市场更新:与 GMoney 直播,通胀数据落地,这是加密市场顶部吗?
- Avi 的宏观框架是:CPI 符合预期后,下一次会议加息几乎板上钉钉,但这一周期不会持续太久,因为华盛顿把 AI 视为国防问题。 “政府会不惜一切代价让 AI 资本开支周期继续下去……他们认为自己必须赢下对华竞争。” 信号在于日本干预日元,以及 Bessent 先谈及、随后执行购买长端债券,而此时 S&P 仅距历史高点5%:“市场已经闻到了他们的意图。这就是黄金获得买盘的原因,也是 Bitcoin 获得买盘的原因。”
- GMoney 的逆向判断是:超大市值科技公司的 CDS 利差是“假的”——“我就是不认为它们重要”。 无论负债规模如何,Google、Microsoft 和 Facebook 的信用风险本质上都等同于美国政府信用风险——“它们不是 Lehman”,资产负债表不存在错配——因此利差走阔后应该会重新收窄。
- Avi 极度看多 Nvidia,并认为围绕循环融资的担忧反而可能催生一门隐形 SaaS 生意。 通过为 neocloud 资本开支提供融资,Nvidia 可能建立一条剩余的轻资产收入来源——“这多少算是一门 SaaS 生意”,理应享有更高估值倍数;而该股已经盘整约2年。GMoney 在财报前发帖看多,Avi 则买入财报行情,“这笔交易直接赚翻了”。
- GMoney 最大的链上仓位可能是 Quotrons(约1000万美元市值),这是一个单向 ERC-404:将流动代币销毁并不可逆地转成 NFT 后,交易费用以代币化股票支付。 他认为 meme 代币与代币化股票的配对正在“制造把股票带上链的需求蓄水池”;接下来发行方将展开一场竞赛,“就像 Circle 和 Tether 真正主导了稳定币一样”。第二阶段将桥接到 Ink,并在 Inc. 上创建 Xtox 池;Kraken CEO Arjun Sethi 也曾与该账号互动。
- 另一个选择是 FWA(“Fake World Assets”):一个部署在 Ethereum 主网上、约1200万美元市值的链上抽卡项目,NFT 持有者可以“当庄家”,并从存入的 Punks 和 Apes 上赚取收益。 GMoney 将其视为抽卡机制的流动性蓄水池,就像“Poly Market 和 Koshi”成为赌局的最后接盘者;它连续3或4天进入 Ethereum 收入前三。执行风险在于能否持续做大漏斗顶部的抽卡量。
- 关于 NFT:这是寒冬,不是死亡。 人们“一边嘲讽 NFT,一边收集 Pokemon 卡……那些就是实体 NFT”;2020–21年的实体卡狂热紧接着 NFT 狂热发生,长期逻辑依然成立:手里有钱的数字原生年轻人会希望在链上展示财富,背后是和手表、汽车相同的锁定收益心理。
- 贯穿始终的主线是:在一个极端失业、极端赌博的世界里,“相应地配置仓位——你要持有赌场”。 Avi 更进一步表示:“投资正在成为美国的国家安全问题”——AI 财富将在10年内让经济变得面目全非,而一大批没有投资的人会“极度不满并引发社会问题”。
- 散户纪律上,持有纳指/Bitcoin 现货,将杠杆永续合约赌博限制在组合的5–10%,并且永远设置止损。 Avi 讲到一位婚礼宾客,其组合全部押在 FOMO 上——基本就是 meme coin 加 Bitcoin——于是被建议买入 QQQ。对 Avi 来说,“一个人知道 NFT 是什么,却不知道 QQQ 是什么”,这种组合非常荒谬。
1. NFT 寒冬,但 Pokemon 卡人群正在验证长期论点
- GMoney 开场时提到,过去6个月到1年,人们一直“一边嘲讽 NFT,一边收集 Pokemon 卡”,尽管“那些就是 NFT……实体 NFT”。2020–21年的实体卡狂热紧接着 NFT 狂热发生,他认为背后是同一种收藏心理。
- 这个长期逻辑可以追溯到2021年、当时 ETH 约为$500:“如果人们要在链上赚很多钱,就会想在链上把这些财富展示出来。”那个15岁的数字原生年轻人未来有了钱之后,可能会更偏好数字收藏品,而不是“拿着卡片时那种切身的触感”;手表、汽车和房子满足的也是同一种现实世界中的财富展示与锁定收益冲动。
- Avi 以自己的经历作补充:他唯一持有的 NFT 是用约5万美元买入的 EtherRock,2021年顶部时一度涨成300万美元的仓位,如今约值10万美元——“这东西我可能永远不会卖”。GMoney 仍然持有2021年组合中的大部分资产,包括 CryptoPunks、自己的 PFP,以及 Chromie Squiggles 和 Art Blocks。
2. 代币化股票成为新的链上需求蓄水池——Quotrons 是核心仓位
- GMoney 深度研究的项目是 Quotrons,一个“单向 ERC-404”:流动代币可以被不可逆地销毁并转成 NFT,之后相关交易以代币化股票支付费用。自他买入以来,地板价已经大幅上涨,但他把它当成收益型仓位,并不想卖出:赚取代币化 Nvidia 收益,对他来说比 DeFi summer 的 Pool 2 更有吸引力;后者往往必须快速卖出资产才能锁定收益。
- 他更大的判断是,meme 代号与代币化股票的配对正在“制造把股票带上链的需求蓄水池”——就像回答为什么美元需要上链一样。未来几年,可能会出现一场“所有发行方争夺代币化股票主导权的巨大竞赛”,就像 Circle 和 Tether 真正主导了稳定币一样。
- 当前设定的规模约为1000万美元市值,第二阶段计划桥接到 Ink,并在 Inc. 上创建 Xtox 池,手续费收入来自这些活动。Kraken CEO Arjun Sethi 曾与该账号互动——“如果你判断正确,上行凸性就在那儿;如果判断错误,风险也不算太大。”
3. Memecoin:PvP《Fortnite》文化 vs. 买入持有派
- GMoney 说自己基本没怎么参与 meme 交易,即使参与也会用很小的仓位:“有人决定卖出时,可能我还在厕所……结果我就成了对方的接盘流动性。”他做了10多年交易台管理,这种文化让他格格不入——“要是有人把我当成接盘流动性,早就被踢出交易台了”——而 meme 交易者却把干掉对手方当成荣誉勋章,“就像在玩 Fortnite”。
- Avi 的反向框架是:meme coin 是拉新入口。那位 FOMO 项目的创始人告诉他,UGC TikTok 活动正在转化那些“连一只股票都没买过”的人,他们被别人的百万美元盈亏截图吸引。但“这些东西根本没法做尽调——本质上只有注意力和信仰”,而且高度受圈内团伙驱动;Avi 认为,台面上的赢家无非是剥头皮交易者、幸运儿和创作者。
- 两人都更偏好 PvE 式的信念交易,但也承认需要打个问号。他们当时以约$0.30买入 Luna;Avi 说这笔交易赚得异常多,大约300倍,并在$20–40附近卖出。GMoney 后来发现,被拿来宣传的 Chai 使用数据是假的。他总结认为,想要长期存活,必须有一个人们真正相信的叙事——“没人会连续3年相信 Dogwifhat……它死掉是有原因的。”
- 为什么要公开 Alpha?Avi 区分了短线交易和长期逻辑:短线交易中,听众可以自行决定是否在他仍持仓时跟进;而像$30的 HYPE 或 ARKG 这类长期论点,“给所有人留下了足够大的获利空间”。GMoney 补充说,公开想法会带来质疑和新的机会:“新信息出现时,你必须重新评估自己的论点……这就是投资和交易本身。”
