情况比你想的更糟：与 Tulip King、Eli Ben-Sasson 和 Saeed Badreg 对谈
Tulip KingEli Ben-SassonSaeed Badreg
- Ansem 正在降低风险敞口，而 Tulip King 称这是自己的“退休周期”，资产选择与投资期限由此成为本期的核心分歧。截至 2026 年 10 月 22 日，Ansem 认为，走弱的存储芯片和半导体股可能拖累加密市场再度回调；他起初预计夏季低点能够守住，之后也开始考虑 Bitcoin 回测 7 万美元中段甚至 6 万美元中段。Tulip 则以十年为期，寻找能承接规模大得多的链上市场的业务，并直言：“别再买垃圾币。”
- Tulip 的投资组合框架把“作为货币的币”和“能够赚钱的币”分开，ETH 和 SOL 因此需要证明自己的估值合理。他的观点是，稳定币正越来越多地充当抵押品和交易计价单位，而扩容会压低原生代币能够捕获的费用。Ansem 不认同现有持有者会突然放弃货币属性和生态估值的假设，但同意盈利应用可能比基础层更容易成为货币。
- Hyperliquid 和 Derive 是 Tulip 论证的核心：投资者可以持有新兴金融基础设施，不必每次都精准押中新赢家。他提出 HYPE 有望成为“100 倍股”，前提明确是 Hyperliquid 能在资产和交易转向链上的过程中胜出；他的期权观点则建立在非线性收益、波动率交易，以及 Derive 据称占期权权利金 90% 的份额之上。若竞争者建立起持久的市场份额，他会重新评估，而不是不断在潜在挑战者之间交易。
- Saeed Badreg 把代币化视为分销和市场结构机会，并以约 160 万亿美元的资产池衡量其空间。即使只拿下 1%，规模也超过 1 万亿美元；但单纯在不同链之间转移代币远远不够，Sunrise 还需要做市商、有效的铸造与赎回套利，以及钱包、交易所和 DeFi 渠道的分销。“我们有 8,000 只股票”并不值得夸耀，如果“你没有任何市场”；目标是打造流动、可编程的资产，解锁传统券商应用无法提供的用途。
- Eli Ben-Sasson 表示，Starknet 社区支持探索 L1，原因是以太坊扩容需求和依赖以太坊的安全性已不足以决定战略方向。他设想打造一座面向后量子时代的“方舟”，具备可编程隐私和账户抽象，同时承认自己无法预测量子计算何时突破。被问到何时最担心时，他回答“未来两年”；这是他的担忧窗口，不是声称届时一定会出现实际攻击。
- Zcash 和 Pearl 分别试图满足市场对 Bitcoin 现有设计替代方案的需求。Tulip 断言 Zcash 将达到 1 万亿美元估值，但没有给出时间；Pearl 的吸引力则在于计划以矩阵乘法替代 SHA-256，将挖矿与 AI 基础设施连接起来。他对矿工迁移的证据有所保留，也称量子是“相当糟糕的叙事”，与 Ben-Sasson 的强调形成鲜明分歧，但没有展开详细反驳。
- 交易媒体的商业机会依赖受众分发和交易活跃度，可信度则取决于能否分清证据与传闻。Tulip 描述的赞助模式偏好能留住资金、持续交易的客户；切片视频业务的触达也可能远超直播观众。Banks 认为 Kimchi 破圈进入主流很有价值，但也承认自己为制作病毒式切片而编造、夸大过故事；主持人的讨论并未证实广为流传的 4,000 万美元交易盈利说法。
- 本期谈到的实际研究优势，是持续追查热门数据面板背后的信息，再给投资论点足够时间发展。Tulip 会测试协议、检查源代码活动和持币人，并借助 AI 检索数据，追问收入为何能够持续；GMX 约 1.2 倍营收的估值只是进一步研究的起点，不是完整投资结论。他披露的最大股票敞口是 Eli Lilly；不愿逢低买入 AI 股票，既因为担心仓位集中，也因为更偏好自己认为有优势的机会。
1. 股市利好不涨，Ansem 转向看空
Ansem 明确推翻了自己两周前的判断。当时他预计 AI 相关股票、存储芯片和半导体股会继续上涨，加密市场也会延续 Q3 的领先表现。对于期待股价再创新高，他说：“我错了。”他的担忧是，自 2022 年底至 2023 年以来一路领涨的股票已经积累大量未实现收益，接下来可能持续遭遇获利了结，而不是短暂回调后迅速恢复。
多重压力同时出现：战争仍在持续，油价大幅上涨，利率依旧高企；与此同时，AI 发现软件漏洞的速度已超过此前人类的能力。Ansem 以 PHP 的重大漏洞为例，说明相关进程可能受到扰动。但他并没有把抛售简单归因于技术风险，核心判断仍是股市或许已经走到宏观周期的“尾声”。
更令人不安的是，企业业绩可以继续强劲，股价却不再上涨。Ansem 提到 Micron Q3 盈利大幅超预期，但股价未能继续走高，实际上形成一个阶段性高点。他说：“营收对得上，但股价还是创不了新高。”他还认为，存储芯片股经历抛物线式上涨后，正形成第二个更低的高点。
他对加密市场的解释仍是待检验的问题，而非定论：Q1、Q2 Bitcoin 走弱时，股市上涨；之后 Bitcoin 在 6 月底附近触底，时间上恰好与存储芯片股见顶接近。因此，Q3 的强势可能只是此前超卖后的修复，不一定代表新一轮牛市。Tulip 随后追问 Bitcoin 为什么一直“强得离谱”，Ansem 的回答是，相对强势并不意味着不会再受股市下跌拖累。
2. 获利了结与主动做空不是一回事
Ansem 表示自己既在减仓，也在做空，但马上区分了自己的交易与他给观众的建议。BTC、ETH、SOL 已接近重要支撑位，此时新开空仓等于“在支撑位上做空”。时机很关键：如果最终下跌前先被止损，最令人沮丧的结果就是空单亏钱，之后还错过跌势。
对于 Pump、Zcash 或 VVV 等仓位已经赚到 2–3 倍的人，他认为部分止盈有道理。他最初预计会出现更高的低点，提出 Bitcoin 约 7 万美元附近作为一种可能，并称自己不认为夏季低点会被跌破。后来他也开始考虑回测 7 万美元中段或 6 万美元中段，同时表示：“我不确定。”
他提出的相对价值交易更干净：做多 Bitcoin、做空存储芯片股。这个组合表达的是 Bitcoin 可能跑赢存储芯片股，而不是更难回答的 Bitcoin 是否绝对上涨。他还回忆起此前夏季机会中 SOL 约 60 美元的水平：在那附近买入的人，仍有大量收益值得保护，不必因此断言整个加密市场的复苏已经结束。
Banks 以一条常见的逆向投资经验反驳：CT 越普遍悲观，他通常越看多。Ansem 自己的经历则让这种直觉变得复杂。2025 年 9 月他转为看空，承受外界批评；Bitcoin 随后创新高，他买入，之后又不得不在下跌中卖出。这段交流区分了方向判断正确、入场过早，以及在社交压力下改变仓位。
3. Paper Trade 调整奖励机制，从早期挖矿转向持续交易
Ansem 介绍，Paper Trade 是他朋友 Jez 推出的合成永续合约平台，使用 Hyperliquid 的 BTC、ETH 中间价，最高提供 1,000 倍杠杆。用户的仓位是对着平台，而非与另一名交易者撮合；亏损归平台，盈利则由平台资金支付。如果平台资金不足，Ansem 形容它“有点像一个随着时间积累资金的资金池”。
他谈到代币分配机制的一项争议性调整。按他的回忆，最初的大部分供应量会根据平台赚了多少钱来分配。他记得 PAPER 最大供应量为 126 亿枚，达到上限需要一段时间——“LP 里大概有 5 亿美元”时。他表示不确定具体计算方式。此后供应量增加，如今没有最大供应量，平台会继续铸造更多 PAPER，但他不知道确切的计算规则。
Ansem 认为，这项调整更有利于积极使用交易所的交易者。他说：“以前更有利于挖矿的人，而不是交易者。”他自己也参与过早期挖矿，但平台改变了 PAPER 的分配方式，很多人因此不满。他为新机制辩护称，它更能奖励实际使用交易所的人，同时承认此前的设置对挖矿者更有利。
代币可转让的时间也被推迟，PAPER 将在更长时间内无法转让。Ansem 说，目前可以把 PAPER 质押在交易所，获取部分平台收入。他喜欢这个平台和相关调整，但也承认分配机制变化与转让时间推迟都是用户不满的来源。
4. Pump 未发空投确实有怨气，但币价下跌是另一回事
Ansem 把 CT 混在一起的两种抱怨拆开来看。他认为，Pump 在发放预期中的空投之前，先向 Kimchi、KOL 和其他推广者支付奖励，用户因此不满，“完全有道理”。Banks 也认同，空投是节目早先讨论中用户预期的核心。两人对 Pump 商业模式的辩护，并不能抹去尚未兑现的分配承诺，也不能消除人们对谁先拿到钱的怨气。
对于 Pump 理应让上线的代币持续升值这一抱怨，两人的回应不同。Ansem 说：“Pump 没法让币涨价，它只是发射台。”他认为，更高的初始市值或许会带来不同结果，但这只是尚未验证的假设。拿如今的市场与一种据称能解决一切问题的理想设计比较，并不能证明替代方案真的更好。
他解释 Pump 为何依然有韧性，重点在于它现有的低市值生态。Ansem 说，即使在熊市，平台每天仍能赚约 100 万美元，因为交易者和开发者不断使用预发行和极低市值市场，不需要有 5 亿美元级别的热门币。如果为了另一类参与者而牺牲这些活动，反而可能伤害维持平台收入的用户和行为。
Banks 和 Ansem 不认同把所有成功交易平台的收入都归为独有的“抽成”。他们提到 Coinbase、Uniswap、Raydium 和 Axiom 等业务同样会为服务收费。他们的论点在于竞争：用户仍在回头使用 Pump，其他发射台也没能取代它。这支持了两人对产品需求的判断，但并没有回答空投争议，更不能用平台收费作抵消。
5. Kimchi 的关注度看得见，交易赚取巨额财富仍是传闻
Tulip King 多次区分 Kimchi 的真实内容与围绕他的传闻。他说，这位 22 岁的年轻人从未亲自证实广为流传的说法——自己交易 Trump 赚了 4,000 万美元。一次 vlog 中，一名粉丝问起这个数字；Kimchi 笑着说：“很高兴认识你，兄弟。”随后便继续往前走。Banks 先前把这类人设概括为“赚一大笔，然后消失”，而不是公开展示交易过程。
Tulip 还提到，有一条链上帖子被拿来证明 Kimchi 交易 Trump“只”赚了 600 万美元。他说，后来有人确认相关钱包属于 Kenzo——Kimchi 的朋友兼同行旅伴，因此那并不是 Kimchi 的钱包。Tulip 表示，Kimchi 没有对此置评，也没有证实或否认 4,000 万美元的说法。
最有力的正面证据是文化影响力：vlog、Bottega 等奢侈品牌的关注，以及他与看起来确实对他感兴趣的大型主播互动。Banks 认为，CT 内部的话题饱和，不等于主流受众已经见顶。一个人可以在加密圈几乎占据全部讨论，同时仍在圈外快速扩张；小圈子的批评，对整体业务的重要性可能越来越低。
Banks 认为，关注度本身可能形成自我强化的商业机会：不论最初的传闻真假，Kimchi 将来都可能通过合作和新项目赚到 4,000 万美元。这是预测，不是对他早先交易成绩的确认。Banks 认为 Kimchi 的优势在于无需回应 CT 的辩论；旅行、朋友和有吸引力的 vlog 可以继续发挥作用，不必把品牌变成市场评论服务。
6. 代币化的市场空间，只有资产真正可用才有意义
Saeed Badreg 解释 Sunrise 的起点，正是意识到单靠互操作性解决不了问题：“把资产从一条区块链搬到另一条区块链，并没有真正解决问题。”互联网资本市场需要健康、流动的市场，也需要桥接交易之后真正有用的金融活动。他估算股票市场约 160 万亿美元，而加密市场约 1.5 万亿至 2 万亿美元；即使只有 1% 的资产迁移，也超过 1 万亿美元。
他以稳定币作类比，说明那些已经获得充分服务的人可能看不到潜在需求。能轻松获得美元的美国人，可能意识不到其他地区的美元渠道有多重要。Badreg 提到稳定币增长和 Tether 买入美国国债，认为让资产在全球范围内可得，会揭示传统机构低估的需求。关键在分销：“你完全不知道市场对某种资产的需求有多大。”
Badreg 说，代币化股票“去年”规模还不到 10 亿美元，在约 1 年半的时间里扩大了约 30 倍。他将其描述为指数式增长的曲线，认为甚至自己的团队也低估了最终规模。主持人后来把 160 万亿美元宽泛地概括为可交易资产规模；但 Badreg 最初说的是股票市场机会，并没有给出一套相互调和的市场分类口径。
7. 全球资产配置和更低成本融资，是代币化的两种不同机会
对于美国人问“为什么需要代币化的美国股票”，Badreg 的回答很直接：“那就不是给你准备的。”对他们而言，机会可能是获得 DeepSeek、Unitree 或 SK Hynix 的敞口。他说 Sunrise 一直在国际上与各方及监管机构接触，包括访问上海，并希望中国股票也能进入这些链上渠道。“希望很快”仍是愿望，不代表产品已经上线，也不是对准入时间的保证。
Banks 提出自己对 DeepSeek 感兴趣的投资问题：其估值约 100 亿美元，而当时市场对美国大型 AI 公司讨论的估值约为 3,000 亿至 5,000 亿美元。后者真的值前者约 50 倍吗？这场讨论没有解答估值问题，而是借助这个难以投资的比较，解释为什么投资者可能希望通过分销渠道触达本国券商范围之外的资产。
第二种机会，是企业不走传统 IPO 路径来融资。Badreg 估计，在美国认真上市的成本很难低于约 3,000 万美元，准备过程可能要求企业进行 1.5–2 年的组织变革。他说明这个估计依据的是自己看到的数据，并非亲自经历 IPO。一家营收只有数千万美元、但经营不错的企业，可能仍会觉得这套流程不划算。
Banks 以自己参与 B. Riley SPAC 的经历印证这一负担，包括需要筹集 PIPE；他还说，把公司私有化同样昂贵。Ansem 把代币化与 Hyperliquid 向用户和团队成员分配价值联系起来。Badreg 认为代币化也可能与更广泛的资本形成趋势结合，并提到 a16z 向前沿行业扩张：加密金融轨道可以服务于业务本身并非加密行业的运营公司。
8. MemeFi 展示了股票市场早已存在的文化因素
Badreg 说，他最初觉得把 meme 和股票放在一起没什么道理，但仔细观察交易活动后改变了看法。他认为，传统金融低估了资产交易中“叙事、社群、文化、动能”的作用。Tesla、GameStop 和 Nvidia 都说明这一点：它们既是有财务报表的公司，也是拥有身份认同的社群。代币化让这种文化层面更直接地进入新的交易行为。
Eli Ben-Sasson 认为，这种尝试把注意力和叙事从传统资产中单独拆了出来；Tulip King 则提出令人不安的反例：配对的股票可能大跌，而 meme 代币表现良好。Badreg 承认，这种结构可能带来“两全其美”，也可能“两头都不讨好”。他支持的是试验和参与，而不是宣称给股票加上代币后就会自动改善投资回报。
Tulip 把这类实验放进加密行业更长的历史中。2017 年在 Bittrex、Cryptopia 上交易的许多资产，以及 2020–2021 年的许多资产，最终都失败了；他认为，这些失败帮助市场识别哪些机制有效。他说：“当年还不叫 meme 币，只叫山寨币。”Badreg 也认为，代币化会迫使上市公司 CEO 表态；公司先抵制、最终接受的过程，和早年稳定币发展时的争论相似。
9. Sunrise 真正的产品，是围绕代币建立的市场
Badreg 认为，可交易的代币化股票首先需要强大的做市商网络。作为交易行业出身的人，他强调必须了解流动性提供者实际如何运作，而不能想当然地认为资产发行后做市商自然就会出现。目标是让资产能在生态内稳定交易，而非仅仅发行一个代币，形式上证明链下证券已映射到区块链上。
铸造与赎回基础设施是第二项要求。如果代币化股票的交易价格高于或低于其参考市场价格，授权参与者必须有切实可行的套利方式，才能把价格重新拉回去。Badreg 认为这是基础设施中的关键环节：如果铸造和赎回机制不能正常运作，看似已经挂牌的资产，未必能成为普通用户可以参与的高效市场。
第三项要求是分销，涵盖中心化交易所、钱包、DeFi 应用、聚合器、路由器和 DEX。Sunrise 试图把这些环节整合起来，让外部体验看似简单，内部运作却足够复杂。Badreg 的判断是有条件的：如果能解决足够多彼此关联的问题，团队就能在 Solana 上发行 100 种资产，同时维持正常运作的市场，再以此扩张。
资产选择同样需要判断。最初的经验法则是社区想要什么就上什么，但 Badreg 说，社区意见很多，很难持续满足。他对不加筛选的资产目录有句形象的批评：“我们有 8,000 只股票”，但“你没有任何市场”。他偏好能够吸引注意、引发研究，并让交易者思考“为什么现在上这项资产”的标的。
10. 可编程股票与社交参与，提供不同的需求来源
Badreg 不认同现货代币化股票与股票永续合约之间只能二选一。现货市场支持所有权和可组合性，永续合约则支持对冲和更复杂的策略。他说：“你要做的是让 Apple 股票变得可编程。”目标不只是把券商账户里的仓位搬到另一个界面，而是让资产参与金融操作，使其他协议、机器人和代理能够协同执行。
他举例说，传统金融中可能需要 2–3 天、4–5 家公司以及反复对账的多项抵押品操作，链上基础设施则可能让用户或代理以编程方式协调完成。他向 Solana 开发者提出一个具体问题：代币化股票有哪些用途，是传统金融或手机应用做不到的？
另一种增长来源，是年轻人更愿意交易并公开分享。Badreg 和 Tulip King 推测，过去 18 岁人群中的投资参与率可能低于 1%，甚至约为 0.1%；而现在已大幅提高，Tulip 估计可能达到 10–20%。两人没有证明这些数字是经过测量的统计数据。他们想表达的是，文化正转向更积极地投资、公开展示投资组合，以及靠资本而非劳动赚钱。
Ansem 提出更阴暗的版本：AI 可能让经济权力集中于少数公司，同时取代工作岗位，使持有这些公司的所有权变得愈发重要。Badreg 补充了银行限制 AI 代理访问的报道，并引用一种解读：机器人正在把存款转向收益更高的地方。他将其解释为传统机构抵制竞争；但讨论没有证明这就是银行限制访问的公开理由。
11. Starknet 讨论转向 L1，反映问题变化，而非放弃扩容能力
Eli Ben-Sasson 从学术密码学经历谈起：他在 2013 年的一场 Bitcoin 会议上意识到，零知识技术不仅能用于隐私，也能帮助扩容；之后参与共同创立 Zcash 和 StarkWare。他把 StarkWare 称为“加密行业的秘密研发部门，或者贝尔实验室”，定位为将研究成果转化为可用系统的研究机构。这是他对自身机构的定位，不是对竞争技术的客观排名。
他说，Starknet 社区当天刚结束一场是否转为 L1 的投票，支持票很多。下一步是调查并朝这一方向建设，而不是声称迁移已经完成。预期的组合包括后量子安全、可编程隐私和更好用的产品。他把潜在网络描述成量子威胁出现时的“安全港”或高地。
战略变化有两个层面：Starknet 已成功开发以太坊扩容技术，但以太坊如今有多种扩容方案，对这项能力本身的需求不足。另一方面，作为 L2，Starknet 的安全性取决于以太坊迁移的速度。Ben-Sasson 把社区的意思概括为：“我们不确定以太坊能不能足够快地推进，保障我们的安全，所以我们要自己转向。”
12. “量子海啸”是一项备战论点，但时间表不确定
被问到量子威胁可能何时到来时，Ben-Sasson 先说：“我没有水晶球，不知道。”在被追问判断后，他指出自己最担心的是“未来两年”。理由是多个量子计算团队和硬件路线的创新速度正在加快。他没有给出概率，也没有断言两年内一定会发生攻击。
这个比喻反映了他对问题的优先级判断：“洪水要是来了，这就是你可以登上的那艘该死的方舟。”住在方舟上未必方便，但如果房子和花园都被 100 英尺高的洪水淹没，便利性就不再重要。因此，他设想中的 L1 主要围绕特定威胁下的安全性，而非又一场交易速度营销竞赛。
Ben-Sasson 同时声称，Starknet 在效率、成本、安全性和易用性方面已经更胜一筹，并强调账户抽象和可与 DeFi 组合的隐私功能。访谈没有提供支持这些绝对化说法的对比基准。他想表达的是，这些能力已存在于现有技术中；新的战略理由是降低安全性对另一条链何时更改底层密码学的依赖。
AI 在这场讨论中同时扮演两种角色。StarkWare 正在探索面向代理交易的超大规模交易和微支付，但没有宣布成型产品。Ben-Sasson 也担心 AI 会加快量子计算发展，或削弱现有密码学假设。他认为 zk-STARK 依赖哈希函数，因此面对这些威胁时基础更稳健：既建设服务代理的基础设施，也建设能够抵御代理所用工具进步的基础设施。
13. zk-STARK 让不可信的执行者证明工作确实正确
Ben-Sasson 用 Darth Vader 处理一天的 Bitcoin 交易并报告新系统状态来解释。没有证明，问题一目了然：Vader 可能直接把 Bitcoin 全分给自己。zk-STARK 改变了验收规则：执行者可以完成计算，但只有在验证者检查一份简短的密码学证明、确认规则得到遵守后，结果才会被接受。
在这个例子里，证明本身比一个 Bitcoin 区块还小，却能为规模大得多的交易更新提供背书。Ben-Sasson 称它像一种密码学“水泥”，即使执行者不受监视，也能确保完整性、可靠性和正确执行。他认为 Satoshi 会接受实用的 ZK，并指出早期讨论已认识到其隐私潜力，只是当时的实现还无法提供更广泛的扩容能力。
他希望最终用户体验像是递出一张 20 美元纸钞：双方之间直接完成交易，没有中间人观察并控制一切。他把这种直接性延伸到借贷、投资和永续合约，并希望易用程度能与 Robinhood 相当。关键补充是自我托管和隐私，不由中心化应用保管资金并监视每一步操作；也就是让去中心化金融关系拥有熟悉的界面体验。
14. 长期采用不能成为开发者消极等待的借口
Ben-Sasson 接受 Ansem 的观察：Zcash 多年没有得到市场广泛关注。他将自己与另外 6 位密码学家共同撰写的基础论文追溯至 2014 年，Zcash 则在 2016 年落地；项目推出约 9 年后才得到显著关注。他承认：“那很痛苦。”这说明，相信一项技术重要，不等于预期市场会迅速认可它。
他把这一过程与货币采用相提并论：纸币花了几个世纪才被接受，ATM 和信用卡也需要数十年建立信任。以这样的时间尺度来看，数字货币花数年确认哪些特性重要，并不奇怪。他把同样的耐心用于 Starknet。隐私、稀缺性和安全性可能在不同阶段变得重要；他的承诺是继续建设自己认为可用货币所需的特性。
他对最初的生态发展策略则更为不满。他说：“建好了，他们自然会来”并没有给投入的资金带来好回报。生态里出现了一些优秀的 DeFi 和游戏项目，但获得资助的团队中，最终成为持久、自我维持企业的太少。这是他明确改变做法的原因：仅有出色基础设施和资助，并不能可靠地产生网络所需的应用和用户。
因此，StarkWare 正在自行开发一些应用，同时继续支持外部团队。Ben-Sasson 提到 supervega.app 上的 SuperVega，这是一个注重用户体验的零售期权产品，支持 Bitcoin、Zcash 和 STRK 等资产。他希望内部开发的应用能更直接地带来用户和关注，而不是把全部需求问题都留给独立开发者。
15. Tulip 看多的是十年周期，也承认赢家尚未确定
Tulip King 的情绪与 Ansem 相反：“我简直看多到不行。”他认为 Sunrise 描述的规模大方向是对的——资产规模可达数万亿美元，交易规模甚至可能达到数千万亿美元。他反问，有谁真的认为两年后会有更少的活动在加密轨道上发生？如果这种迁移持续推进，他认为市场规模将比今天高出好几个数量级。
他提出 HYPE 有望成为“100 倍股”，但明确给出了前提：“就假设 Hyperliquid 会赢。”他承认，其他永续合约平台也可能成为更好的投资标的，到时就需要换仓。相较于他设想的上涨空间，HYPE 假设跌到 60 美元或 40 美元并不会动摇其长期看法。“我会把肾卖了”是刻意夸张的信念表达，不是一套风险管理规则。
他把机会扩展到期权、借贷、现货市场和其他 DeFi 业务，并以回购作为代币持有者获益的连接点。投资期限是未来十年，而非下一周。他说：“这是我的退休周期。”他表示自己的投资组合正处于高点，并批评把大盘表现令人失望等同于没有优质资产：关键在于投资者究竟持有什么项目。
16. 期权保留永续合约无法取代的金融敞口
Tulip 对 Derive 的看法首先建立在收益结构上。永续合约提供带有路径风险的杠杆线性敞口，因此需要通过强制平仓保障协议偿付能力；期权则能提供非线性收益。在加密市场这种极端尾部风险很高的环境中，他认为这一差异有经济价值，不是更好的永续合约界面就能消除的产品缺陷。
期权还可以用于对冲、价差交易，以及表达对波动率而非资产方向的判断。Tulip 承认，永续合约可能会与散户的零日期权交易竞争，但认为其他期权市场大多尚未开发。因此，他的论点不是某一种界面会赢下所有投机交易，而是不同的金融敞口有各自的市场，随着加密金融结构成熟，这类市场会继续存在。
他引用 Derive 约占期权权利金 90% 的说法，并认为领先地位足以让投资者不必把选择复杂化。他对交易量未来增长的估计刻意保持粗略：或许是 10,000 倍，或许是 100,000 倍，“反正就是加很多个零”，才能达到传统金融的规模。这些只是表达机会量级的估算，他明确承认计算并不精确，也不是详细估值模型。
有竞争者并不意味着不能持有当下的领先者。Lighter 或 Variational 达到 20–30% 份额后，他会考虑；他也提到 Hyperliquid 和 Paradex 等潜在挑战者。如果其他平台真的超越 Derive，“你会看得出来”。他认为，有了证据再买仍可能有可观上涨空间，因为投资逻辑本来就是市场还会再扩大一个或两个数量级。
17. 杠铃策略看重不同敞口，而非不断叠加相关仓位
被问到最大持仓时，Tulip 先说“我全部身家都在 Eli Lilly”，随后表示 Bitcoin、HYPE 和 Zcash 的仓位大致相当，权重会随价格变化。他还说，早期买入的 Pearl 和 Derive 已经涨成了重要持仓。访谈呈现的是高集中度和多项重要敞口，没有给出一套精确且能相互核对的组合配置。
他的核心分类是“作为货币的币”和“能够赚钱的币”。前一类包括 Bitcoin、Zcash 和 Pearl，也可以比较 Zcash 与 Monero，或 Pearl 与其他 AI 相关资产；后一类则是经济活动能够惠及代币的运营型协议。他希望投资者说清楚一个资产扮演什么角色，而不是泛泛地期待加密市场上涨。
Cards 和 Venice 吸引他的部分原因，是它们与 Hyperliquid、Derive 处于不同赛道。他说：“我认为你不该追逐 Beta，而该追逐不同敞口。”他的跟踪方法是找出每个市场的领先者并持有，同时用 Grok 机器人每天更新竞争格局。重新配置应由持久的竞争力提升触发，而不是单日或单周的强劲表现。
按运营型业务的逻辑，Pump 的优势在于执行：PumpSwap、应用和跨链桥让业务向纵向扩展。他也不认为钱包和社交交易应用只是零和竞争者。交易者因 FOMO 买入 Pump 代币，两边都可能赚钱；Phantom 则提供现金和消费功能。他认为，这些业务互相受益的程度，比它们在公开场合表现出来的更高。
18. 稳定币采用挑战了“成功公链必须有原生货币”的观点
Tulip 说，自己过去喜欢以太坊的货币论点：随着区块链经济发展，由于 ETH 没有外部交易对手风险，人们自然会用 ETH 作为货币或抵押品；SOL 也可以套用同样逻辑。他如今的反对意见不是否认理论曾经听起来合理，而是看数据后的结论：“数字上看不出来。”他表示，越来越多作为抵押品广泛使用的资产是稳定币。
Solana 的交易对体现了这种区别。SOL 因 meme 交易仍被大量使用，但代币化股票正在与 USDC 配对。因此，看好股票代币化的人，也是在看好 USDC 成为这类活动的计价单位。Tulip 认为，以太坊的借贷和交易市场也有类似情况，这削弱了“生态增长必然带动原生代币货币需求”的假设。
