Decentral Lens: Ordinals News & NodeMonkes | Art Basel Impact | Ecosystem Activity | Nouns Update

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to decentralized on, where lifelong friends Chicago and disco navigate the ever evolving crypto landscape with genuine curiosity and a commitment to nuances are North star. We offer clear eyed exploration. Our goal to empower listeners with the tools and insights needed to flourish in this decentralized age.

Speaker 2: 0:22

All right, what's up everybody. Here we go, 121323 and the bulls heating up. It's exciting, or is it? We're in a little bit of a pullback, but it's still exciting. It still feels bullish to me. Disco is on my right here, disco, how are you today? I'm good.

Speaker 1: 0:41

I feel bully, but I also feel like FOMO and overwhelmed and want to make sure I'm making the right moves. I feel like stakes are high and you know this jam that we play for the intro. I keep thinking about it like it's pretty fascinating. I don't know if we've ever really told the story of it, but you know it's a AI generated project that you know. Each of the NFTs have their own unique beats and videos and everything. It's OMG, kirby, so shout to that. But I just think it's. It's getting under my skin. I like it. I'm sitting there doing a little bit of this and, you know, kind of wondering where music is going to go, moving forward, and there's just a lot to consider these days.

Speaker 2: 1:20

Absolutely. I love this song too, so it's a music NFT that we own and it's only fitting to talk about decentralization and Web 3 and all the above and and have a Web 3 ownership of a token of a song and it's so mellow and we chose that on purpose almost to we both get excited were excitable people to slow us down, because I think the point of the show is to try and onboard people responsibly and and get into crypto, but also sort through all the. The fud disco had a great idea. He's like what about what if we call this show FOMO filter? We just keep playing around with names of shows.

Speaker 2: 2:05

But you know that's, that's what we are and you know not only doing it for everybody out there, but you know we're doing it for ourselves too and you know that they're still. You know I've been in this since 2015 and I still get FOMO and I will say, 99% of the time I don't act on it anymore. But you know, sometimes I do and sometimes I try and take calculated risk or sometimes I just buy a piece of art that I love and it's just fun and and you got to go for it.

Speaker 1: 2:34

Yeah, I think that I think the, the moves you don't make her often the best you know, but you do have to obviously get involved in the game and figure out how you're going to do things, and I think that one of the things that we're trying to do as a show and as a partnership and everything, is really just trying to provide context and tools to help us, you know, kind of navigate, as we say. You know this, this space, because it's easy to get your brain hijacked, as we've said almost every week, and you know the, the newest, the newest news each week. You know it can really get you thinking about stuff like, hey, buy this altcoin before the. You know the ETF announcements and all this, and it's just, it's out there. So I want to be, I want us to kind of be a filter on some of that and help us kind of get back to our anchors and our roots and talk that stuff out.

Speaker 2: 3:19

Yeah, we're definitely playing the the long game here. I mean, I always try and think like for our kids, what could you get to just be perennially evergreen? And you know, either pass along to them or get that in 20 years. You know, pass some along to them and have that beach house, that with all glass on the, some on the ocean or lakefront, or so you know that, that dream retirement home, you know, on the rocking chair of course, with a country time lemonade sitting next to your beautiful spouse and it tastes like it old fashioned lemonade.

Speaker 2: 3:54

Yes, it does indeed, so let's jump into the news. There's a lot that went on this week. We're not going to give her a ton of airtime, because she simply doesn't deserve it. Elizabeth Warren's at it again disco. What's, what's she up to this week?

Speaker 1: 4:09

Well, I mean, last week she was sitting there, you know, they were doing the, whatever the event in New York was, and you had Jamie Diamond, you know, saying oh, watch out for the evils of crypto. And they're only use cases, pirates and pints, answer what?

Speaker 2: 4:22

I believe he said it's very dangerous. I think you should shut it down, like you can't shut crypto down. You can only shut your citizens from benefiting and using it and having the innovation from it right.

Speaker 1: 4:34

I think that I think that all we really need to end on this topic is I think that it would be great if they would shut their mouths about the topic, because I don't think there there's very. There's, obviously, motivations to maintain status quo or to attain more power, influence and what's going on, and I don't think it's tied to the technology, I think it's tied to the fear mongering and I think it's tied to politics and it's tied to dollars and keeping the dollars as they are and the power structure as it is. So it's just, it's, it's almost just, it's just white noise to me, but I hope that people aren't really, you know, paying attention and I hope that they have less influence than they may have. You know, that's, that's my fear.

Speaker 2: 5:14

I agree with you, but being a local trustee in a teeny little town, like part of me just wants to motivate people out there, like get involved at some point to change all this. Like we need more independent people in Washington because this this baby boomers running the country with knowledge that's analog is just not working. Yes, there's a lot of scammers. We had, you know, ftx. We had three hours capital. There was. There was no shortage of scams. But you know, your job should be to regulate those scams in a smart way and they just they've they've eroded trust with our community and the thing that sucks is they don't understand it enough to even care that there's good, smart people building in this space. All they see is the scams or they're just using it to their benefit for political platform, which is extremely frustrating as a citizen.

Speaker 1: 6:15

Yeah, it'd be interesting if somebody and I don't know if anyone's done this, but if someone had actual, you know, pull numbers from her constituency on their actual take on, you know, crypto overall because at the end, in the beginning of the day, they're supposed to be representative. It's supposed to be a representative democracy. It's not supposed to be you know, persons, vendetta's or issues. So it'd be good. It'd be interesting to see. I don't know, you know, but I'm sure there's some major markets in there and some smart folks that are on board the crypto trade and that would be like, dude, you're not representing us at all. So that's just a little tiring to see.

Speaker 2: 6:46

Yeah, no, I 100% agree. So, yeah, I think we've given her probably more lip service than she ever ever deserves. So that said, let's, let's kick to the next topic and hopefully we don't have to keep talking about her, because it feels like the market didn't care either. You know, there has been a selloff. I honestly don't think that was related to the politics this time. I think it's just it was going up so fast, all of crypto and, and you know, at some point you got to have a little more trenchment, which hopefully means we can just kind of fill our coffers a little more dollar cost average on the way up.

Speaker 1: 7:26

Absolutely. I think that's that's well said. So, in you know, in more exciting news and bigger topics, you know you kind of look at the, at the activity with, with some of the new projects, and you know specifically kind of the ordinal side of things, there are some pretty big developments in terms of, you know, some sales that happen there and there's just there's some buzz building in this world and maybe we should talk a little bit about kind of what went down in the last couple of days on that front.

Speaker 2: 7:55

Yeah, bitcoin ordinals are just absolutely going bonkers. There was a sale for ordinal number two. For what was it? 10 point no, 10.5 ETH. Yeah, it was 10.4, 10.5 ETH.

Speaker 1: 8:16

So here it is 10.4. 10.4 bit, by the way.

Speaker 2: 8:21

That's. That's how baked into NFTs that I've been even ordinal since since February. But yeah, it sold for 10.4 Bitcoin and everybody's boasting that this is the biggest sale ever. I'm sorry it was not inscription one or two is inscription eight, and remember, bitcoin starts with inscription zero. So this was the ninth inscription, or inscription number eight, and this honey badger. Yeah, so for 10.4 Bitcoin. This actually isn't the number one, though. An ordinal punk the crown ordinal punk sold for 11.5 Bitcoin, which is the number one sale. So that one was before Magic Eden, when everything was literally done with mediators and on spreadsheets, so it was much more dangerous at the time. But there's folks like flow stay and a bunch of people who are very honest and have done a great job at growing the whole ecosystem.

Speaker 1: 9:19

But 11.5 Bitcoin is actually the top sale for an ordinal punk when you are looking at it from a straight Bitcoin perspective, but I think that they may be looking at it as 10.4 bit at this point, with the market rate or the market price of Bitcoin may translate to more in USD than the 11 when that happened, because Bitcoin probably wasn't at 42,000.

Speaker 2: 9:49

That is a good point. Yeah, so when last February Bitcoin was, I don't think it was in the 16s anymore, but it was definitely. I'm going to call it the low 20s. So you are correct. From a dollar standpoint it would have been much higher, probably 60, 70, 80% higher.

Speaker 2: 10:08

But that also goes to show you disco that over time I don't even think of things in terms of numbers I only do from when I have to pay the tax man, and even up after every year, you know after I record all my trades. But otherwise, like 11.5 Bitcoin is still more than 10.4 Bitcoin. But you make a very good point.

Speaker 1: 10:31

I like. I like the entrenchment. I agree fully. I'm just merely pointing it out.

Speaker 2: 10:36

Yeah, the thing I think was Andreas on Tainopolis, someone used to always say the price of Bitcoin is one Bitcoin, which are like wait, what do you mean? You know, and that takes a while to get to, but I think you know you're pretty steeped in this industry. When the price of an ETH is one ETH and the price of a Bitcoin is one Bitcoin, it's not the dollar amount at all. You know, they always say how volatile Bitcoin is, but you know, have you ever looked at a chart of the dollar compared to Bitcoin? So one Bitcoin is one Bitcoin. Look at the dollar everywhere. Look how volatile it is, you know. So that's kind of the joke. Obviously, bitcoin probably doesn't have the global user base yet to be the de facto cornerstone, like stable asset of gold. But you know, that's the narrative and that's certainly the one that that I believe in.

Speaker 1: 11:27

Yeah, well, there's a significant. There's one or a couple significant differences. One is that there's a fixed supply for the Bitcoin and then, and as we've said pretty much every week, ethereum is de inflationary or disinflationary. So, looking at that, as opposed to the dollar is, I think you should just convert. I think you're right, just make the conversion and consider it all in terms of the, you know, of the currency.

Speaker 2: 11:51

Yep, for sure, for sure. So also in there's actually a bunch of Bitcoin news with the Ordinals there's. There's just so much cool stuff going on and I guess we don't give this show enough. Probably aired Ordinals, considering I got an early and have been a huge proponent of it. We've kind of focused more on nodes and staking any Ethereum and stuff like that. But you know those two chains we both believe in.

Speaker 2: 12:17

The next one is really interesting. I have mixed feelings about this, but basically the Bitcoin shrooms last year. You know these are some of the first Ordinals minted. So I believe the one you see here Bitcoin shrooms is number 38. So this is the 38th ordinals. You saw the honey badger. That was the 8th number 8 or the 9th ordinals. This is number 38. This just sold at close today. So breaking news for $241,000 and that's 5.7 Bitcoin for this one and the reason this one sold. I'll get to the prices the other two in a bit. But why it's more than double the other ones is because this is a sub 100 Ordinal. So this is a double digit Ordinal and it's also one of the first of the Bitcoin shrooms. I think that s is either the first s or the last s, because under 100 they just spelled out shrooms and then a lot of these are in the sub 1000. So these are three digits. So this is actually part of almost the logo or the brand, if you will.

Speaker 2: 13:31

A little interesting note about Bitcoin shrooms.

Speaker 2: 13:35

So last year I'm sorry, earlier this year they did an auction for one of them, I believe, and it got up to like two or three Bitcoin and all of a sudden, right in the middle wasn't through Sotheby's, it was through one of the exchanges, it was more direct, but they pulled it just out of like literally kind of rugged it in the middle out of thin air and I think the market was starting that the initial heat of Ordinals was starting to die down a little and a lot of people in the space were really kind of pissed at them.