4. 加息要来了——但不重要,因为 AI 资本开支属于国防
- Avi 大约一年前提出的框架,GMoney 表示认同:“如果你把 AI 视为国防问题,而我认为美国政府目前确实这么看,那么这列车就不可能减速……为了击败中国,他们会在需要的时候花掉需要花的钱,并且持续花下去。”
- CPI 符合预期,但加息预期升温。Avi 认为 Worsh 需要维持信誉,因此下一次会议加息的可能性很高——但“我不认为这会持续太久”。上个月的信号是日本干预日元,以及 Bessent 表示会买入长端债券,几天后又真的执行,而当时 S&P 距离历史高点仅5%。这种操作本应发生在市场下跌20–30%、已经“凝视深渊”的时候。“市场已经看穿了他们。这就是黄金获得买盘的原因,也是 Bitcoin 获得买盘的原因。”
- Avi 以反方视角估算传染速度:从 Countrywide 到 Lehman 大约用了2年,而 Silicon Valley Bank 事件大约2周就尘埃落定。“如果出现某种 AI 资本开支传染,我认为他们会在1周内解决,可能48小时内就能解决。”最终的应对会变成一场由公众情绪塑造的民粹政治——Bear Stearns 的口号是“让他们付出代价”,而 Lehman 则变成了“拯救全球金融体系”。
5. GMoney:CDS 利差是假的;Avi 认为 Nvidia 是一门隐形 SaaS 生意
- GMoney 是在加密资产暴涨、市场已经把 AI 抛在脑后之后入场的:一周前 Bitcoin 刚触及8万美元,Intel 股价为87美元,而 SanDisk 大幅下跌。这些正是他最喜欢入场的时点。他的需求侧逻辑是,算力需求会增长到足以让企业继续投入,即便利率上升1个百分点也一样。
- GMoney 说,很多人认为他的判断“完全疯了”:超大市值科技公司的 CDS 利差“是假的……我就是不认为它们重要”。无论负债规模如何,Google、Microsoft 和 Facebook 的信用风险“基本等同于美国政府信用风险”——它们不是 Lehman 那样的金融机构,也不太可能出现资产负债表错配。因此,即便利差走阔,他也预期最终会重新收窄。
- Avi 认为上季度财报表现强劲,并提出 Nvidia 的循环融资可能创造一条残余的轻资产收入来源:如果 AI 需求延续,Nvidia 在为初始资本开支提供融资后,可能从 neocloud 收入中抽取一定比例。“这多少算是一门 SaaS 生意”,在盘整约2年后,可能获得更高的估值倍数。GMoney 在财报前发帖看多;Avi 买入财报行情,“这笔交易直接赚翻了”。
6. 持有赌场:FWA、极端赌博,以及保持投资仓位的国家安全理由
- FWA(“Fake World Assets”)由 Rhynotic 开发,部署在 Ethereum 主网上,是一个链上抽卡项目:用户可以参与抽卡,也可以存入 NFT——“你可以当庄家”——并从存入的 CryptoPunks、Bored Apes 和实体卡 NFT 上赚取收益。GMoney 的框架是,它可能成为“所有抽卡机制的流动性蓄水池”,就像“Poly Market 和 Koshi”成为某个赌局的最后接盘者。它连续3或4天进入 Ethereum 收入前三;收入数字可能是3万美元,也可能是30万美元,听起来更像30万美元,而项目市值约为1200万美元。接下来能否落地取决于每日抽卡:“需要有人为 FWA 制造 FOMO。”
- GMoney 借用了受 Good Alexander 影响的一套社会框架:在一个极端失业的世界里,“我们都会陷入极端赌博”,而且或许还会得到当权者的鼓励。“相应地配置仓位。你要持有赌场。” Avi 预计一切都会被 FOMO 化,并会建议赌场在扑克和21点桌上放置排行榜。
- Avi 更大的判断是:“投资正在成为美国的国家安全问题。”AI 将在10年内让经济变得面目全非;大批没有投资的人会“极度不满并引发社会问题”,因此各届政府都需要说服人们让资金运转起来。
- 最后的纪律建议是:在赌博仓位之外保留纳指/Bitcoin 现货,将杠杆永续合约限制在组合的5–10%,并使用止损。GMoney 的朋友曾在没有止损的日内交易中盈利150%,于是有人问:“如果它继续下跌怎么办?”Avi 在婚礼上的一次偶遇则印证了这一点:一位年长宾客的组合全部押在 FOMO 上,进一步问清后基本就是 meme coin 加 Bitcoin,于是 Avi 建议他买入 QQQ。对 Avi 来说,“一个人知道 NFT 是什么,却不知道 QQQ 是什么”,这种组合非常荒谬。
完整逐字稿
All right, Powell needs to maintain his credibility, so we've got to hike at the next meeting. But I don't think it lasts long, because why is the U.S. government intervening when the S&P is 5% from all-time highs? You know what I mean? We should be down 20% or 30% from the highs, and we're looking into the abyss, and the market knows—the market sniffed them out.
That's why gold caught a bid. That's why Bitcoin got a bid. At the end of the day, the government will do whatever they need to do to keep the AI capex cycle going because they have to. They view it like they have to win.
We've got a good market update on this Friday and a very special guest. We've got GMoney, who I've actually known for a long time. What's going on? Welcome to the show.
Yeah, how are you doing? Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.
Oh, dude, I'm great. It's a Friday. It's a beautiful day in New York City. Everything's looking good. We got a good inflation print this morning, so markets are ripping. The Nasdaq is up a percent or so. My positions are looking good. ETH is up 6%.