因而出现一个反直觉的问题：“Solana 和 Ethereum 越成熟、越强大，原生资产就越不像货币。”在 Tulip 看来，采用成功可能削弱代币论点的一部分，而非印证它。他的判断依据是用户实际选择什么作为抵押品和交易货币，而不是只看应用或交易数量。
因此，他认为 ETH 和 SOL 更需要按照“能够赚钱的资产”来评估。这是他框架中的明确转向，他也将其与两种资产此前在高点附近表现令人失望联系起来。这并不意味着这些网络没有实用活动；争议在于，有多少实用性会通过货币需求或收入捕获传导至原生资产。
19. 扩容能让用户受益，却削弱稀缺性溢价
Tulip 的第二个质疑是，交易增长未必带来费用增长。他说，Solana 交易量大幅上升的同时，费用却下降了，因为网络正在做好自己的工作——扩容。他以 NFT 作比：单个系列可以稀缺，但 NFT 作为一个资产类别并不稀缺。同样，既有区块空间在扩容或用户改用替代方案之前，可能显得稀缺。
以太坊高昂的兑换费用曾推动用户转向其他链。Tulip 追问，如果 Solana 把费用提高到什么程度，Aptos、Sui 或其他网络就会拿走边际需求？他并非否认不同区块链的技术差异，真正的问题是，一条网络能否在持续提供低成本执行、吸引用户的同时，保留足够的定价权支撑估值。
他也主动说明了反方论点：如果足够多的应用形成临界规模，Solana 共享的生态环境可能独具价值。用户也许愿意为使用 Pump、DePIN 网络和其他可互操作应用付费，而不把执行能力视为可以互换的商品。他说：“如果我错了，原因就在这里。”他认为投资者可以等待更强的经济性证据，因为持续的费用收入不太可能在毫无迹象的情况下突然出现。
Tulip 提到 Ethereum 市值约 3,000 亿美元、Solana 约 900 亿美元，以此说明至少四分之一万亿美元的资金配置不当。他明确反对一比一资金轮动：某资产损失 1,000 亿美元，可能只有 100 亿至 500 亿美元转向其他资产。他用一个挑衅性的对比说明自己的观点：投资者接受 SOL 按“20,000 倍盈利”估值，却拒绝估值 100–200 倍的 HYPE。这些倍数是他的表述，并非节目独立计算所得。
20. Ansem 不认同持有者会迅速放弃生态与货币估值
Ansem 理解 Tulip 描述的机制，但不同意资金会按他说的速度轮动。他认为，ETH 和 SOL 持有者历来并没有简单地把它们当作企业来估值；它们还代表货币属性，以及对未来应用的敞口。原生代币使用率下降，不一定会让持有者突然得出“它不是货币”的结论。即使使用情况改变，既有的估值习惯也可能延续。
对于新的传统金融配置者，他更认同这套逻辑。一个问“我买的究竟是什么”的人，可能难以给一个经济价值捕获不明确的基础层代币估值。Ethereum 在 2020–2021 年的高额费用，曾提供更直接的量化依据；如今这幅图景消失，确实很重要。Ansem 承认自己曾很早看空 ETH，但也坦言自己偏爱 SOL 及其生态，存在明显个人偏见。
两人最明确的共识，是应用具有更大的可选性。Ansem 认为，成功的业务代币比一条链捕获更多收入更容易成为类似货币的资产。Pump 使用自定义交易对就是前一种路径的例子。他对 SOL 的主要辩护仍是，投资者可以借此获得尚未出现的应用敞口；Tulip 称这是“非常合理的看法”，也认可 Solana 团队投入大、人才优秀。
21. 互联网泡沫类比：基础设施稀缺性退潮后，要找耐久的企业
Tulip 把 Ethereum 早期的地位比作互联网泡沫时期的 Cisco：面对巨大新市场，投资者买入提供稀缺连接能力的供应商。互联网的长期判断可能是对的，但基础设施供应商的稀缺性溢价最终可能过高。他认为，Ethereum 在有用区块空间难以获取时处于类似位置；随着扩容普及，供应格局发生变化。
他更愿意把目光放在 2003 年前后。他大致记得，科技股指数花了“10 年或 16 年”才恢复，而 Apple、Amazon 和 Microsoft 等个别公司早在那之前就成为强劲的长期投资。重点在于回报分化：投资者不必等旧的指数领头羊或整个市场重返高点，才能找到具有强劲长期复利潜力的企业。
他主张付出研究，而不是玩预测游戏。Tulip 说自己已经整理了约 120 页幻灯片，还打算再做一期数小时的节目，讨论值得关注的项目。4 个小时的讨论整理出一份名单，之后又花了约 2 周研究。他认为，专注投资的人可能只需 1–3 周，就能形成好得多的投资论点。这是鼓励研究，并不代表最终选出的项目一定会成功。
22. Pearl 将 Bitcoin 安全预算问题与 AI 基础设施扩张相连
Tulip 对 Zcash 的明确判断是：“Zcash 会涨到 1 万亿美元。”但他马上补充时间无法预测：“我说不准什么时候。”更广泛的货币理论是，流动性和价值储存需求存在零和竞争。美元有弱点，为 Bitcoin 留出空间；其他加密货币要成为货币，也需要 Bitcoin 存在弱点。在他的框架中，“好”货币的成功，来自填补较差货币留下的真空。
隐私、量子风险和安全预算都是 Bitcoin 长期存在的问题，但 Tulip 认为，问题的规模和迫近程度如今让人们开始重视。Zcash 重新打开替代货币市场，是他关注的信号。不过，他也称量子是“相当糟糕的叙事”，没有进一步展开承诺过的解释。这与 Ben-Sasson 的紧迫感构成实质性分歧，双方的技术观点并未在对话中得到解决。
Pearl 处理的是论点中的安全预算部分。Tulip 指出，公开上市的 Bitcoin 矿工正转向 AI，因为把电力转化为 AI 计算，可能比挖 Bitcoin 收入更高。他同时对证据作了限定：Bitcoin 的算力过去也曾下滑，价格疲软会影响挖矿，近期情况则有所恢复。他明确表示，不想把短期算力下降过度外推成永久性结论。
他对 Pearl 的简化描述是：拿掉 Bitcoin 的 SHA-256，换成矩阵乘法。挖矿不再独立争夺能源，而是可以接入将能源转化为智能的庞大行业。他喜欢保留类似 Bitcoin 的货币设计，不加入广泛的可编程性；在他的框架里，权益证明是“糟糕的货币”。吸引力在于获得不同的货币敞口，而不仅是持有另一种打着 AI 概念的应用代币。
23. 研究从找到上游思想者开始，也要亲自检验看起来愚蠢的东西
Tulip 说自己没有固定研究模板，因为市场占据了他大部分清醒时间。他会刻意寻找“非主流思想者”：小说、律师、新 AI 工具和陌生协议都能帮助他建立联系。如果一个正在上涨的项目看起来很蠢，他会先买一点、自己试试。这里的纪律，是在否定之前接触证据，而不是把第一反应当作最终结论。
Twitter 点赞还未转为私密时，他会沿着优秀交易者的点赞记录，回溯他们在发布自己观点前关注的内容。一路追踪，有时会找到只有 400 名粉丝或不到 5,000 名粉丝的上游思想者。他也用同样方法寻找播客嘉宾、书籍和通讯：品味好的人，可能会把投资者带到熟悉领域以外的优质信息源。
他曾发现一条快速上升的曲线，关联一种俄罗斯卢布稳定币；字幕中没有说清币名。Tulip 将兴趣与乌克兰战争期间的资金外流及转入 Tether 联系起来。另一种研究方式，是检查 GitHub 上项目集成情况和提交记录，例如 Vitalik 讨论过的隐私项目。他认为，产品依赖关系和实际开发进度，可能揭示热门市场评论忽略的联系。
他也会在市值约 500 万至 1 亿美元的项目中寻找能产生收入并回购代币的业务，但认为这里存在道德困境。公开指出一个被低估的好项目，可能会引来追随者高价买入，为自己创造退出机会。他说自己没有用这种方式推广发现：“在加密行业，诚信最重要。”研究机会与受众带来的利益冲突，在这里并非彼此无关的议题。
24. 面板上的估值倍数只是研究起点，收入能否持续才是关键
Tulip 用 GMX 举例，明确表示这还不是完整结论，并提醒听众不要急着买入低市值代币。他查看 DeFi Llama，看到估值约为营收的 1.2 倍，且收入已连续增长数月，于是开始追问是否被低估。这个倍数本身回答不了问题；他希望进一步研究创造收入的真实市场和活动。
AI 可以帮助检索底层信息：“Claude，去把实际持币人拉出来看看。”他的技术背景让他更容易检查增长来自暂时性因素，还是来自他认为能够持续的机制。投资论点不能停留在收入上涨这一事实，还要理解收入为何增长，再把解释放进更广泛的市场发展判断中。
Ansem 强调，让信息反映到价格上需要时间。对于一个投资期为 6 个月、1 年或更长的论点，连续 3、4 个月走弱未必意味着失败。他回忆自己曾反复纳闷某项资产为什么还没涨，之后才意识到其他投资者尚未得出相同结论。他同时提醒，杠杆过高或期限太短，会让人无法等待。
Tulip 补充，日常媒体工作也会产生副作用：每天讨论市场让他变得更短线，他不得不重新学习长期思考。有时正确的内容就是告诉观众没有好的交易。Ansem 说，制作节目加深了他的研究，但没有改变交易频率。两人的经历并不相同；持续接触市场信息并不必然改善交易执行的每个环节。
25. 交易娱乐行业既奖励交易能力，也奖励表达能力
Tulip 的职业路径始于电子和固件工程，相关工作涉及 CERN、北京的粒子物理实验室和雷达干扰设备；之后他在 Messari 做了 4 年工程师。加密市场一直是他的业余爱好，直到他大幅降薪转行进入行业。一次公开的 Aster 交易让他登上 ThreadGuy 的直播，后来又加入 Counterparty，参与创意、合作和分发运营。
这个职业选择部分出于兴趣：“我是不是要从一个成功的工程师，变成给 Twitch 主播打工的人？”他选择这份工作，是因为觉得它会非常有趣。他和 Counterparty 团队的商业判断并不只是喜欢直播：他们认为主动投资正在成为一种娱乐，而能把交易讲得有吸引力的人，可以围绕交易建立有价值的受众。
他以国际象棋作类比：最优秀的棋手和最大的内容创作者不是一回事，Magnus Carlsen 可以棋艺出众，却不是最大的娱乐频道。Banks 将这一点延伸至游戏行业：顶尖决策能力与娱乐表达能力是两项独立优势。因此，交易内容创作者不一定要有 9 位数或 10 位数的盈亏记录；他需要有一定真实能力，也需要能让受众觉得值得回来。
Kimchi 是 Counterparty 可观察到的分发案例：一次随口聊起他的话题，成了节目最热门的 TikTok；第二天又聊了一次，效果同样最好。Banks 更直接地讲了这种反馈循环，承认自己曾宣布要做一个大热视频，并对 Kimchi 讲过“编造的故事”和“夸大的故事”。这证明了他们有意制造关注度，并不构成对被放大的传闻的佐证。
26. 媒体业务通过触达范围和分发效率复利增长
Tulip 让听众想象一场直播只有 100 名实时观众，却能带来 100 万次切片曝光。商业受众远大于直播在线人数所显示的规模。他重点看两个指标：实时观众数，代表互动的初始来源；总曝光量，则反映节目背后的分发业务。切片不是附带产物，把直播内容剪成广泛传播的片段，本身就是产品的一部分。
增长可以发生在两个维度。实时观众增多会扩大初始受众；更好的内容选取、剪辑和分发，则会提高每位观众或每场直播带来的曝光量。Tulip 说 Counterparty 在两个维度上都在增长，还没看到天花板。他把这种结合称为“指数型业务”：他的实际意思是，受众规模和分发效率的改善可以相乘，而不只是简单相加。
运营问题很具体：赞助商为每次曝光支付多少，剪辑人员的成本是多少，曝光基数能否扩大，以及内容产出的效率有多高。优秀剪辑师难找，需要留住并善待。Tulip 说，分发后台是自己负责的一大块工作，而不是把公司描述成主持人对着镜头即兴说话。
Ansem 还谈到作为研究团队交易的好处：讨论能暴露论点中缺失的假设。他举例说，朋友 Jeremy 看好 Serum，促使他研究 Serum 和 Solana，最后得出结论：“我觉得不是 Serum，是 SOL。”他认为，与持不同观点的人交流和写作，可能带来单独阅读另一篇市场帖文得不到的洞见。
27. 受众财富和公开记录，能否约束不良激励
Tulip 认为，长期经营金融媒体的经济模式会偏好能够保住并增加资本的受众。内容免费，由赞助商付费；赞助商想要的是手里有钱、交易量活跃的客户。爆仓的观众无法带来太多后续活动。他所描述的利益一致性体现在客户终身价值上：“你的受众越来越有钱”才是商业模式的胜利；但他也承认，仅凭直播中说几句话，无法保证这个结果。
他把这种模式与以牺牲受众为代价快速退出区分开来。长期经营需要反复提供有用信息、维持关系。Banks 也认同交易量是赞助商经济模式的核心。他们谈的是激励机制和经营意图，并没有经过审计的数据证明每位赞助商、每条建议或每次交易都让观众受益；节目提供的是运营逻辑，而非受众回报的量化结果。
Tulip 认为，公开排行榜可能逐渐奖励更好的行为。在 FOMO 上，若有人展示大量未实现收益，后来收益消失，排名就会下滑；保住收益的人则会上升。他把这一机制与公开链上记录、ZachXBT 等调查者联系起来。他预计，长期表现为正的参与者会逐渐变得可辨认，从而减少投资判断对某一时点的说服性叙事的依赖。
谈到跟单交易，Banks 认为，如果有人不断让跟随者亏钱，最终会耗尽可跟随的资金。Tulip 认为，一些快速跟单可能来自专业的小型基金或机器人，它们会跟随 Frank 等公开盈利的交易者。这些只是两人的解释，不是对特定交易背后参与者身份的确认。两人都认为，社交界面让经验不足的参与者也能获取以往只有专业人士会追踪的钱包信息。
28. 加密行业声誉问题上，主持人与 Tulip 的采用优先论出现分歧
Banks 认为，加密行业品牌形象不佳会阻碍采用，尤其是人们常把不同事件混为一谈，归结为同一种指责。他举例说，一个币被 rug，和一个无关的社区币被另一个版本抢走关注度，是两回事；图表可能看着相似，责任却不同。Eli Ben-Sasson 也补充说，CT 会攻击连温和正面的内容，回忆自己粉丝变多后，有人甚至恶意评论他的家人；只改变内容语气，并不能解决问题。
Tulip 反问，是否必须先修复整个行业的品牌形象。人们嘴上说讨厌互联网、社交媒体和 AI，实际上却一直在使用。如果有用的加密产品继续增长，声誉问题未必能阻止采用。他的个人做法是把自己的业务经营好，而不是解决所有公共叙事：“它会自行解决，也可能不会，但我还是可以努力负责任地行事。”
Banks 反驳说，金融需要比搜索引擎或作业工具更深的信任，因为用户会投入资本。Tulip 接受这一点，称“说得有道理”。Banks 预计，加密行业最终会融入日常金融和交易，人们甚至不再提“加密”。在此之前，他认为媒体和可信案例是重要桥梁；Ansem 则把 Hyperliquid 的 Jeff 列为优秀建设者的代表。
29. 股市叙事可以为起初被夸大的现实提供资金
Ansem 觉得 AI 公司的沟通方式令人不安：股价稍有下跌，似乎就会触发安抚市场的标题，让股价看起来几乎与技术进展同等重要。他也担心 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 未来上市，尤其是在公司估值迅速攀升至他粗略形容的 1.5 万亿至 2 万亿美元之后。不过，他承认新模型可能再次改善经济效益，因此预计市场观点会有大幅反转，而不是单边走向。
Tulip 不同意把积极宣传本身视为业务脆弱的有力证据。他称自己的观点是“超验叙事”：围绕想象中的未来采取行动，可能帮助那个未来成为现实。更高的股价能改善融资条件、支持员工薪酬，并为公司扩张提供资源。他认为，企业领导人已经学到加密行业更早发现的道理：限制更少的沟通方式，更容易看清价格和采用之间互相推动的循环。
Tesla 在疫情期间的经历是他的主要例子。按他的说法，Elon 宣传了一个当时的业务尚无法支撑的估值，随后大量发行股票、建设超级工厂，并扩大产能，逐步实现隐含的未来。他说：“Elon 制造的金融幻象，反过来建构了之后的现实。”这是一个因果论点：高估值可以成为运营成功的输入，而不只是对当下基本面的错误描述。
他把这一循环延伸到加密市场。一个成功交易的公开宣传，可能把用户吸引到某家交易所而非另一家，创造后来足以支撑市场热情的交易活动。HYPE 被用作抵押品，能更直接地连接代币价格和交易能力，不过 Tulip 说目前规模相对小。Ansem 承认公司了解自身对市场的影响，但股市接近周期尾声、可能走弱的担忧仍未解决。
30. Tulip 宁愿持有差异化机会，也不愿给 AI 乌托邦定价
Tulip 也担心 AI 相关资产，除非政府干预改变局面；他说这完全可能。他不想逢低买入 AI 股票。Eli Lilly 对他的吸引力之一，是提供与这项交易关联较少的股票敞口。节目没有展开具体药物的投资逻辑；他表达的是，自己更偏好另一类机会，同时认为加密资产仍有显著上涨空间。
他的个人博弈论从 AI 公司高达万亿美元的估值出发。如果这些公司表现好过他认为十年内能上涨 10–100 倍的资产，世界可能会发生巨大变化，以至于最初的投资组合选择已没那么重要。他说：“我不是死了，就是欣喜若狂。”核战争的类比表达了同一观点：如果某种结果会压倒投资的常规目的，就很难看出围绕它优化组合有多大意义。
他也通过科幻小说思考极端情境。两位嘉宾都读过《Accelerando》；Tulip 正在读《Daemon》和《Neuromancer》，也称赞《Red Rising》。Ansem 担心创意思想会收敛成互联网蜂巢思维。Tulip 更偏好用方差来理解：互联网和 AI 一方面会制造更多低质量内容，另一方面也能让杰出创作者触达过去无法接触的规模和细分受众。
他认为，自动化回复和通用文章泛滥时，原创思想可能更容易脱颖而出。他把自己的写作、受众和职业机会都联系到在这样的环境里提出清晰、独特的观点。这个原则与此前关于智能趋于商品化的讨论相呼应：投入、坚持、主动性，以及创造真正有价值的内容，可能成为愈发重要的差异化优势。
31. 更成熟的金融轨道，或能让旧的加密社交创意再试一次
Ansem 追问，为什么很少有项目能从零发展成新的大型企业。Tulip 承认，他曾以为 FWB 会做得好得多，目前仍看好 Paper Trade、Cards 和 Venice。他的解释是，大规模资金流入需要成熟协议来承接。金融创新速度放慢，可能正是生态成熟、能够处理机构级活动的一部分，而不一定代表停滞。
在此基础上，Tulip 希望“过去的一切都能重新流行”。ENS、IPFS、去中心化网络基础设施和类似 Lens 的共享社交图谱，或许可以在扩容后的网络拥有真实用户后重新探索。他以创作者的具体痛点为例：Counterparty 无法把 ThreadGuy 的 Twitter 粉丝直接带到每个其他分发平台。共享社交图谱若能支持不同界面和算法，就能解决真实运营问题，而不只是讲一个代币故事。
Ansem 把交易称作“世界上最伟大的大型多人在线角色扮演游戏”，但角色和历史仍散落在互不连通的个人资料中。钱包可以证明用户早期参与协议、曾经盈利，以及具备哪些经验；ZK 工具还能让他们选择性地隐藏细节。如果数万亿美元的资产及相关用户都迁移上链，他认为，能够呈现信誉和活动记录的系统会更有用。Tulip 表示同意，但认为现在买入旧的社交代币还太早。
Friend.tech 的经历则提醒人们，乐观判断也可能伴随亏损。两人都喜欢这个产品；Tulip 曾通过电子表格交易，记得当时交易量和费用都很高，自己赚过钱，最后也遭受损失。Ansem 说自己可能拿到最大的空投，最终却把收益全部来回做没了，“一美元都没卖”。两人都不把这段经历当作赛道已经终结的证据，仍打算继续尝试；但这段交流也保留了一个教训：令人兴奋的社交产品，照样可能成为糟糕的持仓。
完整逐字稿
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 at 1:00 PM PST, as well as... Oh, my God, it's been a minute.
Yo, what it do? What it do? What it do?
As well as Ansem's Twitter, and his Kick, and his Twitch, and whatever the fuck else he's doing.
Kick.com/Ansem.
Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
Kick.com/ B-O-K-N-O-I-Z-O.
Um, this is, this is pretty brutal, but I feel like I have to kick the show off with this because I just went on a 30- or 40-minute rant about Kimchi. My whole pre-show was basically the Kimchi show. His Twitter just got hacked. You actually broke that news to me as soon as we came into the green room. They just posted this tweet. This isn’t from Kimchi; it’s a fake link to some bullshit scam meme coin. Just stay away from this shit.
What happened? I saw you tweet about links or something. You can get hacked if you click on a link? Is there a bug or something?
Yeah, I think it was a bug on X’s side with showing how many sessions you have on your Twitter, not an actual hack type of thing. It was basically showing way too many sessions on your account. Bro, I had like 1,000 sessions. I was like, “What the fuck?” and cleared all my shit.
But I think it was just something weird on their side. I don’t think it was an account hack.
It’s insane.
Yeah.
Pretty brutal that he got hacked. Stay safe. Before we get into the show, is there anything you’d like to update us on? It’s been a little bit. We’ve been kind of locked back in this last week, but you’ve been traveling like a motherfucker. Do you want to talk about what you’ve done and sum up the last couple of months? Anything you want to mention about anything, really? We’re all ears.
Yeah, I’ve been all over the place. I’ve been traveling for 2 conferences. I was in Singapore and Korea. Both were cool. The Coinbase trading competition was probably the most fun thing I did. It was a 1-hour-long perps trading competition for their new Coinbase Pro product. It was pretty dope. A fucking intern beat me. I was winning for most of it—
Insane.
—and the intern snuck me at the end. But yeah, it was cool. I spoke in Singapore and did a Market Bubble Live. I did a meme coin panel. I also got roasted on stage by TJ Miller from—what’s the show called? Silicon Valley. He’s a comedian. The dude’s fucking hilarious.
Sick show, though.
Yeah, he’s cool. It was funny. I met a lot of important people and had some good conversations. I think people are generally bullish on specific assets in crypto and looking for new things to invest in, which is cool. I’m finally back in the seat, back at my desk.
Thank God. Um, we have an update coming from one of our sponsors at Venice AI, home of the VVV coin, which is one of the only things that's been crushing it the last couple weeks. It's about the Lumara Film Festival that we are judges on. Solana getting involved, and this is all coming to a head October 26th at The Roxy. Are you gonna be in LA for this?
October 26th.
Probably not, right?
It's in New York. It's in New York.
Oh, is it in New York?
If it's at The Roxy, I'll definitely be there. Shit, I'm that close.
Oh, there's a Roxy in New York?
Yeah.
Maybe I just extend then. I'm supposed to be in New York this weekend as well. Um, but this is exciting. Obviously they've been working on this for fucking months. Um, this is the motherfucker who did that crazy interview with us. What's his name again?
Oh, bro, fucking uh, damn, T- Simon. Simon? Simon?
Simon from, um-
Simon is a fucking GOAT, bro. That dude's-
What is it called? Solana? It's called-
That dude's Solana, Solana, the Solana, uh, weekly call thing, the ecosystem call.
Yeah, the ecosystem call. One of the best interviews I've ever done. Um-
I think it is. Like, it's up there for me too.
