.

Hey, anytime y'all want me on, let me know. Let me know. Appreciate y'all. Y'all keep up the great work.

We'll definitely have you back. We need to follow up on Waffle. We need updates.

All right.

Love, bro. Thank you so much. Special connection. All right.

Thank you, bro. Peace.

Listen, W Perks in the chat. Let's pick somebody from chat.

W.

Give somebody a little stimmy before Brian. Dude, he's the GOAT.

He's so cool.

Yeah, Perk, baby. Wow. Boston. Boston.

A lot of wisdom, bro. A lot of wisdom.

He's lived a fucking crazy life, bro. You can't go through life and do what he's done and not have the wisdom.

Yeah, it's true.

Wuaza, $1,000 to you. You're out of Kick chat. You're in Ansem's chat for the W Perk comment. $1,000 to you. You were talking the entire time, and we appreciate you and the support.

7. Banks banned from Uber + bar hack

Z, you want to give them some more love in the next couple of minutes while I go take my third piss of the podcast? Talk to chat. Give them a little something—some stimmy.

Yo, what's good, chat? How was that? How was Perk? I thought that was fucking fire. That was fire. Big Perk on Ansem's stream. I know, right? I should maybe figure out how to do that.

Somebody said, “Waffle.” Yeah, it's fucking funny. Bam Out of the Bayou—yeah, he was awesome. “How do we connect?” Actually, I'm not sure. Gotta give a shout-out to Banks in production. I don't know. It wasn't me. It wasn't me. But yeah, he was solid.

Psalm 25—I like this name. We're going to send you some bread, bro. Damn, Out of the Bayou. Where the fuck is my chat at? Somebody said, “Fucking ripping right now.” What's ripping right now? I'm not even looking. Let me check. Let me check.

Oh, yeah, Jimothy is low-key—well, there are a few coins moving right now, to be honest. “What if I 1v1 Banks in basketball?” I think I'll beat him, bro. Let's ask him when he gets back. I think I'll beat him today.

“I'm looking beautiful.” Thanks, man. It's the lighting. Shout-out the lighting. [laughter] I ain't doing anything different today, I'll tell you that.

Rico is here, $200. What's good, Rico? Chat, chat. “Who's taller?” I'm taller by about an inch—barely, though.

I come back to this shit. I come back to that shit.

Bro, they ask me, they're like, “What if you guys play one-on-one in basketball? Who would win?” And then they're like, “Who's taller?”

I honestly haven't been hooping recently, but I could hoop a little bit. I could hoop a little bit.

I've seen you shoot. You definitely can shoot, for sure.

Yeah. I'm 6'5". You're 6'6". It's all right. I'm going to invest in a peptide startup and figure out how to grow 2 inches.

Hit the extra inch and a half. [laughter]

It's going to be a fucking double dip, too, because that shit's going to fucking run crazy, and we're going to exit at $100 billion. I'm going to fucking flip you there, too. [laughter]

No, listen, bro. Listen, listen. Honestly, the only thing I could think about—I was seeing people in the chat saying he was blowing bubbles when he was talking about LeBron, and I was just like, “Man, is this what I sound like when I'm talking about Z?” [laughter]

I swear, Kendrick Perkins to LeBron James is what I am to you. I saw the chat, too. Call you Kobe and me Pau Gasol.

I did see that. That shit was funny.

That's hilarious.

That shit was fucking funny. Oh, shit.

Somebody said, “Bro was trick-shotting at 6'5".” That's crazy. [laughter] That's fucking funny.

It is funny.

Oh.

But yeah, listen, everybody's obviously super stoked about Brian coming on. I don't know what the status is, but we have him planned and slotted for 3:30.

Someone says, “Love how Banks always says he's the GOAT after every single guest.” [laughter]

No, but it's true, though. We've only really had GOATs on, to be honest. We've had a lot of GOATs on.

True. The whole point of the show.

Yeah. It's fucking fire. Someone said, “What's the next segment?” The next segment is the Brian Armstrong interview. Someone says, “Brian's dog is massive.”

Is that true?

His what?

Dog.

Yeah. Nerd.

Does he have a— [laughter] I don't think that's a dick joke. I think that's just, like—

I have a Great Dane. I have a huge dog as well.

I have a dog.

Banks, how was your piss? There's this small little subculture building of people who think I do drugs when I go to the bathroom. I don't know why the internet's so obsessed with me being a drug addict, but I've been sober for 3½ years.

Give me that. Give me that, at least. Please.

Yeah, give me my biggest win. Let me hold that one.

Please. Please, bro. Don't take that from me.

Someone said, “Did you sit or stand?” Ban that kid. [laughter] My favorite part of the show is hearing Michael Cat laughing in the background. [laughter]

I love it.

Michael Cat is number 1. Number 1 on the show.

The best. The best. W Society, appreciate you, bro.

Man, big shout-out to you for being sober, Ray. XX Soul getting a little $1,000 stimmy. Great comment. Great comment.

I think being sober is such a fucking cheat code. It really is.

Yeah. I'm on, like—I think I'm on 8 months or something.

So sick, by the way. Casually, quietly. How have you seen it affect your life, in all seriousness? Do you think it's overrated or underrated?

I mean, I'm definitely a lot more lucid, bro, just in my thinking and how I work. I definitely am a lot more clear. But it's been so long. I was going so hard for such a long period of time that I feel like it was kind of time anyway. But yeah, I spend my time a lot better.

Cheat code, I'm telling you. Listen, I can't even begin to speak to somebody who complains about their circumstances in life—being behind, not making enough money, being sad, being depressed—and they're out 3 or 4 times a week getting fucking wasted.

Yeah, it's true.

You have to at least start with what you can control.

Yeah, that's true.

Somebody asked, “Did being fucked up affect your trading?” It definitely can. I've definitely had that happen.