For those of you who don't know, GMoney is an absolute stud. He originally burst on the scene because of NFTs, but some people don't know this: he actually was a trader for many years, and now he's back in the game. He hosts his own show, I think FOMO Hour? That's what you call it.
Yeah, I host it with Hunter on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I assume we probably cover a lot of the same topics: places where you can make money, whether it's in TradFi, crypto, or NFTs and stuff like that.
Yeah, but you and I have always talked markets for years now, so it's good to do this on camera for the first time. No, absolutely. It's good to do this on camera. What's funny is we cover basically the exact same stuff, except for the NFT world, which I have no idea about and probably never will.
The only NFT I own is my EtherRock, which I've held literally since the 2021 top. I bought it for around $50,000, rode it up to a $3 million position, and now I think it's trading at around $100,000. It's literally just something I'm probably never going to sell.
But is it going to come back? That's where I wanted to start with you. Are NFTs ever going to come back?
Well, it's funny because over the last 6 months to a year, especially, I've seen a lot of people dunking on NFTs while collecting Pokémon cards at the same time. I'm like, you do realize that those are NFTs, right? They're physical NFTs.
It reminds me a lot of 2020 and 2021, when the physical card market was going nuts. That was right before the NFT market started going nuts. I feel like it's very similar, right? People like to collect things.
To me, the long-term thesis on NFTs was always that at some point, that 15-year-old kid is going to have a ton of money, and he's going to want to buy something that's probably more digital because he's more digitally native than people my age and older, who are like, “Oh, I want to feel the visceral feeling of holding the card.” In reality, it's the same philosophy and the same psychology behind it.
I think NFTs are going through their winter, but again, I think crypto pumps higher—Bitcoin, ETH, SOL, all these things making new all-time highs. I think you recently bought a watch, right? I think you bought a PC.
Well, yeah, I was looking at buying a Patek. It's funny—you know, Justin, I was actually debating him on whether a leather strap is better or a metal strap. He was really heavily on the side of the metal strap, and I was like, “Actually, that's kind of a woman's watch, if you ask me.” That's just my personal opinion. The metal is a woman's watch. It looks beautiful for your girlfriend, but I wouldn't buy it. I'd go for the leather all day.
Fair. I didn't really have an opinion on it, but I thought you were buying one. Again, that whole thought process is: when people want to lock in gains and show off a little bit, what do you do? You buy watches, cars, houses—all these things in the real world.
My original thesis for NFTs in 2021 was that I was really bullish on ETH. At the time, ETH was around $500, and I was like, if people are going to make a bunch of money on-chain, they're going to want to display it on-chain. Sometimes it's just as simple as that.