Yeah, it's really... It was... He, he's really good at what he does. It was great. Um, but yeah, they're getting involved in this as well. Great to see it. Great to see it. Keeping it local, keeping it in the fam. Um, yeah, man, listen, markets. Obviously, the title on this stream is “It’s a Lot Worse Than We Think.” We talked a little bit about this pre-show. It’s been a rough couple of weeks, very rocky. I know you flipped back and forth between bullish and bearish a couple of times. You want to give us your raw thoughts as of October 22, 2026, at 1:47 p.m.?
Time-sensitive.
Yeah, time-sensitive. And it could change, guys. It could change. How do you feel about markets? How do you feel about crypto right now? Where the fuck are we? I’m down a fucking crib today. Is Ansem going to come and save us? How are we feeling? What’s good?
1. Crypto Turns Bearish
Yeah, I’m pretty bearish right now, unfortunately. I was bullish 2 weeks ago. I honestly thought we were going to get another leg up on a lot of the AI names and stock names, and crypto was going to lead like it had been leading in Q3. I was wrong about memory making new all-time highs and wrong about semis making new all-time highs. They retraced pretty aggressively.
At the same time, from a technical-analysis perspective, we have the war continuing, oil ripping pretty hard, and rates still being high. I pulled back a little bit. We also have the confluence of all this AI shit disrupting a fuck ton of things. We’ve had all these vulnerabilities come up in the past week. The PHP one was huge. We’re at a turning point where AI is getting really good and being used to find vulnerabilities in software that humans hadn’t found as quickly. It’s affecting people’s processes, and I think we’re responding to that: What’s going to break? How are we going to have to respond to different things?
But the core issue is that I think we’re at the tail end of a macro cycle for equities. A lot of the equities that have dominated since the tail end of 2023 and end of 2022 are up a lot, and there’s a lot of unrealized profit there. We haven’t really seen any significant pullbacks in some of the main stock names, and I think we’re getting that now as people de-risk and take profits. Crypto outperformed equities pretty hard in Q3. Memory topped at the end of June, literally the same week Bitcoin bottomed. Crypto had front-run a lot of the weakness in equities, so it bottomed earlier. It was already oversold, and we had that bounce in Q3.
What’s really tricky here is whether we’re at the beginning of a bull market for crypto, or whether that was a countertrend bounce and we’re going to continue some kind of bear and consolidation trend. If it’s the latter, it’s going to catch a lot of people offside, which is why I took some positions off over the past few days. If you continue to see weakness on the equity side, especially in the big names—
Are you de-risking or shorting? Are you shorting?
I’m doing both. I don’t really recommend people shorting, because this isn’t the beginning of this downtrend. For Bitcoin, ETH, and SOL, to be honest, you’re at a pretty key support level, so you’d be shorting into support right now. You have to be very nimble getting in and out. It’s the worst to be wrong on a short, lose money, and then have the thing you were trying to short go down anyway while you don’t have a position. That’s doubly fucked.
I don’t really recommend most people short. You can de-risk and take profit if you’re up on positions, or cut positions if you bought near the top. Then you can reenter wherever you want once things get clearer.
You know, 432, Banks looks stressed. I am fucking stressed, bro. You heard the guy.
Yeah, it’s tricky, bro. It’s a really tricky spot. I’m not going to lie; it’s tricky. I was super bullish the last time we had an episode. I was like, “Yeah, I think we’re pulling back to a key level. Good spot for support to hold.” I expected equities to do well, and now I’m flipping to the bear side.
So we’ll see if I’m wrong. Hopefully I am and we bounce and rip back to the highs here. But, yeah, I think it’s a good spot to take profit if you’re up.
You don’t love to hear it, and I’m going to take the bear take a lot more seriously now that you’re saying it. We saw Flood screaming from the mountaintops about being bearish these last couple of weeks, and then we saw CT cannibalize him in brutal fashion.
I always like that, bro.
It’s insane, dude.
He’s like, “Fuck it, I gotta get offline.” I feel him, because I’ve been in that spot before. I flipped bearish in September 2025 when I thought it was the top, and I was bearish for a couple of weeks. People were like, “You’re retarded. You’re dumb. You’re an idiot. You don’t know what’s going on.” And then it ripped to all-time highs, and I was like, “Fuck it, I’m gonna buy some Bitcoin here.” Then it nuked on me, and I had to sell after I bought the top.
I feel like you’re especially susceptible to criticism and getting torn apart by CT in bear conditions, because people are losing money.
Yeah.
It’s really easy to dismiss people’s takes or opinions when everything’s up, everybody’s making money, and people are happy. But my real rule of thumb, from the perspective of somebody who’s more normie-coded and doesn’t analyze markets the way you guys do on such a technical level, is to go the other way from general consensus. When I’m watching CT and it’s been as bearish as it has the last two weeks, that makes me bullish.
Yeah.
That’s typically how it goes. Things are too euphoric, that’s when you sell. Things are too grim and bearish, that’s when you buy. It’s a pretty solid strategy when trading, I’ve found. But now that you’re saying that, it’s a little bit sketchy.
Yeah. I think we had a pinpoint call at the bottom, though. If you allocated near the lows like you should have, you should be up a good bit. I think Sol was around $60. Zcash was probably around, what, $400 or $500, maybe?
Again, if you’re watching your calls on Twitter Live, keeping up to date, turning on your notifications, and watching the show week in, week out, the data doesn’t lie. This is the Market Bubble call sheet. This is the maximum gain if you’d sold all of our calls at their peak. We’ve given you some really good calls. At this point, you should still be in profit. So I guess the question is: Is it time to sell a little bit, to de-risk a little bit? It sounds like it is. For our viewers at home who might have a Pump position, a Zcash position, or a VVV position, is it time to sell a little bit?
Yeah, I think it is a good spot to take profit. If you’re up 2x or 3x on those, you can take some profit. I don’t think the bottom from summer gets touched. I think those are the lows; I don’t think we break them. I just think we’re going to have a pullback into a higher-low spot.
Or around the $70K range, maybe?
Yeah, I think so. People are asking me about other coins. The good thing about crypto conditions, when most things are chopping, is that you can have coins that outperform, especially lower-market-cap coins that get a concentrated bid for something. People are asking about Ansem in the chat. A lot of the time I’ve spent over the past few months has been on that. I think I rushed out the first iteration of Ansel Maya because I wanted to show it wasn’t just going to be me bull-posting or posting about the coin. There are going to be other things attached to it, and that’ll be true in the future as well. I don’t want to rush something out that isn’t what I actually want it to be. I’ve been spending a lot of time on it, and I’ll give more updates soon. I don’t want to leak anything.
I can attest to this as well. Obviously, we run a show together, and you and I have been friends for a long time. I’ve seen how you move and operate more than the average person, especially behind the scenes. You’ve been working tirelessly on this. You’re globe-trotting and traveling—you seem to be in a different country every other day. I can attest to that anecdotally.
Yeah.
Paper Trade. Paper Trade.
Bro, I’ve been clicking hard on Paper Trade. Paper Trade is a platform launched by my boy Jez, one of my guys. He’s a very smart trader and investor in crypto. He essentially launched a 1,000x leverage platform on top of Hyperliquid that uses midpoint price calculations for Bitcoin and ETH. It’s a synthetic perps exchange, so you’re not actually opening a position against somebody else. You’re opening a position based on the price. If you lose, that money goes to the house; if you win, you get paid out by the house. When the house has a lot of funds in it, it has ample liquidity to pay out winners. When it doesn’t, it’s kind of like a pool that collects over time.
So we like Paper Trade, just to be clear.
I like Paper Trade a lot. I farmed it early. People have been mad at them because they changed how Paper gets distributed. At the beginning, a large majority of the supply would be distributed based on how much the house was making. They increased the Paper supply over time, but I think that’s good for traders who are actively using the exchange. Before, it benefited farmers more than traders. The max supply was 12.6 billion, I think, and you would hit that after a certain amount of time—something like $500 million in the LP. But now there’s no max supply, and you mint, I think, a million Paper for… I don’t know the exact calculation. You mint more Paper. Can you pull that up?
Sure.
Go down. Go up a little bit. Actually, it’s a more recent post. Could you go to one of their more recent posts? Up or down a bit. Down a little bit. Yeah, “Transferability”—that one. They made it so the token is going to be non-transferable for a longer period of time. Right now, you can stake the token on the exchange to get a portion of all the revenue from the exchange.
Can I just show off a little bit real quick? Nobody’s noticed it or picked up on it, but we’ve made a couple of changes to production. If you look at the theme of our overlay, Z, you can see it’s usually gray, right?
Mm.
When you were talking about being bearish on Bitcoin and the majors, we could switch it to red, so clips and stuff have a visual cue for the tone we’re talking in.
Oh, shit.
You were just talking about Paper Trade, which you’re bullish on, so we can flip it green.
Mm.
Chat, come on now.
That’s hard.
Dude, it’s sick as fuck. That’s so sick. I think it’s cool because—
That’s fire.
The idea was that if you’re scrolling through clips and you see me talking about Bitcoin and it’s green, you just know inherently, without seeing or hearing anything, that my take is bullish.
Yeah.
And vice versa, bearish, whatever. I don't know. It’s a cool little quip. That’s W production.
Yeah, one pair trade I think I’ll give, though: if you want to pair trade, I think holding Bitcoin long on one side and shorting memory stocks on the other side is an interesting one.
Yeah, so, okay. You think Bitcoin and majors—
I think Bitcoin—
—are gonna outperform memory stocks?
Yeah, I think Bitcoin will—
Okay.
—outperform memory stocks.
That’s good. That’s good.
Yeah.
I spent 40 minutes pre-show talking about this. I honestly want your take. I think you’ll have a pretty good take on this because you’ve experienced a lot of what this kid’s dealing with, as far as CT sentiment on CT and this whole Pump partnership, rollout, whatever. I want your take on the Pump side of things as well.
Yeah.
I just want your general take about everything. Obviously, CT’s been all Kimchi for the last 2 days. Kimchi’s everywhere on CT. It was pretty good yesterday, but—
It’s dominating my feed.
Yeah, facts. One hundred percent, that’s what I said. Obviously, naturally, CT’s hating. Do they actually care, or is this just an opportunity to farm engagement? Is this because markets are down? What do you think is going on here?
2. Why CT Blames Pump
No, they definitely care. They’re definitely not faking it. But I think the anger is misplaced. I do think the anger is misplaced.
I will say one thing I think is justified: people are mad at Pump because obviously they did whatever deal with Kimchi, they’ve done deals with KOLs, and they’ve done the callout reward stuff. But they haven’t done the airdrop, so a lot of people are mad at them for giving away this cash to those people but not doing the airdrop. That, I think, is justified. But I will say—
It’s a huge part of what we talked about on the show when we first started, too. It’s kind of where the Ansem stuff came from, too.
Yeah.
It’s a pretty big deal.
Yeah, I do think that’s justified. But I think they’ve been pretty intentional with giving away rewards to everybody in the app, not just KOLs. I think their ecosystem is pretty structured to reward everybody who gives back to it.
But I think the anger at Pump for coins not going up is wrong. Pump cannot make coins go higher. They’re just the launchpad. There’s nothing they can do to make coins go higher. You can argue that if the starting market caps of some of the coins were higher, maybe you’d have more runners, but that’s not a proven thing.
What people tend to do in crypto is compare the current reality to something that doesn’t exist and say the reality that doesn’t exist would be better. But you don’t know that it would necessarily be better. There’s no proof that it would be better. People do that a lot with different setups in crypto. It’s, “Oh, why don’t you just do this? That would fix everything.” You don’t necessarily know that it would fix everything.
I think the reason Pump has been so resistant to changing a lot of the default settings on their app is that it’s obviously working for them and for a lot of people who use it. Their everyday users aren’t complaining. That’s why they’re able to make $1 million a day, even during the bear market. They have this core user group that continues to come back, even when coins aren’t running over $500 million or higher, because they’re playing the super-low-market-cap games.
As we know, Pump makes a lot of its money on stuff pre-bond, but there are also a lot of traders, devs, and everybody else involved in that ecosystem at very low market caps, too. If you take that away, you remove a large part of the Pump ecosystem.
Every single one of these products and platforms charges some sort of fee. That’s how they make money. That’s why they’re successful businesses, right? It’s Coinbase—
The extraction point I don’t understand. Every business that’s successful in crypto, when they have revenue, people call it extraction. I don’t really know how Pump has gotten so much of the heat for this. You could say the same thing about Axiom. You could say the same thing about Uniswap.
All of them. Everything.
You could say the same thing about Raydium. You could say the same thing about—
Coinbase.
—Coinbase. You could say the same thing about all these exchanges. These are all companies that make money. The reason they’re able to have revenue is that user behavior enables it. If what they were doing in the market wasn’t working, they wouldn’t be making any money. But they are making money because people aren’t changing their behavior with the current setup.
Every other launchpad outside of Pump has not been able to unseat them, so it’s pretty clear that Pump is doing something right on the launchpad side of things. I think that’s kind of undeniable. But, yeah, I think CT’s anger is misplaced. No one ever—
Well, that’s the whole thing.
—
Nobody ever wants to take self-accountability or responsibility for anything. When markets are down, people just point the finger at whoever’s making money. They can’t bear the thought of platforms and products being successful through conditions like this.
But, bro, you don’t need to use these products. If you think there’s a problem to be solved, that’s how people get rich. If you think there’s a gap in the market or you can make a better launchpad—which, by the way, an infinite number of people have tried—go fucking do it.
Yeah.
No one’s stopping you.
Yeah.
Right? It’s just, I don’t know. It’s weird.
Yeah, I think the group of people who are maddest on Twitter are the traders who aren’t making money on coins and are just like, “Well, why don’t the coins go higher?” But it’s not simple. You can’t just make the coins go higher. I don’t understand what they’re asking them to do, because it’s not possible. What controls coins going higher is traders buying and selling them, not the launchpad. That’s not what’s happening. I’m confused about that. I don’t know exactly what people want on that side.
How do you feel about the general take from some of these older guys? The personal stuff, the personal criticisms of Kimchi and his video. I don’t know if you watched it. Did you watch the video?
Yeah, I watched it.
How do you feel about it? Just genuinely, with no bias—what’s your honest take on his video? More than that, I’m curious about your opinion on the attention it’s getting. There’s no question about it, right? He’s getting an absurd amount of attention for his name and his content. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen native to CT. What do you think?
I thought the video was hard. I thought it was cool. For a kid his age who’s made a lot of money, I think that’s the standard thing you see from people that age who’ve done well. I’m very confused by the older people on CT being angry at him and what he’s doing.
It’s insane.
He’s just hanging out with his friends and spending his money. I’ve seen some of the pushback from people saying, “Oh, how he made his money is what matters.” I don’t know exactly how he made all his money, so I can’t speak to that point or the validity of any of that, to be honest. I think it’s a lot of jealousy, and the hate feels extremely forced to me.
I could understand people saying that Pump in general doesn’t have a high success rate for coins doing well, and if you push people to Pump, you’re not necessarily pushing them to win. But I think that’s reflective of 99% of the coins in crypto. I don’t think that’s necessarily a Kimchi or Pump thing. Even with Hyperliquid, the large majority of traders on Hyperliquid are losing money. That’s—
Trading in general.
—the large majority—
Just trading in general.
—of traders in general are losing money. Yeah, I don’t know.
That’s always been true since before crypto.
Yeah. I thought the video was tough. I thought it was cool. I thought it was cool.
Regardless of anyone’s personal preference or opinion, or what kind of content they like to consume, I think exactly what you said is the take. This is a 22-year-old kid spending money he made one way or another. We can all agree he hit some sort of trade or made money in the markets. He’s kind of emitting this hit-big-and-logged-off energy.
All the specifics of it have been implied or speculated on. These narratives about $40 million on Trump never came out of his mouth. He’s never explicitly said that or alluded to it.
Well, he could’ve made something off of it.
For sure. But I just saw—did you see the Bubblemaps tweet? Bold Nav tweeted some shit. By CT standards, it went giga-viral. It got 1 million views and 4,000 likes, and it was this whole internet-sleuth, on-chain-sleuth, 4- or 5-tweet thread about how Kimchi’s wallet only made $6 million on Trump.
Okay.
And then all their friends—
For what?
By the way, only $6 million.
What the fuck?
It’s like, bro, what the fuck are we all talking about? What the fuck are we talking about right now?
What the fuck, bro?
It’s like, “Well, actually, it was only fucking $25 million.” Dude, what the fuck are we talking—
Yeah.
—but anyway, it gets worse. That wallet wound up being confirmed as Kenzo’s wallet, his friend who’s on all these trips with him.
Oh, yeah.
He’s one of his best friends, and they—
Yeah, I know.
—they’re traveling together, whatever. And that confirmed it wasn’t even Kimchi’s wallet. It was his best friend’s wallet. This whole “Aha, we got you. You actually only made $6 million” thing wasn’t even about his wallet; it was his best friend’s. Again, there’s no comment from him. There’s no confirmation one way or another. A fan walked up to him in the video, which I thought was interesting, and said, “Dude, is it true? Did you hit $40 million on Trump? Holy fuck.”
He didn’t say anything, right?
He laughed and was like—
Yeah, yeah.
“Good to meet you, bro,” and just walked away.
Yeah.
That’s the epitome of him. It basically sums up the discourse and the conversation—
Yeah.
—around this fucking trade. By the way, he has zero incentive to set the record straight or—
Zero.
—discuss this or engage with it—
No, not at all.
—at all.
He doesn’t need to at all.
Let people talk about it.
Yeah.
Let people speculate.
Zero.
It’s creating so much attention around his name that he’s gotta be off to the side laughing. This is my big take on it.
Yeah.
I think CT is typically very disconnected when it comes to culture and how things move in culture, specifically attention to media. I think anybody calling the top on Kimchi is fucking crazy. Obviously, he’s at the top of mind share in CT because he owns 100% of the mind share there. There’s no bigger than that. Everybody knows who he is and is talking about him. But out in the mainstream, in mainstream media, you can see the numbers. The numbers don’t lie, right? He’s on an upward trajectory. He’s growing exponentially in the mainstream.
The numbers are crazy.
They’re fucking insane. He’s just getting started. Orangy, we need that soundbite. We need that fucking button.
The “just getting started” bite?
Yes. Ultimately, my big take is that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. He’s for sure going to be able to leverage all this attention to go make $40 million one way or another. Between this Pump deal and future deals, he’s 22 years old. He has a long life ahead of him. He’s obviously—
Bro, he has to fucking partner with Bottega. What the fuck?
That’s what I’m saying.
That shit is lit.
There’s a relationship being built with Bottega. That’s—
That shit is lit.
—that’s what I’m saying. It is fucking lit.
That shit is lit.
Again, I don’t care if that’s your cup of tea. I don’t care if you want to wear Bottega or think buying designer is retarded. But one thing is fact—it should be an objective fact, something we should all be able to agree on: that’s good for crypto.
For sure.
Because crypto—
Without a doubt.
—biggest issue has been swagless, aura-less. Somebody who comes in and is perceived as cool by the stereotypical arbiters of culture—they’re embracing him. We want to see it. This is good for us. Objectively, this is good for us. It could legitimately be good for Bitcoin, right? So why can’t everybody just shut the fuck up and let some good shit happen? That’s my take.
It’s also very weird to see people highlight this. You had a good tweet. Ash Robinson said something along the lines of, “Crypto needs to highlight more stories about taking care of your family and buying a modest house,” et cetera. First of all, this stuff isn’t flashy and it’s not engaging. No one’s going to watch a fucking video of you buying a modest house in the Midwest for you, your wife, and your kid.
That’s just not gonna go viral because it’s average. It’s the median. By the nature of the content you’re suggesting we highlight and push, it can’t run to that level. So that’s the first problem. But the second problem is what you highlight: CT hates everything. That’s just a fact. CT will find a way—
Everything, bro.
—if somebody’s getting too big or being celebrated—
Bro.
—too much—
Everything.
—they’ll find some way, somehow—
Yeah, that—
—to vilify you and make you bad.
I can tell you, bro. I was on CT when my daughter was born. I was posting all these baby pictures, her chilling in the crib. Big mistake.
Big fucking mistake.
I was posting all types of stuff, and I had a lot on my profile. As I got more and more followers, I kept doing that, and then it got real weird. The responses I started getting were weird. People were saying crazy shit about me and crazy shit about my kids.
Insane. Insane.
All types of crazy stuff, and I wasn’t doing anything wild. I was just posting trades and taking trades. I’d be wrong on trades sometimes, but I wasn’t talking to anybody crazy or doing anything like that. It does get kind of weird on CT. I don’t know why it’s like that. It’s a very weird community, to be honest. That’s why—
It’s really—
It’s really weird, bro. The parasocial relationships are just bizarre. I responded to this because he was like, “Oh, well, why don’t we just post more wholesome content?” I’m like, “CT doesn’t want wholesome content.”
They don’t.
They don’t respond well—
They don’t.
—to wholesome content. It’s not like that gets a positive reaction from them either. It’s just not true.
This is the other thing, too: by the nature—
Yeah.
—of the market, how people operate in the market, and how people make money in the market, everyone has a different agenda, too. Some people are short, some people are long, some people want to see coins go up, and some people want to see them go down. That’s something to account for. Everybody has an ulterior agenda and motive that isn’t necessarily their 100% true thoughts and opinions on things. Everyone’s trying to steer some sort of narrative for some sort of reason. It’s a really important thing to highlight and remember.
It’s true. Yeah, it’s definitely true.
It’s definitely true. Everybody’s got their own agenda at all times.
Thought this was a good tweet.
So true.
Oh my God. Bro.
It’s true, though.
That’s so funny, bro. It’s literally them fucking anon PFPs, dog. It’s nuts.
With 3s on a PFP. That’s the other thing. It’s so weird, like people will inherently, or at least pretend to, trust anons with random PFPs and 100 followers on—
It’s crazy.
—Twitter over people who have—
It’s crazy.
It’s so weird. It doesn’t make sense.
No, it’s bizarre, bro.
It is bizarre.
It doesn’t make sense. But the truth is, we’re all imperfect as people. Not to get philosophical and, like, gay about it, but we’re all imperfect. We’ve all made mistakes. Just like you said, you’ve had wrong calls before.
All the time.
But if somebody audits your fucking Twitter and all your takes and calls, you’re objectively right more often than you’re not. That’s why you’re anon, that’s why you’re in the position, and that’s why people trust you. It’s dishonest to highlight moments of weakness or moments where you’re wrong and sum you up entirely based on that. I’m just using you as an example, obviously, because you’ve gone through this before. Lord fucking knows I can relate to this as well, right?
Yeah.
And it’s just weird. I don’t know. It’s weird. This will never change, though. Again, we’ve talked about this a few times. What is the solve? I actually think Kimchi—
The solve?
This is another take about Kimchi specifically.
I think the solve is kind of just pushing through the negativity. I think Thread Guy has done this really well. Thread Guy has done this really well, because Thread Guy—
Yes, he has.
—got a lot of hate when all the fucking LIBRA shit happened.
The LIBRA shit.
People thought he was an insider on that.
He got labeled as, like, the LIBRA guy.
He had insider information, all this other shit, like, “Oh, he’s a scammer,” whatever, whatever, whatever. And he basically was like—
By the way, 100% not true.
Yeah, not true. And he took a step back, and then he came back and was like, “Fuck you guys. I’m just gonna do this content shit, and you’re gonna see that I’m genuine in what I’m talking about. I actually am taking the trades. I actually am gonna study this, and I’m gonna get better than all of you at it.” And he did it every day.
He’s doing it in real time.
Bro, every single day—
Yes.
—over and over and over. You can see CT shift their perception of him in real time. Obviously, there are gonna be highs and lows still, but I think Thread Guy’s reputation and perception on CT have shifted a ton. You kind of just push through it. You just fucking keep putting out information. I do a similar thing: if you continue to be right on trades, there’s not much people can keep saying. Like, “Oh, he fucked up on this, he fucked up on that.” But if you keep coming back and being consistent with the content you’re putting out, I think we’ve done a pretty good job with this show of highlighting important projects and good founders—
For sure.
—and all of that. If you stay the course and keep putting out good content and good information, then the negative stuff falls away most of the time.
Agreed. Agreed. One last thought on the Kimchi stuff, and then I wanna watch this Thread Guy clip, because you mentioned him. I think he has almost a veil, a layer of protection, because he’s not forced to engage with any of this discourse at all. It has nothing to do with his content. He drops aura dumps and vlogs with his friends. He doesn’t need to engage with this at all, and he can fully ignore it. It’ll actually probably positively affect his content, in that the discourse continues and people speculate and talk, which is good for the viewership and engagement. But, too, if he continues to escape the bubble that is CT at this exponential rate, then it’s likely that 95% of all his engagement, his viewers, his fans, are not CT-native—
100%.
—on CT.
Not at all.
So the perception that CT has actually becomes less and less relevant—
It’s not gonna matter. It’s not gonna matter.
—as that becomes less and less balanced, right? So it becomes an insignificant, small little voice in the distance, as opposed to a lot of us who exist primarily on CT. I would say Thread pretty much still is primarily on CT. I’ve watched Rasmer escape it a little bit. But most of the faces on here, the talking heads on here, are subject to the sentiment and narratives that CT is pushing. I think Kimchi is in a different class and is probably gonna have an easier time with that, as long as he can keep his head on straight and just keep doing what he’s doing, to be honest.
He doesn’t need to change up at all, because his—
Yeah, that’s it.
—his lane is honestly really good. It’s the aura dumps, the pics in really cool places, the fucking vlogs where they’re doing cool shit.
It’s such an easy path forward.
And you don’t really have to give insight into how he’s taking the trades, all the trades he’s taking. I don’t think all that is actually—
Oh, fuck no.
—necessary.
His whole shit—
It’s not his thing.
Again, his whole swag is, “Hit big and logged off”—
Yeah.
—and now I’m living life.
Yeah.
The way he scales his brand and his content is, like you just said, taking pictures in cooler and cooler places, doing cooler trips with cooler people, or whatever the fuck.
Whatever the fuck he wants to do. It’s working. I don’t think he needs to change a fucking thing. We’ll see where it goes. I wanna watch this Thread Guy clip, though.
Look, I’m down to hate as much as the next guy. I love to hate on some shit. I’ll fucking hate on whoever: Uncs, plumbers, zoomers. I’m down to pocket-watch and hate, but it was tough. I don’t know what to tell you.
It was tough, bro. It was tough.
It was tough.
It was tough.
It was.
Bro, the Bottega—
King Cut.
Gifts at dinner? That was crazy.
It was.
It was tough.
