The Chopping Block Podcast - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2024

all right well hello everybody Welcome to The Chopping Block live at token 2049 in Singapore every couple weeks we get together and give the industry insiders perspective on the crypto topics of the day so quick intros first you got Tom the D5 Maven and master memes hi everyone next we got tun the Giga brain and Grand Puba at Gauntlet yo we got our special guest first Mo shake the move Mastermind at Aptos and then of course we've got Arthur hay is the high Arbiter of alpha what up [ __ ] and I am the head hyp man of dragonfly we're early stage investors in crypto I want to caveat that nothing we say here is investment advice legal advice or even life advice pleasey chopping block. XYZ for more disclosures um it's very true that this disclaimer matters more live because there's only financial advice at this conference that that's true that's true we're get a lot ADV today from Arthur just saying so okay so we're here live in Singapore token 2049 what's the vibe been so far this is like the flagship Asia event what's the what's the what's the feeling on the ground a lot of [ __ ] traffic a lot of traffic I had to walk my ass out of my car today to get in here I was sweating like a [ __ ] what the [ __ ] yeah yeah I think conferences during F1 is a dumbass idea I'm not going to lie because the infrastructure sucks they're closing all the roads it's just like it's a nightmare I don't get it I don't know it gets people to come out but I agree with you I I like missed I actually literally just missed a panel that you were on um because uh I was trying to get a taxi that normally would take 5 minutes it was like 45 minutes to get across uh just like you know two intersections I had to I had to sub in and be H I was going to go bald for that one but they wouldn't let me do it it's closer you get a ball cap and basically the same yeah okay damn um well so one of the things happening at token 2049 is of course breakpoint uh happens right after token 2049 which is the big Flagship salana event and uh there was just a little bit of drama taking place on Twitter that Iggy iselia friend of the show uh she it turns out she was going to do a debate on stage with Eric wall and they were going to debate whether or not celeb coins are good for crypto now everyone was very EXC I was very excited about this debate uh unfortunately this debate has been canceled and it was canceled because IG aelia was planning to to plant strippers in the audience wearing business suits and they were going to jump out in the middle of the debate and start twerking on stage and apparently this was not allowed by Singaporean regulators and so she was like look I can't actually a debate wait wait wait wait the whole plan was it for it to be aoke she put regular Regulators in quotes if you read the Tweet just just saying I don't know I don't know thoughts this sounds like something I would do if I were going to lose a debate and find some [ __ ] excuse to get out of it so uh I'd be scared too if I were going be Eric Eric Eric's pretty Fierce we should just pump our tokens some more and people wouldn't need the strippers I don't know I mean if that's what it takes to get people to breakpoint but now apparently not happening so who's going to sub in now is that going to be totally on stage twerking I mean now Tom Schmidt is a enemy of the mother community based on that comment he just a mother Community still I feel like when your token goes down 9 you're even more of an enemy for saying that one I will say since we criticize mother mother has actually been kind of down only well I rebounded a little bit but I think it's like at the time that we were talking about on the show it was worth like 250 million now it's like 40 million something like that it's still above zero though it's still it's still above zero it's still above zero and and to Iggy's credit she has been grinding uh clearly she was planning to grind on stage so it's like you know she was really going at it you were just telling us a story about another celeb uh here in Singapore do you want to recount that story yeah so I get this message from my Kea staff he like this [ __ ] Jason Derulo wants to have a meeting I'm like I don't know who the [ __ ] this guy is I'm a EDM house guy so I look thisy this [ __ ] up and oh okay I guess he's kind of famous and so my chief OFA has a meeting with this guy and he's like yo I'm coming to Singapore and I want to come to your party and why don't you me $100,000 to get on stage and sing a song and I was like how about no um and then I get a message from his from his man he's like yo Jason had some deal with you know some decks and it fell through and he's he was supposed to make 80 grand to come to Singapore like why don't you do him a solid and pay him to come to your event like we'd owe you one nah is this how business gets done in Singapore is this the I don't know I guess all right all right damn everyone in the audience wants to know which exchange I'm not going to Flame him like that we're not going to sell them out we're not going to sell them out sorry sorry we want them to get we want them to book subsequent celebrities yeah I think the lesson here is you can't be dependent on um somebody else's decks you know you got to do your own decks you got to do your own token Iggy you know I give her credit for that no no Dex partnership is going to fall through for her so yeah I mean the the celebs at crypto events meta does feel like it's uh it's evolved over the years uh we went from I mean what what would you say was like the high point and the low points of celebs in crypto meta was there ever a high point I mean we're about to hit a new high point with with Donald Trump that's kind of true someone was uh joking that when you see Diplo performing at the uh uh conference that's the top but you know diplo's coming back again so maybe he's like Evergreen there's uh there's always going to be Diplo no matter what you do diplo's solid I don't know Diplo is not like like a down bad kind of you know yeah I don't know but bare Market there must have been like some