Do you own any NFTs right now that you're bullish on or that you think are going to do well over the next year or 2? Show your bags.
I still have a ton of the same stuff that I had back then. CryptoPunks, which is my PFP. I own a bunch of Chromie Squiggles and some Art Blocks collections.
I think what I've seen over the last month or so is the rise of the new NFTs 2.0. One of the projects I've been really deep in the weeds on is this thing called Quotron. It's a one-way ERC-404, where it starts off as a liquid token. You can burn the liquid token into an NFT, and then it can't go back to being liquid. As soon as you burn it into an NFT, you receive the trading fees in the form of tokenized stock dividends.
Any time a trade happens, you get paid out in tokenized stock. Stuff like that is really cool because the floor price has gone up immensely since I bought it. But I'm like, this is kind of a yield play. I don't want to sell it, right?
1. The Best Month Onchain Since DeFi Summer
I think you're going to see a lot of these different new constructs come out, which is why I think guys like you and me really loved crypto to begin with. When the composability layer comes out on a permissionless system, people can get really creative and do cool things.
No, I mean, 100%. Basically, the entire reason I got into crypto was to buy drugs off the Silk Road, but a secondary reason that I got into crypto was because it's the freest market that has ever existed in the history of the planet.
The amount of experimentation that you can do within the confines of finance is unprecedented. That leads us to all sorts of fun little activities.
The reality is, most people aren't paying attention day to day, right? They look in from the outside, see something interesting, and skim it. But if you can go deep, if you can really understand what's going on, you can make, one, a ton of money, and, two, also have a ton of fun.
Right. Right. And that's really what drew me into crypto. The second doubling down that I did in 2020, when I saw all this stuff happening, I was just like, “This is awesome.”
Yeah, this is really good stuff. To that point, I feel like the last month has been some of the coolest and most exciting stuff I've seen on-chain, probably since DeFi summer. People are resurrecting these DeFi narratives and protocols that really went nuts in 2020, but now you can actually do this with a tokenized stock.
Being able to do this with a tokenized stock makes it a little more interesting because, if you think about DeFi summer, there were all these Pool 2s where you were getting insanely high yield because you needed to sell the asset as soon as you could in order to lock in gains. Now I'm earning yield in tokenized Nvidia, and I'm like, “All right, cool. I think Nvidia has upside, so I want to hold tokenized Nvidia.” I think it's really interesting.
No, it is. One thing that's been really fun recently is these meme-fi tokens that are coming out, where people have paired memes with actual tokenized stocks, which has really never been possible before, mainly because we didn't have tokenized stocks. Are you playing any of this? What are your thoughts here?
I haven't really been playing it. I've been watching it. I'm not necessarily a memecoin guy, and if I do it, I'm doing really small size because I just can't get to holding conviction on these types of things.
I can definitely do narrative investing and story trading, but with memes, when somebody decides to sell and maybe I'm in the bathroom or I've stepped away from my desk and missed my exit, I'm just like, “All right, well, I was the exit liquidity,” which is really tough for me.
I do like looking at all these ticker pairs, though, and I think they're hilarious. To me, this is creating the demand sink to bring stocks on-chain, because for the longest time people have been like, “Why do you need stocks on-chain?” For the same reason you could ask, “Why do you need dollars on-chain?”
I do think that over the next couple of years, we're going to see this massive race between all these issuers trying to dominate tokenized stocks, the way Circle and Tether have really dominated stablecoins. I think it's a cool new open space with a ton of upside.
Yeah, no, 100% agree on that. I viewed these memecoins as onboarding points for people to come in and trade crypto. That's how I've always viewed memecoins, for some reason or another. It's easier to convince people to open a wallet and put $100 in if they think they can 30x it. Hopefully, there's some level of conversion between the people who do that and then end up sticking around. So, they're a good entry point.
I talked to the FOMO founder last week, on Friday. He was our last guest on this Friday market update. What he said is that they're running some pretty crazy UGC campaigns. For those of you who don't know, this is basically short-form video on TikTok from small accounts that are talking about FOMO.
2. There's No Way To Diligence A Meme Coin
Through that process, he's onboarded a ton of people who have literally never invested before. These are people saying, “I never even bought a stock. I've never bought crypto, but I'm going to go on FOMO because I saw somebody make $1 million.” Hopefully, some percentage of those people will come on and actually convert, and that's how we get fresh money in. But generally, this thing is just a lottery ticket at the end of the day, right?
Yeah. I think Rasmer put out this video. He put out this hilarious video. I like the guy.
Yeah.
I like the guy, but he put out this video where he's like, “This is how you diligence a memecoin.” I'm like, “Dude, actually, there's no way to diligence these things.”
It's literally just attention and cult.
I mean, yes, but it's also massively cabal-driven. I don't know—maybe you have a different take—but really, the only people I've ever seen win on memecoins are the people who really get in and scalp the hell out of them, the people who get lucky, or the people who create them.
Right?
To your point, a lot of them have used this analogy, and I'm like, yeah, that kind of makes sense: They see it as very PvP, as if you were playing Fortnite. It's like, “I'm going to get you to buy this. All right, cool—I'm going to sell it on you.” They see it as a badge of honor: “Oh, yeah, I killed you.”