Bro, by the way, there’s a clip in this fucking vlog of Jason Lewin and Asian Ray, two of the biggest streamers on earth. You can see from their body language that they’re excited to be with this fool. They’re engaged with him.
Yeah.
They’re asking him questions.
Yeah.
He’s the focal point.
Yeah.
He’s the center of attention.
Yeah.
He’s the center of attention in a room with a fucking star athlete in the NBA and 2 of the biggest streamers on earth.
Yeah.
Bro, why the fuck are we not getting behind this kid?
Yeah.
Honestly, before 2 days ago, I was like, “Finally, bro. CT woke up and had a fucking brain.” This is obviously good for us.
Yeah.
Right? This is very good for us, in my personal opinion. Again, it doesn’t matter what your taste is. I don’t care if you buy watches or care for any of that. I don’t fuck with supercars. I think it’s retarded. I don’t like cars. I don’t buy cars. I don’t even fucking drive. I’m also 35 years old, so a lot of that shit flies over my head.
Yeah.
But it’s obviously good. It’s obviously good.
Yeah, for sure.
That was tough. That was tough. The jet was tough.
It was tough.
The ‘Rari was tough.
It was tough.
The custom Bottega was tough. Sorry.
Sorry. It was tough.
Now, is it me? No. Would it be me if I was walking around mid-eight? Maybe. Hard to say. Guess we’ll never know until we know.
By the way, amazing take. And Thread Guy’s objectively the demographic.
Yeah, I watched his vlog, bro.
That’s the target demographic. Thread Guy is who Kimchi hopes to capture and engage with.
Yeah.
He wants him to watch the next vlog, and the next one, and the next one. If people like Thread Guy, who sit in that bucket, are consistently watching his shit and his output, it’s extremely valuable and can be leveraged in all kinds of ways. I personally think it’s plus-EV and good for the market. But yeah, we’ll carry on. Let’s do this boxing bracket thing. Where the fuck is that? What page is this?
Boxing bracket.
Right here, right here.
Boxing bracket.
Got it. You had a tweet? You have an idea? Let’s host the CT Olympics again.
Bro, can somebody make this shit happen, though? Please. Somebody please make the CT Olympics happen. I promise you, this is one of my best ideas. I’ve been saying this shit for years, by the way.
This would be sick.
I’ve been saying this shit for years.
This would be sick, yeah.
This shit would be crazy.
It would be.
Like a fucking triathlon where you trade perps.
Put me in a basketball match.
And then you got some boxing shit.
I’ll pull up. I’ll pull up.
Three-on-three. Do a 100-meter dash. Bro, I’m telling you.
It would be cool.
That shit would be lit.
It would be cool. Some ping-pong shit, just throw in some funny shit in there too.
Yeah, some random shit. Yeah.
Fortnite would be funny. All that shit. It’s a cool idea. So you had this, and our interns made us a little bracket. We’re gonna go through this. By the way, look how good this is.
Okay, cool. So we will make our picks. I’m going in here blind, raw, fresh. Oh, this is hilarious.
Raw. Blind, raw, fresh. Razz versus Keyboard Monkey. Wait, scroll down.
So you want to give the shot—
Scroll down a little bit?
You want… Scroll down, you said?
Chat, who you got? Razz or Keyboard Monkey?
Okay.
Not the beta. Chat, who you got?
So here’s Rasmer calling KBM a non-aspirational, fat alcoholic idiot, and here’s Keyboard Monkey talking shit.
KBM, this is for you, bro. Just one more bar. One more bar.
Oh, he’s such a comedian, bro.
You will die before I hit my prime, okay? I’m gonna have a multi-decade career publicly here.
Jesus Christ.
I will likely hit my prime in my 60s, 70s. The way that you’re drinking, man, you will be long gone—
Dude, this is brutal.
—by the time I hit my prime.
Razz, this is too much, baby.
Yeah, that was aggressive, bro.
I hit my prime, okay?
“You will die” is crazy.
So just get with that.
“Before I hit my prime” is insane.
All right?
Wow.
Be sad about it. All right.
I feel like Razz was coming for all the CTs’ necks, bro.
Plumbers. Plumbers.
He’s coming for their necks hard.
Chat, genuinely, who do we think? I mean, Razz was in phenomenal shape. He’s young, he’s healthy, he’s on fucking peptides and shit.
I fuck with KBM, though. KBM’s the one.
I love KBM. I was talking about this in my pre-show. I think his takes on the Kimchi shit were fucking insane, to be honest.
Bro, calling 20-year-old girls whores is nuts.
It’s crazy. I’m glad we can agree on that.
It’s nuts, bro.
It’s fucking crazy.
It’s nuts, bro.
It’s giving… I’m telling you, you ever see any of these popular girls online? Especially the girls who do the OnlyFans shit, the Breckie Hills and the fucking Sophie Rain—
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
—and this guy.
Yeah.
You’ll see people in their comments, older guys with their actual real faces on it. You’re like, “How the fuck do these people not understand how the internet works?” You click on their profiles, they’re fucking married with kids. They work some white-collar job, and they’re leaving crazy-ass comments.
No, it’s crazy.
Like, “Hey, come to Minnesota. I’ll take care of you. I’ll fucking—”
It’s crazy. It’s nuts.
—or whatever. Or they go rage mode and they’re like, “You’re a fucking gross, disgusting, dirty whore.” And it’s like, brother, what the fuck? Where is this coming from?
It’s nuts, bro.
It’s insane.
No.
It’s insane.
It’s crazy.
I don’t know. I think, I’m gonna keep it a bean: I think Razzmer’s got this one all day.
Yeah, Razz was in pretty good shape. I know he lifts and shit. He’s on the peptides, you know, he’s got some boosters. I think—
Razzmer for sure cannot fight, but I think he’s got this one, just from sheer biology.
I feel like we could low-key set this up. If we make the CT Olympics happen, I feel like we could get them to fight.
You think KBM would be down for this?
Yeah.
That’d be insane.
I think so.
Listen, on some brand-risk Adin Ross shit, I’ll play that role all day. I’ll make it happen. I’ll get you guys paid. We’ll fucking go nuts. I would love this. We could have KBM—yeah, Yeet. We’ll have Yeet sponsor it.
Bro, that shit would be lit.
Not the rapper. Yeah.
Yeah, we’ll have Yeet sponsor it. Bro, that shit would actually be tough.
FOMO on Razzmer’s side. You have the FOMO logo on his shorts.
FOMO versus Yeet.
Wow. Wow.
Yo, I think we’re cooking right now. I think—
I’m picking Razzmer, though. Can we agree on that? Razzmer?
I think Razzmer will win.
Moving on to the next. Yeah, it’s gotta be. Okay. Wow. The rematch.
Bro, just know that I could not lose this twice. It’s impossible.
The rematch of the century.
Oh my God, bro. Look at this fucking picture. How did I lose this fight, bro? How?
How did you lose that fight? How did you lose that? Wait, did you lose it? I thought you guys tied.
It was a draw. That’s a loss, bro.
Yeah, if you draw. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That’s a loss.
I agree. That’s hilarious.
Oh my God, bro. I’m never living this down. I’m not.
I won’t lie, though, BitBoy does look like the kind of guy who would talk a bunch of shit at a bar while wasted, then stand up and just start—
Bar fight? Oh, he would knock everybody out.
—and just start throwing hands like crazy. You know what I’m saying? He seems crazy.
He seems crazy.
He’s got that dad strength. You can tell he fought his way through life.
He did.
He’d been fighting since he was 10 years old. He does have that physiognomy.
That physiognomy.
But I mean, you’re fucking—we gotta pick you, obviously. Jesus Christ. Orangie and Choose Rich Nick.
What the fuck?
I mean, Orangie is—what’s the lore on this?
Who picked these matchups, bro?
Do they have any beef? There’s no receipt, so I’m assuming this is just completely random.
I don’t know.
Chat, what do we think?
Chat, chat, chat. Orangie.
It’s gotta be Orangie. Somebody said Nick for the win. Rich.
Dang, Rich. Choose Rich. Orangie.
The chat’s saying Choose Rich Nick.
Wow. Choose Rich Nick all day.
Choose Rich Nick all day. Yeah.
Choose Rich would own him. What is going on?
Draw. I like draw.
I’m gonna cry.
Draw’s a good take. There’s no draw option, though.
Draw’s actually a good take. I think that’s a good take.
Draw’s a good take.
Draw’s a good take.
I mean, bro, Orangie’s a big fucking kid, and that’s not a fat joke.
He is big.
He’s like 6'4". He’s like a big kid.
Yeah. He’s tall. I thought he was short, bro. He’s tall.
He’s sweet, though. He’s fucking sweet. He’s a little too sweet for me to think that he could fight.
He’s pretty nice.
He’s sweet. I think Nick is kind of low-key a bit of a crash-out sometimes, and I low-key—
Yeah.
Nick, healthy and ready to go, and both of them on their best day, I think I’m gonna choose Choose Rich Nick.
Choose Rich Nick. Choose Rich Nick.
We got him. Okay. Wow. Kobe and Thread Guy.
This is crazy.
I have a crazy take here.
Okay.
I think, fighting to the death, with both of them trying their absolute hardest, Thread Guy takes it all day. He’s an athlete. By the way, me and Thread have gotten this close to each other. We’ve almost come to blows many times playing basketball.
Really?
Yes. Many times. If this clip makes its way to TG, I’ll let him tell the stories. Neither of us are a pleasure to play with on the court, especially on opposing sides and especially when we’re losing, raging, whatever. A lot of talking shit. A lot of, “I’m gonna knock you the fuck out.” A lot of, “Do it then, pussy.” Thread’s got heart, bro. He’s down. He’s athletic, randomly, quietly. I think he takes it on any given day if it’s left to that. But I think Thread’s way too big of a fan. I think Thread would—
Of Kobe in general? Yeah.
Yes. I think Thread would consider the ramifications of what it might do to the markets and just be like, “Fuck, I’m long Bitcoin right now. Do I really wanna knock Kobe out?”
Yeah, we can’t take Kobe out.
Right? Like, “I can’t knock Kobe out.”
Yeah.
“We’re long Bitcoin.”
It would be like, “We need all-time highs.” I mean—
Or maybe it goes deeper, even deeper. He shorts the market and then goes and kills him, right? Maybe—
What, he tries to take his spot on some crazy shit? Like, “I’m top dog now”?
Facts. But for the sake of the markets, I don’t know. I think Thread Guy would win this objectively.
Yeah?
Yeah. What about you?
I feel like they’re kind of a similar build, to be honest.
I’ve never met Kobe, or seen what he physically looks like in person. I’ve seen videos and photos, but—
Yeah.
I know Thread got scrappy. I lived with the kid. I know it. I know he’d win. Trust me.
I don’t think Kobe really would wanna box, to be honest.
Trader Mayne, Clemente. We gotta go Mayne, bro. Mayne is fucking—
Yeah.
Mayne is solid.
Bro, Mayne can’t get knocked—
What’s up, Mayne?
Look at Mayne’s neck. Mayne can’t get knocked out. It’s impossible.
Bro, he is solid. He’s fucking rock solid. I think this is the easiest decision of the bracket.
Mayne. Trader Mayne.
CZ, Mert—I mean, this—
This is hard.
This Mert photo, by the way, is insane.
No, it’s hard, bro. CZ is jacked, and he liquidates people for a living. He has a lot of hate in his heart.
He’s a killer.
He’s a killer. He might have killed some people, to be honest.
49 years old. How old is Mert?
That’s a good question. I think he’s 30, 31—low 30s? 31. Chat, what do we think? Chat, chat, what do we think?
Yeah, I think you gotta take that.
Chat’s saying CZ easy. CZ is a killer, literally. I don’t know, bro. CZ is literally a killer.
I’m going Mert, bro.
But Mert, where’s Mert from?
He’s younger.
He’s Turkish?
Yeah.
Fuck, Turkish people can fight.
Mert looks like he could fucking kill somebody with his bare hands.
Yeah, I feel like Turkish people can fight.
If you could cast Mert in a movie as an assassin, like somebody who kills people—
Like some Jason Bourne shit?
Yes. Yes. I’m—
Low-key.
I’m happy to go Mert. What about you?
I’ll go Mert.
TJR, Nsendo. I mean, this is Nsendo’s chance. Love you, brother, but TJR’s got a full foot on you, and he works out and shit. TJR’s washing your shit.
Yeah. I’m—
Washing your shit.
Yeah, I agree. We’re like 6'5".
What the fuck is this receipt? Is this Nsendo's cleaning a toilet?
Yeah, I think so.
This is insane. You guys did him so crazy.
That’s fucked up, bro.
That’s crazy. TGR. Moving on. Frank, intern—I mean, brother.
Intern’s—
Frank, I love you, brother.
Intern’s waxing Frank, bro.
Facts.
Waxing. Quickly, bro.
I think Frank would—
Like, waxing quickly.
Frank would agree. In a trading competition, I think he goes all the way and wins the fucking chip. Frank is the GOAT. The GOAT. But yeah, intern, we’re moving on. Quarterfinals: Raz or Ansem.
Yeah, I wanna see Raz respond to this. I wanna know what Raz thinks.
I think he would agree that you’d whoop his ass. We’re gonna go with that. We’ll see what he says. Choose Rich Nick, Thread Guy. We gotta go TG.
We gotta go TG. We gotta go TG.
We have to go TG.
TG.
That one’s pretty easy. Maine and Mert is a good one. That’s a good fucking matchup. They’re both bald.
Damn. I don’t know if either of them…
Who have stamina. That’s the thing, though. I don’t know if either of them has stamina. I feel like Mert—
Oh, again, I’ve seen Mert—
Mert is behind the fucking—
A cigarette hanging out of his mouth, a beer in his hand, and I just… I wouldn’t want to fight Maine. Under those circumstances, somebody in chat says Maine.
Those are very different circumstances, though.
Facts. I don’t know why my head always goes there.
I will tell you one thing, bro: a bar fight is very different from boxing.
Yeah, of course.
A thousand times.
Of course. Of course.
Yeah, I thought that shit, too. It’s not the same.
This one’s tough, bro. I’m not gonna lie. This one’s a coin flip. I’m gonna go Maine because he’s my boy.
All right. I’ll go Maine.
That’s who I would have to root for.
Okay.
We’ll go Maine.
Let’s go Maine. Let’s go Maine.
TGR, Intern. This is another tough one, bro.
Ah.
This is another tough one.
I don’t know, bro. This—
TGR just has the size, bro. TGR is a full foot taller.
He’s got… Does he have the reach, too?
Yes.
Yeah.
He’s a full foot taller. He’s got the reach. I think he’s got to be 30 or 40 pounds heavier than Intern, too. And he’s not a slouch. He’s not a kid who’s sitting.
No, he’s not.
He works out. He stays fit. He’s in good shape. But Intern, though. Intern’s just a Chad.
Intern’s a Chad. Chad.
Yeah, he’s just a winner. Intern’s a winner.
He is.
You know what I mean? He would go and do a boxing match, and he would win.
Yeah. Like, if they trained—
I think Vegas would—
If they trained, I think Intern would probably train harder than TGR.
Yeah, he probably would.
I think so.
If they had the same level of training, if they put in the same effort, biology tells you TGR has the upper hand. I think Vegas would give TGR the odds. I’m gonna go TGR. What do you guys think, chat? Everyone’s saying TGR. Against all odds, Intern wins. I think Vegas would give it to TGR. Let’s go with that. Semifinals: Ansem, Thread Guy. Wow, this would fucking feed generations. I would love to see this.
I know. The clips from this would go crazy.
It would go nuts.
It would go crazy.
Who do we think? You’re TG. You’re in. It’s almost full.
Who do we think, chat? What do we think, chat? Let’s ask chat. Chat, who do you think would win in boxing, and who do you think would win one-on-one in basketball?
TG, I’m not gonna lie, he would whoop your ass in basketball.
Bro, whoa.
He would. He would, bro.
Whoa.
I’m telling you. Listen, TG—
Bro, stop.
See, I got you—
Bro, stop.
No, no, he would. He would.
Stop.
He would. I’m telling you. He’s filthy.
We’re gonna see. We’re gonna see, bro.
Oh, TG’s filthy. That has to happen.
We’re gonna see. No, we’re gonna see.
By the way, that can and will happen.
We’re gonna see, bro.
One-on-one, Ansem and TG—
We’re gonna make it happen.
You guys are playing one-on-one, 100%. We could do that whenever. I’m coming to New York soon. We should definitely set that up. Bro, he’s nasty. Have you seen him hoop?
I haven’t.
TG is nasty.
Only the highlights from Twitter.
I’m telling you right now, we used to do 15-person runs, 3 teams, real runs, good comp. TG was getting picked in the first two or three spots every time.
But we gotta hoop, then.
Not first overall. He’s getting picked first on a team, in the first two or three spots every time. He’s nice, bro. He’s really nice with it. One time, me and TG had a basketball machine at the crib. You remember that?
Uh-huh.
The shooting machine?
Yeah.
We shot 100 shots back and forth, and we went 97 for 100.
What?
It was some nut shit. We missed 3 shots out of 100.
What the fuck?
We went nuts. It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my life. I can’t stop talking about it. TG acted like it was just another day. He’s filthy. Boxing, though, I think you got it all day.
Let’s go.
Maine, TGR. We gotta go Maine.
Okay.
Again, that neck, bro. That image in my head, that neck. It’s that neck.
He can’t be knocked out. He can’t be knocked out.
You and Maine, championship. What do we think?
That’s my unc, bro. I don’t know.
This would be crazy.
That’s my unc, bro.
This would be a crazy, crazy fight.
That’s my unc.
What do you guys think?
Let’s see what chat said. Chat says Maine. Wow. I mean, I have zero wins in boxing, so zero wins.
Someone said Maine sliming.
Zero wins.
By the way, would it surprise you to watch Maine go through a bracket like this and go all the way? It wouldn’t. If I didn’t see the event and heard about it later, I’d be like, “Oh, who won that? Trader Maine? I bet. Yeah, that makes sense.”
Yeah.
Right?
For sure. Yeah, for sure.
Why didn’t Banks include himself? I didn’t make this bracket, you fucking prick. Maine’s so horny. They’re saying Maine. Do we give it to Maine?
Yeah, we give it to Maine. Give it to Maine.
Bang. There we go. It’s a little cliché to give it to yourself on your own fucking thing, too. We’ll go Maine. By the way, Intern, you guys are killing it. What the fuck?
Yeah.
That is all we got for the main show. We’ve had a guest waiting and waiting. That was fun, by the way. Intern, great job. Staff, production, great job. That was fucking awesome. We have somebody in the green room, but I have to take a piss bad.
Not yet. Not yet.
Oh, they’re not ready. Okay, cool. We have 3K more to airdrop. Drop one or two to the chat, Z. I’ll be right back. I’m gonna go take a piss.
What’s good, chat? Who wins in a one-on-one basketball game between me and Banks? I don’t think there’s anybody on CT who could beat me one-on-one in basketball, to be honest. I think FOMO’s doing a three-on-three tournament soon, actually. That shit should be lit. I got five on you. I appreciate you, BWB. BWB. BWB.
It’s alive.
Can we send BWB Jones some cash?
BWB.
What the fuck is happening? Why is it moving?
He’s alive.
I’m scared. I don’t like ghosts, bro. I don’t like ghosts. And L Chef. I fuck with L Chef D Soul. Somebody said the new PFP is fire. Yeah, I’ve had this one. This is one of my older PFPs. It’s Michiko from the show Michiko & Hatchin. It’s an anime. This is one of my old PFPs, bro. It’s been in the tuck. Bro, Micron looks so bad, guys. When I tell you this shit looks fucking disgusting, it’s nasty. Back to them old vibes. You got it. Who’s your favorite artist?
No, I’m serious.
Yeat, Juice WRLD, Frank Ocean, NBA YoungBoy, Michael Jackson. What the fuck? Giveon. I don’t know anybody whose favorite artist is Giveon. Mets fan. Somebody said Diddy. You’re a fucking liar, bro. Your favorite artist is not Diddy.
Yeah, Saeed’s ready.
Travis, Yeat, Yeat, Sia, The Weeknd. You guys are funny. Lucky. Mac Miller. Oh, Vexion Kick. Let’s send Vexion Kick some cash. I fuck with him. Mac Miller the GOAT. He was one of my favorite artists, bro. I was so sick when he died. I was fucked up for a minute.
All right, Saeed’s ready.
Oh, whoa, whoa, yo.
How many did you give away?
3K.
Oh, you gave all 3?
All 3.
Cool. Let's get some W Fanums in the fucking chat.
W Fanum.
Thank you.
I need a button.
Da, na, na, na, na. Na, na, na, na, na, na, na. We do need some audio shit. We do need some audio. We’ve got these fucking green themes and blue themes. What’s the blue one for? What can we use the blue one for?
That’s when we’re underwater.
When it’s raining outside?
No, when we’re long and we’re underwater.
Well, let’s fucking change it to blue, then. Paint me blue at this point. Let me get this teed up and ready. Is his thing in the C-suite chat, gentlemen? Where is this? Okay, cool. I got it. All right, let’s get it.
Are we ready? Are we ready for our—
Okay, chat, he’s ready.
—special guest.
Z, do you want to introduce him? Guys, let’s get some W Saeeds in the chat. CEO of Sunrise, Wormhole Labs. We’re excited to have him. Z, do you want to do a brief introduction, and then we’ll have him pop in and introduce himself?
Yeah, I can. So we’re gonna have Saeed on today. Sunrise is one of the protocols—
DeFi.
—that’s handling a lot of the DeFi. Handling a lot of the tokenized stocks stuff right now: cross-chain and all of the tokenization of these equities, which is driving one of the main narratives in crypto so far this cycle. So, excited to talk to Saeed. It should be pretty cool.
Without further ado, let’s bring him in.
Yo.
Welcome, brother.
What’s up? What’s up? How’s it going?
What’s good, brother? How you doing, man?
Pretty good, man. Pretty good.
I’ve had better days, I’ll be honest. But it’s a pleasure to meet you.
Oh.
Z and I did our very best introducing you to the chat. But in your own words, do you want to introduce yourself to our audience and the people watching?
Absolutely. CEO of Sunrise. If you’ve seen some of the tokenized equity stuff that’s happening on Solana, that’s what we’re primarily focused on.
Cool.
Cool.
Well, thank you for coming on. Z, you want to get us started?
Yeah. I guess we want to walk through how Sunrise came to be. I know you guys have the connection with Wormhole, but what was the thesis around Sunrise, and why do you think you’re playing an important role in the crypto economy?
I think it was a confluence of a bunch of stuff. There’s this thing that people started talking about a couple of years back: internet capital markets.
Mm-hmm.
We felt like, being in the interoperability space, we were helping build that. So we were front and center, facing all the problems of connecting all these different blockchains together and allowing them to work. Then we realized that just bringing an asset over from one blockchain to another doesn’t really solve the problem. It’s not really gonna build the future of finance. What you need is healthy, liquid markets. You need people to be able to actually use these assets once they’ve brought them from one chain to another. That’s ultimately what internet capital markets are, right? It’s the ability to get the entire financial system onto a brand-new set of rails, and to actually trade them and build stuff around them.
Including, but not limited to, RWAs and equities, et cetera.
Yeah. Essentially, the internet made information globally accessible. Solana has the potential to do the same thing for financial assets. I think Sunrise has a big role to play in that, and that’s what we’re focused on.
I’ve heard you describe Solana that way, Z: the internet of crypto and finance. I like that.
Yeah.
Does the average crypto investor underestimate how big tokenized equities could possibly be? Are people sleeping on this?
Absolutely. The average crypto investor is talking about whether a token can pass a $1 million or $10 million market cap, whether a token’s worth a $1 billion FDV. These are all denominated in millions and billions. Equities are a $160 trillion market.
It’s fucking insane. That’s crazy.
This asset class is denominated in trillions. Even if you scratch 1% of it, you’re still over a trillion dollars of new liquidity coming in, or new value coming in. So yeah, it’s massively underslept. I think even the people who are working on it, even people on my team, don’t really understand how big this can get.
That’s interesting. So the total market cap of crypto is what, like $2 trillion or something like that?
Yeah, it hovers between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion.
So that would be closer to 1% than 2%, right? Or somewhere in between that, 1% to 2%.
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s fucking crazy. I never really thought about it that way. I didn’t know that all markets are worth $160 trillion.
If you ask yourself where the next trillion dollars going into crypto is gonna come from, it’s very clear: tokenized equities, tokenized commodities, tokenized RWAs.
Has to.
The thesis is the same thing that we’ve talked about and that everybody’s been talking about: 24/7 trading, being able to trade, people in Japan being able to trade U.S. stocks and markets, and vice versa. Is that kind of the gist?
Oh, well, yeah. Global distribution is super important. Everyone should be able to have access to these markets and these assets. That’s a huge driver. It’s kind of like how stablecoins were.
Yes.
Nobody really understood that stablecoins would get this big because they were like, “I can get a dollar. I have access to the dollar market.” Even the U.S. government did—
People in Venezuela do not, and now they do.
Yeah, but—
Even the U.S. government tried to fight it and say it was bad for the system. Now Tether is a top 10 buyer of U.S. Treasuries, beating out countries in Europe. That kind of growth only happens when you’re completely wrong about something. You have no idea how much demand there is for a particular asset. You think you know, but there are 7.5 billion other people out there that could potentially want your currency. If you build the right technology that makes it super easy for them to get it, then you’ll really know what the true number is. I think stablecoins are a good example. I think tokenized equities and tokenized RWAs are going through that right now. Last year, we were under a billion dollars in tokenized equities. Now I think we’ve 30x’d that in just a year and a half.
Stocks and assets pre-IPO, et cetera.
Yeah, it’s crazy.
Things like that.
The growth is crazy. If you look at the data and the charts, you can see the hockey stick, the month-over-month growth. It reminds me of Jeff Bezos: “Why did I start Amazon?” He was working at D. E. Shaw, a hedge fund market maker, and there was this chart that was growing by, I don’t know, 13,000% per year. He was just like, “There’s no way the internet’s not gonna be a big thing.”
Yeah, makes sense. Definitely simplified. We talked earlier this year about wanting exposure to DeepSeek, the leading AI product in China. Obviously, there’s no way traditionally for Americans to get exposure to that asset or markets like that. I like the idea of knowing the true value of these things when they’re exposed to everyone, when everyone has the opportunity to participate or invest. That’s cool. We’re totally on the same page. Where does Sunrise play into all this? What problem is Sunrise solving? What’s the ultimate goal for you as the CEO and for the product?