really bad celeb bookings no it's always like we like to lose money on the stage I don't think so I don't think any of us do that yeah I'm the wrong person as I don't go to any of these things so I'm pretty boring um okay so speaking of celeb coins let's talk about the elephant in the room World Liberty Financial so World Liberty Financial for those of you have been under rock that is the Trump family defi product okay so they very recently I think it just as of yesterday they did a Twitter spaces so they've been teasing a lot of stuff they've been kind of you know uh uh hinting that this thing is going to happen but there wasn't a lot of detail and so everyone was very excited about this Twitter space I was going to go live by the guys at rug radio and this happened the day after the Trump assassination attempt they were supposed to go to Mara Lago to do this Twitter space but it was delayed by a day because someone tried to kill him and they were like no no just come back tomorrow it's cool so they went tomorrow loo the next day and they did this Twitter space and so Tom you listen to the Twitter space talk us through what you learned about world Liberty Financial uh it was pretty crazy I um you know I I wanted to withhold judgment cuz I want you know you wait till see what they launchit see paper and I feel like you still have to withhold judgment cuz it was like two hours of just like no content it was like uh you know you put it's like you know sometimes people put like five sims in a room and they start kind of like interacting in weird ways and kind of felt like that like there's nothing to do there wasn't like a job but there was kind of like playing off each other and there was like this is the most like like asinine like nonse like quips about like one that's kind of going right now is uh Trump was talking about Baron being like a defi genius because he has like four wallets and I was like what the [ __ ] is going on right now how are these people launching yeah it's incredible incredible does he have an appos wallet what you say is it have an appose wallet I could be one we we don't comment on that we don't comment on that but maybe so my I think I think everyone is waiting to to get more details and the only good news is you know there was this article uh that went out maybe about a week ago talking about how 70% of the token was going to be pre-allocated for insiders it sounds like that's now flipping but this is the other weird part they're doing a reg Dale like they're registering with the SEC for the sale of token which I don't even know why or how they're doing that the the whole thing is just like uh it's from Mars I a coinless sale I have no idea okay wow this is going to be to buy it nobody I'm just say it's gonna be a very interesting deal memo coming out out of that Twitter space from Top I just um you know I'm I'm hoping for the best so what so what does the protocol do do they explain what the protocol does they've not that was not part of the discussion um theyve got that part of crypto right you don't tell them what they do what it does Just Launch it yeah yeah it well did they at least say before the election or after the election when's the launch uh I think it's coming up um because the that's well no no no so there's a poly Market Market on whether or not Trump will launch a token before the election and before the Twitter space it was trading at 80% and during the after the t space it plummeted to 25 maybe people are skeptical of uh you know the overall sort of shape of it I mean we know it's going to be a lending protocol initially there was some teasing that it's going to be somehow rwa real estate related seems like that's not likely to be the case seems like it is going to be this kind of like do finance a kind of fork but like why now why this is is kind of unclear um I I do kind of like the um they have this kind of like populist message though to World Liberty Financial of like you the big Banks they're ripping you off and uh we're going to you know give Finance back to the people um so they're leaning with that which uh I guess is better than nothing that resonates yeah I can feel that so so okay how what do we think let's say let's say World Liberty Financial were to drop tomorrow um and let's say let's say fully diluted valuation there's 10% floating you know standard crypto crypto launch um what do you think the fully deleted valuation would be Arthur for you 10 billion 10 billion 10 billion so a billion floating a billion floating billion floating okay Mo what do you think oh man that's uh I mean 10 is really 10 people are Muppets but it's a it's a meme coin it like what mem coin hit 10 billion that this wouldn't be the first one un launch wow that's crazy I don't know I'm I'm that's I'm dumbfounded I guess based on Tom's DD I think I'll go with seven SE seven s s billion go little under that well I have to play prices right rule 6.9 [Laughter] billion we call that Fu there some jokes in that one I'm going to be a little bit more bearish I'm going to go two I think part of the problem is it's just not fun I feel like if if you had tasked me with creating a trump def5 protocol we could have done all sorts of fun stuff we could done like trump. fun you know we could on Trump swap wow that would great yeah you know it's it's supposed to be like fun and and approachable and like whichever one of you asholes starts trump. fun you ow royalties 20% um just make sure shreky is on it it's going to do well yeah be a little Whimsical with it it's just a little boring you know okay okay yeah I I I guess I'll go in the middle I'll go at like uh 400 4.