I come from—dude, I ran a trading desk for 10-plus years, and if somebody used me as exit liquidity, they'd be kicked off the desk. You know what I mean? In general, it's so hard to make money. Why would you want to share information with people who are actively trying to make you lose money for exit liquidity?
So, it's a very different mentality from where I come from. You have your circle of homies; you want to share the alpha with them. You don't want to say, “Hey, buy this so you can sell into it.” But I guess that's their mentality: They view it as more of a Fortnite-type thing. If that's the way you view it, then I think that style of trading makes total sense.
Maybe it makes sense in a very choppy market, but in crypto bull markets, you want to buy. I mean, we're from the classes where you buy and hold, right? Buying AXS at $6 and selling it at $120, you know what I mean?
Believe in something—actually, just believe in something. Although sometimes what you believe in ends up being a complete scam, and that's okay. It happens; that's just what you deal with. I'll give you a great example: I really believed in Luna. This is crazy, but we bought Luna at $0.30.
Well, no, we did exceptionally well. I mean, I think we 300x'ed on this thing. We didn't sell at the top; we sold at around $40, or maybe $20—whatever it was.
But we did exceptionally well on it because they were publishing all this fake data on an app called Chai. They were saying, “Guys, look—lots of people in Korea are actually using this. You should buy into it.” I didn't really uncover the scam until later.
Once they had the buy-in and the burn-and-mint mechanism with Luna and UST, and it became too big, we had to get out. But the beauty of crypto, at the end of the day, is that experiments can run up extremely high. Really, the things that run the best and have any amount of staying power are the things that have at least some sort of narrative you can attach to them, so that people can genuinely believe in them, right?
Nobody's believing in Dogwifhat for 3 years. It's dead now for a reason: There's no real narrative there, right?
3. Why Give Away Your Alpha?
And that's why we always say in crypto that there's PvP and PvE, and really what you want to be playing is PvE. You raise a very good point. A lot of the time, people come to me—and probably to you as well—and ask, “If you're an investor, why are you hosting a show? What's the point of telling people your alpha? Why would you ever do that?”
The answer is that most of the things we talk about on this show are either short-term trades that we're in, and it's your prerogative to take that trade. As a short-term trade, it doesn't really matter as long as I'm in the position.
And on the long-term stuff—the things we talk about most of the time, my thesis for the next 3, 6, 12, or 18 months—there's so much room for everybody to win.
Right.
Right. If I believe in HYPE at $30 and I convince all the listeners of this show to ape into HYPE at $30, or if I believe in biotech changing the future through the use of AI, that's a massive market, right?
Every single person on this show could go buy ARKG, which I've been talking about for a long time. Everybody can win together because this is a genuine long-term thesis. That's really what we try to do on the show: Talk about things that people can win on and also provide frameworks, right? I want you, as a listener, to become better at trading and investing at the end of the day.
Yeah, no, I agree. I'll add one more thing about why I've really enjoyed it—whether through video or by creating posts and putting my thoughts out there on X. It starts conversations, and I could be introduced to a new opportunity I didn't know existed: Somebody says, “If you like this, you'll like that.”
It also challenges my framework. People say, “Hey, I think you're wrong.” To me, that's probably one of the most important things. I know a lot of people get a ton of shit on the timeline when they change positions or change their thesis on something. It's like, bro, that's literally what investing and trading is, right?
When new information comes out, you need to reevaluate your thesis, and then maybe that means you reevaluate your position. You're constantly doing that and monitoring risk. I think it's super valuable, even for me, in the form of thesis management and development, and in fostering conversations that I otherwise might not have.
100%. It's a constant refrain on the show. I tell everybody, “I'm not your dad. I'm not going to be there every day, every second. I appear twice a week in the ether on the internet to give you my frameworks and thoughts in this moment.”
That's also why I don't often say, “Well, I'm long this, and this is my…” I'm not giving people my complete trades often because they change, right?
Right. So, giving people frameworks is so much more valuable. It's the teach-a-man-to-fish mentality.
But apart from that, it is really fun.
I do love it. My favorite thing in the world is when people say I'm wrong, but then they give me a reason why I'm wrong and I can learn from it. My least favorite thing in the world is when people call me a dirty Jew. But, yeah, there's a give-and-take on X. There's a give-and-take, you know.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
But I do think, dude, props to you and to anybody else who puts themselves out there, right? When you put out a thesis, whether right or wrong, you're being vulnerable by sharing. People generally don't like to be wrong, especially when you're trading. The more right you are, the more money you make.
4. AI Is National Defense: Why The Hike Won't Last
So, when people try to call you out, I appreciate it, because maybe you're thinking of something I didn't think of. I appreciate that because now I can say, “I didn't think about that as a risk. Now I do. Thank you for that.”
Yeah. Speaking of things we haven't thought of, I want to talk a little bit about the market itself.
Yeah, we had this CPI print that just came out. It basically came in line with expectations, but rates—the expectation of a rate hike—is now higher than it was before. Markets are doing okay.
What’s your take on where we are? I think a lot of people are panicked about whether we’re entering a hike cycle, whether that’s going to hurt the markets, how to position, and whether crypto is going to blow up. What’s your process for attacking this?
My framework that I’ve been operating under for close to a year at this point—I think about a year—is that if you view AI as a matter of national defense, which I think the U.S. government does at this point, then there’s no slowing that train down. They’re going to spend whatever they need to spend for as long as they need to spend in order to beat China.