On the DeepSeek point, I was actually in Shanghai during that whole Solana event. We’re making inroads globally and trying to meet people where they’re at, learn, talk to regulators, and talk to people, so hopefully soon we’ll see Chinese equities on-chain.
It would be so cool. That’d be awesome.
Yeah. I mean, people always think that you’re trying to serve the domestic market.
You talk to anyone in the U.S. and they’re like, “Why would I use tokenized equities? I can just pull up Robinhood or any one of the brokerage apps.” And it’s like, “It’s not for you, then.” Right? But maybe DeepSeek is, or maybe Unitree is, or maybe SK hynix is, or any one of these—
What was the idea behind that one? Was it really just the discrepancy between how much that was valued at? It was being valued at like $10 billion, and then you had Anthropic and OpenAI, at the time, at like fucking $400, $300, $400, $500 million—or billion dollars, sorry.
Billion, billion, yeah.
And we’re like, I mean, are these companies really fucking 50 times more valuable than DeepSeek?
I was gonna say, Connor, bro. Yeah.
Yeah, go ahead.
I was gonna say, I think that was an interesting setup, but do you think the tokenization piece will extend to private companies going public that way instead of doing the IPO route? For companies that aren’t traditional domestic U.S. startups?
Absolutely. This is just the fundamental primitive for capital formation. The rest of the world is locked out of certain jurisdictions and can’t invest in certain assets. Those companies building cool stuff all over the world also don’t have the ability to raise capital, go public, or do any of these things.
Even companies in the U.S.—it’s really expensive to go public. It’s insanely expensive, and you get a handful of—
It’s even more expensive to take a public company private. I’ve done both.
Yeah.
It’s an insane process both ways.
Absolutely.
Very, very expensive both ways. Yeah, it’s crazy.
You could have a great company that’s making tens of millions of dollars in profit and growing, and there’s no chance in hell you’re gonna spend the money to go public in the U.S.
How much does it cost?
It depends on the business, but I would say you’re not gonna go public for under, like, $30 million or something like that.
What?
Yeah.
Is it that expensive?
I haven’t gone public, but from numbers that I’ve seen, you have to hire so many people.
What the fuck?
It’s a one-and-a-half- to two-year process, too. And you have to change your entire company. There’s just so much stuff that goes into it. If you want to list on a proper exchange and be a legitimate company, not like a penny stock—
We IPO’d through a SPAC with B. Riley, and they handled all that. It was part of the deal and part of whatever upside and risk they took in taking it public, so it was a little bit different than just the traditional IPO.
Yeah. And you still have to raise a PIPE and get people.
Yes. Yes.
You have to raise a lot of money even before they would take you on to do something like that, right?
Yes.
So how many companies today that are actually good could do what you did? Probably very few.
It’s impossible. Yeah.
That’s interesting.
Yeah.
It seems like the trend is gonna be—I feel like crypto, in the future, is gonna be the foundational layer for how value is transacted and transmitted globally. I think we’ve already seen it kind of happen with stablecoins. They’re objectively better at being able to send a lot of money cheaply and fast across borders. And it seems like tokenization could solve a very similar problem for tokenizing businesses.
I think that’s one thing that doesn’t get a lot of credit in crypto, because a lot of these tokens are scams. But tokens like Hyperliquid were able to distribute value to all their core users and also to the core team members. The revenue is tied directly to the token and token holders, so it actually makes a ton of sense for businesses to operate that way.
It seems to me you’re probably gonna see a trend where some private companies that are doing well, and don’t want to do a standard IPO, just tokenize. Then they get access to public markets if everybody has access to Solana or whatever chain they do the tokenization on.
Look, you saw the news today from a16z—
Mm-hmm.
—they’re expanding their crypto fund to do frontier businesses. a16z in crypto isn’t just gonna do crypto; it’ll do defense tech and other things.
Yeah.
I think that’s very symbolic of VC capital, especially in crypto, but just in general across startup land and Silicon Valley. It’s all going down, right? And I think that’s where crypto can come in and start helping some of these good companies. They don’t have to be startups or C-stage. They can be good companies. It gives them a way to raise capital efficiently and without a whole bunch of intermediaries. I think there’s a convergence there that’s interesting to watch.
Yeah, that is really cool. What’s your opinion on meme-fi, meme coins paired with stocks? Obviously, that’s been a big part of driving the narrative for on-chain stuff in these early innings of this next cycle or whatever. What do you think about all that, genuinely?
I genuinely think it’s fascinating. I may have, in the beginning, been like, “This makes no sense.” But being close to it on the ground and watching it, I think traditional finance has historically underestimated it. Everyone thinks assets are traded only on fundamentals, but the truth is, even in traditional markets, assets trade on narratives, community, culture, and momentum.
Yes.
All of these things aren’t based on fundamentals. Look at Tesla, GameStop, and Nvidia.
Yeah.
These aren’t just stocks; they’re communities. They have massive identities.
Yeah, I think it’s just an opportunity for people to focus specifically on that piece—the narrative piece, the attention piece—and kind of decouple it from the traditional asset and be able to trade and speculate on that. But I don’t know, there have gotta be all kinds of ways to incorporate and integrate that into the traditional markets. I don’t know. It’s definitely interesting. Interesting is definitely the right word.
Where do you see it going?
I think it’s gonna expand, man. I think it’s all part of the same meta happening in trading, and it bleeds outside of crypto. You have these communities built around stocks, social trading experiences, completely new incentive structures, and markets that are accessible 24/7. It’s a phenomenon birthed out of that transformation, and I think it continues.
I really think it continues because it’s a fun way for people to get involved. You’ve got the meme coin side, but then you’ve also paired it with something real, right? I think people like that. It’s almost like you get the best of both worlds—or the worst of both worlds, depending on how it turns out, right?
Yeah, depending on which stock, bro. Imagine.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
You know?
That’s hilarious. Bro, imagine—
But I love it.
—you pair a meme with a stock, and the meme is doing really well, but then the stock starts doing awful, like tanking.
Yeah, it’s crazy.
That seems fucking funny.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
Nike.
Yeah.
And you know what I really appreciate? I appreciate that phenomenon happening on-chain because it’s forced the public CEOs of these stock companies to pick a side. You see a group of CEOs saying, “We love tokenization. We love that people are talking about our stock and getting involved.” And then you have the other guys who are like, “We hate it. We’re totally against it. How could this be?” I think you have to go through one of those battles anytime you’re doing something new in crypto.
I’ll go back to stablecoins. There was this huge battle where people said, “This is going to systemically destroy the banks,” and then, 2 or 3 years later, it turned out to be helping the U.S. borrow more. I think you have to go through these stages: laugh, then fight, then accept that this technology actually solves real problems.
Yeah.
I think a lot of the coins from older cycles—the ones people say were just speculation—weren’t unimportant. If you look at the 2017 cycle, and even the 2020–2021 cycle, a lot of those coins don’t exist anymore. A lot of the coins traded on Bittrex, Cryptopia, and all these places were experiments in delivering value to tokens or trying to, and people were trying different startups on-chain.
A lot of them failed, but I think without the failures, you wouldn’t have the most successful protocols we have today. Speculation is a way for a lot of failures in crypto to happen, so you can see what works and what doesn’t. Out of those failures, you get to see what’s actually going to do well and succeed. They didn’t call them meme coins back in the day. They just called them altcoins. It’s the same thing.
I always liked the line that Bitcoin was the first meme coin.
Yeah, it’s true, for sure.
I always liked that line. It just makes sense.
Yeah, it’s 100% true. When you’re tokenizing these equities, how do you get the necessary liquidity on-chain so it’s easier for people to trade?
I think it’s a couple of things. One is that you have to have a very strong network of market makers. You also have to understand that world very well. The second thing is that you need very strong mint-and-redeem infrastructure. If a tokenized stock trades at a discount or premium to its mark price or market price, you need mechanisms in place for authorized participants to arbitrage that and create an efficient market for it. I definitely think the mint-and-redeem infrastructure is super important.
The last thing I’d say is distribution. The great thing about Sunrise is that we take all of these things, put them together, and try to make something that looks simple from the outside, but is actually very hard to do all in one place. Distribution is super important. You have to be integrated with CEXs, wallets, DeFi applications, aggregators, routers, and DEXs. It’s truly an ecosystem-wide effort.
So, yeah, it’s a bunch of little problems and some big problems all together. If you do them all right, you can launch 100 assets on Solana and keep growing pretty quickly.
How do you pick which ones? There are so many you can choose from. How do you decide? Is it the markets?
It’s hard, man. The heuristic from day one was always, “Whatever the community wants, that’s what we’ll do.” The community is very schizophrenic and very opinionated, so it’s hard to stick to that. But I think there’s a level of tastemaking that needs to be done.
We’ve seen other people launch 8,000 stocks, but you have zero markets. I think you bring the stuff that you think has the ability to capture people’s attention. They can form their own opinions about it, whether they like it or don’t, whether they want to buy it or don’t. But if it has the ability to make people stop and think about it and say, “Why is this coming now? Is there something going on here?”—we always try to approach it with that question. If I were on the other side of the screen, trying to figure out what to trade, I’d want something that inspires me to do a little research.
I feel like you can also follow the flows, because the stock market right now is so driven by momentum and attention. You can pick up on which assets are popular. That’d be a thing for sure.
I know you’re competing with a lot of different people in this space. I’m curious how you think about perpetual futures on stocks versus tokenized stocks, the advantages of tokenized stocks, and why a consumer would want to use those instead of just trading the perp.
You’ve got the spot markets, obviously. Those are important because they power the rest of the ecosystem. One of the things I always think about is that you’re not bringing in a share of Apple or Apple stock. You’re trying to make Apple stock programmable.
That’s where I think the spot markets really play a fundamental role, and then everyone else can build on top of that and compose with it. I think the perps markets are super important to that ecosystem because they allow you to hedge. You can be doing complicated strategies: depositing collateral, withdrawing, and putting that into something different. You could be doing a lot of really hard things that would traditionally take 2 or 3 days, with 4 or 5 different companies signing off and reconciling all of it.
You can do it all on-chain, programmatically, with an agent. You can do it with your own bot, or by yourself. I think all of these different market structures and ways that people can trade help make the value proposition for tokenized stocks. At the end of the day, if you’re able to bring a tokenized stock onto a blockchain and provide liquid markets for it, the last question is: What can I do with it? What can I do with a tokenized stock that I can’t do in TradFi, or with the existing apps on my phone?
Mm-hmm.
I think that’s the challenge for the entire Solana ecosystem right now: You’ve got to figure out cool ways to solve that.
Yeah, makes sense. And you were at Jump Trading before, right?
Yeah.
What are your thoughts on trading the crypto markets in general? There have been a ton of inefficiencies in the past. What are your views, if you have any, on directionally trading the market? What areas are interesting?
Coming from that world, I always look for where the next large pool of capital is going to come from.
Yeah.
I think that’s something you learn over time: In order for markets to grow, capital needs to come in. Where is it going to come from? How is it going to come? Are there any barriers to it coming?
Obviously, I think it’s going to come from tokenized RWAs. I think it’s going to come from building better experiences. I also think social trading is very interesting. It’s having a culture moment, right? If you’re older, you don’t really get it. But if you’re keeping your ear close to the ground, you see that there’s the Millennial generation, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha. These guys are investing in completely different ways, and it’s not really bleeding up. CNBC isn’t talking about it.
It’s indicative of society and culture in general. This new wave of kids wants to share everything. They share the most intimate parts and details of their lives. We’ve seen this insane, meteoric rise in streaming. Streaming is fucking insane. It’s very Black Mirror-esque: There are people walking around sharing their entire day with you, unfiltered. That doesn’t make sense to guys like us, older people. But, like you said, if you keep your finger on the pulse, you start to understand where they’re all coming from. Social trading, adding that social graph on top of people investing and trading on-chain, makes total sense to me.
And that’s the crazy thing: There’s that much sharing happening. The average Millennial—if you took whatever percentage of Millennials were trading at age 18, I think it’s—
Yeah, less than 1%.
—less than 1%. It might be 0.1%.
Yeah.
If you look at 18-year-olds today, how many of them have traded, are trading, set up wallets, and made and lost a lot of money?
That number has got to be closer to 10% or 20%. It’s got to be, right?
Whatever it is, the delta between the two shows you there’s been a—
Yes.
—a fundamental shift in culture, in society, and in where things are going. So who’s building the—
You know, that’s new demand, right? We talked about demand coming from all these different sources that people don’t really understand. They don’t know where the growth is going to come from. But when you watch that, you think, clearly there’s going to be a lot more growth when it comes to investing and trading, and trying to make money off capital versus trying to make money off labor, right? There’s definitely a big shift there.
I think that’s one of the things. I’d say that, plus taking a $150–$160 trillion asset class and bringing it onto crypto rails, are 2 very distinct, very different pools of capital that I’m willing to bet are going to come in and grow the pie.
I agree.
Yeah, I think the dystopian take on why there might be a lot more people investing and trading is this: if you believe AI is going to be as disruptive as people say it is, it’s going to concentrate wealth and power in fewer, really strong companies. And if you believe job displacement is going to happen because of that, then a lot of the ways people will make money with their discretionary capital will be by betting on those companies. I think that’s one of the more dystopian takes on it, but I do think there’s some validity to it.
And you had the banks today, right? The banks basically started turning off AI agents from accessing their systems.
Yeah.
I think I saw a good post about this on Twitter where he was just like, “Yeah, they’re saying it’s security, but really what it is, is people are building bots to move their money to whichever bank has the highest yield.” So they’re like—
Yeah.
“We can’t make it that easy for people to just—”
Shit, game solved.
—do bank runs, you know?
The game being solved, yeah.
Yeah, it’s going to get a lot—
Yeah.
Oh, shit’s going to get a lot realer.
They don’t like competition, those guys. They don’t like competition.
No, they don’t.
I find it funny that one of the bigger bear theses for crypto is quantum risk, obviously. I feel like Frank DeGods has a really good take on this. If quantum can hack Bitcoin, then it can hack Bank of America, Chase, and your Instagram password. Nothing is safe. It’s just game over.
It’s actually more likely that the problem gets solved in crypto because we’re so focused on it, and so many resources and brilliant minds are contributing to solving it across the board. It’s an interesting conversation.
Production’s telling us to wrap up. We really appreciate you coming on. We’ll have to have you on again sometime. Is there anything else you want to say or leave with the audience before you dip?
Thanks for having me, guys. It’s been awesome.
Of course.
Yeah, I’d love to come back.
Great conversation.
Cool.
It’s great to talk to guys like you. You’re crushing it. Congratulations on everything. Keep doing your thing, and we’ll have you on again in the future. Pleasure to meet you.
Appreciate it. Thank you again so much.
Thanks.
Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it. Bye.
Later, brother.
Smart guy. Sunrise. Wormhole.
Sunrise. Sunrise. Bro, $160 trillion, bro?
Yeah, that’s insane. Did you know that before that conversation?
That’s such a big number, bro.
It’s disgusting. Z is referring to $160 trillion. What exactly is that? Is it just total markets?
I think that’s the total value of—
Tradable assets.
—all, yeah.
Tradable assets, so equities and crypto, et cetera. And obviously crypto makes up about 1% of that, or whatever, 1.35%.
Yeah, 1.2% or something crazy like that.
Insane. Yeah, that is crazy. That was a good little unlock. That was good. Next up, we have in the queue—Z, do you want to introduce our next guest?
Yeah, we have Eli, CEO and co-founder of StarkWare, and also one of the co-founders of Zcash. He’s a great cryptographer, one of the OGs in crypto, so I’m glad to have him on and give us the alpha on what’s going on at StarkWare and his history in crypto.
Welcome, welcome, Eli.
Hello there. Hi. Hi, Ansem. Hi, Banks.
Hello. How are you?
Good. Good to see you again, brother. How have you been?
Good to see you. Pretty good, pretty good. Excited to be on this illustrious show for the first time.
We’re excited to have you, bro. Z did his very best at introducing you, but in your own words, do you want to tell the audience at home who you are, where you’re from, what you do, what excites you, why you’re here, and what we’re going to talk about today?
3. Starknet Bets on Quantum Safety
I used to do math back in the day, when humans still did that. Now it’s all machines doing that. I invented a bunch of zero-knowledge technology that ended up being really practical. I think I was probably the first person to realize that zero knowledge can solve not just privacy, but also scalability—
What is ZK?
—for blockchain.
Just for the layman.
Zero knowledge. Zero-knowledge proof. It’s a form of cryptography that can be used for privacy in things like Zcash and on StarkNet, and also for scaling blockchains. I realized this at a Bitcoin conference in 2013, and ever since then I’ve moved over to blockchain, left my academic position, and co-founded Zcash first, and then StarkWare, where I am now.
So you’re a real-life genius. We’re talking to a real-life genius.
Yes, bro.
That’s cool.
Amazing.
No, by now I’m old and dumb. Again, machines—math is for machines now. We humans can’t do much there.
Being smart doesn’t mean anything anymore, right? It’s like what the Industrial Revolution did to big, strong guys. Who needs them?
Exactly.
Who was that? The Multicoin—
You know, it’s—
—the Multicoin guy who came on? He said intelligence is commoditized, and the thing that matters is agency.
Oh, it was—
It was—
Tushar?
Yes, it was Tushar.
Tushar.
That was a bar. That was one of the best bars on the show.
That was a thousand-bar.
Yeah, he said what AI—
Yeah.
—is going to do to society, markets, and industries is the same thing the Industrial Revolution did to big, strong, able-bodied guys. It kind of just—
I agree. I agree, yeah.
What did he say, Z? Intelligence is—
He said intelligence is commoditized, and the thing that isn’t commoditized is agency. So it’s how hard you go, how committed and consistent you are, that matters most.
How committed, yeah. It’s good. It’s really good.
Agency.
Yeah.
And attention is really big. We talk a lot about attention on the show as well. Explain it to me like I’m 17 years old. What do you actually do? Explain StarkWare to someone who’s never touched crypto.
I think StarkWare is like the Skunk Works or the Bell Labs of crypto. So much of the really cool, innovative stuff everyone is now talking about—for instance, post-quantum security—was invented by us, productized by us, and is delivered by us.
Another way to see it: Ethereum is heading toward where Starknet already is. A lot of things, like post-quantum security, privacy in a programmable form that you could define and compose with, very good UX, and massive scale—that’s what StarkWare does, and does best. That’s how I’d describe it: the Skunk Works of crypto.
Cool. Great.
By Skunk Works, I’m referring to the thing one of the aerospace companies had, where they had the Blackbird and invented a bunch of really cool technologies that everyone is excited about.
So there’s a bunch of stuff we invented that now everyone’s excited about.
I know you guys are an L2 on Ethereum currently. The L1 and L2 space has been so competitive over the years that people can get lost in the differences between the different L1s and L2s. Do you want to speak to why you chose for Starknet to be an L2, how you differentiate it from the other rollups, and how you’re thinking about it going forward? I know you’ve also spoken a little about possibly shifting to an L1 in the future.
Today was a very exciting day for the Starknet community because the vote on whether we should be an L1 has now concluded, and there’s a lot of support for it.
Oh.
We’re going to be looking into that very quickly and building something that’s hopefully going to be really useful: post-quantum secure, privacy-preserving, with programmable privacy, and a safe haven—a high ground you can go to if a quantum tsunami ever hits us. I think that day may come.
We set out to build technology that would scale Ethereum, and we actually succeeded. But Ethereum doesn’t need that scale right now. There are a whole bunch of L2s that scale it. Even though our technology is much better, with things like account abstraction that allow you to get post-quantum security and really good UX, and usable privacy where you can easily shield your assets and compose that with DeFi—a programmable version of Zcash—scaling Ethereum by itself is not sufficiently in demand.
But a bigger problem arose: our security is going to depend on how fast Ethereum moves and migrates. I think what Starknet just said today is that we’re not confident Ethereum is going to move fast enough for our safety, so we’re going to move ourselves.
That’s awesome. Big day. I didn’t—
It’s exciting.
—that that happened today. That’s huge.
Yeah.
Thanks for sharing that on the show—
Pretty exciting.
—and breaking that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You mentioned a quantum tsunami and that the day might come.
Yeah.
When, brother? When?
I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know. But I think it could arrive much faster.
If you had to guess.
I think the next 2 years would be the time—
Ooh.
—I’d be most worried about. Yeah. Like—
That’s crazy.
—why not? These quantum computers are producing so much innovation, and there are so many teams and new technologies for building the actual computers. So, yeah, why not?
Fuck. That’s crazy.
“Quantum tsunami.” Chat likes that.
That’s a good term.
Yeah.
I like that term. I’m going to start using that.
You should. Yeah.
So, I guess you’re shifting to being an L1 with programmable privacy. It’s post-quantum secure. How do you guys see yourselves competing with the other L1s? You use a different VM than the EVM, correct? How do you envision competing on transaction speed and throughput and all those things?
We’re already crushing it. We’re faster, better, and cheaper than all the other technologies. It’s just that on Ethereum, for pure scaling, there isn’t enough demand today. On all these metrics, we’re way more efficient, safer, and more usable than any other technology that exists out there.
But I think the main thing with this L1 is going to be very high quantum safety. You ask how we’re going to compete. I’m not necessarily thinking about this as a competition. I’m thinking of a flood that may come, and rushing to build an ark. Living on an ark is not the most convenient way to spend your time, but if your home, with the garden and everything, is under 100 feet of water, then you very much want to be on an ark.
That’s the mindset my team and I have: we need to build this safe place for crypto if the quantum flood comes. It will have a better virtual machine, a better programming language, better UX, and better privacy. But that’s secondary. The most important thing is—
Mm.
—this is the damn ark that you can board if the flood comes.
Awesome. That’s a great way of phrasing it. You spoke a little about how you’re already faster and more efficient on competing metrics, and that you’ll also have programmable privacy. Would you say you’re kind of a combination of Solana and Zcash? Would you guys also have the same properties Zcash has as money when you’re using DeFi applications or other protocols on your L1?
Yeah, probably. I co-founded Zcash. I love the technology, I love the team, and I’m very friendly with them. I think we see this evolution, right? There used to be gold, which we thought was scarce. I saw on Twitter today that people are like—
Mm.
—“They found a way to turn mercury into gold,” or something. So, I guess, I don’t know.
Yeah, I saw that. It’s crazy.
It sucks for Peter Schiff, but at least your listeners know that there’s a better form of gold: digital gold. More recently, people are saying, “Digital gold for money also has to have privacy.” So Zcash is getting more attention, and that’s great. You know I love it.
Hans, in one of our earlier episodes, referred to Zcash as “Swiss banking in your pocket,” which I feel like was a really easy way to describe what the product does.
Yeah, I love it.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off.
Yeah, no. I love Zcash, you know. I co-founded it. I’m very proud of it. I wish it all the best. But as technology evolves, there’s now some demand, or some people are asking, “What about a form of money that is post-quantum secure and has all the other properties?” You want to add that as well. You want privacy, and obviously something that looks or feels a little bit like the Bitcoin style: proof of work and some scarcity. Then you also want post-quantum security. I think this is what Starknet is going to end up occupying.
Do you think—why do you think it takes a while for crypto participants to catch on to which properties are important and which properties matter? Zcash was not performing well for many, many years after its creation.
I hear you.
From 2016 until, whatever, 2025.
It was painful.
Yeah. But at some point, I think the light bulb goes off for people. It seems like right now in crypto, the fundamentally strong assets and fundamentally strong teams are getting more attention. The pendulum has swung one way and is swinging back the other direction. How do you navigate that? Do you even try to navigate it and evangelize why Starknet’s important and how it becomes popular and gets marketed? There are all these things that are overlooked in crypto, and eventually they do get attention and do well, but sometimes it just takes time.
Yeah. Zcash is a great example. The academic white paper I co-authored with 6 brilliant cryptographers in 2014 was implemented in 2016 as Zcash, but it took, as you said, like 9 years for the world to care about it—or maybe 11. I’m not good with numbers.
That’s funny.
So, honestly, I’m not good with numbers. A lot of mathematicians aren’t good with numbers. But it took a while.
The point is that, for money, this is actually pretty quick. Paper money took several centuries to be accepted in China, where it first appeared. People were saying, “What kind of funny money is this? We want the metal stuff.” Then, when it came to Europe from China with Marco Polo, or whatever, it again took a couple of centuries to be adopted.
If you think about things like ATMs or credit cards, it took several decades for them to be trusted. I’m not surprised that recognizing or agreeing on what properties digital gold should have takes a little bit of time. It took a bit of time for Bitcoin. It’s taking a bit of time for Zcash, and it’s going to take a bit of time for Starknet. That’s fine. We’ll wait, and we’ll keep building what, in our minds, is necessary for it to be a form of money that people can use.
How do you think about it as money, but also as an ecosystem? What do you think is going to drive a lot of the early activity once you shift over to being L1, or even now as an L2?
Yeah. Like many projects, we started by saying, “Build and they will come.” Build the best infrastructure, and then developers will come.
Yeah.
That wasn’t a great return on investment. We have a few very good DeFi protocols on Starknet, like Kubo and AVNU, and a bunch of others in gaming. But if we look at the amount of funding that went into projects and how many of them stuck around and became sustainable, it wasn’t a great return on investment.
Something we started doing recently is developing a few applications. One of them I think people should check out is called SuperVega. It’s at supervega.app. It’s a retail-facing platform for trading options and buying—if you want to go long on things like Bitcoin, Zcash, STRK, Litecoin, or other stuff—with a very good UX. That’s one thing my team at StarkWare has developed, and there are a bunch of others we’re building. So, to answer your question, in addition to supporting great existing ecosystem projects, we’re also building a few ourselves. We hope this will attract more attention and bring more users.
That’s dope. It seems like the hands-on approach is going to be a lot more popular going forward, especially when you have a strong team that can do that.
For retail, it seems like what’s caught the most attention with on-chain stuff is speculation. Obviously, meme coins lately have done really well, but perps on Hyperliquid have also dominated. It seems like the finance side of things is what dominates the most. That makes sense. How are you guys—
Mm-hmm.
—thinking about AI? We talked a little bit earlier in the show about how AI is disrupting a lot of things and finding vulnerabilities in existing companies and internet applications. How are you thinking about AI and AI agents transacting on Starknet, and how are you going to interact with that?
That’s a really great question. One of the things we’re exploring is that we’re very good at scale and hyperscale, meaning processing a very large number of transactions at a very low cost. That’s something we’re actively exploring as we speak. I hope to come on again in the future and make some big announcements about what we’re doing there, but right now it’s all in progress. We’re looking at things like hyperscale and micropayments for agent e-commerce and the greater agent economy.