Actually, this is true. My worst trade of all time was this Luna short that I took in late 2021. I had already sold most of everything except for DeFi Kingdoms—DFK—and JEWEL.

I just went on UpOnly with Cobie because he asked me to come on, and then Luna is ripping hard. It’s ripping hard as fuck. I’m like, “Bro, the entire market is topped. I don’t think anything else is going to go higher. I’m going to take this short.” I shorted it while I was fucked up, late at night. I shorted a lot, and then I went to sleep.

Honestly, brother, probably for the best. Because if you woke up and hit a crazy lick, you’d be on some, “I’ve got to get drunk. I play better when I’m drunk,” type shit. You ever hear the guy at the bar say, “I need to get drunk before I play pool. I play better when I’m drunk”? That’s obviously bullshit.

No, but same. By the way, I was with 2 girls wasted at my house, checking my laptop, probably trying to halfway flex that I’m trading little animal-icon PFPs for way too much money. It was the top of crypto. I spent 150 bands on some dumbass crypto, bro, and it was literally down only. I top-ticked it. It was the absolute top.

Yeah.

On a little fucking crypto.

That’s funny. Yeah, yeah, I mean, being sober, you’re just way, way, way more clear-headed with trading and everything else.

Someone said, “Z, can we hear the Uber story? Why are you banned on Uber?”

Bro, it’s not even really one story. It’s just an accumulation of bad habits with Uber. I use Uber all the time. When I would go out a lot and go to the club, obviously you’re always calling an Uber. I’m always calling Uber Black. Every time I would call an Uber and we were going out, we were loud as fuck in the Uber. I got hella people with me, people screaming in the back seat, all this shit happening.

I’m also always late to getting to the Uber. I’ll call the Uber, like, “Oh, we’re leaving,” and then you know how it is when you’re leaving the fucking club or getting ready to go to the club: everybody’s still getting ready and shit, all this other shit’s happening, or people are drinking inside and trying to find their friends and everything. So I’m always late to the Ubers. When I call one, it sits there for like 5 minutes every single time.

Every time I call the Uber, all the drivers would just dock my rating really badly. I don’t even know what my rating was at. It was like 4.2. I think today I was just doing some regular shit. I was just Ubering, and I was late to the Uber, and then I saw this after I got out of the car.

It said, “You didn’t respond,” or, “It didn’t improve since the initial notification,” which means they sent you a warning. They literally sent you a warning. It said, “Bro, you’re going to get banned.” Bro, you don’t understand. If you get a ton of Ubers, it’s so hard to get your score up.

Dude, you know what saves me? You know what’s an amazing investment the average day-to-day person can make, and I feel like people sleep on? Investing in the people who are taking care of you in hospitality and just carrying around cash. I physically carry around a little roll of $100 bills, and I’ll give that to the Uber driver to turn up the music or let one extra person in.

This is, by the way, the biggest cheat code of all time. The biggest life hack of all time. You’re in a crowded bar environment, and the first drink you order is a vodka Red Bull or whatever—$16. You give the guy a $100 bill and say, “Keep it.” They look at you like you’re fucking crazy. They give you the little head nod like, “Bro, me and you tonight, all fucking night.” It doesn’t matter for the rest of that night. You’re probably low-key not paying for another drink at most bars. He’s probably just pouring you free drinks.

They overpour you. You’re not waiting in line.

It’s also such a good look. You’re with a girl, you bring her up to a crowded bar, you give the guy the little head nod, like, “Yeah, get them right, too,” and he lets you skip everybody and hands over a card.

It’s the best investment you could possibly make. There’s literally a real ROI: you get more alcohol and freer drinks. That’s the best thing you can invest in. You can apply that to the guy in the bathroom or the Uber guy. I can’t tell you how many times—

I’m a big fan of overtipping. If you have it, if you’re doing well and doing good, just do it. I’m a big fan of that because not only do I think it’s the right thing to do, it doesn’t cost you a lot to do it. I think there’s a real return on it, too. I think it’s actually genuinely plus-EV and smart to do.

Brian, what’s up, baby? How are you?

Hey guys, how are we doing? Thanks for having me on.

Thank you for coming on. Wow. People are excited about this, and I’m excited about this. We have—

Excited or angry? Which one? Yeah, we’ll see what happens. It should be a good conversation either way, brother.

It’s fake outrage. That shit’s all fucking— you’re the GOAT. You know you’re the GOAT. That is true. You ever read about the tyranny of the 1% thing? Usually, the people who are the most vocal—it feels like it’s 50% of all the people, but it’s usually a small group. Anyway, it’s good to hear them out and learn something from it, but you don’t have to overrotate on it.

Agreed.

Yeah, great to have you on. I love you taking the time. I think a lot of the newer CT heads are unaware of your entire history in crypto and what it’s taken to build Coinbase to where it is now. Could you speak a little bit about the early days, your vision for Coinbase back then, how you’ve executed on that, and how hard it was being one of the first big crypto companies in the U.S.?

Yeah, sure. Well, thanks for starting there. A little warm-up on the background. In 2010, I first read the Bitcoin white paper. I was living in San Francisco. I was an early software engineer at Airbnb, and I was trying to help them move money all over the world. I had studied computer science and economics, and I remember in 2010 I read that Bitcoin white paper and I was like, “Wow, this is really powerful.” It’s kind of like the internet—global and decentralized—but instead of being for moving information around, it’s for moving money.

I had been reading a lot of stuff like Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand—libertarian stuff—over the prior couple of years. Something about it captured my attention. I was like, “This would be amazing if the world had this open financial system.”

So I started working on a prototype nights and weekends and applied to Y Combinator. I started going to these early Bitcoin meetups in San Francisco in 2010. TradeHill, if you remember that exchange, was actually around at that time. Mt. Gox was there at that time, too. And I remember thinking, “Oh, maybe I’m too late,” because TradeHill and Mt. Gox already existed. I was like, “Oh, man, maybe I missed my shot.”