Speaker 2: 14:08

Like it felt like a total rug, like oh, the bear is coming, I'm not going to get as much, so he pulled it. Now, why the team pulled it I don't know, but it definitely didn't have to me. It didn't have a good feel to it at all, but they've held them ever since. There was even rumors that Nintendo was saying like it's a little too close to our branding. Whether that's true or not, I have no idea, but here we are three one on sales at Sotheby's go ahead disco.

Speaker 1: 14:42

No, I was just saying I can kind of see the Nintendo esque or the Mario Brothers esque on the on the head gear and, oh for sure, yeah, it's a good guy. Yeah, yeah, it's. Let's say, it's an homage, if you will, yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:56

So whether that was actually a whole like, whether Nintendo would actually even know, or if they could even figure out who the team was on an anonymous network, is beyond me. But the fact that they now are selling these like it's a blessing and a curse right for for Ordinal's bag holders. Because it's a blessing, because this Bitcoin stream this top guy went for 5.7 Bitcoin. Sovereign individual went for 107 grand, which is 2.6 Bitcoin in today's rate, and then the Bip 39 seed went for 101 grand, or 2.4 Bitcoin. So good sales, good overall, good overall for the ecosystem.

Speaker 2: 15:36

The the kind of punch in the nose on this that I don't love is that. So the bees like it and they've been early adopters and all this, and I think Christie's has to some extent to, but so the bees has really been early. They take a net aggregate of 40% of that sale, which, if you do it on Magic Eden and I'm not saying Magic Eden's a gracing since sliced bread, but I think they take 2.5%, so that feels a lot better to me, but to do it here, you know this opens it up to a market that's obviously way bigger than the small Bitcoin Ordinal's ecosystem.

Speaker 1: 16:16

Yeah, so it can represent some sort of validity within the you know trad art and you know kind of the luxury collecting side of it. But yeah, by the same, by the same token, you're paying like 40% juice, you know, on something.

Speaker 2: 16:32

Interestingly, I believe, the juice. It's paid 20% by the Lister and 20% by the buyer. So that's kind of a you know, I guess. I guess at the end of the day you buy it for 240 and you know, once you get hold of it you certainly don't have to go through them again to sell it. So one could even argue, you could just think it out louder, you could do a little arbitrage play. I mean, 40% is huge. Now could you turn this right around and sell it for the same? You know, if you're paying 240, you know, could you turn around and sell it and make a little money. I don't know, but it is what it is. I, I, I did not put any bids on this.

Speaker 2: 17:15

I, after they pull the collection last year I was not a huge fan, but you know, I understand the importance of these and the entire collection was an homage to a lot of milestones in the what happened to Bitcoin. There's, there's, I think, a couple, there's at least 100 of these, but I think the number is more like 200 or something like that, and their numbering range, I think, from in the 30s. So a bunch of double digits, but the highest one is actually not below a thousand. It's like I think it's below 2000, but it's. It's like 1100, 1200, so they did not actually get them all under a thousand, which for an epic. The whole collection, you know, is ordinal punks. There's 100 of them. They're all under a thousand, starting in the 400s and ending in the 600. So you know, you got your preferences and you got your likes. On art and taste, I actually like this art. I just don't like how this was handled and now it's going through more of a traditional house, knowing that it could benefit the entire ordinal's ecosystem, with new blood coming in.

Speaker 1: 18:22

Yeah, it's, it's you know.

Speaker 1: 18:24

Again, it's remarkable in going back to kind of the birth of ordinals, right.

Speaker 1: 18:31

So you have the most established chain that has been you know doing what it's doing and kind of building its reputation for sticking to what it's doing right, and then all of a sudden, ordinals come in and in such a short period of time, if you really sit back, say you were just going to start collecting right now, a lot of the, a lot of the you know parameters that have been introduced from the ordinal theory are really potentially very transformative on so much of what could happen in the next kind of wave of development of blockchain overall and specifically you know collecting and how you're doing all that.

Speaker 1: 19:11

So it's really fascinating to see something that started not that long ago. Yet now you kind of are looking more like okay, where is it really stored, as we've talked about before, what's, what's the number, and I really just I'm buckled up and interested to see kind of how it all shakes out, because before, like when I first got in and when you were, you know, getting involved with NFTs, it was, you know, a total Ethereum play, and now you're seeing, you know, bitcoin, really kind of almost setting up a new kind of framework as to how to value and and and you know launch pro programs and projects. So you know, I remember sitting with you in Las Vegas and you were like I'll never forget it. You know I was trying to ask you like what's this all about? Like you know, explain a little bit on Ordinals and you were talking, you know, basically like checkers to.

Speaker 1: 20:01

You know, like Star Trek chessboards, and you're starting to really see I think collectors are going to be asking for more and more of the intricacies and kind of the nuances that are baked into the Ordinal Theory. Yeah, it's a good point and I think what makes Bitcoin really interesting?

Speaker 2: 20:20

you know, because NFTs. You know Ethereum has smart contracts, so it was set up to be able to pull these things out, adding tokens to the Ethereum ecosystem and adding, you know, non fungible tokens, nfts. But with Bitcoin, you know, you were limited to kind of an older system that doesn't have these smart contracts. So you know when you were talking about smart contracts. So you know, when you inscribe things permanently on sats, it's the closest thing to actually being, if you think about it, a coin collector or a stamp collector. So and and the funny thing is, you know Bitcoin's mantra from the Maxis is you know Bitcoin is the most pure form of money and inscription numbers, just like dollar serial numbers and age, and you know, was it in the Philadelphia, which I believe is a P versus D, is either Washington or Delaware?

Speaker 2: 21:11

you know, on the dollar bill so yeah, so you know my brother used to be into coins and stamp collecting. He's much older than me but when he was a kid. But you know I understand the draw to that with Bitcoin, like going to a sat that that Satoshi Nokomoto actually had mined himself, like to end to put a collection on there that adds meaning to that and to have an inscription number to be one of the first to inscribe like you just saw the shrooms, like it's.

Speaker 1: 21:42

It adds a whole layer that Ethereum just doesn't have yeah, and when we were talking just about the honey badger or whatever, like if that's, if that's a number, eight like eight is an extremely popular number you know and like to have ownership of. That is pretty badass, you know, if you really think about it. And then for sure, single digit insane, yeah, but eight like the, you know how it's like infinity okay yeah, I know it's gotta, there's a bear may not be my favorite number and what it does is a big hole and I love the number eight there's a big cultural following for eight, believe me.

Speaker 1: 22:20

So here's a question that just popped in my head, that I don't know if it's an obvious answer, but it comes from from this, so I'll just ask you. So what happens to NFTs that you that were from open sea, if open sea goes out of business and shuts down?

Speaker 2: 22:37

No, they're still there on the smart contract. So other marketplaces get open and, let's say, all the marketplaces closed. You could still make a marketplace that just taps into the, the smart contract, into Ethereum for that collection, and that's what the crypto punks did, and they were obviously done before the ERC 721 standard. So that's why you cannot buy and sell Crypto punks on open C or blur. You have to buy and sell the wrapped crypto punks. They're wrapping it in the ERC 721 Framework so that you can buy and sell and then you can unwrap it. To do that. There's, there's. That it's a really good question, though there's actually one more on the Bitcoin side that's getting a ton of buzz and and I gotta say I've, I'm, I'm, I'm liking these things they're called node monkeys and these are early inscription collections. So if you look at the range, it's 835. 83,522 is the lowest node monkeys inscription and a hundred and eleven thousand three hundred nineteen is the highest one.

Speaker 2: 23:51

The big buzz about node money. It's actually been getting a lot of positive and negative buzz out there. I think some of the negative buzz maybe weren't it, but a lot of it, I think, is is people Just feeling angry to me, but node monkeys claim is that it's the first true 10,000 K 10,000 piece collection, pfp collection on Bitcoin, bitcoin punks, which is copy-pasta of crypto punks. There's nothing original there. I believe their last one does fall below a hundred eleven thousand. I think they're actually all below a hundred thousand. But you know, being a ethereum crypto punk holder, like I think I Think it's crap. I can't stand those things. And the fact that those have any value, I think is pretty silly. But Like, I get why people would want to collect them. But node monkeys are truly the first one of original art and you know they're elegant in their simplicity.

Speaker 2: 24:55

But that is going to launch soon and you know they've gotten a lot of flak for it was first they said it was gonna be free and then they were gonna give a bunch to charities and and actually the core dev teams for Bitcoin and even for ordinals. We're like, nope, that's too much. Like we don't even want it. So they're like, okay, like we got to do something with this. So they're they're looked at other charities and and but all the they found that like the same Entities were like using different accounts to try and just get more money. So they're like, okay, you know what we got to do this those most fair way possible and go to a duck's auction, but I think on the heels of shrooms.

Speaker 2: 25:39

You know one thing, going over to ordinals, that I always said to you is I'm not a fan of 10,000 K collections anymore because you know, with ordinals like I love that, you know, ordinal punks only have a hundred Inscribed pepies. There's only 69 little pepos on uncommon sats, which most are below the 500 Description of uncommon sats are. There's 420 of them. So it's a very small number, you know, but I gotta say I'm coming around to this. The art's grown on me more. I will definitely be picking up a couple of these and I think I Think there's a lot of buzz around there. I think a lot of people are excited and this could be on the heels of the shrooms kind of mainstream Sotheby's auction. This could be kind of the cool crypto punk moment for Bitcoin ordinals and then the truly first Unique 10,000 K collection. What are your thoughts? Disco from kind of a one step removed.

Speaker 1: 26:44

Well, I think, looking at it, it has, you know, it's got kind of the aesthetic that kind of feels like something that could be, you know, timeless in terms of you know kind of I don't know crypto punk ask to a degree you know. So that's encouraging and exciting. And I'm curious, you know, if you open up these collections to the 10,000 you know units, so to speak, will that be able to help Garner more you know kind of community and just kind of make it bigger than you know Just the handful of people that were Involved early on some of the ones that you've been talking about? You, so there's 400 of whatever you know. There's people that have multiples, obviously.

Speaker 1: 27:28

So I just wonder, maybe this 10,000 you know collection would help to kind of have a bigger impact on you know the entire you know Ecosystem, as opposed to more of, like you know, an elite or not elite, but kind of more of an insider group that understands of this early adoption. Maybe it could lead to more kind of mainstream Stremification of it and maybe it really could be you know, one of those you know flags planted in the, in the, in the, in the history of you know, digital art moving forward. So I yeah, I'm definitely gonna keep my eye on it and see what I can do to to get involved, because I think that that would be really important to kind of have and I'd love to be a part of, like you know, the inaugural part of a new Community that's very, you know, potentially significant, and I'd love to kind of see that Genesis play out and go on that instead of like Waiting to get in on something after it's kind of had its launch and heyday. So I don't know. Yeah, that's the first initial takes.

Speaker 2: 28:31

No, that's a good, that's a good take in and that's something that a lot of kind of Ordinals groups you know because remember a lot of these that I named ordinal punks or Bitcoin rocks, like a lot of the people who own all of those are a lot of the same folks. So you've got even within, if you mash a bunch of communities together, you know there's discord groups for sub thousand holders, sub ten thousand holders, but you know a lot of these are kind of the same folks. So think about it like the sub 10k collection, any ordinal inscribed in the first ten thousand, it's all over the map. You know Bitcoin rocks, the shrooms you saw the ordinal punks and then just a whole bunch of Other good stuff and a lot of just gobbledygooker stuff that's repetitive or I mean just garbage, right, stuff you don't want. So the hard part about that is, yeah, it's hard to have Gall, it's hard to galvanize a community when you only have a hundred plus 60, plus 120.