There’s another aspect of AI: the threat it poses, both in terms of speeding up things like quantum computation and in terms of weakening all kinds of existing cryptography, including things like factoring that underlies some of the signature schemes out there. I think people are realizing that you need to move your cryptography to higher ground. The nice thing about zk-STARKs, the technology I co-invented about 8 years ago, is that it relies on a very safe form of cryptography called hash functions. Hash functions are probably the safest from AI attacks and quantum threats.
So the AI thing is something we’re both trying to address and cater to by building infrastructure for agents to use. But it’s also pushing the world to realize that zk-STARKs, which are based only on hashes, are a really important technology for saving blockchain.
Can you explain, at a low level for the audience, what a zk-STARK is and how that powers StarkWare?
First of all, it’s a proof. It’s a way of knowing that the right thing was being done, even when you’re not watching. I’ll give an example. If I were to give Darth Vader the task of processing a day’s worth of Bitcoin transactions and reporting the new state of the system, I’d be really worried because maybe Darth Vader would steal all the Bitcoin and put it in his wallet.
Yeah.
But with a zk-STARK, I can tell him, “Look, dude, go do that, but in order for me to accept the new state, I need to check this proof.” The proof is very short—it’s less than one Bitcoin block. The only way for Darth Vader to convince me that the proof is legitimate is to show that all the transactions he did in the UTXO set, and the new state of Bitcoin that he shows, are correct. It’s a kind of cryptographic cement that makes sure someone is operating with integrity, doing everything correctly, and not cheating. It’s like magic that enforces integrity, trust, and reliability. That’s what a zk-STARK delivers.
Makes sense. Thank you.
Cool.
Appreciate that. Would this technology that you’ve used to build Starknet have been used in the early days of cryptocurrency if it had already existed? Do you think it would have been—
Yeah.
I’m sure Satoshi would have loved it. Satoshi actually spoke a little bit about ZK. When he stopped speaking in 2011, we didn’t yet have ZK that was efficient enough to be in Bitcoin. But he did write that if ZK were around, it would solve privacy for Bitcoin. He wasn’t aware of the scale aspect, that it could also solve scale. I’m sure he would have loved it and brought it into Bitcoin. I have no doubt.
I have a question. If StarkWare totally wins, if everything goes right for you guys, what does everyday life look like in 10 years for the average person? What’s different for—
Okay.
—for a normal guy if you guys accomplish and achieve everything to the highest degree?
Here’s my vision. You’ll have the same kind of peer-to-peer, no-intermediary experience as cash—paper cash. If you give someone a $20 bill, it’s between you and him. That’s it. You’ll have that kind of privacy and intimacy, just you and the other counterparty, but applied to all of global finance, whether it’s trading perps, lending, borrowing, or investing.
Everything will be done in a peer-to-peer manner, in a decentralized way. No censorship, and no central party that sees everything.
Frictionless.
And with very good UX. The UX—
Yeah.
—will feel like a Robinhood app, but without a Robinhood where you custody all your funds and that sees everything you’re doing. That’s how it will look.
A valid effort. Appreciate you, man. It’s been awesome talking to you.
Yeah.
We have our other guest in the green room. That was Eli, guys. Eli, is there anything else you’d like to say to the audience before we let you go?
No. I love your show.
Thank you, bro.
Yeah.
You’ve been just lovely.
We’ll have to have you come back on. It’s incredible what you’ve done in your life.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for teaching us, man.
Thank you.
We appreciate you.
Thank you.
Appreciate you, bro.
Thanks.
Oh, he’s super smart.
Yeah.
Super smart dude.
Yeah.
He’s like, “Yeah, I just co-founded Zcash.”
Yeah.
“Like, created zk-STARKs,” you know? Just—
The best is when—
Just invented them. That’s all.
The best is when he said he’s not good with numbers. That was my favorite thing.
He’s like, “Yeah, we’re actually just better than everything else existing right now. We just…” It was just hard.
And following him is Tulip King, who plays a huge role at Counterparty, ThreadGuy’s show. I had the pleasure of meeting him in New York. We’re big fans of him. He has really, really good takes, and I know he’s been super bullish on Zcash. We’ll let him tell you guys—
—in his own words. But that’s kind of the gist of who he is. He’s younger, and he’s really close to trading culture. I’m honestly really excited to have him on the show. We were trying to do it last week, but obviously we had to cancel. Without further ado, let’s get Tulip King in here.
Tulip, Tulip, Tulip.
Yo.
What’s good, bro?
What’s up, boys?
Yeah, how are you?
How we doing?
Good. How we living, man?
Let me just follow up the fucking inventor of ZK technology, the head inventor of everything.
ZK of everything.
Come on, bro.
Let’s crater the IQ of the show as hard as we possibly can.
That’s awesome.
Sorry, bro. Every guest we bring on, we lower the average already, so we’re already fucking it up.
Yeah.
You guys know the role I play here.
Yeah.
It’s definitely a unique show. We do a unique service here at Market Bubble. But yeah, Tulip King, in your own words, do you want to introduce yourself? What do you work on? Why are you here? How do you know us and the show? Just introduce yourself. Who, what, when, where, why, how?
Yeah. I’m Tulip King. I’ve been in crypto for probably too long now. Not super, not unc status, but as far as how much you can deal with it for your mental health, I’ve probably been here a little too long.
I work for—
Tweet.
—ThreadGuy at the Counterparty stream. So I tweet a lot, but specifically for that team. I split about half my time helping ThreadGuy on the creative side and stream content. What are the takes? How can we be smart about what’s going on in the space? The other half is back-office work: our clipping operation, some of our business development partnerships, that stuff. And then I’m just a chronic trader and tweeter, and I love to write about and post my ideas.
Sick. Sick. Yeah, a lot of overlap. Obviously, we do a lot of the same shit over here. You know my background’s in traditional media, attention, et cetera. Z is on fucking Twitter all day. That’s where he thrives. That’s where people know him from. How are you feeling about CT this last week and about markets right now? Just how are you feeling?
I’m so fucking bullish.
Really?
I actually feel like—
Thank God.
—the best I’ve felt. Let’s talk about some coins. I feel the best I’ve felt about crypto, honestly, probably since I joined. I think the opportunity in the space is the biggest it’s ever been since—
Get some fucking tulips in the chat. It’s a great way to end the show, by the way.
It’s—
Thank God that we have you on, Tulip.
Dude, your past guests were awesome, but I was like, come on, let’s get bullish. Let’s talk about some coins here.
I love it.
But take the past guests, for example. Sunrise: whether you think they win or somebody else wins or whatever, the scale of the numbers he was laying out is correct, right? We’re talking trillions of dollars of assets coming on-chain, quadrillions of dollars of volume. Who right now thinks that 2 years from now, less trading will happen on crypto? Who thinks that 2 years from now, fewer assets will be on-chain and less of the world will have moved to these new rails? Two years after that, two years after that, we’re talking about adding multiple zeros to the current crypto numbers.
While that is an interesting story on its own, what’s interesting is, just presume that Hyperliquid wins, right? There will be competition. Maybe you need to reallocate along the way because some perps DEX figures it out or something, right? That’s a 100-bagger. A world where quadrillions of dollars of assets are on-chain and trading, HYPE is a 100-bagger, right?
And what’s your downside at this level? “Oh, HYPE goes to 60, HYPE goes to 40.” I couldn’t give a shit. I’ll sell my kidney. I’m not trying to overstress HYPE specifically, right? You can have your own preferences and stuff, but the scale of what’s coming is unimaginable. The perps DEXes have 100-baggers in there; there are 1,000x opportunities in there. It’s the same thing on the options side, the lending markets, spot, and all of DeFi.
Hyperliquid has shown that buybacks deliver value to token holders, and you’ll go up. There are probably a handful of coins you could buy right now that are a 100x over the next—
What are they? What are they?
—decade. I think Hyperliquid’s probably the most obvious, clear one.
Yeah.
I’m a huge fan of Derive. I think options have been critically undervalued. People love perps so much—and they should—that they got overly bearish on options. But options have fundamentally different payout structures than perps, right?
Yeah.
A perp is just a multiplier on linearity, and there’s path risk, which is why you have liquidations, because the protocol needs to stay solvent. But with options, you have convex payouts, which, especially in a crazy-tail asset like crypto, is incredibly valuable. You can hedge, you can do spreads. You can buy a bunch of options that don’t even express a view on the asset, but express a view on the price of volatility in the market.
Maybe options eat into zero-DTE retail, or maybe perps eat into zero-DTE retail options. But the rest of the market is completely untapped. I’m looking at it and thinking, “Okay, yeah, crypto is maturing. The markets are getting more liquid.” You’re seeing a protocol like Derive with 90% share in options premiums.
Yeah.
I’m like, “Okay, don’t overthink this one.”
Yeah.
And maybe it’s Lighter, maybe it’s Variational. I’ll buy those when they have 20% or 30% share. I think people are also overtrading this moment. What I’ll really say is, let’s take options. There’s probably a 10,000x opportunity, if I’m doing the math right. There might be 100,000x left in options volume on-chain just to get to TradFi levels, however many zeros that is.
If Lighter flips Derive, or Hyperliquid does options and flips it, or Paradex does, whatever, you’ll see it coming. If you buy here or buy when it’s already done the flip, you’re buying on the presumption that it will carry you the next order of magnitude or two.
Yeah.
So your payout in that is still massive.
Yeah.
Candidly, as a portfolio allocator in crypto, this is the easiest time to add zeros to your net worth since Bitcoin. The opportunity is just huge. People don’t wrap their heads around the numbers, and then they overtrade and wait for it to happen over a week. This is my retirement cycle. I’m locked in.
Also, I don’t understand: everybody keeps tweeting, “Oh, it’s a bad market.” I’m like, “Stop buying shitty coins.” I’m at portfolio all-time highs here. It’s not rocket science. It’s not trenching. I buy the coins where the project also buys its own coin. I buy the coins where the teams also buy the coins.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I’m the shit. You know, open DeFi—
What are your biggest positions currently?
Yeah, like HYPE, Pump.
My biggest position—my entire net worth—is Eli Lilly, actually, which is its own conversation, probably.
I love the Eli Lilly shill, bro. Love the Eli Lilly shill.
Yeah, I can definitely get into that if you guys are interested. Bitcoin, HYPE, and Zcash are probably all kind of equally sized. It just depends who’s trading at what day.
But I was very early to Pearl, and that’s just grown to be big.
I had put a little bit of that.
I was very early to Derive, too. That’s just grown to be big. I think Venice cards, some stuff like that. I’m trying not to have too many positions. It’s actually really hard. There’s so much opportunity, and I don’t want to be too cute.
Yeah.
I like that cards doesn’t overlap with Hyperliquid or Derive, and that Venice is in its own lane. I don’t think you should be chasing beta. I think you should be chasing exposures: What parts of the market will benefit from everything coming on-chain? Who’s the leader in that? Buy it, and then tell your Grok bot to give you a report every day if somebody’s catching up.
If somebody’s durably catching up—not just having a really good day or a really good week—play your risk ratios and reallocate. That’s kind of the portfolio.
You’re still bullish on Zcash? How do you feel about Pump? How do you feel about Solana and Ethereum?
Zcash is going to $1 trillion. I couldn’t tell you when, but it is. I think alternative crypto monies, like Bitcoin alternative assets, are incredibly attractive right here.
Pump is a team that knows how to execute. They verticalized with PumpSwap, the Pump.fun app, and their own bridge. They make more money than God. I think the VC class of crypto hates it for some reason. I know all the wallets are in a war right now, but I think they all win together. All of the social trading apps are awesome products.
Agreed.
People trade Pump coins on FOMO, and Pump makes money from that, and FOMO makes money from that. Phantom has a cash product.
Yeah, I think KATE has the most holders on FOMO specifically.
Mm-hmm.
And it’s a Pump coin.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then Phantom has an awesome cash product. Maybe one of these other two do, but if you want to start spending some of your crypto, there’s that. I think there’s so much room for all of them to grow. They probably wouldn’t acknowledge how much money they all actually make from each other.
Yeah.
I’m a team-let’s-all-get-along type of guy. I like it all.
Yeah.
I agree.
I agree.
4. Why Solana Is Not Money
I’m incredibly bearish on Solana, though. That’s my hot take: my bearishness on Solana, ETH, and most of the L1s.
Why?
My perspective for not just this cycle, but honestly crypto moving forward, is that you essentially want to be in one of 2 categories. You either want to be a coin that is money: Bitcoin, Zcash, Pearl. There are pairs in that category. You could say, “Okay, Zcash and Monero are both private monies,” and maybe you have a favorite for some reason.
Yeah.
Or Pearl versus some of the other AI monies, maybe Bittensor or whatever. But coins that are money trade with monetary premia, and then they have their own fundamentals. You put those in one basket—that’s barbell A of your portfolio. Barbell B of your portfolio is coins that make money.
I love this, by the way. I love this.
I don’t think Solana is money. The core thesis that ETH is money and Solana is money was essentially that block space is like an economy, and it would grow, mature, and develop. Ethereum would be the natural money of the ETH blockchain because there’s no counterparty risk. Solana would be the natural money or collateral of the Solana blockchain because there’s no counterparty risk.
It just doesn’t show in the numbers. On Solana, the most widely used collateral is USDC—stablecoins.
Yeah.
The SOL token actually does pretty well in swap pairs because of the meme coins, but what are all of the on-chain stocks paired against? USDC. If you’re bullish on on-chain stocks on Solana, you’re also bullish on USDC becoming the denominated asset in these swap pairs. It’s the same thing for Ethereum in the lending markets and the swap pairs.
You have this nasty problem where the more mature Solana and Ethereum get, and the more robust they become, the less and less the native asset is actually being used like money. That’s my core thesis as to why Ethereum got cucked at all-time highs in the last run-up we had. Same thing for Solana. I kind of think it’s over. Unless something radically changes in these chains, your thesis is not that these are money; your thesis is that these make money.
Now you have the problem that Solana transactions are up like crazy this year, and transaction fees are down like crazy because they’re doing what they should do, which is scale the network. You also have this problem we had with NFTs: “Sure, this NFT collection is valuable and scarce,” but NFTs as an asset class are not scarce. You can mint them as you please.
Yeah.
It’s the same thing for block space. Block space is very artificially scarce. Solana can add more block space and scale. Solana has unique tech, but would Solana adoption have been as good if Ethereum wasn’t $100 to do a swap? Probably not. How expensive can Solana get? How high can they raise fees before Aptos, Sui, or one of these other networks starts to eat into that?
I do believe the thesis that you could build Pump.fun and these DePIN networks on Solana in such a way that there’s a critical mass of protocols there that interoperate, so Solana block space is differentiated because you’re paying for the privilege of sharing block space with all of these other applications. That’s the bull case. If I’m wrong, it will be for that reason.
But again, you can just wait and see it. I don’t expect to wake up and all of a sudden Solana is printing a gazillion in fees and is net profitable.
That is true.
I check this shit every single day. I feel pretty confident I’ll see it coming. I hate to prey on the downfall of people’s bags, but pretend Ethereum was priced off of actual money: it loses monetary premium, and it needs to make money. Solana loses monetary premium, and it needs to make money.
If you look at the misallocation, Ethereum is $300 billion, Solana is, what, like $90 billion, and maybe XRP—maybe that crime finally falls away or whatever. There is literally a quarter trillion or more of misallocated value in crypto. It’s not the case that you’ll destroy this quarter trillion and get a quarter trillion somewhere else. It’s more like you lose $100 billion of Ethereum, and now $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 billion ends up somewhere else, just because of liquidity. But that’s actually your buyer.
Not only is all of TradFi coming on-chain, and not only are Phantom, FOMO, and Pump.fun bringing all the retail users on-chain, but we can reallocate hundreds of billions of dollars from badly allocated value into good projects. There’s your Zcash to $200 billion. If you’re comfortable buying Solana at 20,000× earnings, maybe you’re comfortable buying HYPE at 100 or 200× earnings.
I’m so adamant about the misallocation of value in these coins because that’s actually what flows into my good coins. I’m pretty bearish. I’m motivated to be bearish, and I’ll be totally transparent about that. That’s my take.
Listen, don’t ever sell yourself short. You’re an extremely smart guy. Z, I’m honestly curious about your response. My take on it? Your response. We’ve gone back and forth on this. Yeah, we have. We’ve gone back and forth on the timeline a few times. This is really good shit, by the way. This is great. We’ve gone back and forth a few times.
I do understand the thesis. I actually think it makes a ton of sense. The reason I disagree with it is because I don’t think people ever have valued Ethereum or Solana as businesses. I think they’ve always been valued as some kind of money, and as a representation of how many applications are going to build on top of them.
The people holding ETH and SOL right now aren’t just going to decide today, “Oh, it’s not money,” just because it’s not being used as much on-chain or because stablecoins are being used less. I do think this is an issue for outside allocators, though.
So I kind of disagree with the shift of capital, but I do agree with your point that somebody in traditional finance looks at these things as, “Well, how do I evaluate this? What am I buying here?” I think it’s more difficult for them to get behind a thesis, and I do think that’s why they didn’t do as well last cycle compared with the 2020 and 2021 cycles. At one point, if you looked at ETH, there was a period when it was actually capturing a lot of value in fees—
Yeah.
…like, on-chain.
For sure.
If you look at transaction fees on ETH in 2020 and 2021, they were insane. They were just crazy numbers. I think you could have done the math there and thought through what was going on on a forward-looking basis. What’s more interesting, and where I actually agree with you, is that the apps that are making money, are good businesses, and are doing well have an easier path to becoming money than the other way around—becoming better businesses. It’s much harder for Solana to capture a lot more revenue from the things building on top of it than for Pump.fun to become more money because they’re using more custom pairs of all the coins that launch on their launchpad. So I do agree with you on that.
Hmm.
Um—
Yeah. Yeah, I would say—
It’s an interesting spot.
What’s interesting about that is, I think you’re right: there’s a mental pattern, and there’s so much market cap behind it. The bet I’m making is to fade that. In past cycles, there weren’t really money-making applications.
Yeah.
So it was sensible to buy Ethereum and Solana. You could say, “Well, I’ll bet the ecosystem grows, and either they make fees or become money or whatever,” right?
Yeah.
I’d say the fact that Hyperliquid exists and is making money, and Pump.fun exists and is making money, is what derates the attractiveness of these and starts to wake people up. What’s at all-time highs right now?
Yeah.
In my opinion, at least, it’s either the better monies, like Zcash or Pearl, or the money-making protocols. That creates pressure to reevaluate your Solana and Ethereum holdings in a way that there wasn’t in the past.
I also think the dot-com bubble is a really good historical study of what we experienced in 2021. You look at Cisco, which would have been in Ethereum’s position: these internet businesses are new, with totally new economics. It’s unprecedented. The TAM is the world—it’s everybody, all the value, all the commerce, everything. Who’s going to win? Picks and shovels, like Cisco, selling connectivity. Connectivity is a scarce resource at this time in the species, so plow all the money in the world into it, and it’s the most valuable company in the world. That is the moment Ethereum existed in, when it had a monopoly on the scarce resource of block space. That just doesn’t exist anymore because we’ve scaled.
Yeah.
It took Cisco, God, 2 decades to get back to that all-time high. But the beauty of the dot-com bubble, and where I think we are in crypto, is that we’re around 2003, where the market has bottomed. Everybody should go home and look at the Nasdaq chart for the dot-com bubble. It took 10 or 16 years, or however long, for QQQ to get back to all-time highs after the crash.
Mm.
But you have stocks like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft that were setting new all-time highs a few years after 2003.
Yeah.
If you zoom out and look at the chart, those have basically been in a 25-year bull market. I think what you can do is pick those businesses right now. You have to do the work. This is why I posted that video: I’m just going to do the work. I’m going to look at every single coin in crypto. I have about 120 slides right now, and I’ll do another multihour video just talking about everything worth talking about. Just do the work, because, oh my God, if I wasn’t 4 years old in the dot-com crash, I would’ve sat down and looked at every single business.
Yeah, literally.
And said—
And just like, “No, I’m going to buy them all.”
“This is a generational opportunity.”
Yeah.
Right? You know?
That’s true.
So—
True.
Everybody watching this stream, depending on how smart you are or how fast you work, is probably 1 to 3 weeks away from being able to develop a thesis on the generational assets. I think that will create a lot of pressure on Ethereum and Solana.
Yeah. I’ve been super bearish on ETH. I think I was one of the early ETH bears on the timeline. I’m kind of partial to this for this reason. Everybody’s like, “You’re insane.” I was like, “No, I think I’m right on this.” That’s why I’m partial to your thesis. I’ve always been so biased on Solana. Solana is one of my favorite coins of all time, dude. The other part of my thesis is, if you’re bullish on Solana capturing a ton of this value going forward but you don’t know what these applications are going to be yet, there’s no other way to really bet on that happening. But I guess, as you said, you kind of can—
I agree with that. I think that’s an extremely reasonable take. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think the Solana Foundation feels more involved as well than most others.
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s true, and that’s definitely an advantage. It’s a talented team.
Yeah. What’s the Pearl thesis? I actually met one of the Pearl founders in Singapore.
Mm-hmm. There’s the question of why it’s time for Pearl, and then there’s Pearl specifically.
Mm-hmm.
The reason it’s time for Pearl is that we’ve known Bitcoin has had the privacy problem, the quantum problem, and the security budget problem for a long time. Bitcoin is finally big enough, and those issues are now close enough for people to care. I have this perspective that money is essentially zero-sum: for one asset to gain monetary premium, another asset has to lose it. Money itself is just liquidity. It’s just the medium of exchange or a store of value. There’s actually no such thing as good money; it’s really only money that fills the vacuum of bad money.
The way I like to put this is: if the dollar was fundamentally sound, if there weren’t these issues—like, the Genesis Block of Bitcoin is “The Times 03/Jan/2009: Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” Bitcoin is a political project. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about that. If the dollar was fundamentally sound, you wouldn’t get Bitcoin. When does Bitcoin go up? It goes up when we lose faith in the dollar.
Bitcoin is good, but that wouldn’t be enough. You actually need the dollar to be bad to create the opportunity space for Bitcoin to grow into it. Now we’re in a moment where Bitcoin is, air quotes, “bad.” That creates the opportunity space for new store-of-value assets. Enter Zcash. Zcash is the market signal that maybe my theory is wrong. I think it explains what we’re seeing. The market signaled that we closed the doors on money assets after the block size wars. Bitcoin has been far ahead of Ethereum, even when we all kind of thought Ethereum was money. But Zcash has reopened that.
Now I think new money has to exist within the airspace of Bitcoin, the same way Bitcoin exists within the airspace of the dollar. Zcash is solving privacy. I actually think quantum is a pretty bad narrative, and I’m happy to get into that. What Pearl, in theory, solves is the security budget. If you look at the quarterly filings of all the public Bitcoin miners, they’re all switching to AI because they make more money converting energy into AI than converting energy into Bitcoin.
You’ve seen depressed hash rate on Bitcoin. This has happened; we’ve seen Bitcoin hash-rate bear markets. The price has also been down, which usually has an impact on that. It’s kind of recovering a little, so I don’t want to over-project there. But what if you strapped Bitcoin to the trend? What if you said, “Okay, obviously, as I said, we’re making a civilizational effort to convert energy into intelligence”? What if, instead of trying to have an independent energy sink, which is what Bitcoin is right now, we bootstrapped on that energy? So the beauty of Pearl is…
There are some other things, but practically speaking, you take Bitcoin, you yank out SHA-256, you stick in matrix multiplication, and that’s it. That’s actually kind of why I think it’s better than Nock or TAO, or some of these other things, because all of those have the same problem with moneyness that Ethereum and Solana have, at least in my perspective: the programmability kind of takes away from them. Proof of stake, I think, is just bad money in the first place.
Bitcoin works. Zcash kind of works because it’s really, really, really close to Bitcoin. It’s Bitcoin, but with a privacy pool built into the network. Let’s make that privacy pool as dope as possible. So the thesis of Pearl is basically: let’s bootstrap on all of this matrix multiplication, on all of this AI infrastructure spend. There are a ton of interesting implications downstream of that if you really want to get Pearl-pilled, but that’s the core premise.
Yeah, it’s good. I like the Pearl thesis a lot. I actually talked to Du for a little bit. I think it’s clean; I think it’s solid. You kind of already have the proof of concept of Zcash gaining some traction and doing well, which I think is good. It’s got a differentiated bet. That is the thing this cycle, I think. You spoke a little bit earlier about how everybody’s insanely angry on the timeline, and it’s like, bro, you’re just not picking the right coins. You’re just—
What?
—you’re just not picking the right coins. It’s really that simple. You’re just not picking the right coins. I try to hammer home the 70/30 thing as much as I can: 70% should be safer stuff, and 30% should be riskier stuff. But yeah, I do think right now in crypto, you’re right. If you spend the time and really do the research, you should be outperforming the market, because the people doing the research are coming to the same conclusions pretty quickly.
I mean, what do we expect, bro? 90% of people who trade or are in crypto lose money. It’s never going to change. It’s never not going to be that way.
Hey, man, we’re talking to the 10%.
Yeah.
We’re talking to the 10% on the stream.
But for the chat, those are the 10% we should be paying attention to.
Yeah, if you watch the stream every week, you’re in the 10%, that’s for sure.
100% facts.
5. Finding Alpha Through Research
What’s your process for research? How do you go about looking into coins? Where do you start? What do you do on the AI side? Do you have a standard procedure? I know you have a daily routine, and—
I have a follow-up to this as well. I’m curious, but answer that first, please.
Yeah, I don’t really think I have a structured process so much as I just live this. Even before I was working in crypto, it was the only thing on my brain. I fall asleep thinking about markets; I wake up thinking about markets. I’m addicted. I love it so much. I’m chronically on Twitter, but I also pride myself—and I think a lot of people would be advantaged by this—on finding off-path thinkers.
My biggest goal with my own persona and profile in public is to be an off-path thinker. That means I read sci-fi books, I hang out with lawyers, I mess around with new AI stuff when it comes out, and I try things out. For every protocol, I say, “This is dumb. Why is it going up?” Then I go buy a little and play with it. I try so hard to read what everybody else is writing and thinking, but not take any of it seriously. I do my best to put everything in my own words and draw connections between things. I’m a big walkmaxer.
The saddest day of my life—funny little aside—was when they made Twitter likes private. When I had the most structured process, I’d see somebody who hit a trade and think, “Okay, well, nobody really has original ideas.” So I’d go into their likes and see what they were liking.
Yeah.
Because people always like the stuff about the trade before they tweet it.
Yes.
So, Anton, I remember stalking your likes.