Applying to Y Combinator, they gave me the first $150,000 check as a seed investment. That kind of convinced me: all right, I’m going to quit my job and really go for this. I was lucky enough to find Fred Ehrsam as the co-founder. Most of the early days were just trying to get anybody to care about the app whatsoever, and once we got a simple way to buy and sell Bitcoin, it really started to take off. Then you’re just trying to ride the tiger at that point: super-hypergrowth at times, riding through all the cycles of up and down.

There were periods where we lost 25% to 30% of the personnel year over year in down markets. We had amazing fundraising rounds—everybody wanted to invest. We had terrible fundraising rounds where we were desperate to just get 1 term sheet. Eventually, we went public in 2021, which was a cool 10-year journey: trying to really professionalize the company, get it to scale, build out a real executive team, and get it into the S&P 500. That was a massive win. Suing the SEC and Gary Gensler was another big one, just because I felt he was trying to kill the whole industry, and so we had to fight back.

That was lit. I think people don’t even realize how hard it was to survive as a crypto exchange for that long. People are completely unaware. They don’t even know the name TradeHill, Mt. Gox, Bittrex—all these other exchanges that were super early to crypto that didn’t make it. Could you speak a little bit about the landscape? The Mt. Gox story—I think a lot of people know generally what happened with Mt. Gox—but what made you guys different from all the other exchanges that failed and didn’t succeed over that decade-long period of time?

Yeah. Well, it’s a mix of skill and luck, right? There was some stuff that we got right. We were one of the first companies to get a U.S. bank relationship, which was actually Silicon Valley Bank at that time, in the early days. For a period of years, we were the only place for someone in the U.S., at least, to come and connect a bank account and easily buy Bitcoin.

That came from a lot of our work on compliance and security, and just being based in the United States, putting our name on it, and taking a regulated approach. We were going out and trying to get money-transmitter licenses. We worked with lots of different law firms and had the right backers to allow us to get some of those bank partnerships that really allowed us to get off the ground.

But there was also some luck. There were definitely moments early on when we were about 10 people, and the amount of deposits people were putting on the site was growing week over week. All these hackers were trying to break into our systems, and we didn’t have a big, sophisticated security team. I remember there was this one vulnerability: somebody broke into one of our customer support agents’ accounts, and they were issuing themselves refunds at a rapid clip. We just happened to notice it while we were sitting at lunch in San Francisco, and we were able to shut it down. I think we lost $50,000. But if that attack had happened while we were sleeping on the West Coast, we would have woken up in the morning and the company might have been insolvent.

Crazy.

There were a couple of coin flips like that that could have gone either way. So, yeah, it was a mix of skill and luck.

Damn, that’s awesome. I know the timeline has been very aggressive toward you the past week or so for some stuff that was probably somewhat out of your control. I know how it is being on CT. I get the same thing, where it’s stuff that you do—you may not know how it’s impacting other people in the trenches, and so on and so forth. I guess the question is: How do you think about balancing the responsibilities you have as CEO of Coinbase versus the people who may not know everything else that you’re doing, and their relationship with you as a personality online?

Yeah. It was a good wake-up call for me because I realized I hadn’t been clear enough with people about this particular community that was following what I was saying on X and really looking for signals: “Okay, he’s signaling to us that this thing—it’s time for it to run up,” or different trades they wanted to make.

We built Base with this idea of how we innovate on financial services and build a path toward decentralization that lots of people can build on top of. I’m very pro-economic freedom. That’s the mission of Coinbase, so I want everyone to be able to build on it. That means there are going to be lots of different constituencies.

On any given day, I might talk with folks like you who are more in the trader trenches, as you call it. I might also be talking to some giant bank, some government that’s trying to build on top of this, or the latest fintech. There are a bunch of AI agents now transacting on Base. So, we do have a large number of constituents, certainly, and it’s my job to go understand each of those and empathize with them.

In this case, I fucked it up, to be honest, in the sense that I completely misread what one community was reading into my stuff. So, yeah, I tried to make it clear going forward. Whenever I miss something like that, all you can do is try to set expectations clearly going forward.

There are going to be lots of ways we can support people building on Base with investments and, in some cases, integrating into our products. But unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to be in a position where I can guarantee somebody a listing on Coinbase or pump a certain coin or anything like that. It’s just not something I would personally do.

I’m 43 now, too, so I don’t know—maybe I’m a boomer. And hey, I have to put a lot of my time into putting on a suit and tie, going to D.C., and trying to get the CLARITY Act passed.

Yeah, that’s what we talked about before we came on. It’s silly.

Yeah, I mean, hopefully this will benefit everyone in crypto, including memecoin traders and everyone. But we’ll see. I think that’s where I can add the most value. I’ve got a great team under me, too, with different people with different skill sets that complement areas where I’m not as strong.

Why do you think that is? Why do you think CT and the culture around crypto can be so abrasive and lean negative versus talking about something productive or positive, like the work that you’re doing in Washington, D.C., regarding the CLARITY Act? What is it about crypto in 2026 right now that you think leads people to behave that way or respond that way?

Yeah. Well, it’s kind of the nature of the internet, right? It’s been around a long time. I don’t expect people to give me any free passes or anything like that. What I’ve noticed is that when I see people who are super upset about something, oftentimes I’ll ping them, and they’ll be like, “Holy shit, he actually responded. He wants to know what’s going on.” Then they’re super nice to me, right? Because I think it’s just people who are frustrated, and I get it.

They don’t think that when they’re posting, they’re talking to a human being on the other end. If we met in person, they would never say that to my face.

They’re just venting and shouting that into the ether because they don’t think there’s a human being on the other end.