Speaker 2: 29:32

When you have 10,000, that's when you can, you know, make an impact. So let's say Every you know it's never ten thousand people holding, but call it, we'll call it five thousand people holding, maybe six thousand. You know most people have one, but a lot of people have two, four, ten or whatever. So let's say, a five thousand people holding that can kind of be a force, and you know we learned about Twitter and the algorithms and how they work. The more you have on there and the more that support each other and start following each other, the more that they can like and repost and echo Everybody else's stuff. So you know the way you phrase that. I think node monkeys could be bitcoins and Ordinals big moment in this to finally get a big enough group when a bunch of the kind of holdouts from the ethereum side Finally get a wallet which have come a long way and go to magic Eden and just Drop for one of them. I think it's very possible and very feasible and very likely.

Speaker 1: 30:38

Yeah, and it feels like you would probably be. I think you head on one part recently or a second ago where it's like I think you're more likely to get the conversion from. You know People that were used to collecting it, the ethereum side of things, and I think that Solana I don't know if you'd necessarily be be pulling a lot of the Solana NFT collectors I think that may be kind of a different kind of Ethos or, you know, kind of a different group that you're dealing with.

Speaker 2: 31:05

I it would be interesting to see.

Speaker 1: 31:06

I Wonder if you could. Yeah, that would be interesting, just to see.

Speaker 2: 31:10

Just think about a de gods went from Solana to Ethereum. But they've got, they're on Bitcoin too, so they've they've crossed all over. And now you've said that didn't you just mentioned that they were saying you could bridge back from Ethereum to Solana. So I know, to me it almost feels like, oh, solana is cool again and it's pumping, like, hey, you can go back. But you know, yeah, de gods is also on Amazon web servers. So to me, like, if you're gonna buy NFTs, like at least make sure it's IPFS or our weave like Don't, don't get stuff that's on Amazon s3. All that thing has to do is go down or Amazon has I doubt they would but have like a no NFT policy. But once the founders leave, they can stop paying those bills at some point.

Speaker 2: 31:57

And those images like you. Obviously you can have your own copy. You're right click save copy. But the fact that those are on centralized servers and Most people out there don't care is Beyond me. In fact, you just mentioned there's a good segue. You know the art basal down in Miami. You said there's a couple. Parties that made a big buzz and and those were also the the ones that pumped.

Speaker 1: 32:26

Tell us about yeah, yeah Well. So I'm sure you know I'm not gonna explain to everybody what art Basel is necessarily, but it's it. I've been, I went to it my first. I want to. I price.

Speaker 2: 32:36

I like such a shit art Basel. How's that tell me about art Basel? I'm an art collector, I'll never make that mistake again, I promise.

Speaker 1: 32:46

Anyhow, but it's been going on. I don't know for how long that it came into Miami but it's, I want, maybe three, four or five years ago and I've gone twice. And it's, if you're an NFT collector, and this was before NFTs really started going, but it's such a perfect match because it's all about celebrating art and the you know kind of excitement and the vibrancy and it works well with the whole South Beach. And South Beach is set up, you know, as what is it like? Vegas in South Beach are the biggest competitors for conventions, so you know they know how to have the infrastructure to make these things Sure.

Speaker 1: 33:21

But nevertheless, a lot of the news that kind of came to your feed, into your consciousnesses past week Probably had a pretty indirect if not totally direct connection to the sponsorships and the events that were going on in South Beach last week. So you know you have like Pudgy Pudgy Penguins. You know Pudgy had a big party there. Solana did a big sponsorship called artists and artists and residents, so they made a big, you know, push and impact there and from you know kind of the secondary Churchary feedback I've gotten, it was like you know there are a lot of people talking about oh, if you're a Solana holder, you get access to this or you know, da da, da. So it kind of works that way and I just it's interesting to see how these in-person events then translate to. You know Buzzing is and then the buzziness turns to pumpiness and you know you kind of go back to the genesis of what it was.

Speaker 1: 34:14

So if you really look at, you know some of the events that were going on there, so many of them then ended up kind of leading to, you know, kind of some buzz and bump, and I would certainly say Solana, for whatever it is, has certainly created a narrative of a lot of buzz over the last I might maybe 60 days and moving forward, whereas you know you kind of have been hearing. You know you heard about the airdrop that they did, you know, and the Gito airdrop for their, you know, token for that, and everyone was really excited about that. Prior to that they captured a lot of attention with bonk, you know, and it's like so all of a sudden you're hearing all these different things and you know, again, it's about the orchestration and you got to give credit to whoever the Strategists are behind kind of planning these seeds to be able to kind of get this to get some more traction and it, you know, really get a share of voice of the consciousness of you know which Blockchains are really going to be thriving in the future and, you know, ultimately getting more people on board and and utilizing it. I saw Raupal. I'm probably mispronounced in the name, but I saw him.

Speaker 1: 35:23

Yeah, I saw him I don't know what. It was a little video feed of some sort and he was making the, the equation or the. You know he was saying that he believes now that Solana, due to its UX, is Positioned to become the Apple and that Ethereum is positioned to be the Android, because the Solana UX is so slick and easy to use and you know people like that and kind of would appreciate it from the side of people that appreciate, you know, the how the iPhone UX and simplicity.

Speaker 2: 35:58

And so I hate to give Solana all this time. How do you, how do you, how does that resonate with you? Because I, just to me, it screams like I feel like there's some bullshit. You know, like I it's. And it's interesting what you said, that you said one word Strategist, and that shows you that Solana, like that foundation, is like a company member, this Solana, I think a lot of Etherians even though there's this, this ongoing battle between Solana and Ethereum and obviously Bitcoin doesn't Pay attention to Solana. But it's because, because Solana has these VCs that were behind it, they held so much at launch for themselves, way over 50% between the VCs and the foundation and, like the founding sponsors it was just a ton were withheld by them. We just saw that. What like was it?

Speaker 2: 36:48

60% of Solana is staked. So you know, when something staked, it's not available, it's not on the exchanges, it's not being traded, so one could keep something really inflated. But when you say the word strategist, you know, and when I think a layer twos and polygon and some of these were there, you know, trying to get deals. These guys are trying to get deals with Disney and these big companies to do NFTs, like I get it. But it shows you when you start You're, you're, you really are a company like the web three. Stuff is is almost just smoke and mirrors and you're trying to grow that ecosystem and that's what these guys are doing. And I guess because it started with VCs and they held so much at the beginning and probably hold a ton now. That's why I just I think I own some like a teeny bit of Solana at one point. That's why their lack of decentralization is is why it's hard for me to to spend another penny on it.

Speaker 2: 37:44

I'm not saying that it's not going to go up. It probably will, and I think they're doing a good job at Certainly Dominating crypto, twitter and like jumping all over every conversation, like there's a lot of them and there's a lot of influencers who have turned in the last I would say what would you say three or four months a lot of people like crypto punks and a lot of people all of a sudden are like I'm seeing the light and it's just interesting how they're all seeing the light Around the same time and it's pumping. It's pumping hard and it's just something Feels like you know, there's the room where it happens. Is this in Hamilton? And and I'm not in that room, but I'm just looking at the metrics and the numbers. And the ecosystem is growing. But is it, is it deserving to the 3x from October? I don't know.

Speaker 1: 38:35

Is the? Is the? Is the growth and the utilization of it commensurate with the share of voice that you know the narrative is getting? And that's kind of, you know, the, the thing that we really have to try to understand. It's like and because what you're saying I completely agree, because you almost hear very similar verbiage, you know where it's almost like, hey, this is what you push out or this is what our narrative is like. Oh well, now, you know, I see it. And the reason that I brought up the, the raw paul part, was that he was one of the first people that I started, you know, paying attention to when I first wanted to kind of learn about it, and I remember him talking all the time about being your responsibly long on the east and you know, you know dot and I, and then to see he's an even I mean, let's be honest hoffman, david hoffman, went to the saloon event.

Speaker 2: 39:27

You know this is talking about mad lads which I checked. Mad like all right, the new saloon nft, that's going nuts. Those have to be on our weaver ipfs to be at least decentralized. They're not there on amazon web services, there on s3. It's like that makes no sense to me and that those mad lads I would assume the gods are behind it or the artist, because I mean it's the same duty profile of you said they're all. They all have that same kind of look and there's some cool ones in there, don't get me wrong. But again it's. It's like it's being hosted on on web. To that there's nothing is less web three than something hosted on central cloud servers, in my opinion.

Speaker 1: 40:19

Yeah, and just to kind of tie the knot with the art bozzle stuff and you saying like, hey, it's a business, you know we're talking, and I specifically use the term strategist cuz I meant to you know I mean, it reminds me got me all fired up. It's a little little in 14 minute tangent because you said strategist, you know how to like pop poke.

Speaker 2: 40:41

I'm here's how to you know. You know how to get a rise out of me with like one word.

Speaker 1: 40:48

When I was in another life. I am, you know, used to go to south by southwest as part of my job in the music industry, and it's become a whole other animal now in terms of it's how it is and all the other things it touches. But when I was there, it was the exact same deal, dude. It was like you had the labels, were doing everything they could to get people to go see their bands at those parties. It was really like a battle within of like oh dude, you're gonna go see that, come on come to this one.

Speaker 2: 41:19

So last year yeah.

Speaker 1: 41:21

Yeah. So it was always about like who you know, what influencers you could get to go to see your you know rising artists, and it then translated to the people that weren't there at the other you know parts of the music business. So it's very similar in terms of this hey, we're gonna use these big events In person to then translate to buzz. It happened a little bit, you know. It happened a little bit when we went to the azuki party. Like that worked prior. It didn't, you know, play out well for him down the road with how they you know whatever strategist told them to go with the you know ordinal Drop and everything in the you know just throwing so many new things into the market and deluding what they had going on. But there's something about this activation of the IRL stuff that that is very Strategic behind the scenes well, think about.

Speaker 2: 42:10

I mean, that is a party was literally what two days before the drop and we have a whole first episode. And this is when I had to get off my chest, as I've been with the azuki since the beginning and I love all the people in it. I even think the founders are great people. I just think God is that tone deaf and it was just such a Power, terrible move. But it diluted everything. But it goes to your point and you were there with me in Vegas. Parties work, they create that foam or brain and they create all that buzz. You know whether that buzz last?

Speaker 2: 42:48

and remains to be seen. Obviously, with the zoo kid didn't, but that was a Two thirds dilution event overnight, but it sounds like. So the big ones you said were digods Solana. What were the big three? You said it in our Pudgy's.

Speaker 1: 43:02

Pudgy was yeah, yeah, so you guys all that stuff go, you know. So that's that's. What's interesting is kind of track the sponsorships and I'm not, you know, sounds like I'm almost selling you know the ROI for these events to do the sponsorships, but there is a bounce, it comes from it. They were for sure they work.

Speaker 2: 43:21

it sounds like we need to go to more of these things just to get out there and get a buzz. But you know it's once you get in the influencer realm, in the rings of influencers that Start pumping this stuff, you just wonder, like, who's behind the Solana? You know was was bankless, like Was is. Is there some deals? Are any Solana funds flowing to David for getting a mad lad and stuff like that? And that's why you know it's not on their disclosure sheet. But you know they've got 78 other things that there's there, aligned with their advisors to or who are sponsors or who they have angel investment money with. That's why you know that's part of the reason disco and I started the show.

Speaker 2: 44:06

When I go out to listen to a show and I love Peter McCormack's what bitcoin did?