That’s so funny.
Then you find that account, and you see their likes, and then that account’s likes, and so on, until you find the upstream thinker with 400 followers or fewer than 5,000 followers. You can do the same with Substacks you like and books you like. If you watch somebody smart on a podcast, that podcaster might have good taste in people. You can see who else they’ve had on. It might not even be stuff you care about.
I read exceptionally fast, and I’ll read while listening to a podcast or watching a YouTube video. Just absorb, absorb, absorb, absorb, and then live life and let synthesis happen.
Yeah, live it and breathe it. That’s by far the best advice: live it and breathe it.
You have to. You have to. You said you sat down for 4 hours and researched coins above $3 million. What was the craziest thing you discovered in that process? What’s something that truly shocked you, that fully changed your mind about something, that blew you away?
I don’t know. There’s alpha everywhere. The markets are just so much less smart—
There’s got to be one, though, recently where you’re like, “Holy fucking unlock,” like—
I don’t know about a huge unlock. I’m still—those 4 hours were me just putting together a list. I’m about 2 weeks into actually researching the coins, but you see crazy stuff. One of the most up-only charts in crypto right now is R87 something something or 8787. It’s a Russian ruble stablecoin, and it’s going up like crazy because of capital flight. Everybody in Russia is getting their hands on this stablecoin to then swap for Tether to get their money out because of the war with Ukraine. So that’s in there, and then you’re like, “Okay, well, if these guys ever launch a token, or what’s going on there?”
You see that Vitalik writes about a lot of projects on his blog. Not like he shills them, but he writes about them, and you see what he likes. Then you can check the GitHubs. Railgun, Kohaku Wallet, and Ambire—you look at their GitHub, and you’re like, “Oh, they’re integrating this other coin, and Vitalik has made Git commits. He’s one of their lead developers, low-key, you know?”
I don’t know if there’s anything mind-blowing about any particular coin. There’s funny stuff, but honestly, it’s just shocking how easy it is and how much alpha there is. If you just do the work, you can find some real gems. I think the question I ask myself is: there’s an entire fleet of coins in the range of probably $5 million to about $100 million that actually make money and have the ability to do buybacks. Honestly, what I asked was, “Can I shill this?”
It’s a real project, it’s making money, and it’s undervalued according to the thing. I know if I tweet it, everybody will realize that and buy it, but there’s a fundamental case there. Then they’ll overbid it and I’ll sell it. So I was shilling fundamentals, right? There was actually a legitimate case that this thing was underpriced, and I was bringing attention to it. Obviously, I haven’t done that with any of those coins because it’s a moral quandary.
I look at it and think, or maybe I’ll just park money in here, and somebody— I hope this inspires some people to go tweet about my bags. That would be so cool, because I don’t want to improperly do anything myself. Integrity is the most important thing in crypto. But yeah, it’s shocking how easy it is and how much alpha there is. Again, everybody’s literally like—
Yeah, and I think if you extend your timeframes, it’s definitely a lot easier too, because—
Absolutely.
—that’s what messes people up a lot: being too leveraged or having too short a timeframe. Even a few months isn’t a long period of time. If something’s in a downturn for 3 to 4 months, it’s like, bro, if you’re really convicted on this thing and you have a longer outlook—6 months plus, a year or whatever—and you have a job and you’re making money, slam as much as you can into this stuff when you get the opportunity to. Your knowledge is not what everybody else knows. I think that’s what people mess up on a lot.
That’s what I fucked up a lot in crypto: “Bro, how is this shit not higher? How is this shit not trading a lot higher? What am I missing?” It’s just because everybody else hasn’t figured it out yet. And once everybody else has figured it out—
It’s because they’re all holding Ethereum and Solana. That’s why it’s not higher.
True.
Hey, full circle, that’s where the money’s at.
It is true.
And now you see why—
Instead of me bull-posting those bags, I’m just bear-posting where the money’s supposed to come from.
Yeah, bro. I think I pulled it off pretty good with the ETH/SOL pair a few times. No, it’s true. There’s a lot of money locked up in this stuff.
You’re very well-spoken and articulate. Obviously, you have an interest in the media stuff, the stream. You’ve kind of, like you said, full-ported the Counterparty stuff and are making massive efforts toward that and its goals. You haven’t spoken a ton about that. Where does that interest come from? Where do you see the future going for that? Shows like Threads, shows like our own—how important and crucial is shit like this to crypto? The Kimchi stuff, maybe speak on that.
It’s just very rare to find anyone with a significant understanding of media, attention, how all that shit works, and these markets. I feel like there’s a very small list of people who do, and I think it’s the most important and interesting piece of it, and the most valuable part of it. I’m just curious about your thoughts on all that shit.
Well, my goal in life isn’t really to be rich or make money. That helps a ton. It’s to be happy, you know? I got into crypto because I was obsessed with it. I was a full engineer, a nerd, before all of this. I was working for CERN, the particle collider, and the particle physics lab in Beijing. I was designing electronics and firmware for them. I designed radar jammers for fighter-jet warfare for a little while. I was an engineer, but I’d spend all night, every second at my desk, doing crypto.
So I thought, “I’ll just—why don’t I just do this?” I took a huge pay cut. I full-ported into crypto, and I was like, “This is dope. I’m so happy.” I spent 4 years at Messari and loved it, but I was on the engineering side. Then I basically hit a trade in public and ended up on the Thread Guy stream. He called me after. He and Malcolm—
Name of the trade?
Malcolm, who’s also the GOAT. It was Aster.
Yeah, Malcolm’s—
Aster?
Yeah. I binked the Aster trade. It was on stream. It was a blast. Then Thread Guy and Malcolm, his co-founder, who’s also insanely GOATed, called me up and said, “Do you want to join us? We’re building something here.” Honestly, you don’t have to talk to either one of them for very long to realize they’re generational talents. It’s not just a stream for the sake of a stream. I think we’re thesis-driven. We’ve had this view that trading is taking over, that people want to be active investors. I think the age of ETFs is done. There’s such a deluge of good content that, if you really put in the work, you can shine.
I was sitting there debating: “Am I about to go from being a successful engineer to working for a Twitch streamer?” I thought, “Well, it’s going to be insanely fun.” That’s deadass how I made the decision.
That’s awesome.
I was like, “It’s going to be the most fun thing I could possibly do with my—”
You know I lived with those guys, right? I lived with those guys for a period of time.
Oh, yeah. I hear the stories.
Yeah, yeah.
I hear the stories. And Thread would also say—
It was a lot of fun.
—that he’s nasty at basketball.
Yeah, he is nasty.
He’s also confirmed that.
Bro, we gotta play.
Bro, so can.
He’s not far away, bro.
You do. You do. You do.
We lived in Beverly Hills, in the Flats, and had a full court. We used to run four or five times a week. Thread is the truth. He’s really, really good.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And so—
But it’s funny, because it’s just cool to watch guys like you catch up and the entire market catch up. Obviously, we’re seeing this meteoric rise in the brand and persona that is Kimchi. It’s reached escape velocity outside of CT. It’s fully broken outside of CT. It’s—
People don’t realize that CT is—
Dude—
—its own little bubble. It is—
Like—
The Kimchi phenomenon is real. I remember—
Yes.
It’s very, very real.
It’s massive.
Unsurprisingly, I do all of our data and analytics and stuff, and I’d see we’d have Cupsey on or TJR on, and our live numbers would just go crazy.
Of course.
And I’d be like, “These guys? What?” Then you realize how authentic it is. You’re looking at the engagements, everything. We’re not being botted right now. You’re like, “Oh, these guys are real.” Then you get to know Frank and Rasmer as people, and you realize they’re not running some crazy scam. They’re actually just cracked. They’re really good traders.
Brother, if Kimchi went live today on Twitch, he’d have 50,000 to 100,000 concurrent viewers.
Right. Right.
Right now.
And so you’re like, “Oh, this is the moment,” right? We’re good. It’s small. The number of people who can trade and do content is small. I think of it more like chess, where Magnus Carlsen is the greatest chess player in the world. He has a big following because of that, but he’s actually not the biggest chess content creator.
Yeah, yeah. There’s golf and chess—
There are international masters.
Yeah.
Exactly. Exactly.
Exactly.
And it’s the same thing for gaming. You could be dogshit at League of Legends—
100%.
—and still have a big livestream because you’re entertaining.
100%.
So I think of trading the same way. If this is a new pastime, and this is what people enjoy and are learning to love, we don’t have to run a 9-figure, 10-figure P&L to—
I love the trading entertainment—
—to be good.
I love the trading entertainment versus gaming entertainment comparison. I really, really do love that.
Yeah.
I’m almost obsessed with the one-to-one between trading and gaming. The way I describe what makes a good trader is identical to what makes a good Fortnite pro. When you ask Peterbot, “Why are you so good at Fortnite?” his answer is likely, “I don’t actually know.” He can give you an answer, just like your answer here: you can put in the work, put in the time, put in the effort, but at the end of the day, the top 100 pros all put in the exact same amount of work, time, and effort. Peterbot is substantially better. He’s the consensus best Fortnite pro of all time. Why is that?
When you peel back the layers and the goofy cartoon figures and the rocket launchers, it’s all just code, right? A set of rules and circumstances that everybody has to abide by.
Mm-hmm.
And it ultimately comes down to Peterbot’s ability to make these decisions. That’s what a game of Fortnite is.
Yeah.
It’s just making one decision after another based on variables like—
Absolutely.
—the person’s health, what gun I have, where we are on the map, the spawn points, the storm closing, how many materials I have, how many materials they have. Do I use a shock grenade? Do I use a parachute? Whatever it is, he just makes these decisions more correctly than the average player. That’s why he’s the best. It’s the same thing with guys like Rowdy and Frank and all the best traders. It’s exactly one-to-one, and I love the way that you described it with trading entertainment, because it’s 100% the fact.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, it’s crazy.
And people don’t realize—I mean, the fact that Ansem, you have a million followers.
People on crypto Twitter don’t realize how insane that is.
No, it’s nuts.
Banks, you’re the GOAT.
I love it.
And here you are, running this show, building this brand. It’s real. It’s happening.
I finally feel like I’m in the place where I—
I don’t know how much more evidence—yeah.
—I’m finally in a spot that I’m super comfortable and proud of, and the path forward is so clear. Obviously, I got myself—
Yeah.
—involved with the trading stuff. I love to trade. I have burners and I trade, and I think that shit’s awesome.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I got involved with the NFT stuff, whatever. I’ve always loved that shit—an inherent love for crypto—but my gift to the planet is the media stuff. It’s being able to identify talent, develop talent, develop content IP like this. It’s the exact thesis we had with the Probably Nothing stuff. That’s what Probably Nothing ultimately was supposed to be: a network of people who had an interest in creating media and content IP.
Mm-hmm.
Nobody really got it. It did well—the CTV vlogs did well and stuff—but it’s cool to watch the entire market and industry catch up, and people start to notice and understand how important and valuable this stuff is. You know from your experience at Counterparty: when you can amass any sort of audience, it’s huge. In a market as lucrative as trading, when the entire purpose and the root of it is finance, trading, and moving capital around, it’s really something. I talked about this in the pre-show. I was at a dinner 2 nights ago, and Kimchi’s name was a fucking hot-button topic.
Mm.
We’re talking, and without naming names, this young billionaire—multi-billionaire—who owns part of an NFL team, a super-successful guy, goes, “Yeah, I know Kimchi,” et cetera, et cetera. Then, 15 minutes into the conversation, he’s like, “Yo, yo, look at this.” He flips his phone around, and his YouTube recommendations show Kimchi’s vlog at 70,000 views. I’m like, “There you go.” This guy’s like, “There you go.”
Yeah.
I’ve heard you guys talk about when Flood is in the chat, that’s a lot of extra capital in the chat, and they’re hanging on the words that are being spoken. It’s a real thing. It’s cool to watch people—
Mm-hmm.
—in real time catch up to that. It’s cool. It’s cool.
Yeah.
When Thread first moved in with me, Spaces was the meta. All these crypto guys were on Spaces.
He was driving the Spaces.
Yes, every fucking day. He would wake up in the morning, just like you woke up. These are things I notice, because I know what it takes to be successful.
Mm.
I know what it takes to reach that top 1%—that Kai Cenat, Adin Ross level. It’s a set of things, but one is being consistent and working 25 hours a day. I watched this kid get up every day at 6:00 a.m. and get on Spaces. In some of our early conversations, I’m like, “Dude, you gotta move these guys to Twitch. You have to stream this shit.”
He’s generational.
“You don’t get it. Crypto’s on Spaces. Crypto’s on Spaces.” I’m like, “Dude.” It’s really cool. It was one of my favorite eras and chapters of my life, living with those guys. Malcolm is a fucking genius. I think you’re exactly right.
Malcolm’s cracked, bro.
I think Thread is a generational talent.
Thread’s cracked too.
I think it’s—
Malcolm’s cracked, yeah.
—I think it’s super important that all of us who have an inherent interest and are working as hard as we’re working, specifically on the attention-media stuff in this market—I feel like I’m more excited about this than I’ve ever been about anything I’ve worked on or touched in my life. Obviously, I’ve been through my fair share of controversies and pivots in my career and stuff. I thank God every day, honestly. Q4 2026, I’m like, “Thank fucking God.” Thank God.
Yeah. People don’t realize how aligned financial media actually is. You can obviously rug and scam your audience and make your grand exit. That’s the path to quick money. But the win condition for what we’re building with Thread Guy, and what I imagine you guys assess as your win condition too, is your audience getting richer. That’s not to say I can say something and then our chat is going to get richer, but it’s to try to provide that value.
100%.
We don’t charge for content. Everything we produce is free, paid for by sponsors, and those sponsors want to work with us because our audience is rich and does volume.
Volume, yes.
A trader who blows themselves up or loses money isn’t rich and doesn’t do volume. It’s all about the lifetime value of these potential customers to our sponsors, which enables us to deliver good content for free. So we’re aligned. The Thread Guy’s huge outcome comes from being as positively intended, as plus-EV, and as focused on growing wealth as humanly possible.
Absolutely.
And honestly, it’s the same for Rasmer. He locks in on trenching content, and I understand people have different tastes about that. But people need to realize he has that audience because he’s a good trencher, and people are receiving value from him. You watch some of his videos—
And he articulates it very well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He’s explaining it very well.
Right, right.
If there’s one guy—if a 16-year-old kid walks up to me and says, “Hey, I trade meme coins. I’m on-chain with a couple thousand bucks. Who should I go watch?” I’m looking at him and, without question, saying, “Go watch Rasmer.”
Absolutely.
He’ll explain it to you the way it needs to be explained. You’ll understand. Watch Rasmer for a couple weeks. You’ll come out the other side significantly better equipped to—
Yes.
—manage that capital. 100%.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So I think it’s very aligned. I think it’s very plus-EV. It’s incredibly fun to do. It’s the best. I think it’s the future.
Awesome. What’s your opinion on Kimchi? The last couple of days, the rollout, him as just—everything, all the labels that have been put onto him, and all of his lore. From your view of the whole arc, what’s your opinion on this Kimchi thing?
Actually, let me—can I ask you a Kimchi question?
Please.
Because you’re the GOAT of the game here, right?
Sure.
My observation is that you have to have the talent, be the person, all of these things. Kimchi is obviously incredibly talented and capable. He has an eye for content. His last vlog was incredible. It was almost like a David Dobrik vlog—that hit of fun—
I was genuinely blown away by—
Yes.
—I would not have expected it—
Yeah.
—to be like that.
Right, right. But I also feel like I knew Kimchi would go big when—I run our analytics. We talked about Kimchi offhand, we posted that TikTok, and it was our best TikTok of the day. We were like—
Oh.
“All right, I guess we’re talking about Kimchi tomorrow.”
Of course, of course.
It was our best TikTok again.
Yes.
So I’m like, whatever. What I kind of want to ask you is: do you ever see the algorithm just anoint somebody? Whatever Kimchi has resonates with the algorithm. People think it’s forced. There are a lot of people who would love to be fucking famous and spend millions of dollars trying to be famous—
Let me explain something to you.
—and it’ll never happen, right?
Let me explain something to you. These streamers, for example, like Jason The Weens, Asian Reys, and Stan Renauds, are literally the best on earth at aggregating what’s happening on the internet and trends, and applying it, sharing it, engaging with it, and interacting with it for an audience.
That’s why they are the biggest streamers in the world.
Yes.
That’s why their clips go as far as they do. These guys are the best at that, the way that Ansem is the best at aggregating information around markets, et cetera.
Yeah.
They’re the best at that. Watching those guys consistently farm Kimchi for attention and views just goes to show you he’s at the apex of attention, not just in CT or in crypto, finance, or trading in general. So wherever that comes from, it’s very real. I went on this show—it’s the only time I’ve ever done this to date—and said, “I’m going to farm a really big clip right here. Bear with me.” Then I told a fabricated, exaggerated story about Kimchi.
It was so good.
About Kimchi.
That was a generational clip. That was so good.
100%. But I did that because I knew where it would go. I knew what the outcome would be, and I was confident enough to say that and make that call because it was obvious from my purview and with the experience I have. Rasmer did that before. Now all the lore around Kimchi is going giga-viral outside the scope of just CT or whatever. Now it’s, “He hit 40 million on Trump. He hit 40 million on Trump.” Kimchi becomes the perfect representation of the new American dream: 22 years old, played Fortnite, found crypto, pressed a couple of buttons, hit a big trade, logged off, and now he’s living lavish. Who doesn’t want to do that? How is that not going to appeal to a 16-year-old kid who has the same dream and plays Fortnite all day? It’s obvious, right?
People have fun with it. These narratives run wild. People notice that they can gain a ton of attention by talking about Kimchi, whether it’s positive or negative. Obviously, for a long time, people would just glaze him, and he became this mythological creature. But in the last 2 days, we’ve seen it take a sharp turn negative. Again, it’s the same thing: we see a lot of fake outrage on the internet. I don’t know. I know a lot of CT’s outrage is very real, but I think it’s also rooted in people losing money right now. The markets are down.
Yeah.
We’ve always seen CT kind of cannibalize itself, the snake eating its own tail. We’ve seen this behavior from CT a million times. We’ve seen CT turn on the biggest names and faces over and over, time and time again. We’ve never not seen it. We’ve never seen somebody go through unscathed, untouched. We just saw Flood get torn limb from limb because he might have been wrong. He might not even have been wrong. He might have been wrong by a couple of days about something.
I hope he was wrong.
Right? Yeah.
Yeah.
Me too. But Flood’s objectively the GOAT, right? I don’t know. It’s interesting. The big thing I’m trying to solve for is two things. I’ve said this over and over: crypto has one of the worst brands of anything. I think it’s one of the most poorly branded and represented industries and products of all time. The word is so -EV. So many people associate that word with scams, and it’s just not good. It’s left such a bad taste in people’s mouths.
The way it’s represented by people who actually understand the nuances is the big thing. These narratives aren’t helpful to our market or our industry at all because 95% of people are never going to do the due diligence themselves or bother to understand the nuances of the difference between a coin getting rugged and a coin being vamped. The chart looks the same, and the outcome is the same, but there’s a huge difference between Kimchi rugging a coin and some OG Kimchi coin that some other random third party made getting vamped. We understand all of this. The average person does not. So perpetuating narratives like this unfairly is something I think is fucking retarded.
I don’t know what the solution is. I think the solution for changing people’s perception of crypto is shows like ours, shows like Thread Guy’s, and examples like Kimchi’s and Rasmer’s. I think we’re headed in the right direction, but crypto does not do itself any favors. It’s so fucking—I don’t know.
Do you think we even need to fix that? The reason I ask is: what does everybody hate? The internet, social media, and AI. Well, okay.
Yeah.
Fucking everybody uses the internet. Everybody’s on social media.
Yes.
Everybody’s using AI to do their homework, right? The same people who will—
Yeah.
—tell you AI is the devil are doing their math report with it tonight. So I’ve kind of grown into the take that—
I think—
I don’t know, you know?
I think, yeah—
Crypto volumes go up. Does it matter?
I hear you. I agree with you.
Well, I’d agree with you. I—
I—
We want to be net positive with the—
Yes.
—Thread Guy’s stream, obviously. I think what you guys are doing is also incredibly net positive. But I’m almost just done worrying about it. It will resolve itself, or it won’t. I’m going to do me, and I have to face God at the end of the day, so I’m going to try to be a good person.
I agree with what you just said there.
And that’s it, you know?
What I will say, though, is that I like the take, but what’s different about crypto and trading specifically from AI, the internet, et cetera, is that you have to go layers deeper in terms of trust and commitment when you’re asking people to put their capital on something. It’s a little different from just using Google or using AI. It requires way more trust. When crypto as an industry has lost all trust and is painted so negatively, it’s on guys like us, shows like ours, to cure that and establish something different.
I think crypto is in desperate need of a rebrand and reform. I think it’s all starting to work itself out. Trading, finance—it’s all kind of blending together.
Yeah.
Ultimately, people born today aren’t even going to say the word “crypto” to each other. I think it’s all just going to be finance, trading, markets, you know? And I think that’s good.
Agreed.
This is my whole thesis with not only Market Bubble but everything I’m doing right now: I think this is the greatest story never told. Examples like Rowdies and Qwerties and Incentos, and even Rasmer, Thread Guy, and Kimchi—I think this is the coolest shit that’s ever happened. It’s the greatest game ever played. I just think there’s such a barrier to entry because of all the negative stigma and preconceived notions about what’s happening here. So many people are throwing the baby out with the bathwater and writing it off as a scam, a LARPer, fake, whatever. While that’s true for so many things, you have to meet in the middle and understand it can’t all be that. It can’t.
Right.
There has to be something there. I just wish CT would do a better job of championing the people who actually make a legitimate effort. We’ve seen it a million times: narratives run wild with completely false shit to attack someone’s character or steer a narrative or a market. That’s the other thing, too: everyone’s got a different agenda. Everyone wants to see a different outcome. There are people who are long, there are people who are short, and nobody’s giving a truly unbiased opinion. I try to pay attention to the ones who do, but it’s so hard.
I think the bag-buying space is strange.
I think Jeff is the poster boy, bro. Jeff got us. Jeff from Hyperliquid is doing all the heavy lifting from the public side, from the builder side. I think there’s kind of nothing people can say about him, to be honest, or about Hyperliquid as a product. So regardless of everything else that’s happening, he’s already kind of crossed the chasm, I would say.
I think we do have some really good examples.
Agreed.
Yeah. Hopefully, the public nature makes it all better, where you have ZachXBTs calling out people who do the wrong things. I hope we get another Zach and more people get into that. I remember when there was a huge discussion around unrealized P&L and all these meme coins, and people were asking, “What’s going to happen? Is it just going to be a rug fest or whatever?” My take was always that it solves itself, because either you made all this money trading meme coins and you’re high on the leaderboard, or you lose that money to people who sold earlier or bought different projects, and they’ll be at the top of the leaderboard.
I also think the same thing applies to the HYPE price. Something like the FOMO leaderboard will solve for net-positive long-term trading habits, because it’ll even out over time, and people will learn. The same thing goes for Jeff. Him acting the right way is reflected in the HYPE token, and everybody who wants to make money will start to copy that. I do think we’re at a moment where you combine everything being on the blockchain, with nowhere to hide, and the social inflection point we’re in. We’ll start to see net-positive operators really separate from the pack. And to your point, Banks, hopefully CT can get behind that.
Yeah, yeah.
I don’t know what they’re going to do, but hopefully.
By the way, I was talking more about the talking heads, the content creators, the personalities, and the media stuff than the product stuff.
Mm-hmm.
I think the product stuff has kind of worked itself out.
Well, I think the products will fix it. I think the products will solve for that.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
To the FOMO point, it’s the same way I feel about the criticism of copy trading. We see Frank’s name get thrown around a lot, and it’s like, the way the math works, nobody can have an infinite amount of capital following them and tailing them into a trade and getting dumped on. The money has to run out eventually. If that were the case, you’d eventually run out of copy traders. So it’ll work itself out.
And he’s the most—yeah.
Yeah.
He’s the top trader. If I were a guy running bots, I’d program my bots to buy right after he buys.
Yeah.
When people talk about copy traders and stuff, I’m like, “You know what? I bet it’s actually decently sophisticated hedge funds on the smaller side, or individual traders. They’re your copy candles. They’re the ones sniping it right away.” And why shouldn’t they? If somebody has a provably positive P&L, it’s not a terrible strategy to copy them.
Yeah.
You know?
And these social graphs and apps are just making it easier and easier to get that information to the bottom tier guys. This has always existed, by the way.
Exactly.
All the on-chain people who know how to read on-chain have always done this, and always known how to read this and make decisions based on that information. But now it’s just available to literally entry-level people, which is obviously a good thing. Goes without saying. I’m way over time. I was supposed to dip 15 minutes ago. Tulip, we’ve gotta have you on way more, bro. This has been a great conversation.
Yeah, please. We need the bullish shills, bro.
Anytime.
We really appreciate it. I’m gonna leave you guys to it. Z has a post-show, but you guys can keep going. I just have to dip. I’m traveling tonight. Where are you based?
I’m in New York.
Are you in New York? All right. I’ll be there at some point in the next few days.
All right. Sweet.
Yeah. All right, cool. I’m gonna leave you guys to it. Tulip, thank you so much for coming on. It’s been a great conversation.
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
You’re the fucking GOAT. Um, I'm gonna leave you guys to it. But yeah, without further ado, I'm out.
Cool. Peace, brother. Oh, what’s good? What’s good, Tulip?
You’re killing it. You’re bearish right now? I was just hearing you, or was this a reality check?
I am very bearish.
Huh?
Oh, shit. Yeah, I am bearish right now. I don’t want to say I’m super, super bearish, but I am bearish. I think stuff’s gonna roll over. I do think equities are just gonna pull shit down, dude. I think a lot of the momentum stocks and equities that have dominated the past couple of years are pretty topped out. I think the memory stocks are crazy parabolic, have put in their second lower high, and are selling off. I think stuff can cool off. But I agree with you, we’re in such a great spot for crypto generally. You just gotta have a little bit of patience, I think.
6. Stocks Create Their Own Reality
Why do you think, given the prospective stocks striking us down—it’s been happening for a little while, and rates have been going crazy and stuff—Bitcoin is shockingly, at least in my assessment, pretty damn strong right now? What do you think is going on there?
Yeah. Bitcoin has been super strong. I think part of it is because it sold off so hard before everything else. If you look at Q1 and Q2, Bitcoin sold off super hard while stocks were going up, and HYPE was going up too. I’ve done a lot of looking back at when stocks sell off and when crypto sells off, to see which leads. A lot of the time, crypto had actually been selling off first, before stocks, at all the local inflection points.