Whenever I’ve gotten on the phone with somebody who’s super upset, they’re like, “Actually, I’m such a big fan of Coinbase.”

10 times out of 10.

Yeah. So your question is a good one for all communication on the internet.

True.

By the way, it happens inside companies, too. Sometimes I’ll be on Slack or something, and these 2 people are super pissed at each other or whatever. I’m like, “Hey, get on a phone call.” Suddenly, you can hear the intonation in people’s voices. They always say communication is 10% verbal. A lot of it is about the tone and body language.

Even just you guys—thank you for having me come on here. Hopefully, people can see a little bit more of my tone and body language and get a sense of what we’re all about. I think that is 1 issue that plagues crypto: people are usually confined to the tweets and stuff. That’s why I’ve pushed guys like Z and Threadguy and stuff to get in front of a camera and just speak, because I feel like it reads so much more authentic, more genuine. It’s less difficult to dehumanize a person.

What you said is bang on the money, 100%, and consistent across every community on the internet.

You're not really treated as a person, more so like a character in the fucking film.

Yeah. What's your favorite thing about crypto culture?

Well, to me, I got into crypto—by the way, I want to ask you guys a question after this, too—because I'm super into freedom and economic freedom. There are so many people around the world who have their wealth eroded by inflation in fiat currency, where the value gets eroded, or they're getting nickel-and-dimed on fees just to store their money securely and move it around. Those are basic property rights.

I'm an investor, but I'm not an active day trader or something like that. That's actually a weakness of mine. When I co-founded Coinbase, I co-founded it with Fred Ehrsam, and he was a trader coming from Goldman Sachs. So we had both sides of it.

I initially got into crypto because I was thinking, "Oh, this is going to be like a global payment system where everything is fast, cheap, and cross-border." We're seeing that now with stablecoins, which is really cool, but the trading stuff is just as important. I'll tell you a little bit about the intersection of those things, because trading can bring economic freedom as well.

First of all, lots of people were storing all their money in cash in some local fiat currency, and the value was being eroded. Now they can store it in Bitcoin; they can store it in USDC. But most people are just living paycheck to paycheck. They don't have any ability to invest, and there are something like 4 billion people who don't have access to a brokerage or U.S. companies or anything like that.

With the tokenization of equities, which is coming to Base, I think people around the world will be able to own NVIDIA or whatever company they want—Tesla, SpaceX, and Coinbase, hopefully, at some point, too—and have real wealth that can grow in high-quality investments.

That's economic freedom. That's the thing that keeps me going. Even if my day sucks and I got yelled at, and the people in D.C. are telling me I'm an idiot, or Jamie Dimon hates me, whatever it is, I'm like, "We've got to go create more economic freedom in the world." That's what keeps me getting out of bed in the morning.

If I can ask you guys: What do you think Coinbase should be doing better? Tell me. I like to learn in these situations, too. If you were in my shoes—and be totally honest—what's the thing you think we could be doing better going forward?

Yeah, great question for us. I think Coinbase has done a great job integrating Base into the Coinbase native app and the Coinbase Wallet. I think it's really cool, some of the features that you guys have, like being able to do things on-chain without forcing people to go create a wallet, save their secrets, and do all these XYZ things. It's kind of just under the hood, and I think that's really powerful for people.

You've also spoken a little bit in the past about Morpho. I think Jesse spoke about it last episode. All these different crypto-native applications being able to access them directly in Coinbase, I think, is really cool.

As far as what you guys can do better, I think sometimes people feel that Coinbase picks and chooses which products they want to highlight and focus on the most. Sometimes the market isn't reflecting that that's what you guys should be focusing on. When some of the products you're focusing on don't end up doing all that well, people are like, "Well, we feel slighted because we spent our time building on Base and did all these things. We directed all of our energy toward this, and we felt like we didn't get as many eyes or as much support from top command." I would say that's the biggest thing.

I know it's difficult with the listings around certain coins and things like that, but that's also a huge one for teams, especially when there are other exchanges that may have been quicker on the ball with listing things. I think that's especially where the comparisons are made.

Having people on the team who are closer to the trenches and closer to trading is important. I think Kobe was a great hire, one of the best hires you guys could have made. That's because Kobe knows all of crypto culture really well. He knows all the nuances, all the soft stuff—the in-between-the-lines things that you need to read and understand. Kobe's really good at that.

I think having people like him, and more of the younger cohort of people who know what's going on on-chain and know what L2s should be focusing on or what people are interested in trading, is big. I know you guys talk to people to get more information all the time, so I think that's also really important. Those would be the 2 main things.

As far as advice, just to piggyback off what he said, I'm not really the technical guy. That's above my pay grade. As far as community support, just being more involved in the conversation, joining shows like ours more regularly, ThreadGuy, and just showing up and talking directly to CT, because it obviously is the core of what you guys do and where you came from. You're one of the most successful examples of a person and a product in that regard.

People are always going to look at you for your opinion and your advice and what you're doing, whether or not you want that. Like he said, I think Kobe was a phenomenal hire. I think just giving him a bigger role would help.

A lot of crypto-native companies and products sleep on the community-management aspect of it. It's debatably, in my opinion, one of the most important pieces. Having a clear line of communication between you and the core crypto community is super important, as is being on top of that.

The Kobe thing was—I mean, that's one of the best guys you could hire for something like that. Coming on shows like this to talk through things, it's crazy to me that you could be doing all the things you're doing that are super positive for crypto in Washington, D.C., and then maybe miss the mark on some superficial, funny shit because you're 43, like you said, and you didn't realize the ramifications of changing your PFP on Twitter.

It's fucking ridiculous, and you really only see this shit in crypto. But I think just being candid and honest about it is super relatable and genuine. It's like, "Oh, yeah, this is a fucking real guy. He saw a picture and changed his PFP." [Laughter] We don't need to fucking torment this guy or harass him for a week about it.