Speaker 2: 44:10

I think he's talking about macro is fascinating, but with bankless, I can't listen anymore, or if I do, I'm gonna cherry pick if it's a really good guest, because I don't know if what they're saying is honest and true. So I think that's when you and I start talking about let's get the news ourselves and be unbiased. You know, obviously, when you start you've got no sponsors, but you know that's something we want to hold ourselves to anyway is is Be honest out there and give, give newer people especially an upper hand so they don't make a lot of the mistakes no offense that that you made that everybody makes when they come in at the top of a bowl like I would have made the same mistakes had I come in at the top of a bowl. I would have lost a ton of money and then I would have been curious, stuck around and now finally be like Is it gonna happen? Is it gonna happen, you know, and I think it's gonna pay off for all of us in this next one. But you know, yeah, that's that's why we're here.

Speaker 1: 45:08

That's why we're here yeah, and I think that you know that kind of ties to.

Speaker 1: 45:11

There's some news this week about, like you know, rug radio, you know, partnering with D Crip moving forward and you know some of this consolidation and I think that our North Star, you know, has always been trying to just examine things from a non biased and nuanced perspective and I think that you know I'm on board with you on the bank list side of it because that was such a A great is pivot.

Speaker 1: 45:40

You know it was, you know it's your, your, your building your thing on being a maxi's and I like that's a lot, it's pretty good, a lot going on to and I understand you want to cover things, but you know you kind of gotta be, you kind of gotta be true to what you came in as, and I would be really curious to see who is able to fill the void of being kind of a non biased resource and I think, deep down, that's what I hope that we can develop this into, because it's so hard. You know even. You see, you know Instagram post or Twitter post of you know, by this altcoin before, you know, before the ETF and all this stuff, for you know this is my price projection and no one's showing their work on the research and they don't want to know.

Speaker 2: 46:24

Yeah, and I know where it's like sources, always blank at the bottom of the slide. You notice that like where's what's your source, what year is this and what? What coin it like? Give me? Give me where you get this information from.

Speaker 1: 46:36

Yeah, just where you're getting it, and I know that you've even asked you know kind of you know some follow up questions to some people posting and no one really wants to get into showing you the math you know behind the work. So it's interesting. There I think there's an opportunity. I think there's more than opportunity. I think there's a need for you know when we get into this next run, for you know places where people can go for just you know some straight up news and analysis. That's not you know what bag are they pumping or who's behind it, or who's a strategist and everything.

Speaker 2: 47:06

So yeah, hopefully we all get rich together.

Speaker 2: 47:09

And I don't even want to say slow, because I think with the next ETF, I think at some point there's going to be a squeeze on Bitcoin and Ethereum and maybe some of the maybe salon and some of these others, I don't know but you know we want to go with the ones that are trying to that are getting the most Use and have the most varied utility, because a busy blockchain and a blockchain and high demand Is a good blockchain. Now Salana's argument, I think, is like we can just keep throwing compute power at it and keep fees low. Why should fees have to be high, like with Ethereum? Who wants to interact on that? And obviously on Ethereum, as a staker I'm like bring up those.

Speaker 2: 47:48

You know L one Ethereum fees high because I'm staking and the more people are willing to offer for transactions and if I can actually propose one, the more I get, like when I got that hey day of 1.4 ETH this summer and then the L2s can take care of more inexpensive and possibly eventually L3s can take care of very fricking, frictionless, cheaper transactions for video games and things that you know you can't have huge expenses while you're trading items in and out of games all the time. So you know there's trade offs there. But I think what most everyone can agree on is Ethereum versus Salana. Is is more Decentralized, for sure, and you know, because anybody can, you know, with an internet connection and a big enough hard drive can set up and run a validator at least, and that's not to just a validator, you know, just to validate the network. I'm talking about staking.

Speaker 1: 48:48

so I think it'll be just on that really quick. I've been thinking about it, you know, I don't know how many L2s Are gonna, you know, really Stand the test of time and it will be interesting to kind of see you know, I understand what you're saying completely. Like some of them, something could be dedicated, you know, specifically to gaming or whatever it is, and kind of get you know more specialized but from more of kind of the, you know, global perspective or use perspective, who do you know it'll be interesting to see which one, which one, two or three you know kind of, really Are the ones that are, you know, stick with this and aren't the beta max right? So, you know, is it, is it optimism, is it arbitra, is it Polygon? You know, and to your point earlier I wanted to get back to, that was we're seeing a lot of Corporatization, you know kind of of.

Speaker 1: 49:43

You know these different companies and looking at them now as companies and Business development is a big part of it. You know. So people that are saying, hey, you know, polygons got a deal with Disney, that's a big headline and that looks great, but then when you really, you know, look into it, it's like how much is really that you know, being able to kind of flash the logo and be like, hey, we're partnered with Disney, as opposed to how much is really going to happen from that partnership?

Speaker 2: 50:08

Yeah, I mean I don't. I agree with you, but I disagree with the sense that with L2's, there's nothing limiting an L2 from spinning up and just meeting this one niche. I mean that the point of L2's is to obviously Create cheaper transactions and then, you know, have them Ultimately validated on the base layer, ethereum L1. So that's the beauty of Ethereum and that's why I'm such a huge proponent of of staking and and validating, because you're securing the entire network and everything that stacks on top of it. But you know, obviously some of these will be bigger than others and you know who knows what is it? A mutable X? And now injective is the big one that you know. Are those going to be big?

Speaker 2: 50:56

In the gaming thing, you know, if you scroll back a couple years, they both, they both already had huge runs, and then you know when they were kind of announced. And now that the bear, the bull is back, you know we're a couple years further and these guys some of them have been actually working on the infrastructure to, you know, have more games come out. I don't think we're quite there yet where it's Going to hit the mainstream, but now everything spiking again. So is this the time To like try and catch the caboose before the train's going too fast and you can't, you know, run a tracks and catch it, or Are we going to see a little like lol there, before stuff actually happens?

Speaker 2: 51:38

I guess what I found over time is, even if you missed it and it went up, there's always going to be corrections, like Do your homework first, because you know at some point. I think you know. Obviously none of this is financial advice, but we will recommend One of these, that's, that probably will have the most traction, or a couple of them that might be a good flyer for you when there's a correction. But you know, I'm personally not there yet because I think most prices on most coins and tokens, or whatever you want to call them, are pure speculation right now.

Speaker 1: 52:18

Yeah, I agree, and I think that it's easier yet, that it'll, it'll, it'll shape itself over time. I think that you, I agree with you in that you know it's like, it's almost like you know change coming out of the couch all of a sudden. You know these names you haven't heard from. Now it's bully and you're starting to hear All about it. You know it's okay. Now we're talking about you know cosmos and you know all these different ones, and you know you haven't really heard it. So it again it goes back to you know what's going to get the traction, what's going to get the transactions and well, and what influencers are coming out of the woodwork for what token?

Speaker 2: 52:50

and that's the one that nobody Can see transparently because all the sudden, like look at portal coin, like I don't see it on my timeline now, thank god, or maybe I saw this morning, but like that was. That was a straight week and a half to two weeks of just Farming to get more, you know whatever, to get the potential of a higher airdrop. And to me pre game like F off, like get, get that crap out of here.

Speaker 1: 53:18

Like I almost wish.

Speaker 2: 53:20

Twitter would shadow banner. Doc them for doing that garbage. Like I don't want to see a crap in the timeline and it caused me to unfollow a lot of people and at least mute people to to prune the timeline.

Speaker 1: 53:32

So do you think that Aetherium, due to it's more decentralized roots, is that it's significant disadvantage to tapping into influencers, because influencers tie into kind of the business. What we're talking about, like you know, being a business and a strategy, so it's like deploy money towards the influencers and gain. You know share and influence. You know influences essentially and would like the foundation get into that from the aetherium side of it. Or you know it seems like Bitcoin, as you said before. Yeah, you know, we've always had the maxis and you've had it, but it's always been like let it do what it does and you know we're confident in what it is. And you said, like Bitcoin is not concerned about Solana, and so I'm just wondering if we're kind of experiencing, you know, just an influx of influencer, you know, because people are trying to position, you know, for this next wave and being kind of the point, the token and what that is.

Speaker 2: 54:33

Yeah, that's a really good question. I haven't thought of it in that context, but that's exactly what's happened because remember aetherium, even though it still gets congested and expensive, a lot of people you know people in the Solana world, the hardware guys say that's a bug and you know I can't. I see it as a feature like. That means that that block space is valuable. Now is there going to be room for both chains? Probably, but aetherium, I don't think, needs to promote itself as much anymore and it is far more decentralized, so it promotes itself.

Speaker 2: 55:09

Now I think where that's happening is on the layer 2s, right, because all those layer 2s right now those are still there's not one of them that's decentralized yet. They're all multi sig wallets held by a couple people and you know that's. I don't know if that's taboo to talk about, but it's like that's the reality. Those they are centrally held. Now they've air dropped in and a lot more people have it, but they're holding the multi sig burst smart contracts which, if you think about it's crazy. Now the plan is To then decentralize that and eventually turn that off, but that's hard to do because once you do it, you better have set all those dominoes up, right, because if that one, you know it's turned sideways or the gaps little too big, then you know the grand finale where all the dominoes go down the bucket and then the bloom pops, and then the waterfall, and then all the other stuff, the room Gulbur machine. That doesn't happen.

Speaker 1: 56:04

So Sorry, I got a little. I was going down the domino domino visual.

Speaker 2: 56:12

Everybody loves a good domino's YouTube video here and there like those are all gonna fall. Wow, how many rooms is that in?

Speaker 1: 56:20

I don't think I realized what you just said. Like I got a process that that was the case on on the L2s and there's no way like it sounds good as a soundbite or it's oh yeah, well, we'll just we'll end up making it to central and you know, I don't know it's and they will.

Speaker 2: 56:35

I think eventually they have to. I mean, in on Ethereum, it would be. I guess you could keep getting away with that, but at some point other people are in. You know ZK is going to make it more privacy transactions. So there's there's so many and there's so many L2s that are doing and solving so many different problems and, remember, it itself hasn't even fully hardened yet. They've still got tons of proposals coming out for proto dank sharding to make it even more efficient to you know, to run on the main chain.

Speaker 2: 57:08

So, whereas Bitcoin, you know, has done updates, obviously they did Segwit and taproot, which allowed for ordinals and for block space to be a rearranged more efficiently Ethereum, you know where's bitcoins doing things to kind of benefit and go towards hardening to be the digital gold and and you know, the maxi is our cringe. But with ordinals, I think is awesome to me A permanent store of information, to whether that's Satoshi's white paper or art or whatever. But on the Ethereum side, they're still. They're still a roadmap on layer one. That that makes it where it's not fully hardened. So it's all you know it's, it's all still a work in progress. Like I, it's getting old saying like we're so early.

Speaker 2: 57:55

But Right when the whole grand scheme of crypto. We're so early and you know, just think, you know, hopefully our civilization is around in hundreds and hundreds of years. But like at some point, if you have that optimistic view that it is like these are going to play some role because institutions are only so and states are only so powerful for so long, and then you know things shuffle, things change and you know there's there could be another dark ages or something where there's total iron fist control, but you know and in the long run.

Speaker 2: 58:34

It's, it's, it's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 1: 58:36

And thinking about it just from the very current perspective, I have a bunch of things to say after what you just said is, right now the focus is on Bitcoin from the interest perspective due to the ETF, and that means that has to kind of go through and be the first wave. So people are going to have to understand and educate just on the basics of Bitcoin, which, if you look at it from a digestible perspective for institutional investors or people getting into the space, it's not that hard to wrap your head around. The fixed supply, the 21 million. You know da-da-da works, his money works, as you know.