5 um I it feels to me like so Trump to be clear is the most famous man in the world so maybe Elon Musk but you know Trump is more famous than Elon um that being said it doesn't feel like he's trying that hard and that's the thing that feels like the most disappointing about this is how lazy it feels you know he's doing like one Twitter space every like month and then one tweet a month and that's about it and besides that it's compared to most other meme coin creators he has a lot more going on though to be to be honest right like like Jason drill doesn't have [ __ ] to do other than M that's fair that's fair okay interesting famous people don't have to work as hard man should be lazy yeah all right all right um so the interesting thing also is that we've seen this parade of advisers for World Liberty Financial so a few of the advisers who have been announced so far uh one of them is Sandy from scroll co-founder of scroll uh another one is cryptog who's a crypto security person who's been on the show before uh third person is Luke Pearson uh from po chain I think it's a different Luke but uh different Luke yeah some Luke from poly chain yeah uh any other advisers have been announced I think it's Luke Pearson I think oh is Luke yeah yeah yeah so it's like kind of a random hudge fudge of people and I remember I was I was chatting with somebody who was one of the who was was one of the advisers to World Liberty financial and what they told me was that the advisers to World Liberty Financial the way they're thinking about it is that they know the project is kind of shady but they're joining because they see the other advisers all kind of feel the same way Indian beauty contest for advising it's it's no no no no no the way they described it is like we're sort of the adults in the room and as long as we have like these people around the table we can nudge the project in the right direction and if it's not nudg then we can all walk out and make that like a a signal to everybody else like okay get away from this thing I too have seen an episode of Rugrats where all the kids convince themselves they're the parents like what this is a ridiculous kind of like fallacy I'm not defending it I'm just saying that's that's that's what my would you have been an adviser if someone like suppose in a world where where you could say yes would what what would make you what would push you over the edge I mean so we we we have a kind of blanket thing at dragon we don't advise anything but let's say that wasn't true let's say that wasn't true um I don't know man I just feel like it would just shave years off my life to be advising worldly friend like I just feel like feel like like just does not invite good Juju in your life to be associated with now let's go to the other side Arthur what would it take for you to advise where liberally Financial billion yeah billion more 10% more 10% of the token suppli he's already done this math 10 billion fdv I want 10% I feel like Jason dero might be a value play there you know bring on didn't ask the right question my cut yeah all right you just need you need 100 dulos and then you're inly all right Donald Trump junr if you're listening Arthur's Lin for sale for sale what about you what about tun huh what about you would never do it really I'm too afraid what you imagine there's a rug pull on that [ __ ] you will get chased down by the people who threw [ __ ] at citadel's headquarters on fire after GameStop you're going to get like the craziest people following you I don't want to be anywhere near that for a billion dollars so oh they're there you're buy a lot of lawyers the billion dollars man I don't know yeah well you were you were mentioning so on the previous show you were talking a lot of [ __ ] about the Trump family coin the Trump family meme coin as you put it or the a meme coin with a lot more steps I think is the way that you described it um how talk a little bit for for for the audience about what that experience was like afterwards my DMs were just filled with with a lot of anons um telling me how much they they think my opinions suck so I was just like all right you know what I got to like stay the [ __ ] away from this asset asset class it deserves its own DM they just they hurt you so bad yes I don't know I don't know if they're worth 10% of the supply maybe yeah I I I I got to get to your level all right so the asset class being celeb coins the asset class being presidential celebrity coins presidential cele that's a pretty narrow yeah pretty class okay uh Arthur what's your take on Celebrity coins as a category they're great but I guess most of them aren't doing so well price performance- wise I mean yeah so what and why why are they great attention to the space activity on chain new people using stuff it's great um you don't think that attention is like okay shortterm it's good longterm it ends up reflecting badly I mean if we convert 10% of people who you know logged on to one of these chains and we've done something valuable or whatever it is all on boarding is good on boarding exactly okay all right okay so what's your what's your celebrity coin plan now that now that now that for for Aptos well you talking I thought I I had a celebrity coin for abos coming up um I mean I I agree I think I think they are good at catching capturing attention but they all have I mean we just talked about the price appreciation for Iggy and like that LE that sour a lot of people too and so I think like what is is it is there a net benefit because if the people lose money like yes you captured a couple but the the rest of the mob crowd that's sliding into your DMs like that to me is just so net negative and we haven't pursued any celebrity coins no plans uh in the short run but we can't stop anybody right I'm waiting for dollar sign Arthur cuz like clearly you could you could get one right now one billion going this guy I'll take the other n asking price if you launch any as they say don't get higher on your own supplies that's right all right what is that what is that break up breakup look like on the pie chart greater than 100% you know cuz I'm good at math it's a square yeah so I remember so a while back we talked about this on the show there was all this drama about um uh you know anom being this kind of Gateway for a lot of celebrities coming into crypto and I remember uh I think it was Kobe who was criticizing anom and saying you know look if a celebrity wants to get into crypto is the right way to get a celebrity in crypto to get them to launch a token with their name on it or is it just do what everyone else does and just like Buy Bitcoin and ether and like do the normal thing that everybody else does