Yeah, that's it: community stuff, community support.

Yeah, I love it. Okay, that's good stuff. I think you guys are spot-on.

In terms of listings, there definitely were some great Base projects that we should have listed sooner, and we screwed that up. There is a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes with these projects that we can't, unfortunately—we don't want to out any of it publicly. We're trying to coach them a little bit: "Hey, it would be nice if you checked X, Y, and Z boxes from an SEC securities point of view. We're not going to be able to do it unless you get there." We obviously don't want to say any of that publicly.

Sometimes our risk tolerance has been too low. Other exchanges went first and didn't see any issue with it, and we were just caught up in our own internal bureaucracy. You guys are spot-on with that.

I love the idea of getting closer into the trenches and the community. Jordan and Kobe have been helping with that quite a lot. Community support, too. If there's any other podcast you think I should be doing, maybe I'll ping ThreadGuy after this and we can see what happens.

Thread's good. Thread's really good.

You should definitely recommend Thread.

And even, by the way, just asking us for our advice on that—I think things like that are great, too. It's very rare, I feel like, that somebody in your position would flip it and ask for our honest advice. It reads as very genuine. You can tell that you really want to get to the center of it.

Yeah, for sure. I think what you said about economic freedom relates so well to why on-chain even is what it is. That's actually why it is what it is: people don't have access to all these different assets, or they're trying to flip XYZ into a lot. That's why that exists.

The same principles that you have are literally the same principles that these people trading all these things have. It's definitely an interesting overlap, and I think people hearing from you more will see directly what you're all about and what you care about.

So, I think it is really important. But could you talk a little bit about the Clarity Act and how you've been working through that, and where you think it is—where it's at?

Yeah, sure. It's been great. We've got the GENIUS Act passed—or, you know, not “we,” but the whole crypto community, the Senate, and Congress. Last year, that was a big unlock for stablecoins. We saw hundreds of large U.S. companies start to integrate stablecoins in the 3 months following that act. So, I'm very optimistic that the Clarity Act is going to get passed here.

I just spent the last 2 days earlier this week in D.C. again, meeting with senators on both sides of the aisle and trying to whip votes. I don't know if you guys ever see House of Cards, but whipping votes was a term I learned there. Apparently, it's a real thing in D.C. So, it's interesting—everyone's got their fingers in this thing now. The crypto community has an opinion, but so do the banks. So do the Indian tribes, because they're worried about prediction markets. The law enforcement groups have an opinion. All these groups have lobbyists, and they're influencing things in D.C.

The good news is that there were just a couple of remaining issues that were open, and I think a bunch of the big pieces are falling into place. There was even one that had nothing to do with us or crypto. They were worried about this ethics provision for President Trump and the White House, and the president agreed to an ethics provision. So, that's being debated now. Long way of saying, I'm pretty optimistic this thing is going to get done at this point.

Seventy percent of Americans say that they want clear rules for crypto. They're upset that it hasn't happened already. Something like 4 million Americans have raised their hands at standwithcrypto.org and said they want to elect pro-crypto candidates. So, yeah, we've done our best to really try to help organize the community. What I realized was that the power of crypto is that it's decentralized, and that's great. Everyone can build on top of an open platform, but we also need to get organized sometimes, because all 50 million or so Americans had used crypto, but we weren't electing pro-crypto candidates. It wasn't until just the last few years that started to happen. So, hopefully, we can get this legislation done, and it will actually unlock the next wave of innovation in crypto.

Awesome. No, great to hear. It sounds like you guys have done a lot of work on it. It's awesome. Could you speak a little bit about suing Gensler and what that was about? You guys won that, right?

Yeah, we've actually won a couple of cases now against the SEC—

What did you guys sue them about? What was it?

Yeah. So, okay, this was back a few years ago. When you go public as a company, you have to describe every single detail of your business to the SEC.

Yeah.

They turned over every stone, and then they allowed us to become a public company. Okay? Then, about a year later, Gensler and his SEC started coming to us and saying, “Hey, we're really concerned about all this stuff you're doing. It looks like you're trading securities, but you don't have a license to do that.”

We said, “Well, we've told you everything about our company. You seemed okay with it in the past, but let us know why you think that. Where in the law does it say that? There's a legal test of whether something is a security or a commodity.” We had been very conservative about that and made sure we were only trading things that were commodities, like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

They refused to really tell us any specific reason. In fact, I remember meeting with them sometimes, and I was like, “We're open. You're the regulator, so just tell us what the rules are, and we're happy to comply with them.” I remember Gensler told me one time, he said, “I'm not going to give you legal advice. You need to talk to your lawyers.”

Like, what?

We said, “Okay, well, it's not very helpful. I wish you would just publish the rules so we could all follow them, but if you're—” He basically was telling us, “I want you to delist all these assets.”

We were like, “Well, nowhere in the law does it say that that's the case, and you won't even tell us your legal theory. If we comply with this, it's kind of like voluntarily shutting down our business in the United States.”

Which would arguably kind of kill—if everybody did that, it would just kill the industry in the United States at large.

What I realized is that he didn't really care if it was legal or not. I think what he was doing was—and this is all D.C. insider stuff that was told to me later—basically, Gary Gensler wanted to be the Treasury secretary. Elizabeth Warren, who was choosing the different regulators, told him, “You're not going to get the Treasury secretary job yet, but under the Biden administration, I want you to be the SEC chair. I want you to go after this crypto stuff and really curtail it, and if you do a good job, I'll put you up for Treasury secretary in Biden's second term.”

If you go look at Gary Gensler's record, he taught this class at MIT where he actually is very smart. He was talking about all the benefits of crypto and blockchain. He clearly gets it, and then suddenly he becomes the SEC chair and he's trying to kill it all unlawfully.