Speaker 1: 59:22

That as opposed to sitting down and explaining all of the applications and Ways that Ethereum can manifest over the coming years, so it's just a little bit more, takes a little bit more effort to digest all the different elements of what you're talking about. So in the beginning, right now, when we're kind of in this, you know waiting for the January 8th to 10th when they're supposed to announce the Bitcoin ETF, it should work as kind of the plow to get, you know, new people involved into Crypto overall and it is pretty simple to explain relative to all the different things that are happening on Ethereum and all the different things that can happen. From that perspective, that it kind of is working as a blocker, and I just think that right now might really be the time to Remain focused on Ethereum and really be Excited about where that's going, because when kind of the spotlight's not on you, that's kind of the right time to, you know, really make sure everything's in place.

Speaker 2: 1:00:25

So that's a good point. Eth has definitely not had it's run, has it? Because Bitcoin went from We'll just call it simple numbers 20 to 40, right? So Bitcoin doubled in the last whatever it is three months. Solana has tripled in the last three months, triple plus, I believe, like 20 ish to 60 ish, right? So you know, and that I think everyone's picking Solana to be like and I'm not saying on this show, we are but but to be that number three, right? So ETH has gone from what 2019 hundred to 2200. It hasn't really seen a rise and ETH is the only deflationary one. It it's a little bizarre, I guess.

Speaker 2: 1:01:16

My theory on that again is Bitcoin's gonna get all the attention. I think Solana has so many influencers where it may be avalanche to where, where their Influence is outsized to what's actually being done, and you know there's. I think that influence has also probably caused more NFT developers to be like, oh, let's develop more in FT. You know, and, and you know, and a lot of the folks who went over there are big into hardware and hardware does solve a lot of problems. So, you know, maybe Solana having the fastest network and kind of subsidizing the costs like they do, maybe that will help, but I I love that Ethereum hasn't popped yet, because To me it is.

Speaker 2: 1:02:03

I don't even look at it anymore as a number two to Bitcoin. I look at it as different to Bitcoin. It's the first smart contract Chain, right. That's where all the crappy shit coin ICO happened, of whatever that was 2017, 2018, whatever year that was, you know, but all these things you could do. And then NFTs blew up and and what like 1718, but really in 2021.

Speaker 2: 1:02:30

So I just think I think it's a good play. But you know, when you see Solana triple you, you kind of you wonder, you wonder, you know. But I think ETH is a good play and I think it's drafting right now and there's so much activity on the chain. In fact, if you want to explain a little, you, you, you know, as we go through this disco and our pre-show is saying, you know, there's so many talking heads out there who just like Bitcoin prediction bitcoins gonna be at $84,000 by the end of next week like it's just all total BS. That's like where's your data? So, you know, the more we get into this, the more we want to use real data and find the metrics that are important to us, like what are people actually, you know what are they actually using.

Speaker 1: 1:03:24

So yeah, explain this chart a little, if you could yeah, I was looking, you know I was, I was feeling the, I was feeling the FOMO and feeling like some slight Ethereum FUD, you know, kind of infiltrating my mind and made me kind of try to look for something to you know Kind of validate or, you know, back up some of the things that I that I come to believe in my mind.

Speaker 1: 1:03:45

And I came across this root data site and it was really, I think it was very assured, reassuring. Frankly, one of the ways that you can utilize the information on this is they have the amount of projects that are being built on the various block chains. So, again, we're talking about are we hearing outsized narratives on certain chains based on influencers or strategies or whatever it is. But if you really come down to the bread and butter, it's you know you want a busy blockchain and what's going to make a blockchain busy is going to be the activity and the projects that are that are being built on it. So you can look at this, you can sort the by ecosystem activity, and Ethereum comes up with, you know, 2144 projects currently being actively built or utilized on on the blockchain. The next one under it is Polygon with, you know, almost 1300. Again, that's a L2 to a theory.

Speaker 2: 1:04:42

So it kind of goes.

Speaker 1: 1:04:43

You kind of got to put that in the Ethereum pot, right, you have BNB, bnb after that. Who really knows how that's all gonna build out or play out. You know that's kind of on the decline, at least from a from a Western perspective for sure. Then you have arbitram coming up again and you know, under arbitram you have avalanche, and then, after avalanche, you have Solana.

Speaker 2: 1:05:03

So so an avalanche or Solana at five in the 500s, whereas again, eth was 2,000, polygon was 1200 projects, arboretum was 710, so you get the point like between Solana and avalanche, that's a thousand total, totally different chains. So you know they're growing, but your, your point was, it made you feel more convicted in your Belief that Ethereum was just keeping its head down and building and that's deep down.

Speaker 1: 1:05:36

That made me fundamentally even more bullish, because it's not playing the game of you know, trying to get the biggest share of voice right now or be Right you know the cool kid in the classroom or at the party. It's like it's just becoming more deflationary, being used more and just building away right now and almost Waiting for people to uncover you know how much is really happening there, and that was that was a my eye opening thing in looking at some of the different tokens that had Chars recently and I was like, well, that's still Ethereum. Oh, that's still on Ethereum. You know people talking about like renderer and all these other ones are getting, are getting buzz here and there, and then when I Dig down and just look at you know what they're being built or deployed on. A lot of them are Ethereum.

Speaker 2: 1:06:18

So six of the top ten here are Ethereum you got base at number 10, zeta base at number 10, zk sync at number nine. You got optimism, of course. At number seven, you got Arbitrum at four, polygona two, and then, of course, you got the base chain itself at three of them at one. So just dominating the top ten with its layer one and layer twos.

Speaker 1: 1:06:39

So and wasn't base? Isn't base built on optimism? I think that was what it was.

Speaker 2: 1:06:45

Yeah, I think, I think you're right. Obviously, that's coin bases, layer two, but yeah, it's, I mean it's on the Ethereum system. So that's all that's all we really care about. Is Ethereum Securing these networks as well? And the answer to those is yes, which to me, a busy chain and a varied chain and more stuff going on and building layers on top of that. The more layers you build on top of a foundational L1 chain, the more that L1 chain in some capacity serves as of Money. I mean, there's no planer way to say that it's a financial instrument at the bottom securing the network. It's, it's, it's Beautiful and it's architecture it's just amazing.

Speaker 1: 1:07:32

Yeah and I'm trying to think of the words to express this thought that just came to me based on this conversation but essentially there was kind of a kind of a Backlash on, you know, vc funded projects in in the last cycle. When you kind of zoom back and look at it like, oh Well, that was VC funded, I wonder how much that could be the case moving forward on these farming and airdrop projects. You know it's like, oh, there's a bunch of buzz on this. It's like, yeah, cuz they just dumped a bunch of tokens in people's wallets, so how much is that like gonna translate to, you know, real utilization and and Growth of activity on a blockchain?

Speaker 1: 1:08:13

you know it could get you a little, it could get you a little buzz, but is that then gonna come back like, yeah, we gave away a lot of x, y or z and people have these tokens, but who knows what they're? If they're gonna be at any value in six months, six years or whatever, it is when? Is, I think after looking at just the the tonnage of building and of activity, it kind of just settled the FOMO factor in my head a little bit.

Speaker 2: 1:08:37

Well, look at you guys other deeds. I mean there was VC money behind that there. They started with a hundred thousand I think, but there's well, there's like 200,000 other deeds. And I did, I will admit it, I FOMO'd into that mint like it was and I didn't even foam one right away, I wasn't even planning on it and I was watching. I saw how bad the gas rates went through the roof because it wasn't an Efficient contract at all. It was kind of. It wasn't as bad as the azuki elemental thing In my opinion, because my bags were way heavier packed on the elementals and the azuki side, but it was definitely screwed.

Speaker 2: 1:09:14

Think about it. Think about how much money. Because they made people KYC in for that. So that you know, because they had VC, the VCs wanted KYC. That's back when the market, the NFT market, was really good and those guys probably made a fortune. You know Yuga got X amount of dollars to share X amount of profits from this once they got that initial thing. Yeah, obviously, if royalties were still a thing, they'd want to keep that. Sure. You know that money printing machine going. But you know, I'm sure there are some royalties from that, but they're not as big as now, as I would expect as Royalties, if, if, kind of crept to zero because of blur, but I mean that Move that they made netted them a lot of money Yuga that is but it also so again deluded the ecosystem.

Speaker 2: 1:10:06

Like how much, when that 3d Metaverse is finally done, being built and people are on there, like if you have six apes and four of those apes are rare and you have real estate super close, yeah, you're probably gonna stay engaged longer, but everyone else is gonna be like where, where am I? Like like this is like the equivalent of like Tanzania or something you know, like I don't even have a boat to get over to you. I mean, how do you possibly and I know they have portals and different but think about how complex of a game You're building up and creating and everybody still has to just be like let's go. I mean this could take years To build and get right. And you know I hope they nail it. And you know, for all the the kind of downplaying of Yuga, like they've done a lot of good things and they they kind of invented the mold of the new Thing. But I think what has been proven with a zoo key, even with Yuga, like, the more you add to a collection, eventually it's gonna dilute.

Speaker 2: 1:11:10

Now, can can board apes keep each bull cycle? Can that be the coolest, hottest NFT to kind of show your status each cycle? I don't know, because to me I don't know if those stand the test of time. It's again. I go back to like the 90s, when that one year, you know, we all wore neon like hats because I think they finally could print neon and that trend went and it was gone in a flash. Now I'm not comparing Board apes to neon, but it could go out of style, whereas a crypto punk, also by Yuga, is More timeless and and an early part of the collection. It's on chain. It quality checks more boxes to be art and long-lasting, in my opinion.

Speaker 1: 1:11:58

Well, I think that it's kind of what we talked about earlier with the advent of, you know, the ordinal theory and everything like that. Like that, every cycle should probably, or will probably, have its own value structure and you know, what was relevant, you know, in the previous cycle may not maintain its relevance unless there's, you know, tweaking and kind of making sure that it fits kind of what's what's in vogue at the time, and I think that we're seeing a kind of a transition in that. One last thing on Yuga. It's like let's not forget that Yuga was Talking about as a business, you know, like that was a Hollywood influencer business to the extreme. You know, yeah, I, you know so they were. We're talking about influencer stuff when they're handing stuff out to Paris Hilton into frickin Jimmy Fallon and it's coming from, you know, gaioceri.

Speaker 1: 1:12:48

You know it's like yeah, whatever that agent group was, yeah, was it would say it was Gaioceri, it was Gaioceri yeah and you know he, I knew him when he started as Madonna's manager and you know, then he got Maverick records and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I'm told, talk about ultimate insider influencer, like that's where that really kind of got its got its legs.

Speaker 2: 1:13:12

So right, that's the old school influencers right.

Speaker 1: 1:13:16

Yeah. So, all that being said, it made me feel a lot more relaxed and and steadfast in my belief that you know A lot of the theory, like a theorems, where I'm really focused, and I'm happy that I'm, that I'm trying to carve out a space there.

Speaker 2: 1:13:31

Yeah, I think that's well put and a good point. So it's funny. We went on a nice long journey there, which I really liked, and it all stemmed, believe it or not, from rug radio and decrypt and and I think the net net there is just like when, when groups consolidate, it's we're realizing that this is. It turns from loose influencers behind the curtain and these rings and these, these discord channels, to businesses right, and everything you read out there from news you know, from coin desk, to decrypt. You've got to take everything with a grain of salt because there is an agenda behind each of those and and that's what we're here to uncover.

