35 Burst results for "Delphi"
The Breakdown
A highlight from Shockingly, Gary Gensler Doesn't Like Stoner Cats
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Thursday, September 14th, and today we are talking about stoner cats. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or, if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on The Breaker's Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Alright, friends, well, I have to tell you, at this point we really have about four archetypes of breakdown shows. There's number one, oh god, more cleanup from 2022. There's number two, hey look, a new TradFi player is getting in the game. There's number three, hey look, a judge or elected official is smacking a regulator down. And then there's number four, hey look, an unelected bureaucrat is trying to expand their power again. And today's show is indeed an example of the fourth, and the reason it matters is not just because it's another SEC enforcement action, but because I do really think that this represents and is a great example of that impulse to authority expansion. So what am I referring to? Well, of course, I am referring to the SEC bringing its second enforcement action ever against an NFT project. This time, the regulator targeted Stoner Cats, a profile picture NFT collection that was sold to finance a web series. The SEC alleged that the sale of collectible NFTs constituted the sale of unregistered securities. The production company behind the project settled the allegations without admitting to the SEC's findings. So the details. Stoner Cats sold out their collection in around 35 minutes at the height of the NFT bull market in July 2021. The project raised $8 million from the sale. Marketing highlighted materials Hollywood producers and big -name celebrities attached to the web series, and suggested that the success of the show would increase the value of the NFTs in secondary markets. The company received 2 .5 % of royalties from secondary market sales, which produced $20 million in volume. In the settlement, Stoner Cats agreed to a cease -and -desist order and a $1 million penalty. In addition, a fund will be established to refund investors and all NFTs held by the company will be destroyed. Gurbir Gural, the director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, said in a statement, Regardless of whether your offering involves beavers, chinchillas, or animal -based NFTs, under the federal securities laws, it's the economic reality of the offering, not the label you put on it or the underlying objects, that guides the determination of what's an investment contract and therefore a security. As an aside, I wonder sometime if they find their own writing as clever as they seem to. Beavers, chinchillas, or animal -based NFTs, wah. Moving on, the statement reads, Here the SEC's order finds that Stoner Cats marketed its knowledge of crypto projects, touted that the price of their NFTs could increase, and took other steps that led investors to believe they would profit from selling the NFTs in the secondary market. It's therefore hardly surprising, as the order finds, that Stoner Cats sold its entire supply of NFTs in just 35 minutes, generating proceeds of over $8 million, most of which were then resold, not held as collectibles, in the secondary market within months. Carolyn Welschans, the associate director of the SEC's home office, added, Stoner Cats wanted all the benefits of offering and selling a security to the public, but ignored the legal responsibilities that come with doing so. Now, Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Ueda offered what has become their customary dissent against the SEC's actions. They claimed the enforcement represented a perverse extension of the SEC's jurisdiction and the borders of the Howey Test into the realm of art and collectibles. In a statement they wrote, The application of the Howey Investment Contract Analysis in this matter lacks any meaningful limiting principle. It carries implications for creators of all kinds. Were we to apply the securities laws to physical collectibles in the same way we apply them to NFTs, artists' creativity would wither in the shadow of legal ambiguity. Rather than arbitrarily bringing enforcement actions against NFT projects, we ought to lay out some clear guidelines for artists and other creators who want to experiment with NFTs as a way to support their creative efforts and build their fan communities. The Commissioners claimed the NFT project was more properly characterized as a fan crowdfunding. More broadly, they expressed concern that, through this enforcement, the SEC were attempting to exert jurisdiction over collectibles in a way they had never previously done with physical objects. The Commissioners likened stoner cats to a scheme surrounding the launch of Star Wars toys in Christmas of 1977. The toy maker sold early bird certificate packages in lieu of actual toys due to problems with production. These certificates were redeemable for toys in due course, but could also be resold for a profit in secondary markets at the time. The Commissioners asserted that, Using the analysis of today's enforcement action, the SEC should have parachuted in to save those kids from Star Wars mania. The main point of the dissent was that the SEC should not use its enforcement to stifle innovation in creative industries through the use of NFTs. The Commissioners said that, They argued that the SEC's More generally, it contributes to the legal ambiguity facing artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and others seeking to build a loyal, engaged following. There are a few different categories of reactions from people in the crypto community. Some honestly said that the stoner cats were not necessarily the best example to be a standard bearer for the industry. Gabriel Shapiro, General Counsel at Delphi Labs said, NFT trader, ex -lawyer, NFTs said, And the natural extension of that is any collectible that has a robust resale market — Jordans, baseball cards, comics, rare whiskey and wine, etc. — is potentially sold as a security. That is not the law, but it seems that the SEC is using essentially dicta in an order to creep its jurisdiction. Crypto criminal lawyer Carlos says injecting language like this into settlement seems to be a recurring pattern. To which ex -lawyer again responded, Obviously to us that's not true, but the SEC doesn't play fair and will take advantage of it. And indeed, this take that the SEC was overreaching here was by, in a way, the most common take. Marissa Tashman -Koppel, the Senior Counsel at Blockchain Association said, So now the SEC is in the business of regulating creatives and artists? Creating opportunities for ownership in the creative process is one way crypto and Web3 transforms how we interact online. The SEC shouldn't interrupt this process. Crypto lawyer Ujin writes, Hester Peirce emphasized in her dissent that the SEC's position limits legitimate ways for artists to make a living and she is right. Speculative sales of art are the basis for many sales of art, and that doesn't make those sales a security offering. Now still one more take was that we are seeing something of a positive pattern of dissent. Framework Ventures' Vance Spencer said, Peirce was on her own for a long time. Important to remember for something like an ETF approval, which requires three of five. Now staying on the theme of Gensler for a moment, it's like after the Senate hearing where he had to take some punches earlier this week, he had to go out and find a venue to get his own shots in. Appearing at a conference hosted by lobbyist group Better Markets on Wednesday, Gensler said, Millions of investors have been hurt in this field. It's an area that can hurt investors, but it can also hurt the broader economy because it can hurt investor confidence and finances ultimately built on trust. The conference was of course being held to mark the 15th anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, giving Gensler plenty of opportunity for histrionics about financial risk. Gensler trotted out his usual talking points, although adjusted to consider recent criticisms raised in court. Still, there was one kind of awkward and sweet moment where the host suggested that the crypto do seem to be finding some sympathetic judges recently, to which Gensler was uncharacteristically silent in response. Now, Jason Franek from Alliance Dow really sums it up. He wrote, Now, somewhat related, while presenting a speech at a conference hosted by the Practicing Law Institute, CFTC Enforcement Director Ian McGinley pressed home his agency's antipathy towards DeFi. McGinley said, McGinley presented the complete list of CFTC victories in DeFi cases, including a settlement with prediction market PolyMarket and derivatives exchange operator UkiDao. He said, All of this is to say, the CFTC has brought groundbreaking actions in the DeFi space, standing for the proposition that when offering core derivatives products based on digital assets to the public, whether in a centralized or decentralized manner, you must comply with the law. The comments came just a week after the CFTC announced settlements with DeFi trading platforms Open, 0x, and Derridex for offering quote illegal digital asset derivatives trading. The enforcement actions were widely viewed as the regulator taking on easy targets in an attempt to send a message. Indeed, the attack on DeFi was so brazen that one dissenting commissioner even openly suggested that the CFTC was quote, creating an impossible environment for those who want to comply with the law. Bankless co -host Ryan Schott Adams tweeted, The IRS is attacking crypto, FinCEN is attacking crypto, the SEC is attacking crypto, the CFTC is attacking crypto, OFAC is attacking crypto. This is what the now they fight you phase looks like. Now speaking of the fight and not going down without one, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has called for DeFi protocols to take the fight to the CFTC and defend enforcement actions in court. He said in a tweet on Wednesday, The CFTC should not be creating enforcement actions against DeFi protocols. These are not financial services business and it's highly unlikely the Commodity Exchange Act even applies to them. My hope is these DeFi protocols take these cases to court to establish precedent. The courts have proven to be very willing to uphold rule of law. The only thing this is accomplishing is to push an important industry offshore. Now following last week's enforcement action against that trio of DeFi platforms, many commented that the order was a stretch of existing law. And while their cases may have been defensible, the diminutive DeFi platforms were unlikely to have had the resources to take on the US regulator, which is of course why many believe they were targeted in the first place. Now while Brian Armstrong stopped short of offering funding, many others in the space urged collective defense. Crypto law US founder John Deaton said, The industry needs to create a legal fund of some sort to help defend these winnable cases. LEO Trades amplified that, saying, Brian, if you really want to affect policy change, you and Coinbase should help create a fund for projects facing enforcement. Let's be real. Everyone is worried about the financial burden of litigation. This would honestly be a better use of resources than vague political campaigns. Now a different take was summed up by Jamison Lop, who wrote, My hope is that DeFi protocols be so decentralized that the notion of them going to court is absurd. Lawyer Jason Gottlieb wrote a thread about this as well, saying, I agree with Brian Armstrong that DeFi protocols should challenge the CFTC and SEC in court on overreaching settlement demands. The sad reality is that the agencies first attack smaller outfits for whom it makes vastly more economic sense to settle rather than litigate. We see what happens when well -funded projects go to court to fight shaky theories of DeFi liability. Cases or causes of action are dismissed, partial liability can be dropped, the dynamics are greatly changed. But the regulators start with huge advantages. They have typically worn down projects with an expensive investigation first. Even just satisfying the overbearing demands for document production in these investigations can cost six figures easily. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Every single subpoena a regulator sends to a blockchain project is one less engineering job in America and more money for lawyers. Even the lawyers who benefit from that, hi there, think that is a terrible trade -off for America. One problem is funding. The regulators can wear projects down and then offer deals that, while expensive and onerous, are better than more years of continued litigation where even if the project wins, it has massively lost time, funding runway, and momentum. Another problem is that these are people's lives. An investigation is obtrusive enough. Litigation is personally highly disruptive. For us litigators, it's just what we do, it doesn't feel bad. But for founders, devs, people just trying to build, it can feel terrible. So I would love for more DeFi projects to take the CFTC and SEC to court. And is this attorney advertising? I'd love to be the lawyer who represents them. But it costs a lot of money and it's emotionally hard. Companies that have taken on the fight have done great work protecting the space, sometimes behind the scenes in ways people won't widely know about. We need more. But not everyone is well financed and in a fighting mood. So we need to support the smaller projects financially and otherwise. Everyone who believes in the efficiency, privacy, and self -control advantages of digital assets is in this fight together. The battle over the future of crypto is the battle over the future of all digital assets. And since more and more of our lives are digital, that's more and more of our lives. This fight is far more important than when moon antics. It is literally the battle for the future of your digital life. The legal battles over digital assets are the battles over the direction of our collective future. Here, here. I think I will let Jason have the last word on that one because I can't do any better. I appreciate all you guys listening. And until next time, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.