is like invest in the space um Mo I want to get I want to get your take on this as somebody who runs an ecosystem um what do you think about the the healthiness for an ecosystem of getting you know people from outside who are like oh I can make a quick Buck I can monetize my fame coming into an ecosystem saying great you know the sort of Jason der rulers of the world pop in and say yo will you do me a solid and like you know I mean you think about that anam's backstage right I think he's coming up next he's listening he's listening don't worry you can't box so it's okay I did moti so I don't know I'd be down to explore with him but uh um I I I guess like what's the question is the question is how do we get those people on board and then convert them question is like you know with respect to meme coins there's a lot of criticism now of meme coins as well it's kind of same category in that uh when you get into the late cycle of meme coins in the beginning it's like oh it's fun it's getting people in the space late cycle m coins people are like oh pump. fun it's kind of extractive it's pulling money out of the ecosystem how do you think about that as somebody who's trying to cultivate an ecosystem yeah I mean I I think what's fun about it I think what's fun about mcoins is like you see price going up and people piling in and people talking about things and sure you get some fun components on Twitter but that's really the fun is making money right like let's be honest and so how can you actually achieve that Beyond just doing you know Meme coin activity celeb coin activity nfts Ico it's go go you know go back to every cycle I mean for our perspective we think applications whether they're defi applications that offer economic incentives those are much more interesting for us they show demonstration of our protocols performance they bring in people that get economic value they're having fun trading right like making money and that's awesome from there like how do you cast a much wider net net from a distribution perspective I mean we you were in Korea with with us right we're working with South Korea Telco 30 million sub phone subscribers they buil T wallet going to be in you know potentially 30 million devices if you think about that like and app TOS is the preferred blockchain of course I got to the plug but imagine all those people having fun making money on abasa products like that is a little bit more sustainable and I think far more interesting and then you can of course pile on and bring in all the meme coin stuff all the fun nft stuff but there's so much more beyond that right like web tunes for example I don't know how many people in the audience or listening know about web Tunes web Tunes is a a comic strip that just you know has an episode every week a bunch of different artists contribute to it if you have a mobile device that H that allows you to make money and also take take that money and deploy it into your favorite artist that has the next cartoon episode or comic book episode coming you can make money off of that too so like there's fun there's actual entertainment versus like chasing the hype of a an meme coin or an entertainment coin yeah that we think is shorter fuel right right yeah so okay you were mentioning um what's going on in Korea and I wanted to switch subjects a little bit to talk about a recent report that was dropped by CH analysis which was the global crypto adoption index so every year CH analysis they rank all the different countries in the world using a bunch of signals from like both onchain data as well as uh you know website and and kind of online visits to try to get a sense of how different countries are adopting crypto with respect to total number of users and total amount of online activity now I I someone have my doubts about their methodology but here's the list of countries that they had by ranking okay number one anyone want to guess what the number one was if you do anyone know is it is it percentage penetration or no nominal notional number of people it's kind of unclear they don't specify exactly what they're doing but it seems like it's mostly about people okay it seems like it's more about people uh does anyone want to guess who the number one country was Philippines Philippines no good guesso number one was India India India was number one so I'll go on the list India then Nigeria then Indonesia number four is USA number five Vietnam six Ukraine seven Russia eight Philippines nine Pakistan 10 Brazil 19th is Korea and then 20th is China 19th is who Korea wow 19th is Korea so no I I I'm kind of doubtful that this methodology like that just doesn't like really seem true to me that India is like the number one country for crypto adoption they put a 1% tax on trading and volume went to zero so I don't know I mean yeah there's no volume there what I have no look I I have no idea I'm just telling you what the report says so I think ni Carter recently did a piece like analyzing some of this but it feels like it may be that they're over indexing on like website visits just like the raw number of people in India and the fact that China uh you know China everyone has to use a VPN maybe maybe this is really an index of where developers of all this [ __ ] are not not actual users the website click an index of Click Farms basically yeah I don't know okay interesting but so but you were in a Korea blockchain we did you also go to Korea I was you did yeah okay so what was the vibe that you guys saw in in Korea how did it differ from what you're seeing here in Southeast Asia I mean the Koreans love to trade the Koreans trade the most of any country per capita for crypto in the world it started with traditional financial markets the costee options Market was the largest options Market in the world until The Regulators banned it because everybody was just gambling like like crazy [ __ ] um and so they love crypto uh and as much as the politicians want to push back on it the young population wants it so bad that they have no tax on it yet they've been keep keep delaying it you know they basically introduced some new rules to cut ify how listings happen on you know the up bits