Speaker 2: 1:14:19

So definitely follow us, definitely hit the like button and do all that. Leave us a review, do all that stuff and and join us and Help us. If there's things you want to talk about or if there's topics that are interesting to you or someone we should talk to, please let us know. That's how we got dr G on here to talk about AI and decentralization, which was our super cool episode. So just join us and talk to us and let us know what you like, because the I'm sure what you like, if you're listening and you're sticking with us, then it's, it's it's gonna be is a group that we kind of all grow this Honestly and transparently together.

Speaker 1: 1:14:59

Well said, I agree completely and we appreciate all feedback at all times. And that's not just speak like. We're always Thirsty for for ideas and things to explore and you know we talk about looking at potentially developing tools or you know, things that we can that could help people and and help the kind of movement moving forward. So we're we're in it for the long term and again trying to be Just a little bit of a voice of nuance and and kind of ask the question Is it really? You know, I think that's a really important question these days when, when you Get certain things that kind of infiltrate your, your, your thought track, it's like, yeah, but is it really? And that kind of helps to, helps to kind of give you a step back.

Speaker 2: 1:15:41

For sure. So the one other thing we wanted to share with you today, which is really interesting. So you know, like I said, everybody we're all just in like this Bitcoin ETF holding pattern, but just how much? Like, let's say, 12 ETFs get approved, which I think the date was set to be like 20 or January 15th, 2024, so let's just say it happens in January. So 12 ETFs all at the same time are open for business. Now, obviously, hedge funds and some pension funds especially pension funds, probably and maybe retirement funds, will be slower to move and have to get approvals and they might jump on the bandwagon. But you know, I cannot imagine in the US that the floodgates Aren't gonna open. Maybe not on all 12. That's, 12 is a lot, but you know they're gonna open.

Speaker 2: 1:16:41

So how much Bitcoin are on the exchanges now? And you see FTF because of the bottom there, obviously they don't matter. But so at the top, you got Binance at 522,000 Bitcoin, you got Coinbase at 440,000, bitfinex at 389, ok X at 132, gemini and on and on and on. The total Bitcoin out there right now is 1.83 Million Bitcoin, which is 9.4% of the supply, which is a pretty healthy number. Right, you almost got 10% of the supply that you and I. You know we can't buy it all because we can't afford it, but we can buy some. Right now there's, there's no shortage.

Speaker 2: 1:17:23

But think about when these 12 funds I assume some are pre-gobbling, just you know, obviously taking a little risk on, but have been pre-gobbling. The word was that BlackRock was doing it through miners, which is the best way to not change the price, right, because the Bitcoin just came into existence, so it didn't really hit the market. It doesn't put a squeeze on the supply. But how do these guys even you know, fidelity BlackRock over a trillion dollars and holding, I don't know, fidelity is at a trillion BlackRock's well, well, well, over a trillion, but they're, these are just goliath. So the amount of money now is it's like it's it's. It's gonna make our current crypto whales look like minnows again. You know, it'll make us just look like a little like or a little like and like a little little boss here, a little Little bit quite over here.

Speaker 2: 1:18:16

Yeah, well, we. But the beauty is we got to front run this whole thing. So so you've got nine point four percent of Bitcoin. Right? Eth has 13 million 247 Thousand member. Eth has a much bigger supply at 120 million. Where's Bitcoin, of course, is capped at 21 million, with 19.4 million in circulating supply. Now the other whatever, that is 1.6 coming out in the next hundred years. So You've got 13.2 million ETH. That's about 11 percent the supply. So a little more Bitcoin, which is 9.4 percent. So my theory on this is that if there's even some demand here, especially when the hedge funds, like some of these hedge funds are gonna jump in and these you know, the Raymond James and some of these personal investment companies like with, because clients have been Asking for it, they're gonna I would just think the floodgates are gonna open and at some point I don't know if there's enough to buy. I mean that sounds like a lot of money, but that could go super quick. I mean that's under $100 billion in Bitcoin. I mean that in the big whale, that's nothing.

Speaker 1: 1:19:41

Yeah, and remember last week we were talking about, you know, Qatar alone is budgeting 500 billion potentially.

Speaker 2: 1:19:49

Allegedly, allegedly.

Speaker 1: 1:19:52

I understand, but I'm just saying that.

Speaker 2: 1:19:54

They're talking about it. They're talking about it.

Speaker 1: 1:19:56

Yeah, but my point is we're just talking about the ETF side of it, you know, and there's still all these other players that may get a little antsy and want to get involved. So it goes, just looking at this, it takes you back to basic. You know, the first day you hear about supply and demand and you got to look at that and I hate to make it that basic, but it really kind of is that basic. You know, if the demand pumps like this and the supply is fixed, what happens? The price goes up.

Speaker 2: 1:20:24

Yeah for sure. So I mean, for both of these assets for Bitcoin and Ethereum there's just there's not a ton out there on the exchanges and if you you know, we'll explain it to the folks who are listening and not watching. But if you look at the charts, we've got a good one here from CryptoQuant. So this is Bitcoin over the last three years. Look at the amount of. So the black here is the price and the blue is how much is on the exchange. This is just the last year, but the amount on the exchange went from 2.7 million and now it's down to 2 million Bitcoins. Right, so that's the 9.4% where we are now. Or what are we at? 1.8 now, actually. So to me, I mean, if you're listening the supply in the last year goes down quite quite quickly. Now, if you look at Ethereum, it's even crazier Now, obviously, with staking, when you have staking, that stuff gets locked up and you know if someone's staking, it's obviously not on exchange.

Speaker 2: 1:21:39

The amount there in the last three years has gone from 31, 32 million-ish down to where we are now at about 14 million. And remember these two companies they're close in their numbers. So if it's not exact from what I said before. It's because CryptoQuant is actually including the Mt Gox holdings, especially for Bitcoin. Why? Because they're counting that as an exchange, which is silly, because that money is locked up and is actually, once it unlocks, it's gonna actually go to the people who got screwed for 10 years, you know, holding it. So some of those people are gonna be very rich and very happy.

Speaker 2: 1:22:19

But the amount of supply in the last three years of Ethereum and Bitcoin has gone down considerably. You know, and you're right, I'm being very US-centric here because, like Qatar, yeah, I mean, if they spend 500 billion, well, how do you spend 500 billion when the supply of Bitcoin right now is under 100 billion? You don't. But obviously the more you buy, the more supply and demand, the more price just squeezes up. So at some point, yeah, you can keep buying, the price will keep going up and you can get your 500 billion because you're gonna be at $100, 200, 300, $400,000 and up per Bitcoin, I mean, you know. So we'll see what kind of you know being the biggest financial system in the world. We'll see what kind of pressure gets put on Bitcoin and eventually Ethereum and if they get their ETF. But I suspect it's gonna be a lot. At first it's gonna get a lot of buzz and a lot of news and then, I think, a lot of the laggards are gonna jump on.

Speaker 2: 1:23:23

You said something really interesting before that. I want to circle back on. You keep thinking of Bitcoin, ethereum. You kept saying people have to understand. Like now it's easier with the ETF First. They have to understand that, but with Ethereum. They have to understand, they have to understand, and what you forget to realize is we're the early adopters, we're the ones who have to understand, because the UX isn't baked in yet.

Speaker 2: 1:23:48

All this when the big chasm is crossed to the mainstream. A lot of this is gonna be in retirement accounts or just basic trading accounts. It's gonna be invisible to them. It only matters to you and the people in this ecosystem who are super into it and either wanna build in it or really just understand it and how money can be reinvented and reimagined. The mainstream. It's just like when you buy your taco. It's like you don't need on your receipt where the meat was sourced and what kind of tomatoes are being used in the salsa. You just like that. It tastes good and has a little kick at the end. So I think it's gonna be huge and even if it's a slow, sluggish start, I feel like it's gonna put pressure on the supply of Bitcoin and I just can't imagine, like pension funds not at least at some point, once the market moves to the mainstream, allocating one or 2% to it as simply another hedge along with gold.

Speaker 1: 1:24:54

Yeah, I totally agree, and I think that one of the things that we're not talking about enough which is pretty obvious is nobody who's already owns Bitcoin or is holding Bitcoin is looking to sell it. So you gotta factor that into the market and into the demand. And if there's X amount of people or X, you have the sailors, you have the other groups, you have the individual retailer. No one's like, oh, now's my time to dump Bitcoin. I think the only thing that maybe I would sell some Bitcoin for would maybe be an ordinal, but that's still within Bitcoin to a degree. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 1:25:29

So, I just don't see it Like, I don't think-.

Speaker 2: 1:25:33

Are we both going node monkeys?

Speaker 1: 1:25:35

I don't know how much they're gonna cost, so I'll have to check the purse. But from a conceptual perspective, yes, and like this. But as I say, like that's the other part on this. You look at a potential hockey stick of the demand and then you have to add nobody's gonna be like, oh yeah, I'll just sell mine for market, like everyone's in it for the long term I would think that's already adopted in it and is holding it. It's not on exchanges, as we've shown, and I just don't see a lot of people being like, yeah, now's my time to dump it. You know, maybe a little profit taking here or there but, it goes against the whole hold mentality of Bitcoin.

Speaker 2: 1:26:09

Well, it goes against the whole hold mentality. And once the floodgates open, it's not like all the demand is gonna be met in two days. In two days, like to me, it's either gonna be a super fast than a slower squeeze or a super slow than a gradual. But at some point people are gonna see like, when is the mainstream coming in? They're not when the first people.

Speaker 2: 1:26:35

You know, when the new bakery finally opens its doors and the first three people come screaming in with their money, the person's not like, okay, I'm gonna sell my interest in this bakery right now. You know you're gonna wait and see how many customers you get and all that stuff. And I think, with all the regulation and you know, with just all the financial entities, both public and private, and companies and, like you said, globally, and states and sovereigns, like it just to me seems like why wouldn't everybody carry at least some? And that to me says hold long-term for everybody who got in early now and who's holding not financial advice, but yeah, no, not financial advice, but it's advice for Chicago, yeah, and it's a complete perspective change, you know.

Speaker 1: 1:27:26

So, once you start going into that bigger thought and picture of you, know we're looking.

Speaker 1: 1:27:31

I think I read that it was between January 8th and 10th when that announcement's gonna actually come down because of how the week falls and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1: 1:27:40

Hopefully that can be a point where maybe it'll get everybody more on the same page and realizing that we're rooting for an entire change of all the values that were so exciting and so intriguing about this space and we get past this. You know what the bulk of this show was really about was kind of this you know strategization and that's not a word. But you know this business-ification and business development of the different projects and things, and we can sit back and look at it and be like, okay, people are coming in, people are gonna use this and we may actually see some of the changes that we've been rooting for. So that's kind of how I hope this goes. And then you know, I think everyone even if you're a big ETH Maxi, I think you're rooting for the BIT, the BIT ETF, to go well, you know. So it's kind of like it kind of gets everybody you know pulling on the same side of the rope and I think that'll be really kind of gratified and positive to see.

Speaker 2: 1:28:33

Yeah, for sure, rising tide, in this case, will definitely lift all boats, and you know, google right on time is now coming in.