The Breakdown
A highlight from The Next Phase of Stablecoin Competition Begins As Coinbase Invests In Circle
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me and LW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, August 22nd. And today we are talking about updates in the circle and Coinbase relationship around USDC, followed by a number of macro updates. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review. Or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello, friends. Happy Tuesday. So today we are going big picture and we're starting in the crypto sphere with some updates around one of the biggest stable coins in the space. The TLDR is that Coinbase and Circle are dissolving their center consortium partnership and restructuring the relationship between the two firms. The center consortium that governs USDC currently will be wound down and Coinbase will take a minority equity stake in Circle. The size of the equity stake was not disclosed, but one anonymous source said that no cash had changed hands as part of the deal. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said in their joint blog post that, quote, The nature of the investment means that Coinbase and Circle will now have even greater strategic and economic alignment on the future of the financial system. So let's take a step back for a moment. The center consortium was founded by Coinbase and Circle in October 2018 to establish the USDC stablecoin. The effort was originally envisioned as an open standards effort which could facilitate additional USDC issuers and broader industry participation. That said, since the consortium's founding, Circle has remained the sole issuer of USDC, with the center consortium acting as a jointly managed self -governance organization. As part of the restructuring, Circle will bring issuance and governance of the stablecoin completely in -house. In their blog post, the two companies explained that, quote, With growing regulatory clarity for stablecoins in the US and around the world, the requirement of a separate governance body like center is no longer needed. They said the move will, quote, Alongside the restructuring, the firms announced that USDC would be issued on six additional blockchains, bringing the total number of supported networks to 15. The firms didn't identify the new blockchains, but Circle had previously announced plans to support Polkadot, NEAR, Optimism, and Cosmos this year. Coinbase's new base blockchain would also make sense as one of the remaining additions, but was not formally announced. Now, revenue sharing of the interest earned on USDC reserves has become an increasingly important driver of profits for Coinbase over the past year. Coinbase earned $151 million in interest income from the revenue sharing agreement in the last quarter alone. The two companies confirmed that revenue sharing would continue under a revised agreement, stating that, will now equally share an interest income generated by the broader distribution and usage of USDC. In a tweet, Coinbase said they, quote, Executives from the two firms reinforced the idea that additional regulatory clarity and competition drove the decision. Circle Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global Policy Dante Despartes said, Of course, in addition to newly arrived competition from PayPal, USDC has also been under recent pressure from crypto -native rivals. Since the March banking crisis, which briefly threatened a small portion of USDC reserves, the stablecoin has lost more than $17 billion in market cap. In the same period, Tether has increased its stablecoin market share by over $10 billion and is now more than three times larger than USDC. Discussions on Twitter around this had a lot to do with this idea of regulatory clarifications. Columbia Business School adjunct professor and former Paxo staffer Austin Campbell wrote, The reality is that Coinbase and Circle have held tightly to the Mint burn control and issuer status rather than expanding into an actual consortium. To some extent, this just validates this is the path forward for this partnership. Second, with more issuers of stablecoins arriving this year, PiUSD, FDUSD, etc., and others on the way, scale is going to become increasingly important, so these firms binding together to leverage that also matters. Third, I don't know what the public pathway is for Circle, but a purchase by Coinbase, which this ultimately sets up, is one pathway to get to that, and essentially allows Coinbase to have more control over cash on platform and cash management. Tommy Shaughnessy from Delphi Digital also brought up this idea of this as sort of a pre -merger. He wrote, Now the flipside interpretation is almost exactly the opposite, that Coinbase might have been coming up against regulatory pressure because of its vertically integrated regulated financial services. There has been a lot of scuttlebutt about how the crypto industry does away with distinctions that exist in traditional markets, such as separating brokerage and custody, and how part of the path forward from a regulatory perspective might be to reimpose those barriers. Bitwise researcher Ryan Rasmussen said, Now one thing to speak briefly to the decoupling of Tether and USDC over the last few months. This is something I've talked about before on this show, but I think has far less to do with a vote of no confidence in Circle and USDC and far more to do with a vote of no confidence in the United States regulatory apparatus. Circle and USDC have gone to pains to be as compliant as possible when it comes to issuing a stablecoin in the US, and the fact that they had a decoupling event and almost got screwed by the failure of a major US bank, even as the US government was putting undue pressure on the crypto industry via Operation Chokepoint 2 .0, I think increased the risk profile of USDC, not because of anything that Circle did, other than try to comply with US regulations. The move towards Tether and away from USDC is, I think, a reflection of the lack of regulatory clarity that we have. Overall, though, I also agree with the point that this just formalizes what has effectively been the case for some time now, and that sort of streamlining usually does make sense. Now, next up, let's move over to a macro update. The US bond market continued to sell off on Monday as long -dated Treasury yields hit fresh multi -decade highs. The 10 -year Treasury yield climbed to nearly 10 basis points to 4 .35%, a level not seen since 2007. Meanwhile, the 30 -year notched up by 7 basis points to reach 4 .45%. 10 -year inflation -protected Treasuries reached 2 % for the first time since 2008, and the 2 -year yield, which is sensitive to changes in Fed policy, moved up to 5%, coming close to previous peaks in March and July. The overwhelming sense in bond markets is that traders are positioning for continued tightness in central bank policy and potentially a re -acceleration in inflation. Recent macro data indicated the risk of another pulse of inflation with GDP estimates coming in scorching hot. Last week, the Atlanta Fed published the results of its GDP Now modeling, which forecast third -quarter GDP growth coming in at an annualized rate of 5 .8%. We haven't seen growth that strong since the final quarter of 2021, when the data came in at 7%. This is a complete reversal from economic concerns over the first half of the year, where below -trend growth and the risk of recession was front of mind. Zachary Griffiths, senior fixed -income strategist at CreditSite, said, Now, of course, one of the underlying narratives of the past 18 months of Fed policy is that the central bank is seeking to close the door on post -GFC zero interest rate policy, returning to most historically normal policy settings. These bond market movements could be a ratification of the Fed's strategy, signaling a growing belief that a return to the zero lower bound won't be required at the conclusion of this hiking cycle. Now, it's also worth putting this in context of upcoming comments. The bond market route comes just ahead of Fed chair Jerome Powell's speech at Jackson Hole, which is scheduled for Friday. Jackson Hole is the annual Fed symposium for the discussion of longer -term monetary policy strategy among central bankers and interested parties. Last year, the conference was punctuated by a brief and terse speech from Powell that had been apparently rewritten just before the event. At the time, the stock market was in the midst of a strong relief rally, and according to reporting, the Fed chair threw his prepared notes in the trash shortly before the speech. Instead, he opted to deliver the simple message that the inflation fight is not over and that it would involve pain to households and businesses. Andrew Brenner of Natalyon Securities thinks that expectations around Powell's speech could already be providing tailwind for bond traders betting on higher yields. He said, Now, lastly today, a brief China update. For more background on this, go listen to my episode from last week, where we did a bit of a primer on the China economic situation, which is increasingly coming to dominate macro conversations in the U .S. as well. Chinese banks have held a key interest rate steady this week in a move that surprised economists. The five -year loan prime rate was held at 4 .2 % on Monday, according to data from the People's Bank of China. Economists had expected a 15 basis point cut to the rate which prices retail mortgages. The choice to keep rates steady represents lenders choosing not to pass last week's cut to central bank policy rates onto borrowers. Now, the decision is highlighting the dilemma facing Beijing. Policymakers are seeking to drive borrowing in an attempt to combat deflation, while at the same time needing to preserve financial stability in the banking sector. Allowing banks to capture a little more of the interest rate spread should preserve banks' revenue and profitability. This concern was highlighted in a report from the PBOC last week, which said banks need to maintain Goldman Sachs economists wrote in a note, Chinese stocks continued to fall on Monday, with the iShares China large cap ETF now reflecting a full retracement of price action dating back to 2006. Offshore yuan pricing also softened by 0 .3%. Ten -year bond yields fell to 2 .55%, the lowest yield since 2020. The Chinese government has signaled more urgency in shoring up lending, urging banks to expand credit growth amid a slump in borrowing demand. Deflation pressures also continue to mount, with simultaneous trouble in the housing sector and an as -yet unresolved liquidity crisis at major shadow bank Zhangji. And really the big theme is the continued lack of decisive action out of Beijing. This policy of cutting central bank rates while allowing mortgage rates to stay flat at commercial banks kind of continues that weirdness. Bloomberg economist Eric Zhu said, Second, it could be a signal that other non -monetary policy support is in the pipeline. These policy settings might indicate that Beijing is attempting to navigate the economic downturn without taking measures that would reaccelerate housing prices. China already has some of the most overpriced property on earth, and President Xi has been clear that he wants to put an end to excessive housing speculation. Bruce Pang, chief economist for Greater China at Jones Lang LaSalle, said that the policy actions send a signal that, In some ways, this more moderate intervention could represent a transition away from the infrastructure -heavy, growth -at -any -cost mindset of a pre -pandemic China. In remarks released over the summer, President Xi expanded the scope of national success outside of growth, emphasizing national security, risk preparation, and lower pollution. Michael Herson, a former U .S. Treasury attaché in Beijing, commented that, that local officials should stay disciplined against financial risks and not chase short -term goals, but now they are also being told to support growth. Many officials are thus likely to see the safe course of actions as taking modest efforts at stimulus, but nothing particularly bold. So, taken altogether, this really still leaves us in a very liminal in -between moment. In crypto, we've got USDC and Coinbase preparing for an anticipated regulatory clarity coming down the pipeline, but which still isn't there. Fed watchers policy are trying to grapple with what might come next, and different and conflicting signals in again another wait -and -see period. And then in China, they continue to thread a needle between political goals and economic goals, while all around, continued global realignment is happening. A quiet August may be in some ways, but with, it seems, a lot of change building under the surface. Anyways, friends, that is going to do it for today's breakdown. I hope you enjoyed, and until tomorrow, be safe and take care of each other.
Veteran on the Move
A highlight from Batteries Plus Franchise with Keith Placencio
"After successfully run in other franchises Marine veteran Keith Placencio bought a Batteries Plus franchise from a friend and plans to open his second location in the near future coming up next on veteran on the move Welcome to veteran on the move if you're a veteran in transition an entrepreneur wannabe or someone still stuck in that Trying to escape this podcast is dedicated to your success and now your host Joe Crane Getting a new car is exciting and you deserve a hassle -free buying experience for more on Navy Federals car buying experience visit Navy federal org All right today we're talking with marine veteran Keith Placencio with batteries plus in Las Cruces, New Mexico Keith Thanks for being here today looking forward to hearing your entrepreneurial story before we do all that take us back to us Which did in Marine Corps? Okay. Well, thank you so much for having me We really appreciate you know an exposure and and we're just so excited to be part of this Batteries Plus organization Thank you said my name is Keith Placencio. I had went into the Marine Corps back in 1987 August 10th of 1987 right out of high school, yeah You know my wife and I were high school sweethearts sweethearts. We were already married Had a daughter and they went to the Marine Corps, which wasn't easy But we knew it was great life that would lead to great things. Yeah, I Spent four years in the Marine Corps moved around all over I was with a hawk missile battalion. We had to shoot down planes out of sky. Yeah desert storm veteran Going and being being a marine one of the greatest experience of my life it I was always pretty motivated very competitive I ran track and did all a lot of great things right now. I was super competitive The Marine Corps just kind of refined that and and gave me even more motivation more discipline One of the greatest things I picked up from the Marine Corps is how to overcome right? Yeah, him provides a dad all that great stuff that you need to be successful in life, right? Absolutely Learn how to take care of our people right you take care of your people. They're gonna take care of you. So My wife and I and and our children we stayed four years in the Marine Corps After desert storm we got out. We went to New Mexico State University and an electrical engineering degree Wow, that's a tough one and spent a foot another four years in the National Guard here It was a little tough, but you know what thankfully to my wife she man She's hung with in with me through some of the most difficult times in any marriage right the Marine Corps. Yeah college And you know, I was very competitive again in the even in school, right? I wanted my straight A's and wanted to do best, you know The best I could and and get out and get a great job with great pay so I can take very care of my family Uh -huh. So what happened after college? after college went to work in the In the plants in Mexico for a little bitty company called General Motors Their Delphi Delco organization, I'm as an engineer worked on ninja control modules stereos things like that Started as an engineer and moved my way up into engineering management and eventually I was running plants in Mexico so I just just done quite a bit traveled around in Mexico quite a bit and then What year was this this would probably been 2007 2006 -7 You know, you've heard about all those killings in Juarez and all that craziness that was going on down there When I felt safer in a war than I did down in Juarez I Was like no, it's about time to leave and and it's sad because I loved what I did the great people great engineers great Work environment, you know, I was having a lot of fun and doing great things. So we left that Went into you know, looked around El Paso for quite a while. We were living El Paso at the time Couldn't you know, the job market wasn't that great at that time? And we're so from a little town in New Mexico called super city, New Mexico, it's a mining community upper mines that's been there forever and So, I don't know one day got a wild hair made some calls down there My uncle was an engineer for them and started working down there three weeks later My wife wasn't a big fan because you know, we left that small -town community and that this and that but you know It gave us a good a good living for for several years But I had always loved entrepreneurship always I was always had a side business Anything from custom home installations of theater systems, you know, I loved working on stereo since I was a kid electronics and Wanted to do that and when my wife wasn't real happy about our kids were already a little older But we had a granddaughter we were raising and she wasn't real happy about living down there in those small communities So we decided we had to come back up to some some semblance of civilization and into Got as an insurance agent for a bit and that's how I started I thought that'd be a great Opportunity everybody's gonna have insurance right but when your family turns and runs away from you because you sell insurance I was like, that's not good Yeah, I was like I just want to say hi to you right I want to give my mom a hug It's like no you're gonna try to sell me insurance I'm quite that bad.
Crypto Banter
A highlight from LAST TIME THIS HAPPENED BITCOIN RALLIED 489% (Will History Repeat?)