If that’s the case, then any type of blip that we see—and I think maybe we probably saw it a little bit last month with the Japanese yen intervention, and then Bessent saying that he was going to buy the long end of the curve and then do it a couple days later—then that’s where I think gold and Bitcoin really caught a bid.
So now it’s like, all right, Worsh needs to maintain his credibility, so we’ve got a hike at the next meeting. But I don’t think it lasts long, because why the is the US government doing intervention when the S&P is 5% from all-time highs? That should be when we’re down 20% or 30% from the highs and looking into the abyss, thinking, “Oh my God, the world economy is about to implode. We need to do this.” They’re doing that now, which kind of tells you—and the market knows it. The market sniffed them out. That’s why gold caught a bid. That’s why Bitcoin got a bid.
Even though we’re probably going to get a hike at the next meeting now because it seems certain, I don’t think it’s a long cycle. At the end of the day, the government will do whatever they need to do to keep the AI capex cycle going because they have to. They view it like they have to win. That’s been my framework for the last year, and I feel like it’s been playing out that way.
No, I’m totally on board. I’ve actually been super bullish on AI. Basically, once crypto started ripping—I think Bitcoin hit $80K like a week ago at this point—Intel was trading at $87 a share. People had, in my opinion, moved on completely from the AI trade. SanDisk was down a ton. Those are always my favorite moments to enter into a market, because I actually hadn’t thought about it in the way that you just laid it out: the government needs to make sure that the AI capex trade continues.
I thought about it more from the perspective that the AI capex trade will continue because the demand for compute is going to grow tremendously. So these are actually 2 complementary narratives for why it’s going to grow. My perspective was that demand is going to grow so much, and people are going to be willing to pay so much money that even if rates go up a percent, we’re still going to see capex. We’re still going to see that spend.
I agree with you. I also think that, because I feel like you’re probably deep in the weeds on using AI as well, if you use this stuff as a power user, you’re like, “Oh my God, I want—I need more of it, as much as possible, to do more.” I’m super bullish on the use cases, and even as more agents start getting used, we just need more compute for all of it.
But again, trying to play devil’s advocate, what happens if it does slow down? My thesis ultimately is that the government can’t afford to slow down because, if you look at the bailout processes over the last 20 years, the financial crisis—from when Countrywide went under to when Lehman went under—was about 2 years. Then you look at what happened with Silicon Valley Bank 4 years ago, and it was about 2 weeks before the contagion started to settle.
If we have some sort of AI capex contagion, I think they figure it out within a week, probably within 48 hours.
But what does it even look like? What is AI capex? These companies—the amount of debt that they’ve taken on is minuscule compared to their market cap.
I don’t even know what that would look like. Again, just playing devil’s advocate, people are like, “Oh, the CDS is blowing out,” and I’m like, “Okay, fair.” But these guys generate so much cash. It’s not that big of a deal. They’re generating cash on top of that. It’s not like they’re not seeing an ROI on it.
5. The CDS Spreads Are Fake
Again, playing devil’s advocate, I don’t know what it would look like if leverage grew 5 or 10 times from here, because I think at that point it becomes a populist situation. It’s whatever the crowd wants, right? When Bear Stearns went under, people were like, “Oh, we have to show them. Make them pay.” Then when Lehman went under, it was like, “Well, we have to save the global financial system.” It really depends on what the mood of the population is at that time.
I’ve got a take here: I think the CDS spreads are fake. I just don’t think that they matter. I’ve talked with a lot of people about this, and they think I’m totally nuts.
Basically, I think the credit risk of these companies—Google, Microsoft, Facebook—is basically equivalent, regardless of how much debt they take out, to U.S. government credit risk. People look at that spread and go, “Oh, wow, it’s blowing out. These companies are getting slightly more risky.” I think that it’s basically always going to come back in.
These are not financial institutions. They’re not employing mass leverage in any way, shape, or form. They’re not Lehman. They’re not going to have a balance-sheet mismatch. It’s very, very unlikely for any of that to happen. So even when those spreads widen, you kind of know that they’re going to come back in, in my personal opinion. It’s this weird dynamic where I just don’t think they matter. I do appreciate that you’re playing devil’s advocate. I thought this was a fun, interesting side point that I’ve been thinking about.
But also, when you look at their earnings last quarter, everybody’s numbers were great. I’m like, invest more and more in AI capex, because your ROI on that is going to be insane. So, yeah, things like that. I’m so bullish on Nvidia here.
I love to hear it. Are you bullish on Nvidia?
Yeah, super bullish. I bought into earnings basically, making that bet. I saw you tweet that out as well, so props. You actually put out a tweet literally before earnings. I was like, “I’m bullish on this thing.” I went in and absolutely ripped that trade.
The crazy thing is that everybody’s bringing up the circular financing and all this stuff, but I think Nvidia is putting itself in a spot where, if AI demand continues to grow, which we think it will, they’re basically going to have this residual business where they’re getting a percentage of revenues because they financed all the capex to start.
Now all these neoclouds have a piece of that—they have a residual. All of a sudden, Nvidia is going to have this capital-light revenue stream, and I’m like, dude, that’s a SaaS business, kind of, right? The multiples on that will probably be way higher. It’s also consolidated for about 2 years, so I think it’s setting up.