So, anyway, I started asking some people, “Should we push back and go to court with them over this?” A lot of people would say, as a public company CEO, you should never sue the SEC. It's just going to put a cloud over your company for years while you're in this litigation. A lot of public-market investors, if they know that a company is suing the SEC, are just like, “This is too complicated. I'm not going to invest in that stock.”

I knew that would kind of happen, but our alternative was basically to shut down the whole industry in the United States unlawfully. At some point, I was like, “Screw it. We've got to push back on this.” So, we got some good lawyers. They engaged in an enforcement action against us, and we sued them under what's called the Administrative Procedure Act, which is a law that Congress put together that requires the SEC to engage with industry and publish clear rules. They had very clearly failed to do that, so they had violated the law.

Later, we actually sent them a FOIA request, if you know what that is—a Freedom of Information Act request. As a U.S. citizen, you can ask your government to turn over any document that is not classified because they work for us in a democracy, right? It's a government for the people, by the people.

We sent a FOIA request to the SEC and asked them to send over all their documents and Gary Gensler's text messages about what he was saying about crypto in private. I was pretty sure what he was saying was things like, “This may or may not be a security. We're not really sure,” things like that.

After many rounds of negotiation with them, the SEC came back and said, “Actually, Gary Gensler has accidentally deleted his text messages. We can't find them.”

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Have you ever told this story?

Not on a podcast or anything. There have been some documents.

That's wild. But, I mean, yeah, by the way, if the government is ever suing you and, as a public company CEO, you were like, “Oh, yeah, I accidentally deleted all the documents,” you'd pay a $100 million fine or something. But, anyway, in this case, the court actually ruled in our favor and censured them. It told them that they had violated their obligations and actually awarded us damages.

W, Brian's in the chat. See what I mean, chat? CT.

Exactly. They're fighting for us on the—

Fighting the good fight, bro.

I remember trying my best in 2023. I was super bullish on Solana. Nash was super bullish on Coinbase, too—my 2 trades. Robinhood had Solana on their exchange, and they literally delisted Solana at the stone-cold bottom in 2023 because of all the stuff that happened around FTX and the securities issues people were concerned about. I will always remember that. I will never forget that.

Twitter forgets and flips so quickly. It's so interesting to me.

I make it too long to forget. I don't forget anything.

That one's crazy.

That one's crazy.

Well, Ansem, you told me this, too. You were like, “People are taking shots at you because you guys are on top.” I get that, too. We're seen as this 800-pound gorilla, so, yeah, beat up on them all day. They should be doing better.

In some ways, people wouldn't be doing that stuff if they didn't care, either. If they just thought we were irrelevant, they wouldn't even say anything at all.

So anyway, try to take that they care—and they do. So that's good.

Yeah. I don't know. Have you guys ever had a mob form over something about your brother?

Brother? Oh my God.

Brother, if there's one thing—or two things—I absolutely call you on and have your number on, one, it's CryptoPunks. I have a zombie. You have to step your shit up. And two, it's this. I've been fucking canceled and dragged through Twitter for 35 different reasons across my 15-year tenure on the internet.

It's part of what we do. It is what it is. But I relate one-to-one. I walk around fucking Beverly Hills all day, get my 10,000 steps in, and every interaction I have in person is super positive and really nice. I don't know. The internet is not a real place. It's really not.

They care.

They care. That's the most important thing.

I love that. I always thought there should be a podcast called Canceled and Proud, and all the guests are just people who've gotten canceled.

Tana Mongeau has a podcast called Canceled.

8. Brian Armstrong interview

Oh, good. That's a good one. Yo, we get Brian Armstrong on Tana Mongeau's podcast. That's hilarious.

He just starts doing his rounds.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's good. I mean, Z and Cobie are really the only 2 guys that I know who—and Z, obviously, you could speak to it yourself—but you've faced your fair share of what we're describing here. It's incredibly hard.

I don't know. There's this cannibalistic nature that comes with CT and crypto that I've never been fully able to understand, because I don't see that it's in anyone's best interest. Obviously, when market conditions are poor, it doesn't help. If people are losing money and markets are down, people have been stuck in crypto for the last 2 years, while traditional stocks are doing well and everyone's seeing everybody making money in AI and stuff, you're just sitting there holding your shit Ethereum bag. I get it. I understand.

What do you do when you're not building Coinbase? Give me a day in the life. What do you like to do? What are your favorite things?

Yeah. Okay. The thing I'm most excited about, broadly, is how we use technology to build the future. I'm kind of a sci-fi guy. I just want to live in the future. I've always wanted that, even since I was a little kid.

Basically, Coinbase is 120% of my time. It's all-consuming and stressful, but occasionally I get to work on other stuff, too. I co-founded this biotech company, which is doing cool longevity research and bringing drugs to clinical trials in the next year. I co-founded this thing, ResearchHub, which is trying to accelerate scientific research. I like meeting with other entrepreneurs who are building really cool stuff.

I was just talking to a guy who's working on an offensive hacking company for the US government. I sometimes put angel checks into things like that because I think they're awesome. Honestly, I have no idea if they're even going to make money. I'm just like, “That is awesome. I really want to see what's going to happen.”

I also hang out with my family and my dog. I go on hikes. I try to exercise in the morning just to stay sane and not get burned out by all the stress of work. I travel a lot for work, but I try to mix in fun while I'm there and get to see people.

How big is your dog?

Dinners.

How big? Like, somebody in chat said you had a big dog.

Oh, don't say its name, though. They're all asking for its name. Don't say it.

I thought you might ask that. I came prepared. There's not going to be any revealing information.

No, it's a medium-sized dog, I think. I want to say 65 pounds or something like that.

We understand you have important business elsewhere and you need to wrap things up. We're over time a little bit, but you have to come on the show again. We have to make this a recurring thing anytime.