"Pattern played out on Bitcoin, price rallied over 400 % to make new all -time highs. So in today's video, we are going to be unpacking the data to work out what's next for Bitcoin and will it mirror this previous massive move. Now, just to break down the agenda for today's show, it's going to be a massive one to contextualize where we currently sit in the market. I'm going to be discussing what are Bitcoin's upcoming catalysts because there are two major things that are going to drive price over the next couple of months. I also want to discuss where do we currently sit in the current cycle? Are we entering a new bull market? Are we still in the depths of a bear market? And when can we look at a significant price recovery? Because even though we've swung off the lows to reach those figures that you probably hear floating around like 60K, 100K, Bitcoin is going to need to have a massive move and of course a massive catalyst to get it there. So we're going to talk about when that could happen based on where we are in the current cycle. And next, I want to talk about what's the best window to accumulate. So in the context of the data I'm about to show you, what does this mean for actually buying Bitcoin and buying altcoins? How will altcoins respond to Bitcoin price action? That is all stuff I'm going to be talking about today. So that is the agenda. And without further ado, let's kick it off with point number one. What are Bitcoin's upcoming catalysts? Well, there are two that I want to talk about today. The first one is Bitcoin spot ETFs. And actually over the last few days, we had some massive announcements regarding the Bitcoin spot ETF. Now, the Bitcoin spot ETF news obviously caused a massive rally in the Bitcoin price when it was first announced, but we have seen a slow bleed over the past few weeks as we've started to see the SEC delayed the approvals or rejections, mind you, of some of these ETFs. But I want to remind you just how big of a catalyst this actually is for Bitcoin, considering it's going to allow retail and participants institutional to now access Bitcoin via the stock market. So your parents, your grandparents, people that may not necessarily be so used to using crypto exchanges will now be able to talk to their stockbroker or use their brokerage app to buy Bitcoin. And I think this could be a huge vertical for retail adoption and also institutions as it will now allow them to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet within the current regulatory frameworks. It also gives more validity, I think, to Bitcoin as an asset that could potentially lead to more fund managers, more companies, et cetera, adding Bitcoin to their books. It is huge, but obviously the market is waiting out for this approval via the SEC. BlackRock clearly being the company that has the biggest AUM, so assets under management in the world, leading the pack here in terms of positioning. Although we will see ARK get their decision slightly before BlackRock because they filed first. So let's look at some of the latest updates that we have had in the ETF realm, considering it's such a big pivotal moment for Bitcoin and as an extension of that crypto. So as expected, a couple of days ago, we did have the SEC delaying the ARK Invest filing. So it was officially delayed and there was no decision made on grayscale to do with their case versus the SEC in trying to convert their current fund, which is a futures fund into an ETF. So those were the first two things that we were waiting out for the grayscale trust conversion, as well as the ARK approval, none of which we got a confirmed answer on because ARK was delayed and there was no grayscale decision yet. But here are the dates that you need to look out for because the SEC can't keep kicking the can down the road forever. Eventually, they're going to have to make a decision. And although they have the right to essentially delay the decision one, two, three times on the fourth time, they do need to make a decision. However, they can choose to approve or just flat out reject it in any moment leading up to that final deadline. So we had the first deadline where we did see a delay from the ARK ETF, but we do have some more deadlines that are soon approaching here. You can see the dates clearly. We have the 17th of October, the 16th of October as well for iShares and Bitwise. We are now probably going to see ARK get delayed into its next threshold here, which is in November. So what I would keep my eye out for is some of the September and October approvals. So the next closest deadline is the first deadline on iShares and Bitwise on the 2nd of September and the 1st of September. So the 1st of September is the date to watch that is in two weeks when it comes to the spot Bitcoin ETF approval. If denied, then we are looking towards mid -October for the second round of deadlines. And then we also have the ARK one to look forward to slightly after that in November. So they can keep delaying it. But what we do know is that their final deadlines will start to hit on January 10th for ARK. And if that's approved, then that should lead to the approvals of more of these deadlines for iShares, Bitwise, etc. leading down the list in March. So January is the first final deadline and then the rest of the final deadlines hit in March. But September 1st is the next date that you need to watch out for in terms of the next potential day where we could see an approval or rejection. But because they're being so slow with ARK and they decided to delay and because they decided to not give a grayscale decision, I do anticipate that they will kick the can down the road a little bit further, which will keep investors waiting. And clearly this is what investors are waiting for when you look at Bitcoin price action. It's the biggest story in the market. And it did result in this move of the 200 MA of 23 % to the upside from 25K to 31K for Bitcoin. But now investors are just starting to get a little impatient, a little bit bored. I think the whole Bitcoin spot ETF narrative was overplayed during this run -up. And this is where you see some sellers start to exit the market. So some of the weaker hands now starting to exit that were holding on for a approval pump. Now, I still do think we get an approval pump by the way, because the probability from Bloomberg analysts is 65 % that we get a spot ETF Bitcoin approval. So if it is 65 % and you want to assume the market is pricing it in at 65%, if it gets approved, well, there's a discrepancy there of 35 % that the market isn't baking in that will likely result in a pump. So I do think if we get approved, this will lead to the next wave up for Bitcoin. And if you do want to take a similar move to what happened before of 25%, let's assume the same move is replicated from the current levels, then that could potentially take us to the 36 to 38K price target for Bitcoin. And that could happen as soon as September 1st or as late as January next year, depending on what happens with some of these filings. They also may ask for amendments, but definitely at some point, we will get a concrete decision. What happens on the flip side? If it is rejected, well, if it's rejected, I do think Bitcoin comes back down to that 25 to 26K level. If we are assuming that the market stays constant. So let's assume nothing happens in the macro realm. Nothing happens with the finance and the Coinbase cases and everything is the same as today. And we get a rejection today. Then I think we would come down to 26 ish K in that environment. But of course, things are going to happen in the meantime in the lead up to a potential rejection. But I am on the bullish side that we will get approval because they have made multiple amendments. BlackRock also has never really lost any of its spot filings. It has an exemplary track record. It's only ever gotten rejected once in its history. And when the biggest asset manager in the world decides to file, you better believe they've done their due diligence. And I believe that it will set a precedent for some of these other funds who are now copying the structure of the BlackRock ETF filing. So I am cautiously optimistic there that we will get an approval, but we will just need to wait for those dates that I mentioned. All right. What is your catalyst number two? It's of course the Bitcoin halving. Remember after I talk about catalyst number two, the Bitcoin halving, we are going to get into the question of where are we now versus previous cycles and what's next for Bitcoin based on the data that you're probably eager to hear about. That's in the title of the video. We're getting into that. But the second really important event that we have to analyze here is the Bitcoin halving. And let's look at the historical performance of Bitcoin leading into the halving and after the halving to try and map where we are in the cycle before we bring in some other data. So the Bitcoin halving is now 235 days away. If you don't know what the Bitcoin halving is, essentially the issuance of Bitcoin to Bitcoin miners will be halved. It's halved every four years. And essentially over time, this creates more scarcity for the Bitcoin asset. Now, miners essentially earning less means less Bitcoin is coming onto the market and it does have an effect on supply, of course. And when supply is contracted in the market, then price tends to find a new equilibrium if demand stays constant. That is a law of economics. However, the Bitcoin halving isn't just a supply side factor. It's actually more of a demand side factor. Now, that may sound counterintuitive at first because it's not a demand side event, but the hype leading into the halving and the narrative that it's assumed in its own right actually creates demand for Bitcoin as an asset. And because the Bitcoin issuance is going down, people start to believe it's more scarce. And as it becomes more scarce, demand actually also increases. So it is a supply and a demand side event, which is why historically combined with some other business cycle reasons, the Bitcoin halving has resulted in huge positive price performance for Bitcoin. If we look based on previous cycles and this cycle in terms of the four -year halving cycles, Bitcoin is currently 82 % of the way there towards the next halving. And typically what we've seen into halvings is a nice run -up. So we have seen a run -up during this period in the 2017 cycle. We actually saw a decline followed by a run -up post halving last cycle. But if you just look at the data, we know that typically roughly a year after the Bitcoin halving is when you get your blow off top. So it happened in 2013. The blow off top happened around a year later. It also happened again in 2017. The blow off top happened around a year later. It also happened in 2021. The blow off top happened about a year later after the halving. So if we take that into account and we look at the halving cycle, then you could start to affirm, yes, we're heading into the next cycle, but Bitcoin won't put in its peak until 2025. Because if the halving happens in April 2024, as per the calendar here, and blow off tops tend to happen a bit later, then we're actually looking at 2025 for the absolute Bitcoin highs. But Bitcoin tends to perform very well around the halving period as well. So we do see the uptick start to begin post halving. So if you line that up to this cycle, that would be April to May. We're going to talk about a few caveats with it and why this cycle may be different though. But that is essentially how Bitcoin behaves in the midst of Bitcoin halving. And you can see here that Bitcoin has historically been very predictable, aligning to this four -year cycle with new highs occurring shortly after the halving every single time. It's actually a bit less than a year. It was 240 days and 220 days, but that would still put us into the early stages of 2025 if you were to follow the previous cycle. But I guess the major caveat is point number one that we talked about, the spot ETF narrative, and this could drive enough demand for Bitcoin to speed up this halving cycle. So in my opinion, we could actually see a peak earlier if we can affirm we are following the halving cycle due to external catalysts, because not every market is the same. We have seen previous halvings, as I just showed you, for example, 2014, where Bitcoin actually reached its all -time high very quickly after the halving, just 90 days. And the time that Bitcoin takes to peak after the halving has actually diminished in 2021 versus the 2018 cycle. So that was also an interesting thing to note as well. We saw the absolute peak happened to 20 days after, but that first initial peak, if that was to be the all -time high, it would actually be closer to 160 days after. So not quite that full year that some people are anticipating. So 2024 could end up putting in the peak, especially if that spot ETF gets approved. But there is a lot of data based on the current macro cycle I want to get into in a few minutes, which can contextualize it a little bit better. I'm just kind of giving the very basic halving explanation to help you understand where we sit in halving terms. Benjamin Cowen said, during the last three pre -halving years, Bitcoin fell below its bull market support band for August slash September. The purpose of this correction is to flush out as many of the scams and cash grabs prior to the halving. No guarantee it happens this time, but certainly a strong possibility. And that's something I will say, even though we may be in the beginning of a new cycle, and we'll get into more of that evidence later, of course, you still have to take into account that there's still major flush outs. I mean, just look at what happened during the March 2020 crash. Of course, that was a black swan event, but there was a huge flush out and a lot of old coins got wrecked during that period. And we tend to see these flushes for Bitcoin. You could see it happened here in 2016. You could see it happened here in 2020, of course, even in 2019, you see these major flushes that happen even in the lead up to new all -time highs. So don't fade the possibility of getting buying opportunities just because we are in a new cycle. There are still major drawdowns and people panic. And this is where the weak hands get shaken up because they think, Oh my God, we're in a bear market again. Everyone sell, sell, sell. Whereas in reality, it's very normal for Bitcoin to correct the course 20 to 30 % on the run up to a new all -time high. That is very normal price action from Bitcoin. And that is where you do get your really good buying opportunities for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and of course, all coins, which often do get erect, heavier than Bitcoin in the lead up. I just want to reiterate this point about this spot ETF being a major event to keep your eye on on the 1st of September. That's going to be your next major announcement there. I also found this in relation to the halving super interesting. So Delphi Digital, we're going to go into their report in a minute, which looks into where we currently sit in the cycle, posted this photo, which basically shows you where we currently sit in relation to Bitcoin halvings and they can map the Bitcoin price cycle versus the Bitcoin halving date. And you can see here, we see the halving, we see the peak, then we see typically around a two -year bear market. Once again, we had the halving, we saw the peak, then around a two -year bear market. And if that does line up with the current cycle, then you would start to see an uptick now heading into the end of 2023 and early 2024. History doesn't always repeat, but it often rhymes. So this might be a good chart for you to screenshot or something if you just want to contextualize where we sit in terms of the halving. Now, let's get into the next question. Where the hell are we versus previous cycles? And what's next? So there is a lot of macro data, which is now playing into the current cycle. So the cycle doesn't operate in isolation, in my opinion. I don't think the Bitcoin halving is ever the sole reason for a Bitcoin pump. There are other market conditions, for example, quantitative easing last cycle, which contributed. So we want to look at what the contributors are this cycle and try and use some of our knowledge around the cyclical nature of Bitcoin and the business cycle to refer back to where we currently sit. That is how we're going to get the best estimation of where we sit this cycle. And there are a couple really amazing reports I want to break down for you. And