Speaker 2: 1:28:43

You know and I guess they've got regulators everywhere on them too but they are clearing BTC ETF advertising in January because obviously even the people there think that that's imminent. That's a pretty bullish sign to me, but the fact they haven't allowed crypto advertising in years and now they're allowing it sounds like at least a portion of that to thaw, because you know, if you can't advertise on Google, I mean, what are they? 78, 80, 90% of the search market, I mean that too will open up the floodgates yet again and probably open up the floodgates to some scam. So hopefully they got controls in place to try and keep a lot of those away, because there are a lot.

Speaker 1: 1:29:32

Yeah, and that's kind of the good news, right, is that it's not. You know, I don't think any of these larger organizations are gonna get caught flat-footed on this. You know there's been plenty of time to develop your time and strategy, and I'm sure you know the VanX and the, you know Fidelity's. It's not like. You know they're like it's gonna get approved. They're gonna be like okay, now what do we do? So you know things, the groundwork's been laid and let's hope that there's decent execution and that you know we can let as many people get involved and everyone can benefit. So it's an exciting time. It's almost like you want the countdown clock to, you know, january 10th to start kicking in. We're sitting here mid-December, so it really is imminent. We're probably about three, four episodes away from actually talking about if this thing comes alive and see kind of how a landscape could change, because if it doesn't, I don't know what that's gonna do to the air and the sails as well. So we really gotta pay attention and be poised and ready to go.

Speaker 2: 1:30:23

Yeah, I think there will definitely be some cell pressure there. But you know, I just-.

Speaker 1: 1:30:29

But that's an opportunity it is an opportunity To me.

Speaker 2: 1:30:32

in the long run it just the ETF feels inevitable. You know, remember careful what you wish for. Then you've got the big, big, big whales all of a sudden now playing that game and Bitcoin. They're trading on paper. So you know, as long as we can hold the underlying and have our own hardware wallets and secure that stuff like sign me, up.

Speaker 1: 1:30:56

It does kind of scare me, though, you know, hearing you know institutional investors trying to position it, and you know I just some of me does fear you know what that narrative turns into and how they, you know, totally commodify it, and we look at it from that side. So that'll be something I think we should keep an eye on too, and you know you do. I do think the base has been laid for, you know, the understanding of how it should work and how it goes, and that's kind of the immutable thing that's so beautiful about the. You know Bitcoin from the jump right, but it just I don't want it to get too icky with, like, fund managers you know telling me why they think this is the move and it's like, dude, that's good, that's good. Just, I'm gonna hold, we'll see how it goes.

Speaker 2: 1:31:43

Yeah, it's, it's, we'll see. So that's what we'll talk about on this show for sure. So also lots of stuff. You know, like I said, we tie threads together from old shows to new shows and you know some of the stories are interrelated and I think that's where a lot of folks out there fall short. They just, you know, they talk about this story and then this story. This is the news, and it's just like it's parroting. And we all know that the smart folks in the space know that all of this stuff is kind of a dance that's interwoven with each other. So, as such, we follow up with stories that we've already covered and you know kind of what's going on with them now. So just go all throughout the first one if we don't have any more, kind of in the main news section.

Speaker 1: 1:32:29

No, I think we've. I think we've covered the, we've covered the up to date and you know, I think there's a few that we should touch on that have kind of resurfaced with some interesting new data points, so to speak.

Speaker 2: 1:32:39

For sure. So the first one is we did a whole show on nouns and, for those of you who don't know or can't see, nouns are fully on chain Ethereum, NFT, but it's really so much more than that. They're a DAO, a decentralized, autonomous organization. We're holding one of these nouns tokens. Basically every noun has the nouns glasses which were in the Super Bowl a couple of years ago, so they're getting their name out there. But there's Tigerheads, Codewhangerheads, Curlingstoneheads, Shipheads, you name it. There's a head for that and they're very pixelated because they're all totally compacted on the Ethereum chain. What's been going on is a lot of early people this has been going on for two and a half years now but a lot of early buyers who paid somewhere sometimes 50, 100 plus ETH for some of these nouns, were kind of upset that they weren't maybe realizing more value or they weren't investing in more stuff. But whatever reason, a lot of nouns have bailed in three different forks. So we can look at the forks I'll show you in a second. But there's been three forks now and since we last did it, we covered fork zero and fork one. Everything in crypto just starts with a zero. Just get used to it. So zero is always one and one's always two, but so there was two forks, fork zero and fork one.

Speaker 2: 1:34:04

Now, on November 16th, what was that? Like three or four weeks ago, very silently, it didn't get much buzz because there's so much hype on the bull market. Now this one just didn't. I didn't even hit my timeline until I just went on there. I'm like wait a second, was there another fork? So the arbitrages are buying nouns. There's a huge nouns treasury. So what these folks are doing is they're arbitraging and buying as many nouns as they can and then they're forking. So look at this, so notice all these nouns are going for, like in the 20s, 21, 20, 20, 20, 20, 18, 22, 21. So what the ARBs are doing, this was November 12th, 13th. So look at this we go to the 13th. Remember November 16th was when the big fork happened. So there's the 16th, the 17th, remember you could still get in because it was proposed on that day. We're at 23, 20, and then all of a sudden, you see it dipped to like 15, 16. So now what?

Speaker 1: 1:35:03

these folks did is November late teens in November. So like November 18 or so, you're starting to see the it moved out from the higher rate.

Speaker 2: 1:35:12

Yep. So now we're November 27th, 28th, now we're at 11, november 30th, december 1st or 12, december 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 11, 12, 12, 12 and a half, 11 and a half, 12, 10. So the numbers are teeny and that's because this fork. Every time you get enough nouns to fork, then you are taking the treasury. So think about this that group of 53 nouns right there paid. They were paying about 20 ETH, on average, maybe 21 ETH, but they're looking at the entire treasury of nouns, which used to be. I believe when you and I first looked at this, this was like 24 to 30,000 ETH. It was a ton of ETH. It's down to 8,000 now. So each time these nouns fork, remember all these other people might have been paying 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 ETH for these.

Speaker 2: 1:36:10

These guys are the new guys are paying 20. Well, guess what? However many nouns there are, they get that cut of the entire treasury. It's almost like you could call it the great experiment, or you could call it a glitch, but the arbors are trying to figure out. So they're probably they probably netted like 24, 25, 26 ETH, so they probably all netted like plus two or three ETH to make this arbitrage play. Well, it's great for them and it's an interesting experiment for us not owning nouns, but if you own a noun, your treasury. The goal of nouns is to propagate nouns and make it a global, the biggest global brand out there, which is a very adventurous and ambitious cause right and costly.

Speaker 1: 1:36:59

It's not easy to launch a potential lifestyle brand along the lines of a Nike, or and that's where their goal is to become a household name across the world, so you're gonna need a pretty big purse to be able to get your stuff placed in front of the right people.

Speaker 2: 1:37:16

Yep. So these 53 nouns forked yet again, and so those nouns get returned to the main treasury. There's also a second set of nouns that go with the noun fork too, and they get to take their share of the treasury. So now you saw roughly a couple of days after this fork when this passed it. Now we're at 10 to 12 ETH, so they're probably thinking they can net like 15. You can imagine this is causing some consternation. So it's just, it's a race. It's a slow race to zero. But the actual core believers and I'm actually I don't hold any nouns now, but I definitely plan to and I like the concept of this whole thing and I will definitely own a noun at some point. Not financial advice, but it's interesting. So the nouns actually came up with a proposal to raise the fork threshold. The fork threshold was 10%. So all you needed remember one noun comes into existence every day. It's bid on by the general market. Well, right now the general market is arbitrages. They're trying to get to 10% of the threshold of nouns and then they can vote. All they need is the 10% of nouns to get out and then they take that treasury more than they paid in to get out. So now the nouns just passed to raise the fork threshold to 30%. So now you need 30% more 30% of the nouns of the circulating supply and the main group have to vote to get out. So, as you can see, it is going to. They're trying to make it harder, but the arbitrages, as you can see, they're still playing the game. They're just gonna have to play it arguably three times as long to get their net profit of ETH, and if someone's got a lot of money, they might buy 10 or 12 of these things. They have to wait for 70 to get minted or 70 days, but they'll get maybe two or three ETH times, however many nouns they had. So the game keeps continuing to be played.

Speaker 2: 1:39:33

What nouns is also doing is for the proposals that come in. They're really trying to find good proposals. So if you have a good idea for nouns and how to propagate it out there and I've got a good one I think that I'll share later on this show. But they're gonna try and spend the money to get it out there, because the more they spend, the more the arbitrages are like wait a second, we can't predict how much money is gonna be in there. So there's this cat and mouse game going on right now of hey, we're gonna spend the money, and now it takes 30% and they're trying to limit them.

Speaker 2: 1:40:06

I mean, I would argue at some point I don't know what that number is, maybe it's five ETH, maybe it's four ETH, maybe it's seven ETH, but at some point I would assume we may get to a number where it's not worth it for the arbitrages anymore and it is then the people who actually want to be a part of nouns can get in. So we're entering a bull market. I assume more people want to get in on nouns, but there's this weird balancing act. So the nouns, the verbs who are like kind of the brain trust, and the Oz behind the curtain had a whole write up of the kind of game theory behind all this.

Speaker 2: 1:40:45

But I will say as a bystander, this has been fascinating to watch because a Dow can work, but not all Dow's are fully proven and this is either a feature or a bug. If I was an early investor it would have been a bug because I'd have been super bum, because if I had stuck around, you're just watching your treasury deplete and the value of your share of the treasury. Remember the first fork? I think it was 36 to 38, then it went down to like 28, 29. Now we saw it was 22. Now it sounds like it's gonna be like 12 or 13. Like you're just watching it go down At some point you're like, oh my God, I'm gonna jump ship and maybe I'll just get another one in or get a second fork, one for pennies on the dollar.

Speaker 1: 1:41:34

So it's fascinating and I was. It was enlightening just to sit through and be a part of the conversation with Brennan when we were talking about it. And, as you say, this is a real time experiment on the functionality of Dow's and looking at the structure and the potential vulnerabilities and where it can go. And if you aren't a holder and you're not hurt by that, you're right, it is. You're really watching the evolution of something and, if I recall, with the nouns, other people could use kind of their structure for other organizations. So it really was this development of a novel concept, of a new way of governance and to see kind of. It almost feels like the arbitrageers are like they snuck in the gate and we're gonna see how much they can do and how much they can influence it and you're really looking at a potential new. The governance aspect of Dow's can be fascinating and I think they've always been at the forefront of trying to understand how this can be leveraged and utilized in a really game-changing way. So yeah, that's remarkable.

Speaker 2: 1:42:47

Yeah, so we'll, as this unfolds, we'll see. I mean, it looks like there's probably gonna be a fork three and a fork four, but now the nouns are being more strategic and how they approach it, which is super cool. So what other things? We wanna follow up on disco for the.

Speaker 1: 1:43:05

The only other thing I was thinking maybe I'd ask you about a little bit is just to check in on. I know we talked about the exit or the potential exit strategy of we did the whole show or the deep dive about comparing solo-staking Lido and Rocket Pool and you kinda walked us through your entrance into running a node from Rocket Pool and I was curious just kind of where things are at from that side of things.

Speaker 2: 1:43:35

Yep, good question. So I staked in Rocket Pool with 80th and drove the train and 24th stacked on with me, so I was getting 14% of the staking rewards by being the validator right, so it was a very interesting concept and I do love it, you know.