That’s true. What do you think? Are you more bullish on crypto here or more bullish on AI? How are you allocating capital right now?
I’m bullish on both for different reasons. I’d say in the first half of the year, I was focused a lot more on TradFi, on traditional markets, because I think that’s where all the action was. But over the last 3 weeks, I’ve been spending more time on-chain because I think there’s been a lot of cool innovation there.
These things also start at really low market caps, so you can take a small stack and get a couple multiples on it pretty quickly, as opposed to something like Micron, Nvidia, or Nebius. I’m bullish on all of them, but I have long-term calls on them. Am I going to 10x that in a month? No. But I do think they go up significantly over time.
So I’m bullish on both. It’s almost like a barbell, I guess you would call it, even though they’re probably kind of the same trade.
6. Be The House: Inside Fake World Assets
That makes sense. I want to dive into that. What’s going on on-chain that you’re looking at? What do you like right now?
A lot of the things that got me looking on-chain were fake world assets. Are you familiar with real-world assets?
No.
Give us a spiel.
Yeah. So, it’s on Ethereum mainnet. It was started by a developer called Rhynotic, and he’s done a bunch of these projects in the past. What he basically developed was an on-chain gacha mechanism.
I think most gacha mechanics are kind of like blind boxes, right? Like pack ripping. You pay $25 for a pack, you rip it, and you see what the card is. It’s worth anywhere from $10 to $1,000 or whatever, depending on the odds, right? Then you can instantly sell it back to the site at a 10% or 15% discount.
What Fake World Assets did was take that concept but apply it to NFTs. You could play it, but you could also deposit them, right? So you can be the house as well. People started depositing NFTs on it. There are CryptoPunks in there, some high-value NFTs, Bored Apes, and stuff like that.
What I think is really interesting about that is that he built out the protocol layer for—I mean, if it plays out the way I think it will, it basically becomes a liquidity sink for all gacha mechanics, right? The same way that Poly Market and Koshi became the buyer of last resort on a bet because their books were so big, you can lay off risk onto that gacha protocol.
He built that out, right? So if you have Collector’s Crypt, VeVe, or Courtyard, you can put those NFTs—those physical cards—into Fake World Assets and earn yield on them. Because, basically, the odds are—well, I mean, if your thing gets pulled, you’re kind of cooked, right?
Well, you get money for it—whatever you earn over that time, right? So it’s based on the odds, right? You play the odds that you’re going to make the money back with some sort of return after that.
But to me, it’s cool because I wasn’t able to get any—I wasn’t able to utilize any of that cash that I had in NFTs for years. So I’m like, all right, cool. I can put these NFTs up as assets and earn yield on them. I think what he’s been doing is really cool.
He built out the protocol layer. Now he has to focus on getting more spins, because spins drive daily revenue. Even last week or 2 weeks ago, he was in the top 3 for revenue generation on Ethereum for 3 or 4 days in a row.
That’s pretty solid.
I think it might have been three. It’s either $30,000 or $300,000. $300,000 sounds right, but—
That’s what you guys need to know.
Yeah. The market cap right now is $12 million. So if he can focus on getting—
Maybe I’ll just buy this thing live on stream.
Yeah. Top-of-funnel distribution—I think it could become a massive thing. I’ve been pounding the table that somebody needs to build FOMO for FWA, so that my friend who knows nothing about crypto—
7. The $3 Million Ether Rock & Are NFTs Coming Back?
If you view crypto as a giant casino floor, there are tons of games, right? Memecoins are one game. Protocol investing is another game. Gacha is another game, and that’s more of a casual thing, right? With memecoins, you can make a 10,000x in a couple of hours, but if you take your finger off the screen for one second, you might lose it all.
There are people who want to do more casual gaming. They want to spend $25 and maybe hit the jackpot. The odds aren’t as much in their favor, and it’s not a skill-based thing. I think that’s where gacha falls. That’s what we’ve seen with a ton of the Pokémon stuff and all the trading-card stuff that’s been taking a lot of mind share in the real world. I think eventually that stuff comes on-chain.
I think what he’s doing there is really cool. Right now, the execution lies in whether they can get top-of-funnel distribution to get more spins per day. I think it's 12 or 13 million. When I last checked this morning, it was $12 million, and to me—
I’m looking at it. It’s $12 million right now. I mean, that’s pretty low.
Yeah.
Honestly, for this type of thing, I agree. By the way, I have a fear that everything is going to become FOMO-ified. I was thinking of calling a few casinos and telling them, “Hey, guys, you need to put a leaderboard up for each one of your games—a leaderboard for poker, a leaderboard for blackjack.”
I actually think that is the core of what’s driving volume on FOMO. When you talk to people who are trading there, it’s literally just, “Oh my God, you can actually make money on these things. Let me go in and figure it out.” You see these large P&Ls, and it’s totally nuts. I think basically everyone is going to look at that and say, “We probably need to do this as well.” More than that, create a social environment.
Right.
8. Investing Is A National Security Issue
Well, I think even to that point, I know you’ve had good Alexander on once or twice, and he influences a lot of my thinking. In a world with hyper-unemployment, we’re all going to be hyper-gambling, right? This is probably going to be encouraged by the powers that be for us to be focused on. Position yourselves accordingly. You want to own the casinos.