it should definitively answer the question in this video, where do we sit versus previous cycles? And it should really help answer that question, what is next for Bitcoin? Before we answer that question, I just want to give a quick shout out to one of our official show partner Smart Decks. It's a very, very cool deck donating the negative effects of impermanent loss with their proprietary adjustment method, meaning LPs no longer need to worry about impermanent loss. And actually, there can be impermanent gain the way that they rebalance their pools. So it's really good for LPs. But what they're also doing is they're using strategies to boost their APYs across a variety of pools. So if you want to look at the LPs right now on Arbitrum, you can see that they're Arbitrum USDC pools paying 24%. Their native token pools are paying almost 100%. And if you go into Polygon, you can see, you know, their MaticUSDC pool, for example, are paying huge percentages, some of the biggest percentages in the market, S 25%, USDC Decks, etc. 93%. So just huge, huge APRs. Now, they are incentivizing this. So people might ask, Miles, why is it a huge API? Is it a Ponzi scheme? No, it's not a Ponzi scheme. It's a normal LP pool that you can deposit liquidity into. Keep custody of your assets just like a normal pool and earn yields on it. But they are incentivizing it with these multipliers, as you can see. So they won't be this high forever. Of course, they're a relatively new index. So they're trying to get TVL onto the platform. So if you want to take advantage of the super high APRs, you can today. But just to make it even sweeter, Banta is doing a one Ethereum giveaway. That's right. An airdrop of one Ethereum every single week to a random stake of that deposits a minimum of $50 of liquidity into the platform. So if you want to win one Ethereum this week, which I'll be giving away on my show on Friday, you have two more days. All you so Polygon, Arbitrum or BNB deposit liquidity into any of their pools. If you don't exposure to their token, you don't need to. You can pick any of the other tokens in these pools. Of course, minimum $50 and then go onto the dashboard, which is linked in the description and enter your wallet address. And you will then enter the running for the one Ethereum giveaway, which will be on my show. Pretty crazy. One Ethereum every single week to valued at around $1 ,800 just for someone that deposits liquidity. So you can literally put $50 of your own money into a pool. You don't win and withdraw. So I mean, do what you want. It probably makes sense to keep the money in. If you're thinking you're earning a good yield risk adjusted, of course, based on your goals. But yeah, if you do want to just get in for the giveaway, nothing stopping you from doing that either, technically. So link in the description to SmartX, the wallet address deposit side, and then also the farming side. Thought I would give a quick shout out to them before we get on with this question. What's next and where do we sit versus the previous cycles? So the first thing I want to talk about is the cyclical nature of Bitcoin. And a lot of people have been asking me like, Miles, what the hell is happening with the market? It's so boring right now. Well, this isn't abnormal for Bitcoin to have a weird August slash September period. What typically happens in August is a lot of the fund managers and the big VCs and the big quants and all these guys, they go around the holidays, especially the Europeans. They go away. They don't trade much. They know the summer period is not very active. So they decide to concentrate their time and liquidity into the months where there is more volatility. So August, typically in crypto, been a pretty boring month. I mean, it's averaged 0 .69%. And it's been one of the most boring months, aka, I'm defining boring as what is closest to 0 % returns. It has been the most boring month, 10 % total return, total return since Bitcoin inception, which is crazy. September, however, is the worst month in crypto. So this is super interesting and it lines up with some of the peaks, sorry, the troughs that Benjamin Cowen was showing just before how a lot of the time Bitcoin falls below its support band heading into September. This does also line up with the data that I've been analyzing about September being the worst month. Actually, the last six Septembers in a row have historically ticked red, typically quite a red month. Now, if this is the case and we affirm that we're in a new cycle, we'll get into that data, then September could be your best DCA buying month if we do end up getting a dip just like previous months. So although it can be scary, this could actually be a big buying opportunity as one of your opportunities to snap up Bitcoin, Ethereum, altcoins, whatever you would like to purchase the next cycle if you can affirm on the way to a new cycle. So be very interesting to see whether September is also a red month. I think it can be a possibility if we do get that delay on September 1st, because if we get delayed again on the ETFs, then the market has less catalysts, especially if liquidity conditions worsen globally, which we're already seeing are starting to happen, especially like the macro in the US looking quite shaky. That could line up with the Bitcoin spot ETF delay and subsequently poor performance in September. So it wouldn't shock me. I can't predict what will happen in September. All we can do is look historically and say, we've got to be prepared here. Don't expect the massive pump to happen in September. But afterwards, well, different story. Bitcoin typically does have very good early Q1 and late Q4 performance, which kind of lines up with this pre -halving run that we have seen in previous cycles as well, right? So that's also quite interesting. So if we also want to look at the stock market, because Bitcoin's very related to the stock market, we could see stocks did have an amazing run up, but have also pulled back and are around 8 % of their highs in the S &P and around 10 % on the NASDAQ. And Bitcoin actually showing similar correlation and uptick in correlation to stocks, although correlation for Bitcoin on aggregate is much lower than it has been in the past. So Bitcoin not responding as much to the stock market as it used to. I still think they're closely tied in. I still think markets are highly cyclical. And we're going to have a look at that just now. But just interesting to note that we have seen that slight uptick after the stock market started to pull backwards. Bitcoin was running on its own, in its own little ETF narrative prior to that. Let's look at this, though. Very interesting. Stocks are also mimicking their price action. It's not just Bitcoin with its halving cycle. It's also the stock market that's closely following its 2015 to 2017 price action, where you have that massive drawdown, then you have the recovery, then another drawdown. And what actually happened to stocks is they rallied into the end of the year. So could we see this September lull and then a rally into the end of the year? Well, if we do follow the pattern from 2015, then that could be the case. But of course, different liquidity environment can't always line it up one to one and assume what happened last cycle will happen this cycle. Okay, guys, this is the best thread that I have ever read this year on Bitcoin cycles. So if you're still paying attention now, 22 minutes into this stream, keep watching because this 5 next minutes or 10 minutes is going to be completely alpha packed. And I'm not even going to break this down. I'm just going to read some of the thread and then give you my thoughts on the thread because of how in depth and amazing this was. So it was written by Kevin Kelly. He is the founder of Delphi Digital. He works closely with their analysts and he basically contextualize where we sit in the cycle. And his work was very good and also very telling of what happened next for Bitcoin. So let's read this. Evidence is piling up that we're in the early stages of a new cycle. Risk assets like stocks plus crypto have been sniffing this out all year. This isn't another bear market rally. Stick with me because it'll come full circle. To outsiders, crypto may look like it lacks rhyme or reason, but crypto markets are actually quite cyclical. They're also surprisingly consistent in their timing between peak to trough bottoms, recovery time and timing of rallies to new cycle tops. Using Bitcoin as a benchmark, a typical cycle looks like this. Bitcoin hits new all -time high, as we've seen many times before, suffers an 80 % drawdown, as has happened every cycle, takes two years to recover to the prior high, as has happened every cycle, and price rallies for another year before reaching the new all -time high. The last three cycles have followed this blueprint almost exactly. Each of these cycles last typically four years. Bitcoin price peaks occur around the same time the ISM, that's the manufacturing index, shows signs of topping out. Active addresses, total transaction volumes, total fees, they all peaked alongside tops in the ISM too. As the business cycle shows signs of recovery, so too does network activity levels. So he's using the price manufacturing index, so that is your synonymous indicator with the business cycle in general, to contextualize that alongside Bitcoin. So he's making the point here that Bitcoin doesn't operate in isolation, it operates alongside the real world US business cycle. And that's also a reason for Bitcoin network usage. In fact, Bitcoin's year -on -year percentage change usually shows signs of a reversal near bottoms. And so far, that is exactly what we've seen. Now, this is the chart that's in the thumbnail of the video, maybe if we, because there's two thumbnail options I'm deciding between, but maybe in the thumbnail of the video, that is probably one of the most telling charts. We can see, typically, Bitcoin price ends up responding around the trough of the ISM. So we saw this crossover happen in 2015 -2016. We saw it happen in the lead up to the 2021 bull run. And then we also are now starting to see it happen again. Every time this line intersects, we start to see recoveries take place. It kind of oscillates between its highs and its lows. If this is the case, then you could affirm that last November, we had the lows set in on the PMI. And consequently, we had the lows set in on Bitcoin as well during the November FTX collapse. That's very interesting. What's also remarkable is how closely the ISM has tracked the trajectory of its prior cycles, including the timings of its peaks and troughs. Every 3 .5 years, it's rinse and repeat like clockwork. You can see it here. Business cycle peak to trough exhibits predictable pattern. You have the peaks, you have the troughs. You have the peaks, you have the troughs. We had a trough. Are we now going to be heading into another peak? Well, history would suggest we are every 3 .5 years. So this is quite interesting because it may give us some evidence that the Bitcoin halving is not just driven by the supply or demand side factors relative to solely Bitcoin. It may also be driven by the overall business cycle. And the reason that we get these pumps is because Bitcoin falls into the overall business cycle alongside its own halving narrative. And that's a powerful combination.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"And it's like, it works because it's hard to compete with that, right? Like if you're, these guys now have billions of dollars of stock options to give out to employees or at least hundreds of millions to give out to employees and they have like loads of money to throw at ecosystem grants and stuff, right? Like this stuff works. And all this is like kind of bad, in my opinion, like the community gets screwed long-term, more stuff moves off chains, centralized exchanges. And so I do think someone needs to work on stuff that makes AMM looks like relevant again. And I think Ash what's doing good work there. It'd be amazing comeback story if they succeed here, right? Because obviously all the, everything they've been through to be, it'd be amazing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And obviously you've been working, like you've been, you're in close contact with the team. So what's the team like most importantly? Yeah, I mean, it's the contributors are really, really, really good. They're really devoted. They've been like anyone who survived the kind of terror crash, like all the projects which survived the terror crash, like Kajira, Astroport, like Apollo, you got to have like that in itself is a positive signal. Right? Like you've got some something like some grit because it wasn't easy like going through that and then going through the lack of traction in Cosmos. So yeah, I mean, it's a super smart team. A lot of the Cosmos teams are really smart whether it's Neutron say. And so they're working with really smart teams. So yeah, I'm cautiously optimistic. Like I think there's a lot of risks. There's risks to Cosmos taking off risks to AMMs losing and like just ending up not being relevant. But yeah, I think I'm more optimistic.More amazing. I think that's a good note to end things on. No, I found this really, really interesting. We had two parts. If you haven't checked out the first part, you will link that in the description. And yes, there was so much I didn't ask, but that's fine. This space is endless. Thanks man. You'll have to come on another time and we can. Yeah, happy to. We can do that. Maybe next time you come on, hopefully the market's moving and we can have a bit of action to talk about. But I think for the viewers, this is a good time to do some research and knuckle down on some of the things you've talked about. So that would be the plan. But yeah, thanks for joining. Thanks very much for having me. We'll see you in the next one. Peace.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"And sort of, I think the last, like I think Uniswap is for me, not an AMM anymore. Like Uniswap V3 was already not an AMM and Uniswap, cause it's like, it just allows so much, it's not passive anymore, right? Like to really succeed, you have to be an active market maker. So it's abandoned like the automated portion of AMM. And then UniswapX kind of like abandons that completely in like, in that it's gonna aggregate liquidity from like off chain sources and market makers as well. And then I think the last pure AMM is sort of like Curve and to some extent like Balancer as well. And so there's like a weird situation of like, does, do AMMs need to, like what are AMMs good for? Do they need to exist? Like will these like highly inefficient algorithms ever outperform like centralized market makers? And for me, kind of what I said to you earlier, like I think AMMs really shine on the long tail of assets, right? You kind of see that with Unibot and Robit and like Ox and DMT and all this stuff that's trading on chain, mainly on AMMs. But it's kind of like, if stuff just like launches on AMMs and then as soon as they do meaningful volume, they move to centralized exchange, then it's kind of like not too good for AMMs, right? Cause you're almost like selling your winners, like GMX, right? GMX started trading on an AMM on Arbitrum. And then now like price discovery mainly happens on Binance. Like that's not great. And so I think, yeah, AMMs are in a weird place. And then for me, the big thing with the AMMs is that they need to, they're like, they're not DEXs. They're like slightly different from DEXs. Like a DEX targets the trader and you wanna offer the best experience for a trader. And AMM, your target is the LP and you wanna offer the best experience for an LP and for projects, right? Because those are your two targets. Like you wanna target LPs who want like passive yield strategies and like efficient ones that internalize MEV that have like good algorithms that aren't leaking loads of value, like Curvy too. And then also projects because projects wanna launch their tokens, establish liquidity, build a community and like not all of them have access to centralized exchanges they might not want to interface centralized exchanges. And so I think like the cool AMM stuff we're seeing is things that like serve those two use cases. And that's kinda like what Astroport is trying to do focused on Cosmos, kind of building the best like pure AMM like providing the best experience for passive LPs and for projects that are launching tokens on top of them. Cause like, and this is part of the trend that's like really kind of worrying as well is even new tokens that like that have good funding don't go through AMMs anymore either, right? Like Worldcoin, Sui, Aptos, they do these like coordinated finance launches where the market makers own most of the supply and they're trading back and forth and the valuation is huge and the volume looks huge. And so to some extent, people like anchor to that. So even if it goes down from that after launch, Aptos went up to like 20 bucks and now it's trading at seven and people are like, oh shit, it's cheap, right? So these launches like work, it's kind of like Sam coins in disguise, right? Like the old Solana flavor.