and the bit thumbs of the world and you know from Ma's perspective we get a lot of questions from our portfolio is like how do we get on a Korean exchange because that's where the Traders are that's where the people who want to own these assets and trade them and add liquidity and all that sort of stuff so I am I'm very surprised that that report said 19th I think they're they've got to be top three yeah yeah I I think we definitely need to look into the aster and how they calculated this thing um I mean India is not a surprise just by share volume but I would say Korea probably definitely should be higher I mean we had apos experience there last two weeks ago and you know we've been really big in Korea right like you and you've seen all the momentum that take place before over the last five years so we like we have not only the largest corporate sponsors or Partners working in that region but you know we see a massive sense of appetite in terms of volume and you know propensity to try new things and so I I mean Korea like the vibe is completely different on the ground like you were there we we were we were out every night everyone is interested we uh we launched something called the Aptos card a cold storage that ties to your Petra account you get AP on it or usdt now that USD is available and people were lining up trying to get a card because they knew that that there's so many cool things that they could do with it and so like that the interest the the Young Generation there that's so open to trying new things it's rampant there and so and I would say India is probably very similar right like the consumer Behavior the propensity to try new things is really high in these markets so that's that's not so surprise for India but Korea that we got to talk to Sergey about that I mean one thing that's always confused me is that uh Korea and Japan are kind of similar culturally like they're both like you know sort of these conglomerate driven countries low birth rates you know it's like you're both kind of um uh similar type economies uh Korea loves crypto it's like you know 15 to 20% of adults only one of them had number like magic the Gathering online exchange though let's be real like what the [ __ ] are you talking about but the weird thing is that Japan like crypto is just like not nearly as much of a thing there they Japan used to be a massive crypto trading market and The Regulators are put a um tax on trading and destroyed the market and so that's why you don't see the is that what it is I see interesting interesting so why does Korea have no taxes on crypto because the population is so agitated for crypto that a politician proposing that is not going to get reelected okay so it's just it's just like you I mean what what's the theory of the case there if you if you had to make the crypto germ spread more through different countries like how did Korea end up there and Japan ended up totally in the opposite direction like what's your theory of the case I don't know I mean yeah let people trade and they're going to love it it's fun as as MOA say I I I think pensioners got burned out on all the cardano and xrp they were buying back in the day like let's be real like that's like the Japanese pensioner meme thing is a real [ __ ] thing you think was you think it was choice of coins that led them different round I think they were just a little too early I like was all about the I boom Japan was like a little too early and so then they bottled the dog [ __ ] stuff I see okay actually and then they lost M go come on that's true that's like seared into national memory maybe maybe I mean it was so tiny at that time like not that many people it made the news everywhere there sure well so I heard I heard launching a new exchange too so this might be uh he's coming back yeah yeah second act he there you go you learn double Double Entry bookkeeper counting you know he learned some things so I heard I was chatting with somebody today who's uh like this Korean um you know guy who's very connected in Korea and he was telling me that so apparently Korean retail um like the sentiment in Korea shifted a lot after Terra collapsed but even more so not not actually Terra so much as Clayton so Clayton if you remember it was caca's uh you know blockchain in Korea and Clayton apparently like the the chairman of caca or something like some CEO of caca do you know this story uh basically he was embezzling money from Clayton and he was like indicted or something and like it's like this huge scandal in Korea and as a result of that Clayton ended up rebranding and like fusing with some other Korean blockchain there like the whole it's like a whole thing and I had no idea that any of this had happened but like yeah Clayton is no longer Clayton and now is a new name because of this Scandal Do you know the story I mean we know we we we know a little bit of the story it's I mean it's the reason apps I think ends up becoming an exciting option for everyone but yeah there are probably these types of stories across not just Korea in many markets I mean we talked about you know other new products I'm not trying to sell you down the river with your Korean friends sorry yeah like I'm getting sweaty up here can't but but but you know I do think going back to the point of of just like you know consumer Behavior I mean you've seen Korea come out of a war um many decades ago and go from you know one of the lowest GDP producing countries to one of the top whe their top 11 now and you know I I I think there's definitely a lot of pressure from The Young Generation to continue to allow for crypto to participate in in these economy and be part of the economy but I think what's more important to any like political system or government system is to make sure that they're in that top tier uh ranking when it comes to GDP and there's no denying across the globe that crypto is a big part of GDP now and so whoever continues to facilitate the right structure the right setup is going to win and I think Korea is doing a a piece of that and probably a lot more when the elections in the US you know materialized all right fair enough fair enough I'm sure there's