What I’m most concerned about right now, for this rally in Q3, is that we bottomed at the same time the stocks topped. Was that because we were just oversold and had sold off before stocks did, so there was a discrepancy and people were just allocating some to crypto? Was this rally more of a countertrend move to the ongoing trend where we were going down? Right now, we’re at range highs on ETH and BTC, arguably making a deviation over the range highs—a false breakout, arguably. Are we gonna come back and test the mid-70s or the mid-60s again? I’m not sure. I think we were so oversold in Q3. I caught that bottom pretty well with the memory top, but I’m concerned about equities being at the tail end of their cycles. They’re up so much, bro.
Yeah.
It’s really hard.
I mean, this is why I love Lilly, right? I think anything in the equities market that you can get that’s uncorrelated to AI—
It’s hard.
I’m definitely pretty spooked on that whole complex. I’m personally kind of bearish on most of the AI complex, unless the government steps in with intervention, which is definitely on the table. But it seems like we’ve kind of left reality over there.
Yeah, bro. It’s not even that the valuations don’t make sense, because I think what’s actually scarier is that the revenues are matching up, but they’re still not making new all-time highs. Micron’s Q3 beat was fucking crazy, and it didn’t go any higher. It was the top of the day; that was the local high. What’s more concerning to me is how they talk about the stocks. Every time stocks go down even a little bit, the CEOs of all these companies are slamming the news feed with, “No, it’s fine,” and so on.
The market seems as important as the technology and how fast it’s improving, because there are so many people with exposure to the market. We also have, obviously, the Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs. If you look at those rounds and how fast they’ve gotten to $2 trillion or $1.5 trillion, I don’t know if it’s the fastest in history, but it’s got to be close for how fast these companies have gotten to—
Mm.
—these crazy valuations. So you also have the supply on that side coming through. But it’s tricky because there could be a new model that drops in a few months and makes everything so much better, and it evens everything out. I expect a lot of flipping back and forth in the market over the next few years.
I’ve adopted a much more hyperstitious view of the market over the last year, maybe year and a half. To break that down, I think the CEOs hitting the news feeds as soon as the market goes down have actually realized the meta. Look at the environment we’re in: why does Apple, which is sitting on gazillions of cash, also issue debt? Wouldn’t they just use the cash they have instead of debt, if they’re getting less on T-bills than they’re paying out on debt? Using debt versus your own cash is a money-losing operation, right? It depends on your return on capital, but you can do the math where it actually makes money.
When you look at an environment of extreme debt, where all the major companies are operating like this, what you realize is that the stock price is an asset. The bigger our stock price, the more favorably we can raise debt. How did Saylor make it for so long? It’s because so much of his debt was at zero interest. When did Saylor start to run into trouble? When he couldn’t get zero-interest debt anymore.
And you see this with the Tesla COVID example, which I love. Tesla couldn’t scale. They couldn’t make enough cars to sell and get the revenue to justify their valuation. So what does Elon do? He bull-posts it to the moon.
Yeah.
Then he does what was, at the time, one of the largest share issuances ever, raises a fuck ton of cash, and plows that into the gigafactories. They scale, and all of a sudden they’re producing the cars that make that valuation at least make more sense. The financial illusion that Elon created back-constructed the reality moving forward.
This is something we’ve known in crypto for a long time. Take Hyperliquid and Lighter. Imagine they both started at the exact same spot, and Flood and Jez hit a million-dollar trade on Lighter instead of Hyperliquid. Would it have inflected and become the winner because of the publicity? Then the token price goes up, more people go to it, and they actually get the fundamentals. Or take Apple, which pays employees in shares. Take it even further: Hyperliquid allows you to use the HYPE token as collateral on the system. The higher the HYPE token goes, the more collateral is available to their people to trade with and do volume. Granted, it’s not a huge amount compared to their volumes and stuff.
I’ve adopted a much more hyperstitious view. Hyperstition is essentially this: if you live according to a fake reality, reality actually converges to that fakeness becoming real over time.
Yeah.
I think that’s the meta in the stock market. Crypto discovered this way faster because there was no regulation on communications. If you ran a crypto company, you could say whatever the fuck you wanted. If you ran a stock, at least before the modern “loot and rob,” the modern era where nothing is true anymore, stocks were constrained. I think they’re just converging on a winning strategy. I don’t really see the media presence of these stocks as a strong indicator of weakness. I think maybe these stocks are weak for other reasons.
That’s interesting. I think that’s fair. They’ve definitely realized they’re impacting it. They’re definitely aware of that. Are you buying any of the AI stuff, or are you mostly just watching it?
I’m not interested in buying dips on any of this stuff. If OpenAI, from a trillion-dollar valuation, or Anthropic, from a trillion-dollar valuation, outperform like any of the crypto coins I think have a 10x or 100x in them over the next decade, we live in a radically different world. It just won’t matter what I bought. I’ll either be dead or euphoric.
Yeah.
It’s almost like—
Yeah.
—I love to joke that the market cannot price in a nuclear war, because if there’s a nuclear war, we all die and it goes to zero. So what’s the point of discounting based on me dying and it not mattering? The market will never price in a nuclear war.
In the same way, I’m just completely uninterested in pricing in AI utopia, which is what any further growth in these stocks implies. From a pure personal game theory perspective, I’m probably minus EV to buy AI stocks. If you have perceived edge in something like crypto, or, you know, I love Lilly Pharma—there are other pockets in the stock market. But I just think it’s kind of minus EV. Why do it? You’re either going to die or you’re not going to die. It’s whatever.
That’s a good point. That’s fucking funny. I wonder what that shit would look like. I’m actually curious what AI utopia would look like. Maybe we’ll get to see.
Do you ever read a bunch of sci-fi?
I think the closest thing I’ve read to AI sci-fi is Accelerando. Have you read Accelerando?
Yeah, that’s what I was going to recommend.
I read Accelerando. That was good. I actually liked it a lot.
Yeah, great book.
That was good.
I’m working my way through Daemon and Neuromancer, making my way through all of those as well.
Neuromancer is a series, right?
I think there are a few in the series. It’s what the cyberpunk genre is basically based on. It’s a fun read, but also a slog, so—
Yeah.
—I’m making slow progress through it.
I think I might have ordered a ton of sci-fi books last year and haven’t gotten through them. I have them all over my crib right now. I think that might have been one of them.
Let’s do another book club.
Yeah. Some of the producers said we should do another book club. We haven’t followed through on our Market Bubble Book Club. We’re definitely behind on that.
A reading spread. I’m a big fan of reading books. It’s the easiest way to fix everybody’s one-shotted attention spans.
What are you reading right now?
I’m reading Neuromancer and Daemon right now.
Those are the sci-fi joints?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I finished Red Rising. Dope as fuck. It’s so good. I think I’m going to do a fantasy book next or something. I don’t read nonfiction because my life is nonfiction. I don’t need—
Yeah, it’s boring.
“Everything I do is fiction. I don’t need any more of that in my life.” I’ll read fiction books for the rest of my life, and that’ll be plenty.
I read something online the other day that said artists are always the ones predicting the future. That’s why fiction, sci-fi, and fantasy books are often the ones you read from the past that have things looking forward that actually happen. It’s kind of interesting, like Accelerando. We’re kind of trending in that direction. And then—
Hmm.
—the engineers are the ones who build the vision—
Yeah.
—that the artists come up with. I’m actually kind of concerned about the trend we have going on right now, like you said, the one-shotted thing.
If everybody is consuming content that isn’t their own original thought, where does all the artistry and creative direction come from? It all converges to one hive mind—
Mm-hmm.
—of the fucking internet.
I think I really like Balaji’s perspective: the internet just increases variance, right? In the olden days, you couldn’t even have a MrBeast before a distribution platform as big as YouTube. He’s bigger than Elvis, right? It would be impossible to be that much of a right-tail outcome. Then you get the internet, and variance increases, and now you have a MrBeast.
But the unfortunate other side of that is that the MrBeast also implies what used to be 1,000 brain-rotted people listening to Elvis all day is now 100 million brain-rotted people watching MrBeast Shorts. I’m not critiquing MrBeast. We all just live within the world we live in, right?
Mm.
I think of it more from the perspective of variance. I actually think we’re in a music golden age. With Spotify, a small artist can have these niches. The leading genres of music used to shift from “rock is hot” to “hip-hop is hot.” Now every genre can be hot and have a genre-pushing artist, right?
I think of AI the same way. There will be a huge amount of slop, and it will one-shot a ton of people, but the breakouts—the people who can get away from that—will go further than we’ve ever seen before. So that’s your hopium. I think that’s why a lot of my writing stands out. You read Twitter, and it’s all reply bots. Most of the articles on Twitter are pure slop. If I write half-well-reasoned, clever thoughts, all of a sudden I have a big Twitter profile, got a job from it, and I’m on this stream now.
Yeah.
I want to be on a certain end of the distribution curve. Hopefully everyone watching feels the same way. You just have to be on the top of the K, basically.
Yeah. The K accelerates super, super, super aggressively. Have you seen the trader-celebrity stuff? I’ve seen The Timer has been very angry about it recently. What are your thoughts?
Dude, I was defending you in some of the replies. I think Wizard of Soho is a cool guy, but he had a quote like, “Oh, all the real guys making money are low-key.” I’m like, “Bro, what are you talking about? Warren Buffett is a media whore.”
Yeah, yeah, right.
He’s on CNBC. He’s 80 or 90 or whatever, and he’s on CNBC all the time. Ray Dalio is out here selling books and going on podcasts and stuff. Sure, some random portfolio manager at Goldman is running a big line and staying low-key. But all these top traders have been embraced and are doing media.
Again, the hyperstition is that they’re raising capital or trying to create their own reality, right? Even if you look at Jane Street: “Oh, Jane Street, everybody’s super secret and shadowy.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” They sponsor the Dwarkesh podcast, and part of that sponsorship is obviously to have Jane Street analysts come on and talk about working at Jane Street. They’re not low-key and super shadowy. That’s their aura. That’s the brand they’re trying to promote.
Yeah.
And the reason they hide their founder is because he was funding terrorists. That’s why they hide him. They’re not hiding him because they’re low-key or anything.
Yeah.
I don’t know. I saw everyone hating on your take, and I was like, “Don’t we already live in this world?” That’s where I was: “What are we talking about here?”
Bro, I was like, “Am I tripping, bro?” I looked at it again and I was like—
Yeah.
—“Am I insane?”
No.
Because I know what I’m seeing all the time. Yeah, Twitter is interesting, bro. Once somebody posts something, it’s like, “Oh, I’m gonna piggyback on that,” even if it’s not that personal with you.
Yeah.
I really liked your post on the counterparty strategy and everything. That was yours, right? Yeah, that was really good, bro. I liked that a lot.
Yeah. I think—
It was really good.
I think a lot of people, if you’re not on the other side of it, don’t perceive how much of a business it actually is. My favorite example is the clipping stuff. I’m sure you guys are the exact same way, right? Let’s say you have 100 live viewers, but you get a million clip impressions. Your business, which is selling views on those clip impressions, is actually based on your ability to convert the stream into clips.
Yeah.
And that’s obviously not fixed, right? As you become more efficient, build out your clippers, get better at identifying the right moments, and double down on what’s working, that multiplier can grow. I think the only 2 metrics that matter are total impressions and live viewers. Live viewers seed engagement in everything you do, and total impressions are essentially the efficiency of the machine you’ve built around distribution.
For us, I don’t feel like we’ve hit a ceiling yet. Our live viewers have grown a lot over the last year, and our average impressions per stream, based on live viewers, have also grown. If we can grow both of those, you have a multiplier and a multiplier. You have an exponential business, right?
A lot of other people who do what we do—you can tell who’s locked in on the business and thinking, “I need a team, or I need to lock in on this and make it a core competency of mine.” That’s part of the separation function: the people in this business who can lock in and grow the actual efficiency.
Then you look at how much you’re paying clippers, and you’re like, “Okay, my average payment from sponsors is this per impression. I’m paying clippers this. Can I grow the base of impressions? Can I make it more efficient?” Clipping talent is hard to find, so you obviously want to take incredibly good care of these people. How do you persist them forward? Because it is a game skill. That’s the other half of what I was saying about the back-office stuff. What I focus on a lot is how we have the most efficient, scaled distribution backend for our business possible.
Yeah, no, it’s really good. I think people definitely don’t realize. I didn’t know for sure before doing the pod. I was like, “Oh, I just have to talk about markets. I can do that. I do that all the time.” But there’s a lot more that goes into it behind the scenes, for sure.
I know you talk about how you trade 100% of the time and are always online. What’s also underrated about doing a pod or a show is that you have to be on so consistently. In theory, the trades you find should be a lot higher value because you’re always talking about markets, what’s going on, and what’s happening.
I think the sponsors and the money you make from that are cool, and the value you get there is great. But you’re also kind of running your own pod shop as a team putting on a podcast. It’s your own pod shop, and I think the trading upside of it is also really beneficial.
For people who aren’t doing a pod but are trading or getting into trading and thinking about markets, it’s really good to operate in a group where you can come together and discuss how you’re thinking about things and what your ideas are. It’s different talking about them in person or on the phone than just writing and reading them, or even just reading them. Writing and discussing with other people adds so much value to your thought process and how you’re thinking about the market, because you may talk to somebody who has a conflicting view and find something you’re missing.
One of the ways I found Sol super early the first time was talking to my boy Jeremy. He was super bullish on Serum, so I looked into Serum and Solana, and I was like, “Bro, I don’t think it’s Serum.”
Can I ask you something? When I was at Messari, I was an engineer. I actually wasn’t an analyst, so when I would tweet or write, I had the privilege of waiting until I had a good idea. There was no pressure to write about a project or produce research on a particular cadence.
If I saw a spot, I would take it, but I had a pretty long time horizon and focused on long trades. When I joined Thread Guy’s stream and we were talking about markets every single day, it skewed my trading style. I became so short-term-oriented that I had to reteach myself how to think long term. How do I engage with the topic of the day even though I low-key don’t think there’s a good trade here? How do I make good content around saying there isn’t a good trade here?
I’d love to ask you: as you’ve gotten into this side of the media, how has it affected how you trade, your research process, and how you think about it? In my experience, it’s a lot to adapt to, and I’m probably still not fully adjusted to it. I’m curious how it’s been for you.
No, it hasn’t impacted my trading, thankfully, but it definitely has impacted how I think about things. I feel like I definitely look more into things. As far as how many trades I’m taking and how frequently, not really. That’s just because I feel like I’ve been doing it for so long. I know how I’m operating.
How long? When did you first get into crypto?
I first heard about Bitcoin in 2016, and 2017 is when I first started trading. I was on Bittrex, BitMEX, Cryptopia, and EtherDelta. I used to be an engineer, too. I was a software engineer at Capital One.
Oh, nice. I laugh because all the electrical engineers always end up being software engineers. Throughout my early engineering career, I was like, “I gotta do hardware. I can’t be like one of those guys.” Now, obviously, anytime I do anything technical, it’s all software, but—
Yeah.
Everybody capitulates to software engineering in the end.
Bro, I loved physics in high school. I did electrical and mechanical, I think. When I was trying to figure out what major I was going to be, I thought, “I want to do something in math and science. What can I do that’s math and science and engineering?” Then I thought, “Okay, electrical engineering.” So I came into Georgia Tech as an electrical engineer. Before I started at Tech, I was in a freshman summer program, the Challenge Program, and that’s when I first started coding. I also had a field trip to an electrical engineering plant, and I thought, “I don’t know if I want to do this.”
Yeah.
That’s when I pivoted to computer science. I was comp sci at Tech the whole time, but the software stuff is cool.
Do you ever write any code nowadays?
Bro, I have not been coding. I feel like I should be coding more. I always say that, because even with the AI stuff, I mess around with it, but not in the building-apps way. It’s always the people around me.
Mm-hmm.
I feel like I should be coding more.
It’s funny how much alpha is still on-chain. I don’t code at all the way I used to, but going through my research, I’ll ask Claude to pull the actual holders of something. One example—low cap, nobody go buy this shit—but GMX, if you remember that perp DEX.
Mm-hmm.
If you look at DeFiLlama, according to its revenue, GMX is trading at about 1.2 times revenue, and it’s been growing for the last few months. So I’m like, “Is this a steal?” You look into those markets and see what’s going on. I’ve definitely integrated it more into my research flow. The fact that I understand what’s going on on-chain means I can dig into these things and ask: is it going up for some stupid reason, or is it going up for a reason that I think will actually grow and persist?
I think the generational trades aren’t just, “This protocol’s revenue is going up.” It’s, “I understand why this protocol’s revenue is going up, and I’m marrying that to this worldview, so I believe it will continue.” That’s the Hyperliquid or options trade, or whatever. If you can get past the basics—starting at DeFiLlama—and do any analysis beyond that, and you have the technical background, there’s still so much alpha there.
Yeah, no, that’s definitely valid. Do you think there are going to be more projects that start at super-low valuations? We think there are going to be trillions of dollars moving on-chain over the next few years, right? Those flows are going to be concentrated in things like Hyperliquid and other applications. Do you also think there are going to be more developers looking to build things around these on-chain products? Will there be alpha in finding those protocols, too? It feels like it’s been a really long time since we’ve seen something built from the ground up that became substantial and did really well on-chain.
Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know if you were in FWB at all.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I was in there.
I thought that was going to crush, you know?
Yeah.
I thought it would do incredibly well.
I’m clowning right now.
Yeah, same. We’ll see how Paper Trade does, which is a clever concept. I don’t know if Cards counts as new or old, or Venice.
Oh, absolutely.
I think we’re seeing new stuff, just at a slower rate than everybody’s used to. Maybe part of the reason tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars are coming to crypto is that there are mature protocols that can process and absorb those flows and are worth those flows.
Yeah.
That signal of maturity suggests there will be slower creativity and fewer new things on the build side. Honestly, I also think that’s part of why meme coins have persisted. If there were always an innovation wave of new things, that’s what OG DeFi projects were: all these worthless governance tokens were kind of meme coins, you know?
Yeah.
In the absence of new protocols to trade all the time, meme coins have kind of filled that space. One concept I’m playing with: you talk to a bunch of VCs and they all ask the same stupid question: “What’s five years from now, or six years from now?” They want to know what they should be venture investing in.
I think we’ll reach a point where everything old becomes new again. Go back to some of the fun, cool ideas from DeFi summer. You have ENS and IPFS, web servers, and a decentralized web—not just the value layer, but decentralizing parts of the web infrastructure. You have Lens, a shared social graph. Maybe someone builds a Twitter front end on that social graph, a YouTube video front end, or an algorithm layer.
I can’t tell you, Thread Guy has so many Twitter followers. I would love it if we had all of those across our other distribution platforms. Lens is an awesome idea, right? Or Friend.tech. I think FOMO is different from Friend.tech, so maybe there’s a version of Friend.tech that works again. I get excited about whether, once all this value and all these people are on-chain, we can revisit some of these old ideas with a fresh perspective, scaled networks, and real users. Maybe some of them will actually work.
I think it’s far too early to be buying any of those, but I think we’re in a phase where we inflect and then get creative again. This inflection curve will probably be localized to that small set of protocols. Beyond that, I at least have hopeium that there will be a wave of creativity where we can really revisit some of these old ideas.
The plumbers are sad that we've lost them, and I'm sad we've lost them too. They were so inspiring.
Yeah. Bro, I've always been super bullish on the social stuff, to my detriment, to be honest. I think it is one of the areas where crypto is uniquely positioned to do something differentiated from other existing social networks. I think FOMO is kind of in that direction. Pump is kind of also in that direction.
Trading is literally the world's greatest MMORPG, but right now we don't have any characters. Our characters—
Yeah.
—are all siloed to these social profiles, where our history isn't really represented well. I think it also would solve some of the problems around reputation and authenticity. We have the ZK tools necessary to obfuscate certain things or not obfuscate them.
There are people who are extremely smart on-chain, have made a lot of money on-chain, and have been active in all these early protocols. They can provably show that with their wallets, but right now there's no protocol or app highlighting or surfacing those things. I do think it's an interesting place, especially if you're thinking all this value is going to move on-chain—
Yeah.
—over the next few years. If there's trillions of dollars moving on-chain, there's also going to be all the associated user activity—
Yeah.
—with all those trillions of dollars. That's when crypto social networks make a lot more sense than they do today.
Yeah. Somebody will figure it out. Somebody will figure it out. I burned a ton of money on Friend.tech, and I'll keep burning money on social protocols. You pay the cost of the game. I'll keep losing money on that shit until I finally make money.
Until it works. Until it works and I make a million X.
Exactly.
Bro, I round-tripped my Friend.tech airdrop. My shit was worth over… I think I had the biggest Friend.tech airdrop. I think I was number one, actually. I think I literally was number one on the app.
Wow.
I round-tripped the whole thing. I didn't sell a single dollar, bro. Not one. Not one dollar.
I actually—I'm pretty sure Friend.tech is the reason you first followed me, because I was trading Friend.tech like crazy. I was doing spreadsheets.
Damn, I was.
I think I was one of your top key holders, and I posted in there, “Racer is Zuck.” I was thinking, “Zuck becomes famous because of Facebook, and Jack becomes famous because of Twitter. Racer built Friend.tech.” I thought, “Oh, I should tell his key holders.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I posted that in your room, and then a few minutes later I saw you aping the fuck out of Racer keys. Then I got the Twitter notification, and I was like, “Oh my God, I had someone follow me.” I loved the lore there. I loved Friend.tech. It was so much fun. It was the best.
Bro, I love Friend.tech too. That's one of my favorite apps in crypto. That shit was lit. That shit was lit as fuck.
But yeah, nothing has really hit quite like that. It was so dope.
Yeah. That shit was interesting. That shit was cool. Who else was on Friend.tech? I remember there was somebody on Friend.tech who was only buying and selling keys. He wasn't even in the rooms, but he was really good at buying and selling keys. I think it was D. Pats or something like that. I don't know how he was making money, because it was a 5% spread both ways, but he was still making money, or whatever it was he was doing.
Looking back, it was insane. I've never done so much volume, paid so much tax, been up so much, and then just gotten wrecked. I really went through the roller coaster on that fucking project.
Oh, bro, that shit was so fun. Everybody was tapped into that shit. Fucking 5% buy-sell fee. That shit was crazy.
People complain about the fees—the $100 ETH gas fees. I'm like, “Kids these days, they don't know about fees. You don't know what it means to really want to buy something, and then to really want to sell something too.”
No.
Yeah.
Oh my God, bro. ETH fees were fucking hilarious. I remember selling Pepe on-chain when Pepe was running up. Every fucking transaction was just knocking me over the head.
Crazy.
Oh, man. Anything else you want to hit on before we hop?
No. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks to you both for having me. That's everything I got.
Hey, we gotta do one more. We gotta do what? One more thing. Which one? Do I have the phone? It's right here. Okay, hold on one second. I appreciate you staying this long, man. It's usually a long three- to four-hour show. How do I fucking—
Yeah, you guys run a long show. Thread Guy, we tell him all the time, “Thread Guy, you gotta hit three hours. You gotta hit three hours.” Every time I see his eyes hit the clock at 2:45, he's starting to wind down. I'm like, “You're not at quota. You're not at quota.” He drops it anyway. I have mad respect for the long streams you guys do.
Yeah, bro. I don't know how Thread does it every single day. I was telling him the other day when I saw him in person, “Dude, you are a machine,” because that shit is not easy to do consistently at all.
Our other secret weapon is Dnap Daniel, who doesn't get enough love. He's also Counterparty-affiliated, if anybody wants to find and follow him. This kid is the smartest. He's the research-engine workhorse. He crushes it with topics and analysis. The other day we were talking about experimental monkeys to play the pharma trade, and he was showing us articles he'd found in a South China Sea newspaper that even Google couldn't translate.
What?
So, huge shout-out to Daniel for just being the man. It's a team effort. Obviously Thread Guy is a generational talent, but it takes all of us every single day to put this shit together.
You said Dnap? What's his @? Dnap? I'm gonna follow him.
Let me find it real fast. It's Dnapway, D-N-A-P-W-A-Y. This is the GOAT.
Oh, I do follow him. I follow him. Oh, cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's the best. Everybody here who doesn't follow him, definitely give him a follow.
Dnapway. Word. All right, I'm going to take the Bears because I don't like the Patriots and I think they suck. That's who we're rocking with today. Who else is playing today? Chiefs, Seattle. It's Chiefs-Seattle Sunday.
They're taking the Eagles.
You said Chiefs? Chiefs-Seattle is coming up. Seattle's gonna beat y'all for sure. Nah, nah, nah. Seattle's gonna beat y'all for sure. It's Kenneth Walker, for sure. See, they're already favored.
They're taking the Eagles.
That's bullshit. They're already favored. I'm taking the Seahawks to beat the Chiefs. I'm actually kind of surprised they're favorites here, to be honest. The Chiefs are undefeated this season, so we'll see. I feel like the Seahawks match up well with the Chiefs. They're a good defensive squad. They got Kenneth Walker. I don't need Kenneth Walker. It's gonna be like 6-7. Kenneth Walker. Okay, what else we got? Packers only put up 6. What do the Eagles play this week? We play the Cowboys—
Let's go, Cowboys. I'm a Cowboys guy myself.
You're a Cowboys guy? Okay, we'll hedge my pain, bro. We'll hedge my pain because my Eagles are fucking awful this year anyway. Who already took this? You guys did this when I wasn't paying attention. They already have the fucking… Let's see if I can clear it anyway. Yeah, bro, it's rough. Jalen Hurts is out for the season. Saquon got hurt for a second.
Fucking, our O-line is looking not great. It’s just not great. It has not been great so far. Maybe we’ll turn it around. We’ll see if Tanner McKee—maybe he’ll be the second coming of Nick Foles. That would be crazy.
No, he’s decent. He’s not bad. He’s not horrible. But yeah, we’re gonna have to fucking put some shit together.
There’s a lot of problems to fix.
For sure. Yeah, for sure.
All right, guys. All right, chat. Appreciate you guys. I think we are going to hop. Tulip, I appreciate you rocking with me for so long.
Yeah.
Gave us a great amount of alpha, I think. I know the chat appreciates it. Hopefully I’m wrong. I’ll be embarrassed. Hopefully we just fucking rip it. That’ll be great.
Yeah. Everyone get bullish. Just take good coins. That’s all I got.
Just take good coins. All right, cool. All right, guys. Later. We are out of here.