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"Yeah, man, memes are powerful. Like memes are super powerful, especially in the modern world. But yeah, I do think there's stuff where like meme and reality lines up and it's like even more powerful. I wanna talk about another sector that I think would be pretty powerful. Crypto gaming, we talked about it a bit in part one. Do you think we're on the verge of getting these AAA games? I mean, real gaming finally only happened around two to three years ago. So I know this thing takes time, but how close do you think we are to the first big crypto game blockbuster? Hold on, before Jose gets into the nitty gritty to do with the crypto gaming space and gives us his favorite gaming pick for next cycle, I want to quickly give a shout out to one of our official show partners, Smart Decks, who are currently running a massive giveaway in collaboration with Crypto Banda. So apologies for interrupting, but I think it's for good reason because once a week we are going to be doing a one Ethereum giveaway. So that's $1,800 every single week just for someone that deposits in their liquidity pool. So all you need to do to potentially win one Ethereum is go into their platform, there's a link in the description, stake in one of their liquidity pools, a minimum of $50, which you can see here are paying massive rewards, 28% for ARBUSDC, some of their native STEX pools are paying 100% plus. Make sure the network is either Arbitrum, Polygon, or BNB. So not Ethereum, any of these other networks, you are all good. Simply select your pool, add liquidity. So obviously you would still own the assets that you deposit. You will earn massive yield on those assets and also put yourself in the running as long as you deposit at least $50 to win potentially one Ethereum this week that I will be giving away on the show in just a few days. So you only have a couple of days left if you wanna take advantage of this giveaway. Once again, link in the description, deposit minimum $50 in liquidity to any of the non Ethereum networks across their amazing liquidity pools, and then come onto this dashboard and enter in your wallet address. Once you enter in your address, we will pick someone live on the show that is going to win one Ethereum. So don't miss out on the giveaway, get involved on SmartX today using the link in the description. And now let's get back to Jose's response on crypto gaming and some of the games that he thinks have the most potential to be big winners next cycle. Kinda like L2 or like the ETH 2.0 roadmap, right? It's like on the verge for years. I feel like gaming might be like that for a bit just cause it takes way longer than people think, including the people building the games as people might realize. But yeah, I think there's a few, and unfortunately like development is kinda like under wraps for a lot of these games. So they can't say much publicly, especially with ones that have trading tokens. But there are a few that we've played like private betas for and stuff that look really good. And then there are a lot of games cause like the universe of gaming is huge. There's like all sorts of games. People talk about like crypto games suck, which is hard to argue with, but there's also a lot of really successful games that in my opinion suck as well. Like I don't get mobile gaming really, which is like a massive category. There's like all sorts of stupid games people play. And I think crypto gaming is gonna have all of that. You're gonna have mobile games, you're gonna have shooters, you're gonna have MMORPGs, you're gonna have fully on chain games where you literally have to be able to code to play them. You're gonna have like the whole gamut of experimentation. That's what I think is like so exciting about it. I do think you're gonna have AAA games too that bring in like millions of new users to crypto. And I mean, for me personally, like that's what I'm most excited to play. Are there any games you've seen in particular that you've been like, wow, that looks cool? Yeah, the Alluvium, we're investors in Alluvium, but like the Alluvium beta looked really cool. I think a lot of people tried that and had good things to say. There are a bunch of others, let me- What do you think of Star Atlas? Star Atlas, yeah, I haven't looked at the recent thing. We ended up not doing the round and I think we had concerns about them being able to deliver the game at the time, just given like how complex what they're setting out to build is. It's like a hugely ambitious vision and you need like a lot of time to do that. And like the vesting schedules and stuff didn't necessarily line up with that. But I think they're like, they've been really, and like they've had some layoffs recently and I don't know. Yeah, I'm not, don't have too much of a good take there, honestly. Let's see, let me see what our, yeah, we, yeah, I don't have any, because a lot of the ones that we know about, like developments kind of under wraps, like we tried to do a report on this, actually like just go through our gaming portfolio and other games that we know and like show where they all are and stuff like that. But none of them want you to talk about it. So it's just kind of annoying. I wanna ask like studios versus individual games. Like there's this, there's like two approaches, I guess you can invest in the games, you can invest in the infrastructure, like the picks and shovel plays. Do you think there's validity to like buying instead of investing in individual games, like also buying like, yeah, gaming studios, like UOS, PYR, Gala come to mind, infrastructure like, you know, let's say IMX, like just, yeah. Do you think there's validity in taking that approach? Yeah, we've invested in both studios and infrastructure, like we did IMX. We also did a wallet recently called like Hyperplay, which is from an X-Metamask lead that's kind of building like a wallet optimized for gaming. I think there's gonna be like select infrastructure plays that do really, really well. But gaming is also kind of weird in that like, it's a market where the infrastructure, there's a lot of like infrastructure that ends up being built by the games themselves, right? Whether it's like the Steam marketplace or a lot of other stuff like that. So I do think investing in, and it's a hard space to invest in because it's not like something where you can purely look at like numbers or market size or anything like that. You have to have some, there's some subjectivity and like artistic taste, right? You can sort of like, you have to talk to the founder, like check their, what they've built before and stuff like that to make sure they can deliver. But then at some point it's like subjective. And so I think a lot of people shy away from it, which can make sense. And like, we haven't, and we'll kind of see how that plays out. But it's definitely like, it's a mixture of like investment and then like investing in art or something, I guess. Do you have a take on UOS? They're like the, I guess they would consider themselves to be like the steam of crypto gaming. No, I don't actually. I don't know. Yeah, I haven't heard of it before. Oh, yeah. I think there are a few people trying to build that. I think it's too early for there to be like a steam of crypto right now. Because we don't have the games. There'll be like winning games to try and build that. Like I think Axie is trying to do that to some extent, but I also think like Hyperplay and like the winning wallet is in a really good position to do that because you own the user. And I think whichever game ends up like really taking off has the potential to just like verticalize and build a lot of this in for themselves. Yeah, because they could go to other games and say, hey, we'll like incubate, launch under us, launch under our studio, kind of like Rockstar in the early days with their big hitters and then acquiring other gaming companies almost underneath that. That could be an interesting model. There are, I mean, the reality is there's lots I wanna ask you, but also there's, you're a busy man and yeah, we don't wanna be here all day. I do wanna talk about Cosmos and Solana and all that stuff, but an Astra port, actually maybe just give us an updated Astra port. Maybe that's a good one. Cause I'm interested. Yeah, I mean, that's probably a hard one to do in a few minutes, but you basically did a 32 part thread. I'll show the viewers. If they're interested in reading more in their own time. Yeah. Yeah, and obviously I'm a contributor, I hold tokens and like labs as a contributor. So we're biased and stuff like that. But I mean, there's an interesting thing happening right now where like AMMs are kind of like dying in some sense, right? Like you saw sort of like volumes are down across the board, but spot volumes are down versus perps. And like even within spot, there's like these sort of intense based models or like kind of off chain models, like CalSwap and OneInch and UniswapX, which are the kind of like just front ends for centralized exchanges and market makers, right? And so like AMMs are kind of in a weird place.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"But with the token economics rebound, it does seem like they're doing that. And again, like with all kind of exchange tokens, and this is always a concern with like these, like CDFI, I mean, not even CDFI tokens. These are like purely centralized exchanges that like make vague promises to do certain things with the token. But this really isn't like a legally enforceable right and involves a lot of trust. But if they stick to this, I think like some days they're doing like 5 billion in just like perhaps volume, right? It's like, it's pretty absurd. And so I think the token, like if you had like, take yesterday's and it's not even sports season, but like take yesterday's sort of burn and annualize it and they're burning like 20% of the token. Well, it's crazy that the market's not even volatile, like exchange revs at a yearly low across most exchanges. So it's crazy that they're doing these kind of numbers. Like what happens if Bitcoin, like I'm not trying to show Robert, I'm just asking like what happens if Bitcoin like has a huge move like downwards or upwards? And you know? Yeah, I mean, it is like, I don't know if you've used the product, but it is like a really good product. Like it works. No, it's good. It's good. Works really well. They've got like cool features that I haven't seen elsewhere. It's like not easy to build such a good, like such a good product. So they have merit there. Yeah. Yeah, the marketing's been great. Like with their affiliate campaign, like, I don't know, I think it's a perfect storm. I think people are bored as well. Like there's a lot of market participants who are like reeling from the low volatility and just really want something to speculate on and Robert's given them a vehicle to do that. Do you think other- Yeah. And like these hated, I feel like these hated tokens have like sort of like, you know, like this and like Alks to some extent have like a native, like almost like short squeeze type, like market structure to them because people hate it so much and like don't want to buy it. And then like capitulation happens all at once, right? Where you like look at the price keeps going up and then at some point people are just like, fuck, I want to buy it, you know? And it's like, yeah, it's interesting. Like we're kind of seeing with, in the recent sort of six months or whatever, I think all the stuff that's done really well on Chain has been stuff that people hate for various reasons, right? Whether it's Unibot, like you're giving them your keys and like the volumes aren't real. Robit, obviously like the history of the founders and everything like that. Alks, you know, it's all stuff that's- Even Airdrops, Arkham. People hated that email thing with Arkham. The Airdrop was the biggest of the year, like. Yeah, exactly. Next time everyone hates a really popular product, I'm just going to ape it. I think that's the strategy. That's the lesson. In terms of gamble fire, do you think like this as a general narrative has legs? Because I know like Robit's mostly been driven by it's like crypto perps and not it's sports betting. Do you think crypto DJs want to gamble on sports and plays roulette and all that kind of stuff? Do you think there's a market for that? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think so. I really think the- And when I talk about a DEX or like a centralized exchange or anything, I really mean in the broadest sense, like speculation platform. I think that's like the immediate kind of like killer app for crypto is like the speculation platform where you can really speculate on anything from crypto to stocks to bonds, commodities, sports, random like election betting markets, like everything. I think like that, and it's sort of one of the biggest addressable markets in crypto as well, I think. And I think like FTX was kind of going this route before we found out all the shit they're up to in the background, but they were adding stocks, they were adding betting, they had like all this in like a really nice UX with cross margin and then they had FTXK. It would be a killer. If they just weren't such idiots on the back end, they could have killed it for decades. Exactly, yeah. And then I think that ends up being like, because it's a game of capital efficiency, right? Like you want to have your assets in the place that you can do the most stuff with them, right? And that's why like centralized exchanges end up absorbing so much of the capital of crypto because you can do options, there's Launchpad, you can do perps, you can do like margin trading, they have a bunch of different coins you can buy, they have debit cards. Like there's no reason for you to take your capital off there, right? And I think the winning like DEX will offer all that stuff to you. And I think that gambling is definitely part of it. Well, let's continue to talk about gambling. Next segment I wanted to talk to you about MemeCoins. So that's clearly another huge addressable market, probably the biggest in a bull run, right? Looking at what Doge did last cycle. What's your take on MemeCoins? I saw a tweet before in the break, I was on my phone, and I saw someone say like, all of you were trying to mid curve it, I'm left curving the shit out of the next cycle, I'm buying Pepe, Doge and Shib, good night, see you in two years. What do you think of the whole MemeCoin strategy? I personally don't actually like invest in MemeCoins, in like pure MemeCoins. It's just not my expertise. You're too smart for that. You're not mid curving, you're like right curving. I'm actually probably mid curving, yeah. But like, I just think there's like coins that represent good projects that also have good meme, right? And I think that's really where I think the biggest opportunities are, is when meme lines up with utility and fundamentals. And like, I just find it easier to hold stuff like that. Also with MemeCoins, there is like, a lot of botting and like games going on, right? Where there's like bots tracking who the deployer is of various MemeCoins, and if the deployer has eight figures in their account, then there's like bots that are automatically aping after that and stuff like that. And then there's like manipulation games being played, like that definitely happened with Bald on Coinbase. And so I just think it's like a game where I don't really have an edge in like the MemeCoins thing, and I think there's gonna be, like the Doge is success. There's gonna be like 100 failures sort of like next to it. Do you have an opinion on Doge with all this X app payment speculation? Do you think it's a good buy, good hold, or just in general, like do you have any thoughts on Elon and Doge? I think X is like a really cool vision. Like it's one of the only stocks that I own because I think they're moving really fast. And I think that vision is, it's almost like the same, it ends up at the same place as like the FTX vision, but starts at a completely different place, right? Like they can, it's like this everything app, but it starts off with, okay, I have Twitter profile. Now I can like send money to people and maybe I can like subscribe to them. And now you have a kind of like a payment network, right? And then eventually you integrate like a wallet and suddenly you can hold your assets on there and send those assets. Then you can have like an exchange, you can add lending and borrowing and mortgages and all sorts like, I think there's a lot of ways to get to that everything app, but only a few people that have the vision and like kind of ability to execute on it. I definitely think, obviously Elon is one of them, but I don't know about Doge, like I don't- You won't be buying Doge as a proxy, like some people. Like me actually, I'll be honest. Look, I'm buying a bit of Doge for next cycle. I'm not too heavy now because I still think Bitcoin, ETH, et cetera outperform, but I think at some point I will rotate heavier into Doge just because I've seen what it can do, but yeah, I don't know. Everyone's got their own approach.