a group of uh Korean crypto podcasters who are you discussing World Liberty Financial similarly incredulously like did you hear about this President and he's doing a defi in the US well I have to say your your description of the Clayton story actually did remind me of terara because I don't know this is a deep cut but I don't know if you remember dgen boox which uh the Tera Foundation borrowed against and and sent to e that was the same type of embezzlement as the Clayton emzl kind of true that is kind of true okay well all right well speaking of embezzlement let's talk about macro and the Fed so Arthur you have uh you've become now kind of in your um I'd say you're sort of this like this elder Statesman of crypto at this point and you write these these long treatises talking about macro and um given the moment that we're in right now so just for I mean this show is probably going to come out on the podcast in you know probably in in two or three days and by then everyone's going to know the size of the Fed rate cut and how the market responded right now we still don't know so there's a lot of speculation that it's going to be 50 basis points as opposed to 25 um but you wrote in a post recently that uh the story may be less about the size of the ray cut as the other channels of liquidity entering into the economy talk to us about what your thesis is of how people should be thinking about macro that they're ignoring so I as I said today on stage and my keynote the only thing that you need to look at is the dollar yen exchange rate and so if the fed's going to cut 50 or whatever it is that's narrowing the differential between the FED funds rate and the boj deposit rate and the faster that the market believes that that rate is going to narrow the more the Yen's going to strengthen the more Traders whove borrowed yen to buy assets around the world you know US Stocks treasury bonds real estate crypto as well they're going to have to cover and sell what they can as fast as they can buy back yen to not lose a lot of money and so if the FED comes out and says yeah 50 basis points and the Dot Plot is super aggressive I think that maybe the initial reaction is yay red cut and then [ __ ] slaughter people are going to get absolutely carried out as Yen goes through 130 because people like oh why the [ __ ] why do I want to own this this pair have this trade on when I know that they're converging and the rate the the the Yen should strengthen and so I think that's going to be a big problem and the response is they're going to cut more because they believe that that's the response to everything oh if something's [ __ ] up oh let's just cut some more the reason why it didn't work is because we didn't do enough of it so just do it more which obviously is good for us you know in a medium-term perspective but I do believe that you know crypto could be a bit correlated with all the other assets if we do get a generalized selloff due to um everyone now knowing okay the FED is cutting rates they cut maybe it's 50 right that was aggressive um they said the the economy is weak or jobs are weak or whatever they're going to cut more dollar Yen goes [ __ ] you know 200 at some point uh which again causes Financial calamity and then bad girl yelling to the rescue let's print some [ __ ] money cuz Camala Harris needs to win the election so how how do you position for this let's assume that they they let's assume the audience completely believes you what what's the portfolio positioning they should do um wait I thought we're saying no Financial advice we said of us are not giving Financial advice give whatever Financial advice it wants just just just double check yeah number one I obviously I'm long as [ __ ] and it's more like okay do I want to take a tactical position while I'm at the bar all [ __ ] up I'll just go short some Bitcoin into the into the FED announcement and wait for a few days if Yen responds as I think it's going to respond then wait for the market to drop and then go long as [ __ ] because the response is more money we know what the response is if there's any sort of Hiccup before the election they will print more money right okay tun what's your what's your take on this story do you believe this all I have to say is that Elizabeth Warren letter that ask for the 75 basis points describe describe this so I guess Elizabeth Warren wrote this this letter to Jerome Powell that was I want to say graving almost uh for for a 75 basis point cut and and said it it was needed and in in a lot of ways that were just like we can't win the election without this cut that would be my that would be my summary if you like ask me to to summarize it uh which is funny because this might actually be the first time there's like bipartisan like support in this direction for anything like um macro wise I don't know I I feel like the Market's been pricing this in forever like I mean you just like look at you just look at all the implied spreads it's like everyone thinks it's 50 basis points at least so I I don't know I don't think I don't think you're going to see some like shock type of thing because I feel like the Market's been feeling like this is going to happen for the last month Tom what's your take yeah I the Warren thing was that was very weird I think I I don't remember like a time in my adult life when people have been this focused on on the FED which is also very kind of unnerving like you have Senators you have random retail people kind of like watching like fomc like you know every single month I'm like this feels a little weird to me like I don't I don't um but they should be watching it it's so important so yeah maybe maybe that's [ __ ] up sort of Point yeah yeah yeah um but I don't know I think um it's uh it's always bizarre when it becomes kind of like a top of mind for everybody again yeah yeah that is very true Mo what's your take I mean Arthur said it well I think and it and and I think I agree with what tun said saying too it's it's bizarrely a good thing for us um shortterm and then maybe not medium-term but maybe longer term and so that's yeah that's kind of my view okay yeah I mean it it does feel like um so you