I'm down. I'm down. The next time, you guys can teach me more about the trenches, what I'm missing, and get me more plugged in. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate what you guys are doing.

And Ansem, thanks for chatting with me over that weekend. It was funny. You asked me, “Do you understand what you did when you just posted that?” I was like, “Maybe I'm not. Tell me, what did I just do?”

Yeah.

Interesting.

No, I appreciate you, bro. This is good. I think people are going to love hearing from you more, for sure.

I don't know what you expected with the chat and the show and stuff, but the chat's been spamming “W Brian” the whole way through. Chat loves you. This has been great. I really appreciate it, bro. Thank you for coming on.

Thanks, guys.

We'll see you again soon.

See you soon. Later.

Listen, chat: W Brian's in the chat. That was fucking awesome.

I wish he could have stayed on longer, bro.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's—we've got to get him.

Yeah, we've got to get him back.

We could do fucking hours with him. He reads as so genuine to me. He just seems like a fucking good dude. You know what I mean? I feel like—

Bro, people don't understand how hard it was to build a crypto exchange in, what, 2012, and then have it survive to now, bro. Every other crypto exchange that was built around then is gone. Mt. Gox is gone. TradeHill is gone.

You literally had to survive, like, 10 coin flips to get here.

10 scenarios that could have gone either way, that could have just fucking wiped us off. In certain scenarios, that could have legitimately—by the way, this isn't hyperbole—could have legitimately killed crypto.

I know, bro.

If they just met the needs of the SEC—like, you heard the guy—they fucking IPOed their publicly traded companies. The CEO of this publicly traded company, who needs to make that decision about whether to sue them or not to sue them, fucking sues them. He goes against the best interest of the price of his stock and company in that moment.

In one.

What?

In one.

What the fuck?

In one. You guys are harassing this guy and spamming him about PFPs and shit. I get it, though. I get it.

But I think the 2 biggest unlocks for me in that interview are things that a lot of these companies—and, more broadly, tech companies—sleep on. I think it's beyond crypto. Broader tech, AI, robotics, crypto: I think they sleep on the content aspect of it. It's really important to have some sort of presence content-wise and distribute thought and conversation the right way.

When it's just PR-safe articles and things like that, when it's nonstop like that, it's very easy to dehumanize the situation.

It's way different talking in person and seeing your face. He can put out a tweet, and that's way, way, way different from seeing him in person respond and actually explain what he thought and all.

Imagine Brian Armstrong and Coinbase hiring us to do a production for them where he sits in the middle of a fucking room. You ever see those one-versus-20 debates?

Yeah.

Like, Coinbase man versus 20 people who hate crypto. That'd be fucking—

He would for sure win. That'd be a W production. People would fucking love that. I just feel like that's way underexplored and underdiscovered.

Yeah. But that was sick. That was awesome. Chat, how'd you guys feel about that? That pretty much wraps up the main episode. W Coinbase, W Brian.

I hope he feels better about that. It sucks. It makes me a little bit sad. I know the guy's worth 9 figures and he's not struggling by any means, but even to hear him say out loud that, you know, even when he's having a tough day or a tough week—somebody said “W Johnny Sins.”

That's funny. Yo, give that guy $1,000. Whoever just said that—I caught it out of the corner of my eye. I'm not sure if they're on Kick or Twitch, but whoever said that, production, give them that. The Johnny comments—that is hilarious.

Too good. Too good.

Wow.

But yeah, the culture-building stuff, content stuff—that's why I think the show's so important, man. I feel like that's obviously the direction we're taking this shit.

Johnny—

We've got everybody—the diversity.

How silly, though? How funny is it that at the end of that interview he's like, “Yeah, I came prepared. I'm not going to be revealing his name.” The fact that his team—

That's what I'm saying. Do not say that. Do not. Yeah, I'm—yeah, yeah.

The fact that his team had to do that—and they did. They had to do that because that could have been an even worse situation. It would have been even worse. Yeah, it would have been even worse. Even worse.

No, he's good. He's smart. He knows what he's doing. I think the team around him also knows what he's doing. He knows what he's good at. We kind of touched on this in that interview, but, Z, just for the sake of the show and the hypotheticals, gun to your head: you're CEO of Coinbase. What are you doing?

Damn. What if I'm CEO of Coinbase? I think they're doing everything—well, not everything. I think they're doing a lot right. I would just make sure I have somebody on the team who's closer to the trenches.

Even Cobie—he's obviously a GOATed trader, really good at trading and knowing what's best for the product. But I would have some people there who know what's going on on a day-to-day basis: what trends are popping up, what people are looking at, and what's not getting enough attention. I know there are a lot of traders on CT who would be willing to do something like that in an advisory-type role, especially a lot of the younger guys.

There are a lot of these younger guys on crypto Twitter who have made a lot of money and are in this place where they don't need to work, but they're obviously going to stay in crypto and want crypto to do better and contribute to crypto. They don't necessarily have the resume that would be needed to work at a Fortune 100 or whatever type of company, but they're really, really smart and really, really good at knowing crypto, how it works, and how it functions.

I think there are a lot of people like that who would probably be great hires at companies like Coinbase or Robinhood or those kinds of places. I don't know what having that in place would look like, but that would be the thing I think I would change.

I think they're doing a great job on the regulatory front with the Clarity Act and all of that. I think they're doing a great job with Base and all the products they're building there. I think they've been doing a great job with AI and integrating stuff like that. What is the protocol?

You said, “Make crypto fun.” I think that speaks back to what we were talking about—all the highlights of NFTs in that meta.

Who—who—who, like Coinbase? I feel like Coinbase isn't going to be the company that makes crypto fun. Maybe I'm wrong on that.

I just mean a general community effort to do that, because I feel like nobody really pays enough attention to that part.