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"Yeah, I think I invested in that, I think. Yeah, I think you guys did too. So yeah, I think that's really cool. What's the update with that? They're launching soon. I heard some announcement the other day. Yeah, I think it's live. I think it's my main, if you have assets on multiple chains, I've yet to find like a better portfolio manager than there is. I can't believe I haven't, to be honest, I'm a terrible, I'm investing and I haven't used it, but I'm going to. It's really useful, honestly, cause you can borrow all your wallets. Well, dBank is really good. We're investors in dBank too, but they're just EVM. So these guys, like if you have assets on Solana or on Cosmos chains or on Studio Aptos or whatever, they have all those integrations. So it's super useful, yeah. dBank today announced they're launching their own, what was the dBank chain? I'll get the announcement off. I didn't see that. Damn. I'll get the announcement off actually right now. What does the chain do? Yeah, I'll tell you right now. So here we go. dBank chain aiming to become the asset layer for social. We're launching Testnet today and it's planned to roll out Mainnet 2024. Built on the OP stack, our development primarily revolved around addressing three key concerns while maintaining robust security, gas costs, offering a native account obstruction like experience and ensuring the safety of L1 assets. You can kind of read this, yeah. My computer's freezing a little bit as I scroll, but yeah, I was just wondering if you knew about that. No, I don't actually. I need to catch up on this. Rabi wallets integrated the dBank test. I've heard Rabi's super good actually. Yeah, it is. I've heard it's nice. Yeah, I've heard it's really nice. So yeah, lots of interesting stuff being built on that front. So we talked about Telegram bots. That's kind of one of the, by the way, you invested in Unibot. Are you trading that or is it? I think I like a small, I think I bought a bit of it a while ago, but yeah, not a big position. So I think the other vertical that's been just exploding and there's even speculation that Unibot will partner with them is Rollbit. So we did have a little bit of a chat before we went live about Rollbit because yeah, I think we've all been trading it. It's been a lot of fun to kind of watch this gamble fight thing develop. And yeah, I've been doing a bit of on chain, de-genning myself. So yeah, I wanted to get your thoughts on Rollbit and that huge tokenomics revamp they announced two days ago. Yeah, I want to caveat just like, it's a casino and people have different opinions about casinos and the morality of them. And also like the team is a non, there's a lot of risk of all sorts of things, blow up, ragging, so like. We don't even know if they're gonna adhere to this burn. Kind of discussing this. Oh, can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. I think one of my intents is a bit lag. I was just saying the, we don't even know. Like theoretically, since it's not transparent, we don't even know if they're burning what they say they're burning. Like we can see some of the burn, but we don't know whether they're gonna stick to it. You know what I mean? Like it's all just kind of in the air. So yeah, definitely caveat, like this is crypto, but this is like, not even just crypto. This is like one other crazy extremity of crypto. Yeah, all the caveats that you said, it's a casino, it's centralized founders are unknown and potentially have dodgy history or whatever. But it's unlike, if the statistics are to be believed, they're like absolutely printing money right now. And I think, yeah, my one big concern with them was like whether they ever put value through the token or at least my concern. I didn't know whether they'd be like meaningfully putting value through the token, given how much money they're making just as a purely centralized thing.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"Like, yeah, there isn't a counterparty, right? Like a lot of the, I mean like all regulations are there for a reason, right? And we kind of like speed run why they're there with crypto in many ways. But like the reason you have securities regulations, right? Is because you have someone selling shares and they're in a business that they understand way better to people that understand it, that don't have as much visibility. And so there's a lot of like potential for moral hazard with that, right? Where I can sell you stuff while I dump on you. I can not tell you that the business is actually failing and sell you shares saying that the business is doing much better than it is. All the stuff that we've seen happen in crypto and that like regulation is there for, right? Like that's why you have disclosures. That's why you have prospectuses and like and criminal liability for not or different kinds of liability, including criminal for people who break those rules. And it's the same with everything, right? Like if you run an exchange, like the custodian regulations there for a reason, the counterparty regulations there for a reason. And I think like crypto, like smart contracts, if it's a well-designed system kind of like eliminates the need for a lot of that stuff. Like there is no counterparty risk with a smart contract system, at least not in the way that's normally defined, right? Yeah, so that's why I think that's gonna, the future is DEXs. So let's touch on some of these DEXs. You mentioned Vertex as being one of the most underrated DEXs in the space. Yeah, well, what's Vertex? What's the thesis there? Yeah, I'm really bullish Vertex. We don't have an investment, unfortunately, although I'm a user. It's built by, I don't know how much he wants me to say, but he's one of the smartest devs in crypto. He's like a wonder kid who was like very early, worked at one of the big market makers, built out a bunch of their systems, then worked at an L1 and built out a bunch of the systems there, like before he was sort of 19 and then went and built this. So he's a very, very smart guy. And I rate him super, super highly in my kind of interactions with him so far. And then his partner is also very experienced chatify guy that people know, maybe it's called Darius. And yeah, what they're building is basically, I think it's the only, maybe Quenta allows us to, but I think it's the only cross margin, like DEX in production. So they have like a money market plus spot trading plus purpose trading with like single cross margin account. It's live on Arbitrum. And they have like this off-chain order book that they run like similar in concept to like zero X or do IDX. People are more familiar with that, where you kind of sign orders on chain, but then they get matched off chain. And yeah, it works really well. And I think the cross margin piece especially is like really interesting. And I think one of the things that made the FTX experience so sticky was the cross margin stuff. Like I think one thing about exchanges is you make all your money on the majors, like BTC, ETH, et cetera, like people went and used Binance over Coinbase because they listed like whatever shitcoin they wanted first. And then they went to FTX over Binance because they listed like purpose for their favorite shitcoins. And they'll let you like use your shitcoins as margin. And then people now go to Uniswap because they can ape like Unibot and rollbit and all these things that list on Uniswap first. Like exchanges can win a lot of customers by listing the long tail quicker. And I think the cool thing about Vertex is it kind of combines like you're able to do perhaps on majors with like pretty decent liquidity, obviously not the same essential as exchanges, but they're also able to list the long tail, they have an AMM and they're also able to do cross margin. So allow you to use a bunch of different stuff as collateral through their money market, their kind of internal money market. You mentioned DYDX on part one as one DEX to also keep your eye on. Injective is one you've also spoken about as well. Is there any other DEXs you're actively looking at as solutions that you find particularly interesting? Yeah, there's one called Cube Exchange. I don't think it's stealth. It's got a Twitter page and everything, but it's built by Bartosz who was one of the best engineers at Solana previously. And it's basically like an MPC based like non-custodial exchange. And it will be like allowing layer one to layer one swaps as well as eventually like you can basically use your actual layer one assets in the exchange non-custodially and then trade both like spots. So trade them for other layer one assets similar to what something like third channel allows you to do, but also doing like perps and leverage. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, DYDX is really cool. Have you heard of Drift? Jordi spoke about that as one Solana that he likes. Yeah, Drift is really cool. They've been innovating a lot for a while. I haven't caught up with their recent stuff, but the last time I checked them out, they were doing really cool stuff. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think it's one of the areas that has the most talent building on it. Like GMX V2 is really cool. I think the new synthetics V3 is really cool. That's maybe one of my favorite designs and like one of the most kind of scalable designs if it works. I think Gainz, and I know they sponsor you guys is a super cool design. Like they all have different trade-offs. And like, I think with all of them, you kind of have to like go in, understand them, speak to the teams and then figure out like what you think makes most sense. Do you think long-term the Oracle-based perp model can win or do you think we're gonna see more like order book style solutions start to dominate the market once some of the issues with that's flushed out? Yeah, I think Oracle perps are a really good like hack to get to market with decent liquidity quicker. But with an Oracle perp, you necessarily assume that price discovery happens elsewhere, right? You kind of like import your price discovery. So, you know, like centralized exchange or whatever, Binance, like all the market makers trade there, price is established and then GMX or Gainz will just like pull that price and let you trade against it with some slippage or whatever. And for me, I think you can still build a massive business doing that. Like it's what these Oracle perps are doing. It's what like Rolebit's doing with their perps. But I think ultimately the big opportunity is for price discovery itself to happen on chain. And I think for that, you do need an order book or something like an order book. So, yeah, I think it's a good like short-term or like medium-term kind of like hack. But I think over time, I mean, it would be really disappointing if price discovery always happens on centralized exchanges and the best we can do with DeFi is just like try to avoid as much toxic flow as possible with a very fast Oracle, you know, that just copies. Do you think like GMX could switch their design to an order book model? Or do you think if another program like DYDX ends up finding the solution, they'll just kind of take price discovery from another DEX? Like, well, I don't know, it's hard to predict. I know, but it's interesting like what their solution might be long-term. Yeah, I think they could, as we kind of see these things evolve. I honestly think the best models will take advantage because I think the best models will have their own price discovery. So they'll have like an order book or something eventually. But I also think they'll have ways to take advantage of passive liquidity. Cause like clearly there's a bunch of demand in crypto for, and like all the big brands on crypto on the Twitter will say how stupid these passive strategies are and how people are losing money and impermanent loss and LVR and all this stuff. But reality is there's billions of dollars in even like the simplest XYK AMMs, right? So like there is for whatever reason, there's demand for this. And so like it not tapping into that is kind of stupid, right? Because it's much cheaper as we can see, like it's much cheaper than the decentralized market maker. Like these people are willing to lose a lot of money to impermanent loss and all sorts of things and still market make. So I think the best systems will have options for both. Like they'll have vaults where like passive LPs can kind of participate and provide liquidity to DEXs. But they'll also have order books for like more sophisticated players to participate. And it'll all kind of be aggregated into one like liquidity book basically. I'm just about to ask Jose, what do you think of new front end solutions like Unibot? But whilst we're on the DEX subject, I wanted to quickly give a shout out to one of our official show partners Gaines Network who are providing an amazing DEX trading experience. If that is something you're interested in in the context of everything that Jose has just said, right now they are currently running a $50,000 trading contest across Polygon and Arbitrum. On the Polygon side, the rankings will be based on cumulative percentage P &L over all of your trades, ensuring every trader, no matter what size you're trading with has a shot at the top. And if you're more of a whale then on the Arbitrum side, they will be favoring total P &L over trades, which obviously favors people that are trading biggest size. So just to give you an idea, this trading comp will reset every single day and pay up prices based on daily P &L. So this is amazing if you've got a really nice trade lined up for the day. And as you can see on the Polygon side, you have $2,000 for first place, 1,600 for second place and so on and so forth. And even bigger prizes for traders over on the Arbitrum side with an $8,900 prize for first place so if you are interested in trading on an amazing decks, but also getting the upside to potentially $50,000 worth of rewards through their trading comp, then click on the link in the description to trade over on G trade. Of course, they're across Polygon and Arbitrum and have some of the most diverse range of asset pairs in crypto. Now, back to Jose to answer my question about Unibot. What are your thoughts on like front end solutions like Unibot? Cause this has been like a huge trend over the last couple of weeks, especially, but it seems to only be growing Unibot hit its all time high in daily active users today. Do you think these Telegram bots have legs as like a yeah, in the medium term, medium to long term? Or do you think it's just like short term hype? No, I think the current version of like these custodial kind of like Telegram bots are interesting, but I think there's definitely a lot more you can do there. Like, I think with, and especially with AI, like crypto UX sucks, right? So an AI I think opens up the ability for like chat as a UX that I think is really underexplored, right? And like the, I think the Telegram bots are like the first sort of instantiation of that, where you can see that people want to be able to ape stuff simply. And I think there's opportunity for like wallets or dashboards to innovate on this UX with AI and let you, for instance, have, and like we backed a project that's doing this, but have like simple ways to trade, simple ways to like, let's say you type bridge my ETH, you know, from L1 to Arbitrum, and then like stake my ETH in Lido, or like buy some Unibot. Like all this stuff is much simpler actually, and I think with AI in general, I think a lot of stuff that's currently done through like browsers or browser extensions or even search engines kind of moves to like more of a chat UX. And I think crypto is no different. And these chat bots are kind of like- That's super interesting actually. First iteration of that, like you're just gonna be chatting to your, to this like assistant that basically like packages that gets the transaction ready for you, and then you just have to sign, or there might be even be like stuff that's even simpler than that. But yeah, I think it's like the start of something cool. That's actually pretty cool. Cause you could be like, yeah, deposit into this search for yield opportunities, deposit into this LP, reinvest 50% every week. And I want you to auto compound into this farm. And then I want 10% of those profits to go back into ETH. Like it's disguised kind of the limit. Are you seeing any solutions for this? Obviously it's gonna take time because these, you know, we've just seen like the first few iterations of even chat GBT. Have you seen anything like building anything like this already? You sort of need like, I think the only people that can really build it are like wallets and dashboards, because you need to have done like all the indexing of blockchain data. That's like really hard to do with the current solutions. And I think you almost need to build like that cause the AI would need to train on like a lot of data and also to have access to a lot of data. And I don't think many people actually have that, many in this space right now. So I've seen a few of the dashboards kind of experiment with that. And I think they're in the best position to do that, especially the cross chain ones, which are indexing data across like all the different blockchains and like Pulsar, which is portfolio company of ours is like one of the ones that's experimenting with this.