Yeah, 100%. I’ve said this before, and I genuinely mean this: investing is becoming a national security issue for the United States.
What am I talking about? I’m saying that we’re entering a world where, in the next 10 years, there’s going to be an incredible amount of wealth produced by companies like NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Facebook because of AI. We’re not going to recognize our economy in 10 years.
If you’re not invested in the market, you’re going to be left so far behind. If there’s a large pool of people who aren’t invested in the markets, they’re going to be incredibly discontent and cause societal issues. So it becomes a national security issue for the administration, and for subsequent administrations, to convince—
Every single American needs to put their money to work somehow, some way.
Right. I do think that, genuinely, these products are a gateway to get people in. This is just going back to what we were saying at the beginning. This is a gateway to get people in.
If you’re listening to this, make sure that even if you’re gambling on memecoins or trading crypto on perps, you have spot positions as well. That way, just in case you blow up—God forbid—we all know that you’re an amazing trader and you’re never going to lose. But, God forbid, you hit a bad spot, you have some portion of what’s to come.
You are invested in the NASDAQ, you are invested in Bitcoin, and you are invested in the future, because I genuinely think it’s important. Most people, at the end of the day, GMoney, are going to be better off just sitting and parking their capital in stuff that’s going to perform well over time.
Yeah. Also, don’t use leverage. That’s what I would tell people if you’re not actively trading.
It’s funny. I ran into a friend yesterday who was telling me he started day trading a month ago, and he was like, “Oh, I’m up 150%.” He said, “The market goes down and then it goes up.” I’m like, “But what happens if it keeps going down?” He’s like, “I don’t know,” because he doesn’t use stops.
My one piece of advice to you, since you’re trading with leverage, is that you need stops. I’ve seen it a million times where people trade on leverage, don’t use stops, get cocky, and blow up. Just stay in the game. Stay alive. I think that’s always the name of the game.
100%. Dude, I was at a wedding last weekend. I was at a wedding in Mystic, Connecticut, which, by the way, is a very cute town with a wonderful aquarium. If you’re ever there, go see the harbor seals. They’re very cute.
But I met this guy who will remain unnamed—an older guy—and he found out that I was an investor and started asking me for investment advice. Then he showed me his portfolio, and his portfolio was all FOMO. I was like, “What the fuck am I looking at? What else do you own?” He goes, “This is it.”
It was in that moment that I realized this is why I do this show in many ways: to educate you that you also need to have a broader portfolio. You can gamble on these things. If you want to trade perps on leverage, take 5% or 10% of your book and do that. See if you can run it up, but no more.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’ve never done that. Of course I’ve done that. My friends and I, back in 2021, used to host Bybit parties where we’d all load our accounts with $1,000, get pissed drunk, go on 100x leverage, and the last one standing got everyone else’s balance. It was great. It was fun. It was a good time.
But treat it like it is: if you’re using excess leverage, if you’re gambling on coins, it’s a good, fun time.
Yes, you can make money, but you have to be careful with it. That was totally surreal to me. It's a very nice wedding, too—smart people. That was great. Hopefully, if you're listening to this, I hope he's not listening.
Let's put it like this: was it all memecoins, or was it normal stocks? What was it?
No, no. It was basically just memecoins, but there was Bitcoin in there as well, which is fine.
But I told him to buy QQQ, and he goes, “I've heard of that.” I was like, “Okay, good.” I just find it hilarious—the concept of somebody knowing what NFTs are and not knowing what QQQ is is the most hilarious combination ever.
That's pretty good.
But yeah, it was amazing. I don't know. Before we wrap up the whole thing, I want to ask: what are your most controversial ideas? Let's get some clips and ideas.
Man, I don't know. You're putting me on the spot. I can just tell you what I'm buying.
Yeah, just tell me what you're buying.
So there's FWA. I think Quotrons is probably my biggest bag on-chain right now, and I'm super bullish on it. I think, for me, Quotrons is a really good play. Basically, what I described to you at the top of the show was kind of their phase 1. Phase 2 is that they're bridging over to Ink. They're creating Xtox pools on Inc., and a lot of the fee generation is going to be coming from that on a go-forward basis. So, like I said, I'm very bullish on tokenized equities on-chain, and I think quotons is like a really cool way to play that and a very interesting way to play that. Arjun Sethi, the CEO of Kraken, has interacted with the account, so it seems like Ink is very bullish on what Quotons is doing itself.
I kind of love that. I love these little secrets: maybe the CEO of Kraken is going to buy this. That intrigue is good for driving volumes. One of my friends, this guy named Gamchan, was talking about Tibber because the Robinhood CEO has apparently interacted with it. I'm like, all right—
With Tibber? No, that—
Was something like that.
The token from Rivet Capital.
Oh, right.
The Malcus [?] token. Mickey Mouse token. Yeah. So, again, all this inside baseball stuff, but the thing I like about Quotrons—I think it's a $10 million market cap, right? So it's super cheap. I think the convexity is there if you're right, and the risk isn't that terrible if you're wrong.
All right. Well, yeah, we heard it here first. GMoney, this was awesome. We have to do this again. Just keep ripping it.
Absolutely. We'll do it whenever you let me know.
Amazing, dude. Thanks again. Appreciate it.
For having me. Nothing said on the ThousandX podcast is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of 1KX Media. Our hosts, guests, and the 1KX team may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.