There isn't really—that's what I'm saying, though. It is our job, but even to push them in the direction of—

“Hey, explore doing more content, support the community, support shows like ThreadGuy's show. You guys are [inaudible], you know what I mean?” Like you said, I really resonated with what he said: “I've always wanted to live in the future.” I've felt like that my whole life, too. I love the idea of flying cars and robots, and I'm always super optimistic, a pro-AI guy.

It's like—

Reflect that in a way that people can see and embrace. Make it content. Make it fun. Content keeps it clear as well, and the community stuff is in line with that too, right? It's less confusing. Yeah, I think we're in a good spot, though. When are you talking to the MetaDAO guys—4:30, or in—

13 minutes?

Oh, we're that close? Oh, wow. I didn't even know we'd been going for that long. What time was it?

Seven.

Bro, this episode flew by. Fast as fuck. Holy, bro. The other ones, where we're going for 3 or 4 hours, I'm like, “Damn, bro, I'm kind of tired.”

No, my head feels like it's going to explode after every fucking episode because I also have the lowest IQ in the fucking room. I'm like, “Fraud.” My brain feels like it's fucking exploding.

But you know the funniest episode was the one where we had Greg Osuri on from Akash.

So good.

You were gone, bro.

That was one of our early episodes too. I was like, “Fuck, bro.”

You were like, “God.”

By the way, I was waiting for my moment the whole conversation. The whole conversation, and then he finally said, “Yeah, I'm bullish on Apple.” I fucking lost it. Like, “Yeah, me too, brother.” [Snorts.] [Laughter.] A genius. I know what I'm talking about.

So stupid.

So stupid. That's awesome.

No, that shit was funny. That was also when bro was like, “I use Claude in the shower.” We were like, “Bro, what the fuck?”

That was actually what started you with the robot shit, bro. That's what got you the robot shit. [Laughter.] Really? My wife's gone. I talk to Claude in the shower all the time.

I only—I only talk—

I only talk to AI on the weekends, after the hours of fucking midnight, in the shower. [Laughter.]

Okay, bro.

That's too good.

Oh, shit.

Speaking of AI—

Did you see Elon Musk? I feel like not enough people talked about this. We have 10 minutes, so fuck it. I saw this tweet: “AGI within a year,” and Elon Musk responded to it. Oh, did he delete the tweet? Oh, no, no, he didn't.

Literally nobody saw this tweet. When was the last time you saw an Elon Musk tweet with 3,000 likes on it?

Yeah, it's weird.

The bro owns Twitter. Weird, right?

I'll go hit it.

So weird. AGI in a year, brother. Shit's about to look wild.

Wild. I wonder if we're discounting xAI. Everybody talks about ChatGPT and OpenAI. Everybody talks about Claude and Anthropic. People even talk about all these Chinese models, but nobody really talks about xAI that much.

They've kind of been lagging behind, I think, on all the model stuff. But I think Nikita's crushing it as head of product at X, by the way. I think they've been shipping a ton of really good updates and shit.

I think the X Money shit is really cool. And if you believe X is going to be the everything app and there's going to be—

They're clearly trying to do that.

They're focused on live streaming and video. They want to come for TikTok with short-form video. They want to come for Twitch with live streaming. Then they're also focusing on scrolling your timeline, where it gives you the next video—the same shit that Instagram keeps everybody locked into in that way.

They're also focusing on the money aspect. You can get a debit card through X. You can store all your ad revenue. My shit is just in my X account right now.

What's the—I just saw—what's the APY? What are the returns for just keeping your shit?

That's insane.

Yeah, like 4% just for keeping your money on X right now. They also have xAI. I don't think a lot of people are realizing how much that could impact things if they're able to get all of that real-time data immediately. Their model should be the one that's crushing, to be honest.

We talk about it all the time, right? You can't sleep on the companies that have distribution—the Twitters, the [inaudible], the Facebooks, the—

Yeah, Meta, Apple. You can never count Elon Musk out of anything, you know?

Yeah, for sure.

And again, we're on tech Twitter, so it's easy for us to, I don't know, for a long time, think Anthropic has been front-running the race or whatever. But no average person really feels the difference between a Fable 5, a GPT 5.6, or a Grock.

It's true.

It's all relatively the same to them. At that point, it's just UI and what people are familiar with and trust. That's why I think Apple's the pick to win it—

Because Apple already has that trust built. Apple's a rare tech company that people fucking love.

Yeah. And Apple also just hired that dude, John Ternus, who is their new CEO.

He’s a super-smart hardware guy. And if you think the cost of running all these models is going to go down a ton, you should be able to do a lot more stuff locally, directly on-device. So I think that’s honestly another interesting area where Apple should, in theory, dominate.

Well, that’s what I’m saying. It’s a pinned conversation in your iMessage. You’re like, “Hey Siri, just go through my emails and tell me what the most important 3 are.” You know?

True.

Yeah, that’s all I have. We ran a great episode. This was smooth, bro.

It might be our smoothest one. We might still be getting—

Literally, this went super smooth, super easy. Um chat, as you guys know, let's get some W episodes in the chat. I'm going to be passing off the reins to Z for the post-show. He's going to be talking to MetaDAO, charts, trading, and so on. I got the pre-show, he's got the post-show. I'm going to stay live on Twitch and Twitter, and I think we're looking like we're going to crack 40K across all platforms today. Z, you're at 22K on Twitter, so clearly people were looking forward to this Brian Armstrong thing. WZ in the chat for getting that one lined up. That was glory to God. That was awesome. Let's get Vlad on. Let's get Kobe on. Let's get all these guys on. This is the show.

Chat, appreciate you guys. W episode. This was awesome. My brain doesn't feel like it's bleeding or about to explode, so that's a good sign. Every Thursday, 1 PM, the show is going to go on with Z.