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"Yo, what's up, everyone? I have Jose from Delphi back here on the show. If you watch part one, you guys would know today we are going to be discussing more of the degen Altcoin stuff going into interesting topics like, you know, roll bit, gamble fight, trading bots, uni bot, all that sort of stuff as well as some of Jose's topics. So welcome back, although it's only been one minute in the real world and let's kick it off. So first thesis I wanted to get your opinion on was this tweet that you did. You said over a long enough timeline, all centralized exchanges will fade into irrelevance and become glorified on the slash off ramps. Pretty strong words, actually. You said the vast majority of trading activity will happen on DEXs, overzealous regulators will just accelerate this transition. Do you want to elaborate a bit on that tweet? Yeah, like I, yeah, I think the future is, at the very least, like non-custodial exchanges. So where you like similar to do IDX or Vertex, where you might have an off-chain order book, but the trading is non-custodial. It's just kind of like, I think, inevitable. It'll take a while for both the tech to get there and then the trust in the tech to get there, right? But yeah, I think it's inevitable because it's like a better system. Like you don't need to give, there's no reason why an exchange should have custody over your assets in order to allow you to trade there, right? Like if you can trade according to rules defined in smart contracts, then like there's really no need to give up custody of your assets. So that applies to like derivatives and spot. So I think, and then also from a regulatory perspective, I just think that regulators are gonna be kind of going after centralized exchange. Centralized exchanges are like one of the easiest places for regulators to go after, right? They have a lot of money. And as we've seen with Binance and then Bitrex and these kinds of enforcement letters, like I just think it's gonna be like the biggest targets that the regulators go after. And in doing so, they end up pushing people more and more towards like decentralized exchanges. And then I think you're gonna have on and off ramps and like crypto native neo banks, right? That serve as the connection point between fiat and the crypto world where you can go on and off. But then in terms of like your trading venues and stuff, I think the most successful ones will be decentralized in future. And I think prices probably will. You mentioned decentralized, sorry, you mentioned centralized regulation. Do you worry about DeFi regulation as well? I know it's hard to regulate, but like, yeah, is there some sort of future where things are just like flat out IP band, I guess, in like multiple jurisdictions for DeFi? Yeah, I think DeFi is much harder, like properly built DeFi is much harder to regulate in that way, right? Like if you build, and it depends exactly how things are built, but like, I think if I built the right way, there is no one you can subpoena to shut it down, right? Like there's not like a Binance you can go after and say, hey, you've been serving like Hamas or whoever they were, whoever they were laundering money for. You guys need to stop doing that immediately. And it's like, well, if it's a smart contract and you've handed over the keys to governance, then it's like, if you want me to stop, you have to make a governance proposal. Like the SEC would have to propose to the Dow that they stopped doing whatever they want to do. It's really the only way. That's pretty funny to think about. Gary gets all like clicking except on his menopause. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the end game of well-designed DeFi, I think. So I think that the kind of weak link there still is like the front end and to some extent, like the backend, but I think there are solutions coming up for that too. Like Arbit is super interesting, but I think even absent Arbit, like stuff like Liquidy just makes it like, so Liquidy's model for those who aren't familiar, it provides like a fee at the smart contract level to front end operators, right? So you can stand up a front end and you get paid per, I think in their case, it's part of the interest for standing up a front end and serving users. And I think every exchange or decentralized exchange will eventually like adopt a similar model where, and you can also like open source your front end, right? And dockerize it and make it very easy for anyone to deploy. And at that point, it becomes like as hard to stop as Tor. You have these smart contracts running permissionlessly on the blockchain. And then you have a bunch of people all around the world running front ends for it and like a free market, basically of people being paid fees to do that. And so I think like, yeah, properly built DeFi is both very hard to regulate practically and also doesn't fit into regulatory like definitions and like, and this, yeah, like the kind of principles that regulations exist for.
Crypto Banter
A highlight from You're 'Running Out Of Time' To Stack These 5 Altcoins | with Jos (Delphi Digital)
"Yo, what's up, everyone? I have Jose from Delphi back here on the show. If you watch part one, you guys would know today we are going to be discussing more of the degen Altcoin stuff going into interesting topics like, you know, roll bit, gamble fight, trading bots, uni bot, all that sort of stuff as well as some of Jose's topics. So welcome back, although it's only been one minute in the real world and let's kick it off. So thesis first I wanted to get your opinion on was this tweet that you did. You said over a long enough timeline, all centralized exchanges will fade into irrelevance and become glorified on the slash off ramps. Pretty strong words, actually. You said the vast majority of trading activity will happen on DEXs, overzealous regulators will just accelerate this transition. Do you want to elaborate a bit on that tweet? Yeah, like I, yeah, I think the future is, at the very least, like non -custodial exchanges. So where you like similar to do IDX or Vertex, where you might have an off -chain order book, but the trading is non -custodial. It's just kind of like, I think, inevitable. It'll take a while for both the tech to get there and then the trust in the tech to get there, right? But yeah, I think it's inevitable because it's like a better system. Like you don't need to give, there's no reason why an exchange should have custody over your assets in order to allow you to trade there, right? Like if you can trade according to rules defined in smart contracts, then like there's really no need to give up custody of your assets. So that applies to like derivatives and spot. So I think, and then also from a regulatory perspective, I just think that regulators are gonna be kind of going after centralized exchange. Centralized exchanges are like one of the easiest places for regulators to go after, right? They have a lot of money. And as we've seen with Binance and then Bitrex and these kinds of enforcement letters, like I just think it's gonna be like the biggest targets that the regulators go after. And in doing so, they end up pushing people more and more towards like decentralized exchanges. And then I think you're gonna have on and off ramps and like crypto native neo banks, right? That serve as the connection point between fiat and the crypto world where you can go on and off. But then in terms of like your trading venues and stuff, I think the most successful ones will be decentralized in future. And I think prices probably will. You mentioned decentralized, sorry, you mentioned centralized regulation. Do you worry about DeFi regulation as well? I know it's hard to regulate, but like, yeah, is there some sort of future where things are just like flat out IP band, I guess, in like multiple jurisdictions for DeFi? Yeah, I think DeFi is much harder, like properly built DeFi is much harder to regulate in that way, right? Like if you build, and it depends exactly how things are built, but like, I think if I built the right way, there is no one you can subpoena to shut it down, right? Like there's not like a Binance you can go after and say, hey, you've been serving like Hamas or whoever they were, whoever they were laundering money for. You guys need to stop doing that immediately. And it's like, well, if it's a smart contract and you've handed over the keys to governance, then it's like, if you want me to stop, you have to make a governance proposal. Like the SEC would have to propose to the Dow that they stopped doing whatever they want to do. It's really the only way. That's pretty funny to think about. Gary gets all like clicking except on his menopause. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the end game of well -designed DeFi, I think. So I think that the kind of weak link there still is like the front end and to some extent, like the backend, but I think there are solutions coming up for that too. Like Arbit is super interesting, but I think even absent Arbit, like stuff like Liquidy just makes it like, so Liquidy's model for those who aren't familiar, it provides like a fee at the smart contract level to front end operators, right? So you can stand up a front end and you get paid per, I think in their case, it's part of the interest for standing up a front end and serving users. And I think every exchange or decentralized exchange will eventually like adopt a similar model where, and you can also like open source your front end, right? And dockerize it and make it very easy for anyone to deploy. And at that point, it becomes like as hard to stop as Tor. You have these smart contracts running permissionlessly on the blockchain. And then you have a bunch of people all around the world running front ends for it and like a free market, basically of people being paid fees to do that. And so I think like, yeah, properly built DeFi is both very hard to regulate practically and also doesn't fit into regulatory like definitions and like, and this, yeah, like the kind of principles that regulations exist for.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"The thing with most decentralized Stablecoins, maybe including DAI, is that they're not really being used as Stablecoins. They're mainly almost like yield instruments, like very few people are using them to pay for things or transact or anything like that. And so they end up being more like a byproduct of generating on-chain yield or doing lending and stuff like that. And I think what they will end up kind of realizing is that in order to make a Stablecoin work, you have to really build the ecosystem around it that makes people want to use it. And that's what Fracks is doing, I think, really well. It's like they have Fracks lend and they built their liquid staking derivative and all this. And you need to build those products around it. But so far, I'm not really seeing too much evidence that any of them are kind of like succeeding and really being used as Stablecoins. The other thing I wanted to ask you was about this whole Neobank theory. Is it in a way like centralized DeFi? Because it's not true DeFi, right? Because to have on and off ramps, you need some sort of centralized intermediary. So what's your opinion on centralized DeFi, obviously with DeFi regulation as well? Yeah, I mean, you have to interact with the real world. You have to abide by real world regulations. But I think there's ways to connect the two in a crypto native way that make a lot of sense. Like, I don't know, the way I kind of envision it is, you know, if any of you ever use like Revolut or an app like that, where you have like your different currency accounts. A wallet is just kind of like another sort of like account. Right. It's a different type of capital in that account. And the idea is like being able to bridge from your wallet into like a bank account and bank accounts in different currencies and vice versa, like very seamlessly. And also stuff like Gnosis Pay allows you to like, you know, kind of pay with your Visa debit card, like actually initiate a smart contract transaction with it. So I think there's going to be like more and more both technological ways and UX ways to make it so that, yeah, the Neobank will obviously have to have like all the relevant licenses. And if they want to be an actual bank, they have to have a banking license and fulfill all those regulations. But there's still ways that they can integrate with crypto rails that make the experience like way more seamless. I don't think anyone has nailed that yet.I think exchanges are actually the Neobanks of crypto. I think like most people treat like a centralized exchange or several as their banks. Right. Like you have a bunch of capital on there. Maybe you have their debit card that you spend with. Maybe you use it to borrow and lend. You do all your capital management on there. It's very easy. Right. And so I think it's inevitable that someone will nail that user experience in a way that allows you to kind of like seamlessly go from one to the other. I'm a user of some of the current crypto banks and none of them are quite there, in my opinion, in terms of user experience. Have you looked into Meld? They're kind of building a kind of like a banking solution. They've got fiat integration, too. No, I haven't. It might just be one to look into. That's the only one that came to mind when you mentioned like this, these kind of solutions. It's the only one I'm familiar with. Yeah. So, yeah, I think there are cool ones being built. I want to end this first part here because there's lots I want to discuss on the more like altcoin front in the next part. So for the people watching, we'll put up part two tomorrow. So after this, sorry to keep you hanging, but I wanted to split it up, make it a little more digestible. So, yeah, thank you for joining. And well, I guess we'll see everyone else on the other side. Yeah. I'll put in the exit outro to make it easy for our producers.