know this this R cut of side obviously a lot is going to be dependent on this election and we're now getting closer and closer to November and uh it's it's it's a story that everybody around the world is now talking about at this point you know it's it's just dominating headlines we just saw Trump um have a second assassination attt against him and it it it feels like um we still don't know what commis platform is going to be for crypto so Arthur again as the kind of you know macro Guru of the industry how do you think about a comma presidency and how it's going to end up playing for risk assets of crypto well first I don't understand why crypto Bros and gals are so Pro Trump because Trump was President for four years and he did [ __ ] all and so now he wants a bunch of crypto donations and so he says the right things out of his mouth launches some D5 dog [ __ ] or whatever he's doing right and all of a sudden people like oh yeah you were president for 4 years you had all this opportunity to do all these things and you did nothing and so all of a sudden you're going to do something now I don't think so you don't believe it you think you think he's just G tose crypto down the river zero uh and so then if you think but what's the opper like Camala Harris well the Democrats and their Administration has been hostile to crypto and I my point is who cares it doesn't matter right Bitcoin went from zero to whatever one point 5 or 1 or two trillion whatever the market cap is with no regulatory Clarity with no support from any government Regulators we don't need them and why Grable to these people to like beg for scraps off of the table like continue building the stuff that you should be building [ __ ] them okay all right all right we got so it doesn't matter at the end of the day because the the Republicans in the US are going to cut taxes without cutting spending so the government deficit widens and then Democrats are going to have more welfare payments and the government deficit widens so at the end of the day the US government will borrow more bonds and will have to print more money to finance that debt and so crypto will benefit it doesn't matter who wins it's just a popularity clown contest on TV so you think that all the stuff that happened in 22 right of uh you know operation choke point and the the SEC going after all these companies you think it didn't matter and it didn't slow down the propagation of crypto no absolutely not it maybe yeah of course it impacted some individual people and their individual projects but we still have more wallets than today than there were in the past we still have more people building we have 20,000 tickets sold at this conference 10,000 were sold last year so more people are coming into this ecosystem they don't need Gary Gensler or someone to give them a stamp of approval like yes you can invest in crypto [ __ ] you all right let's get let's get it that only only thing I'm disappointed about is you didn't use the word muppet which usually I mean it it is an interesting thing like people didn't stop building people continued to build we launched right in 22 and so despite all the sort of confusion around what is right what is wrong and and in the gray area like we continue to build I think the sad thing is we did slow down though right we slow down in the US and we were forced to you know I came to Korea eight times I was in Singapore four times Japan four times and so like you just kind of took people that are in New York and California and like pushed them out to 19 hour flights to to Singapore um and everyone loves it here so like that's going continue to happen I think that's good for the globe though because now this Innovation is disseminating In Pockets where they can take things forward in much more interesting more creative ways than we would have typically seen if this would only happen in Silicon Valley although we're based in Silicon Valley or only in New York which was uh obviously the H Hub of crypto for a bit so I think that I think that's kind of good right like I'm the basis for your business is that you require like you know to suck on the government tee to survive then you shouldn't be doing crypto go back to try that's how it works very profitable don't knocking it right all right all right what's your take on the ETFs in that case on the what the ETFs uh the good things make the price go up you know more buying pressure but I think if we will see how the ownership changes in the next was it the 13f or whatever I think a lot of the buyers of the ETFs are basically just delta neutral basis trades and so if the Bitcoin basis comes down they've Unwound their positions and so we'll see the millenniums and the 72s and those sorts of folks have probably reduced their crypto exposure because they never really were in it for the price appreciation of Bitcoin they're in it for a basis trait yeah but I mean the reason why I'm asking is that the ETF was a result of you know basically sucking on the government tee as you put it right yeah and that's Larry F's business hey we want to buy Bitcoin let you use your retirement account and put your money with us it's just as if you know Black Rock and Vanguard are another arm of the US government just like any other asset manager regulated by a domestic entity is at armed of their government and so if you want money to stay within your system and not be in the hands of the people then let the same trii Muppets come in there you go Muppets come in and take your money say we'll give you this we'll give you this piece of paper here's this Bitcoin thing it goes up in price goes down in price you you get this thing but if you actually want to like I don't know buy some coffee from a single origin producer in Guatemala who doesn't have a bank account this is not for you so again it's it's okay you know price number go up cool but you're not actually using crypto yeah but but it's still good though in a way that it's at Brad access and distribution and awareness to people that typically would not be willing to or may not feel comfortable going through an exchange right yeah I mean I I'm not I'm not knocking it I I get it passive