Speaker 2: 1:43:57

But we did talk about the risks of that show and it's funny. I think I jumped in almost a little too quickly to Rocket Pool. I don't regret it but, like so, I exited the validator after our show last week. I exited the validator to Rocket Pool and it took basically for the beacon chain to recognize the exit I think it took about a day and a half. It said exiting, exiting, and then it exited about day and a half and then it took another 256 blocks or about 27 hours where it was withdrawable, what is very difficult. And Rocket Pool actually has decent documentation. But it doesn't explain very well when it's Because basically in Rocket Pool they're doing all these smart contracts behind the scenes Because, remember, you have to stake 2.5 ETH worth of Rocket Pool, which the price of Rocket Pool now is down pretty bad, but I think it's like 25, 26.

Speaker 2: 1:45:03

So you have to convert your Rocket Pool to ETH or ETH to Rocket Pool. You have to stake that. You have to stake your ETH to get your 14%, and I did the smoothing pool too, and just the returns it didn't seem worth it to me, but I'm glad I did it and I don't have my money out yet because I'm checking to make sure that it says exited and I waited the time where it is withdrawable. But the way that they explain it to then getting it out, what I understand is basically there's over a million validators now and it basically just creates a bookmark every block, Like, okay, this many validators if they're asking for rewards whether it's just your validator rewards or getting all your money out and closing the validator down those are treated the same and it just goes through like one to 100,000. And then it's like okay, stop, it creates a bookmark and then it does it again and then it just starts over again. So right now I'm not seeing the ETH or I'm not sure if I'm reading it right. So I'm just waiting a week to make sure that that thing's cycled through.

Speaker 2: 1:46:13

I think I could take it out now but, like I said, between having my own solo validator and running this Rocket Pool node, the Discord group in Rocket Pool was almost egging a little and I don't think they're ready for prime time, Like if they're basically saying, if you're not doing command line stuff, like we don't want you. That's kind of what I got and you know I can do the terminal command line stuff, but I have an interface or DAPNO to do it. And the fact that they were just like, oh, you're one of those DAPNO guys like beat it, it doesn't make me want to stick Rocket Pool and honestly, the extra rewards I just don't think are worth it. And I think the one thing I'd want to pass on to everybody is when you're in a bull market and you're staking like a second layer like this, where you're doing smart contracts on top of the staking like my solo stakers right now in a bull market.

Speaker 2: 1:47:17

If I get it out, I can get it out. You know, within that one or two day period it's no big deal because there's no one queue to get out. But the more you stack on top of that like a Rocket Pool or a Lido, if the market tanks or something glitches like one of the consensus layers or something and everyone's racing at the same time, if you're late, that and that building is on fire, like you may get burned and it may. Your Rocket Pool may unpeg from ETH, like. There's a lot of things that can go wrong.

Speaker 2: 1:47:48

It would the beauty of smart contracts in Ethereum and the whole crypto ecosystem. It will eventually unwind, but you may be last out and you may get burned with like a DPEG or be a slow one out. Even if it doesn't DPEG. The price of the underlying asset might go down so much you simply can't get out of it to get back in cash or to get back in Bitcoin, like if there's a fire in the building. You're just one more step removed. I can't even get the Rocket Pool out for 28 days because they do these big 28 day cycles. So just everything you do and put in. There are definitely rewards, but the more rewards you get, just know that there's underlying risks with time and that one, two or 28 days could be what like makes you lose half your ETH or make stuff screwed up entirely.

Speaker 1: 1:48:41

So I know that we kind of went through the evaluation and the exploration of the different options and that was what really stuck out from watching and listening to kind of your experience was like, well, why do I have to buy Rocket Pool? And like they're calling it ETH, but it's not. It's like 2.4 or whatever. It's like well, really, just tell me that I have to buy this much Rocket Pool. And what's kind of a word to the wise I guess out of this is you couldn't have imagined any of the things that you're dealing with, like they weren't positioned as any potential situations through looking at the website and setting it.

Speaker 2: 1:49:25

Right. They're just like oh, just do this. And then there's basically one line of code to unsteak and I did that and nothing happened at first, and then I saw it exiting. I'm like, oh okay, it worked. I didn't even get a confirmation on that. It was very, it felt very sketchy and, like I said, I haven't got my ETH back yet, but I'm confident that I will. I'm just being extra cautious and waiting. But in waiting thank goodness I'm in a bull market and not in a market where I actually am desperate or need it or just don't I see everything tanking and I want to get out first. So, because I want to get out of that Rocket Pool and reposition.

Speaker 2: 1:50:03

Yeah, and I had to put in 2.4, 2.5 ETHs worker Rocket Pool. Now that the conversion rates are a little lower, rocket Pool's go down a little, I'll probably get two ETH back.

Speaker 2: 1:50:15

And obviously it's a good lesson learned and, like you said, until I went through that with the staking, I wouldn't have known that there was these extra layers to get out on top of the ETH staking. I assume there were, but yeah, it's not necessarily position that way and I think don't get me wrong I think Rocket Pool is an interesting, great way to do it, but I guess, being a solo staker, I'd much rather have an Ethereum staking node that I control and I can get in and out of and there's risks with that too, but the reward is less, but the risk, in my opinion, is far less because I'm directly hooking in to the main chain.

Speaker 1: 1:50:59

And true or false, the reception when you're going into the community of the solo stakers appeared to be a little warmer than what you got the other way. So then you're kind of feeling like you're walking home late at night alone when you're trying to withdraw or exit and get the right answers and get guidance.

Speaker 2: 1:51:17

Yeah, I would say so. Dappnode actually makes its own machines. They have software that I installed on a NUC like a Linux, a simple Linux box, but they also have their own like pre-built boxes. So a lot of their Discord channel is more about that and what's launched. But they are good folks. It's not the most active Discord channel I've ever seen, but they were somewhat helpful. I wouldn't say it was coming home, but at least it was like they'll help you on that side. But their integration with Rocketpool is still it's literally version 1.0, and I'm sure there's more updates to make it more clear.

Speaker 2: 1:52:01

I probably did it a little earlier than I should have, but I was curious and I'd consider doing Rocketpool again, but I don't know. I think there's other places. Well, if I can build another validator, build up to 32Eath, if I have 6 to 8 to 10Eath, I can always stake in Lido, which comes with its own risks, but I can unsteak my Eath and Lido faster. I'm only getting 4% as opposed to maybe, like we'll call it 6% with Rocketpool, because you get the 14% on the other folks, but it's also less headache. So I need to figure out with a less than third If I want to keep building validators, kind of, is my long-term annuity of getting Eath every week, like I am now. What's that strategy when you have from 2 to 32Eath before you set up your next?

Speaker 1: 1:52:56

validator.

Speaker 2: 1:52:58

Just buy NFTs. Yeah, I mean, it's worked for me in some ways and it's completely screwed me and others.

Speaker 1: 1:53:05

But never, but it's been fun.

Speaker 2: 1:53:08

All right.

Speaker 1: 1:53:09

Well, I think that was good follow-up from the other shows. It is interesting how things come back and I think that at Chicago I think you made a really good point that I want to hold us to circling back to things that we covered, as opposed to just punch listing news items of the week and not trying to put the different ingredients into the stew so that we're building something at the end of it where it all feeds upon itself and we can get some exponential knowledge. So I think that that's valuable, at least from my perspective, to even go back and look at the nouns, because when we first sat down I was more just onboarded into the concept overall. It was kind of just whoa, wow.

Speaker 2: 1:53:49

I threw you into that one. I'm like, hey, we have another show in four hours and it's on nouns. We're like awesome, what are nouns?

Speaker 1: 1:53:57

Yeah, nouns are kind of a heady concept to wrap your head around in the beginning.

Speaker 2: 1:54:00

But now, with this follow-up, you're like, okay, I see this pattern, I see how the arbitrage, you see how these bigger systems work and we're on the ground floor and our dows haven't even remotely been solved and we get to be on the ground floor to see how these things work, which is super cool because at some point dows that are more social structures they're going to figure out the best combo of company slash dow For more automated ones.

Speaker 2: 1:54:27

I think that's easier to figure out where dow just runs contract and sends funds to X number of wallets. That's obviously the easiest use to the dow, but it's going to make an impact. We're kind of on the front lines of the experimentation how, and nouns, in my opinion, is by far one of the best ones doing it and really not being afraid to tinker. Not only not being afraid to tinker, but also not being afraid, especially with the nouners, with how many they hold. They could have been like no, no, no, no, we're locking the movie theater doors and nobody can get out because that treasury is too big and we want to spend it on nouns.

Speaker 2: 1:55:06

Well then, the vote and everything like then you weren't decentralized in the first place and they took a very moral high ground there and I respect them for that. I mean, obviously it angered a lot of people, but those people were able to get out. A lot of them obviously lost a lot of ETH, but some didn't and some might have paid 30 or 40 ETH and they got out kind of broke. Even we're like, okay, that was a good experiment, but this is too wealthy of a game for me right now and I want to get my ETH back. So it's fascinating to be on the 50 yard line of this, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:55:39

So again we sit down, we start talking and before we know it, much time has passed through the old hourglass and we covered quite a bit and I really I thought it was an interesting conversation. I think I'm excited for the next show and what comes up. So usually we try to work in, you know, just kind of a not really a moment of gratitude, but a moment just to kind of recognize, you know, something good that's going on in the world. With a lot of these headlines out there, it's kind of hard to, it's kind of hard to always, you know, zoom back and really look at the positive things in life. So I don't know if, chicago, if you have anything you wanted to kind of touch on to kind of wrap up the show, yeah, I got a couple, but I'll just pick one of them.

Speaker 2: 1:56:27

I can't remember what I did last week, but this week I would say if I said persistence last week, it's still persistence. This week One of my children went out for a sport and you know, has only really started playing it recently. And just to like, and there's only an 18, only 12 make out of 50 kids, and you know I was like, oh, how did it go?

Speaker 2: 1:56:50

And she's like you know, I did my best and I had fun, dad, and you know, and there's a couple more days of it, and but that's all you can do and that's all you can ask in life, like, just keep getting up and you know, keep, keep moving forward and and you know, even when you don't feel like it, just keep trying because you know things, doors will open and your perspective and life, I think, will change if you keep not not moving to keep yourself so busy you don't smell the roses but to keep moving, to keep learning and keep being curious and just to keep trying stuff and to putting it in perspective and I think kids are so good at doing that for all of us just being like oh yeah, it was cool.

Speaker 2: 1:57:33

Like I may made a kid I may not, there's kids who are better than me. But you know, I'm trying my best and it was fun to try out and we'll see what happens and if I don't make it, I'm going to go play in that rec league again. You know, at the park district I'm like cool, that's all you can ask for. And if, at worst, you get a new sport under your belt when you're older and you can just like get activity and have fun and get some sun playing beach volleyball or indoor volleyball or whatever, then hats off to you, you're. You're on your way to kind of being a self contained content human being, so Huzzah.

Speaker 1: 1:58:08

I love it, I completely. I see the, I see the beauty in that and, you know, if you don't, you end up surprising yourself a lot. And I think that you end up. You know the universe ends up surprising you in good ways as well. So I'm going to I'm going to do a little hard fork here and go into a disclaimer saying that this show is for entertainment purposes only. Nothing is purposed to be financial advice. We encourage you to do your own research and to make sure that you don't get into a position where you're over your skis on any of these thoughts or investments and just keep exploring and you know, until next week we'll we'll be doing the same. So I appreciate it, and this is disco signing off.

Speaker 2: 1:58:58

And Chicago signing off. Take everybody and like it, rate it, do all that stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:59:03

Thanks for being with us.

Speaker 2: 1:59:05

Take care, bye-bye.