investing is a thing if you have money in a retirement account and you can't get it out this is the only thing you can buy then okay cool makes sense yeah Tom what's your take on this on this uh claim that Arthur's making that crypto it's basically path independent it's going to get to the same place out of the way government's a distraction I say I uh it reminds me kind of of your uh blog post kaiseki you know the the destination known but the journey is not and I I kind of agree with that to a certain extent I think um you can't really kill crypto at this point um but I do think GDP creation value creation is a fragile thing um I don't know if you saw this uh uh report from um former Italian Prime Minister um B basically talking about all the different ways the EU has uh kind of destroyed value and killed Innovation and what they can do to sort of change it and you know people can say oh you know regulation and the grand scheme things doesn't really matter that is kind of true but there is a very sort of practical potentially negative uh uh downside to having a bad regulatory environment you can basically destroy value or stop value from being created and so um you know I I I agree with him in the sense that uh yeah it's this whole thing is designed as to be you know isolated from government that is sort of the whole thesis but everything else that sort of accelerates it and and and makes it maybe that that path uh faster um I think the government can actually meaningfully slow it and sort of destroy value there yeah I think yeah the point that you just made resonates with me in that um like it's definitely true for Bitcoin that Bitcoin like it's there we all know what it is it has its role in the global kind of financial firmament at this point and it's it's a little bit like you know when when China bans Bitcoin mining and okay there's no more mining in sushan and it just pops up now in you know Kazakhstan or in West Texas or whatever like you can't kill it right it's like wacka it just pops up somewhere else um but that's not true for companies it's not true for Founders right if you basically go through and do a sweep and just say every single one of you [ __ ] is dead now and we're finding you for all the money that you're worth it really does slow things down and make it more difficult that the marginal entrepreneur is just going to be like all right well I'll just go build the fintech thing or I'll just go in Ai and you know get get easy money over there um and it does feel like it's not guaranteed that we all get to the same place with respect to the total amount of new things applications uh use cases that people end up building in crypto um maybe it's true that we get to the same place eventually but it it does feel like it really matters whether it takes like 5 or 10 years longer I mean we don't build stronger applications right so if if you survived because you know of a favorable funding environment or whatever you built a product based on your own personal gravitas or whatnot and then you get sliced by The Regulators for whatever reason I mean is that really decentralization what have we built we just built another way of building centralized companies but they've got this funny token thing that that rides on chain right I don't think that's what we're here for we value decentralization and pro projects that preach that and back it up with you know real Vigor are the ones that are most successful and I'm sure in your portfolio as well and same same in mine right it's but the the guy who's like yeah I'm really good at raising money from the traditional silic Valley VCS and as soon as the winds changed and I went to AI then I mean okay you got a zero in that but you probably deserve to get a zero because that wasn't really about what we're trying to do here right right I mean the decentralization part is a is a very important one and I I think that really matters um but you know looking at the Nakamoto coefficient at the same time you also have to look at what are the use cases I think you're I mean not only can you not kill crypto I think all these large companies not all but like some of the large companies that have put their Roots down are really starting to see things come to come to fruition right like take a look at someone like Black Rock right they have the Biddle fund on E and that is a pretty significant you know stake in the ground for them and you know you have Larry fin going out there talking about what crypto can do and so not only is there products being built that add value to financial products or underlying infrastructure that reduces you know costs and so they have margin Improvement or potentially helps them with distribution of new Financial products helps them grow Topline that's p&l impact and so I think a lot of these larger companies whether it's Black Rock whether it's PayPal whether it's South Korea Telco all these folks are going to continue to push crypto forward because there's real business value and they're going to continue to push you know their stakeholders and constituents along the way too I don't think there's there's no way you're killing crypto at this point fair enough all right well we're we're running up on time uh so we we're going to wrap it up but I just want to ask uh real quick anything that you want to plug arth there for folks who are in Singapore or people in your portfolio that you want to shout out well I'm going to plug my party on Thursday the the location's coming out tomorrow it's going to be [ __ ] lit no Jason dero no Jason dero ready go Cas you're excited he's not going to be there unfortunately Bo anything you want to plug I was going to plug my party but my party conflicts with Arthur's Party and I'm trying to figure out which party to go to we have we our party at s so go to Arthur's party after my party because I think there's going to go much later probably um but I think you know the only thing to plug is probably what everyone cheered about right like people you got to keep building and I think that's just like a really good message and if you want to build build on appts love it okay that's it from us thanks everybody