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"And then I think another interesting opportunity there is kind of like a crypto native neo bank. We invested in a project called Harbor that and the idea is just like crypto, especially stable coins and fiat dollars should be fungible. Right. But they just aren't like it's very difficult and getting more difficult. Right. As we were kind of talking before the podcast started in many parts of the world to go from fiat to crypto and from crypto to fiat. It's like it's extremely difficult. It's actually it's also difficult to spend your crypto. And so I think solutions that make that much easier to manage like crypto native sort of like neo banks make a lot of sense, too. I think that will eventually enable like payments, payroll and a bunch of other solutions, which which like basically building a financial stack for like crypto companies that still need to interact with the crypto users that still need to interact with the real world. So I think that's super interesting. And then I also think there's going to be more like legal fi. So like kind of legal services, like unchained legal services for DAOs that need to interact to the real world, like what Maker's doing. But also, like every single sort of DAO has these multisigs that are just like random people, sometimes anons that are managing protocols worth like billions of dollars. I think all that is going to be turned into like or wrapped around legal entities with with stuff like borgs that Gabe Shapiro from our team kind of pioneered. I think you're going to see a lot more of that. And then on the and then also games like I think games like sub games, I would consider in that realm of like Web 2.5, like bringing bridging the real world and crypto. And some are like purely unchained. But I think the majority is is like Web 2.5. And yeah, there's some really cool games being developed by some like really experienced game developers that I think are going to blow people's mind. I think enough money was invested that will get at least a handful of like big successes. And I think those are likely to be some of the things that drive most new users to crypto. Yeah. And then gaming, something I was definitely going to touch on in the second half, the part two. I wanted to ask you quickly about the first point you made about real world assets like tokenizing assets. Have you checked out fracks, what they're doing with the treasury bills? Do you have an opinion on fracks? I'm interested because I had Drake on the show and he he was a big fracks bull. So if you have one. No, I haven't looked at what they're doing with treasuries. How does that work? They're going to be implementing. I don't know exactly how it works, but they're going to be. Well, obviously, they've come up with their fracks lend protocol. I don't know if you've seen fracks lend. Yeah. And they're also going to be starting starting up with treasuries. So I guess you can they're going to be buying up treasuries, I think, using using some of their their assets to have like some sort of pool. And yeah, they'll be earning earning a yield on those treasuries, paying back to frack stakers. There's a lot of intricacies, I don't know, because I was just explained it three days ago, but that'll be an interesting an interesting kind of addition. So, yeah, I can check that one out. Are you bullish on fracks? Do you have an opinion more broadly speaking on fracks? Before Jose answers my question about fracks finance, I want to give a shout out to one of our official exchange partners of the show, OpenX. OpenX has been pretty amazing with listing lots of new pairs onto their platform. In the past week alone, they've listed two of the most popular coins right now, Rollbit and Unibot. And they also have many other pairs, as you can see on their platform, like your Bitcoin, your Ethereum, your SHIB. And they're constantly listing new pairs. But they also just launched their new staking dashboard. So if you are an OX holder, which is their native token, you can now stake it to earn a yield. And remember that fees generated from the protocol are paid back a percentage of that to OX stakers. So stakers can actually benefit from the growth of the platform. And it is an exchange that I'm personally pretty bullish on. So obviously, it's your decision whether you want to hold the token. But just in general, it's been a great exchange to trade on. And also, it's quite unique because of their transparency model, which allows you to leverage other forms of collateral that you have in your MetaMask wallet to trade against on the exchange. For example, if you have Pepe in your wallet that is currently a liquid, you can actually put it up as collateral using their OUSD credit system and in exchange leverage against it to trade. So on most exchanges, you need to trade against Stablecoin, whereas on OpenX, you can use illiquid assets like your Pepe, your Rollbits, all these degen coins. So I think it's going to be an amazing exchange for all the degens out there. So if you want to get involved, submit an FTX claim trade and use the platform. There is a link in the description. And of course, their new staking dashboard is now live if you are a holder of OX and want to earn some yield off that token. So without further ado, let's get back to Jose's response on Fracks Finance. I think it's a really good team, like the rate at which they build and continue to build with a relatively small team as well is super impressive.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"Why so many L2's? I don't think we need so many L2's. I mean, yeah. There's a question as to how much throughput like L2's actually enable as well. And whether you'll end up having like a world of kind of like the Cosmos thesis, but on Ethereum with a bunch of like app specific L2's. Like roll apps or try, you know, all the whole modular thesis. Yeah, but in terms of like these general purpose L2's, I don't think we need this many of them. I think people are launching them because they I mean, a lot of those you mentioned have been building for like years, actually. Yeah. You know, like we first invested in Arbitrum like years ago. Same with ZKSync. And they've been grinding for years since like before people even kind of thought L2's could become a reality. But yeah, L2's make a lot of money right now. Right. Like they make a lot of money. And it's the narrative. It's arguably the narrative with the most traction in crypto right now. So it kind of makes sense. Do you think things will flip maybe next Boron where like the need for block space comes back and we realize, well, maybe they are limited. Maybe we do need more composability. And then people like, shit, well, Adam offers this. Solana offers this. Well, not Adam, Cosmos rather, the ecosystem. Do you think that could play out next Boron? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. I think that's what's interesting about Solana for me is that it really does enable more than what like the current crop of L2's do in terms of like scalability and throughput. And can also like sort of implement L2's if it wants to. Right. And kind of has its own ecosystem there. But like, yeah, I think that's what has to happen for them to succeed. There have to be like unique applications that could only exist there that launch there in the next bull run. Otherwise, L2's I think will just continue to like absorb capital because, yeah, if the only things that we need are like the things that already exist on L1. But faster and cheaper than I think L2's are the winner. Yeah. So I want to kind of segue now into the final section of part one here and ask you, yeah, what are some of those applications that you think can can drive that next wave of users, not just onto Solana. Obviously, you can talk about Solana specific coins, but also other other layer ones, individual protocols, but also more like ideas, because there are big problems in DeFi today, right, that I think are going to be solved next cycle. So what are some of those solutions? Yeah, so I think there's a bunch of... It's a broad question. I guess we can start with like one, maybe like one of the biggest problems that you're seeing in the market and some of the interesting solutions to it. So we can break down like, you know, DEX's and the other ones. Yeah, I mean, I think some areas that are interesting are like crypto native. So I think broadly you can think of like applications of kind of two types, like some of them are sort of bridging the real world and crypto world in some way. And that's stuff like stable coins, stuff like neo banks, stuff like real world assets. And I think those are interesting and will continue to grow. And then there's entirely crypto native applications, which I would consider things like AMMs, things like crypto native, like money market protocols and these kinds of things. And I think there's like a mixture of both that are happening that are interesting. So like, I do think eventually most like stocks, bonds, commodities, you know, pumps sold line are going to be on chain. And we're seeing like really cool stuff happen there. Both people tokenizing treasuries, which like makes sense as the first killer app given the yield there. But also people working on tokenizing like real estate and making real estate finance like available on chain and other stuff like that. I think kind of the flux model was an interesting one as well. Like kind of a breakthrough for people where you can use these treasuries as part of DeFi, part of the money market.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"Yeah. And then other than that, I'm bullish sort of Cosmos, not Adam, but like Cosmos kind of like app chain thesis. And that's just because I think there's going to be a lot of use cases that benefit from customizability at the chain level, like being able to customize and launch your own chain that's completely tailored to your use case. I think a good example here is DYDX V2, which should be launching soon. And so and I think if you want to do that, Cosmos SDK is like by far the best way to do that, by far the best way to kind of launch your own chain. I think over the next year, we're going to see a few interesting launches that kind of show the power of Cosmos SDK. I think SAE is definitely one of them, like really impressive team. It's going to be one of the fastest chains. They also understand BD and are very crypto native. I think Anoma is one of them, obviously at the center of like this intense kind of narrative that's going on and also privacy. So the first application is Nomada, which is going to offer like private shielded swaps on Osmosis. And then obviously DYDX is like a huge one where these guys had the most successful, arguably one of the most successful applications on E-Plan and chose to kind of throw it all away. And not throw it all away because the application is still running, but like start from scratch, basically building their own Cosmos, building their own chain with Cosmos SDK. So I think that kind of shows like the power of the of the stack. And so, yeah, I think there's going to be a bunch of launches that kind of and those are like on opposite ends of the narrative spectrum. Right. One is like AppChain, which is you can you can like control your block space and customize your own consensus and stuff like that. And the other is Solana, where very easy to deploy an app, highly scalable and like single shared state, basically. Do you think the DYDX launch will succeed? Because there's been a lot of speculation about how, I guess, audacious the the attempt is basically rewriting their entire protocol. Yeah, it's really audacious, like writing your own protocol, launching your own chain, inventing this new kind of like in-memory order book. There's a lot of moving parts. I think we're investors in DYDX, so like biased. But I think that's like one of the best teams in crypto, one of the best and most ambitious teams in crypto. So I'm pretty bullish on on on them being able to succeed. Yeah, I had Jordi on on for an interview, like I think it was a week ago, and he was saying how, yeah, if it pays off, there could be a huge reward at the end. And if it fails, well, you know, then then there will be a lot of competition that'll that'll catch up quickly. So I think it's a pretty pivotal moment for them. But yeah, some of the stuff they're trying to do is, I think, pretty cool. I think. Yeah, I think now I want to discuss some DeFi stuff, some relevant stuff. So I had you on my space to talk about curve. I don't want to talk about curve too much today because I think that's kind of already already at least played out. But I want to talk about base because this is really the talk of the town right now. It's all over my Twitter feed. Everyone's talking about base protocols. Everyone's speculating on what is it? Friend tech profiles. It's been a it's been a crazy day in baseline. So I wanted to just get your firstly, your broad opinion on on, yeah, base and what you think of it. Yeah, like someone somewhere I don't remember who described as like BSC for white people, which I think is like a good metaphor. I think like base is cool. Obviously, you get the advantage of like Coinbase brand and Coinbase customers. Like Coinbase historically has been kind of on and off in terms of products, like their perps product and their NFT products kind of sucked. But their wallet I tried recently is pretty good. So, yeah. And I think their execution on base has been interesting, like kind of launching on a weekend and then having like, you know, eight figures of capital bridge in and only to get rugged on a meme coin called bald, you know, referencing the CEO's bald head. Is is an interesting like BD strategy. I don't like in terms of tech. It's just like another optimism. Right. But and so I don't know how many L2's we can have, like EVM compatible L2's leveraging like similar tech stacks. I don't know how many of them are going to end up having their own ecosystem. Right. Like like does base need its own AMM, its own credit protocol, its own perps protocol? Does optimism need that need their own or is it just like that Aave ends up deploying on all of them and winning on all of them and Uniswap does the same and this kind of stuff? I think if the and that's also I'm more interested in kind of environments that allow you to do stuff that hasn't been done before. And I kind of don't see that with with base or with I think the advantage of base is just reach and user base, which is a massive advantage. But I don't see really any of the L2's as environments where you can do like fundamentally new stuff that you can do elsewhere. And so that I think I'm kind of like wondering how this ends up, because like everyone is deploying an L2. Like, you know, are we just going to have a million L2's all with their own ecosystems and fragments of liquidity? Or is it going to be a winner? And if so, like, what does that what does that look like? So many L2's like, yeah, I had a look at the funding stats. It's mind blowing. Like the biggest funding is going towards L2's. We've got like StarkNet, ZKSync, you've got Scroll, you've got linear. And then that's already like, you know, notwithstanding Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism. Now we've got base. I mean, just it's crazy the amount of layers in the market. I want to touch on the ramifications of base, though, because you touched on a point that Coinbase has a lot of users and it has a lot of sway in the industry. And they will have their Web3 wallet. And I think they've already integrated it straight from the Coinbase platform to base, which there should be some like liquidity slash user flow into base from that. Would you maybe view it because of Coinbase's like advantage from that perspective as more of a negative for maybe the other L2's? So like base might just come in and just steal market share and the losers will be, you know, maybe a Polygon or an Arbitrum. Do you think base could be the winner and some of these other ones end up being affected just because they can't compete with Coinbase? Yeah, I think so. I certainly think like they're all competing for the same kinds of users. And I think Coinbase has the biggest reach of all of them. Obviously, Polygon and some of the others have done a great job with BD. They all have like their own communities. But I definitely think base competes most directly with those chains. And yeah, I think there's going to be more launches as well. Like more people are going to be launching L2's.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"And if that's the case, what other L1s you mentioned before, like you think there will be other L1s that can cover their own niches. What ones are you looking at? I know you've spoken a bit about Solana in the past on the show. You've spoken a bit about Adam. That's something I think in part two we'll touch on a little bit more. But yeah, what other ones are you seeing that are, I guess, differentiated? Suiaptos now coming into the market. There's all sorts of new ones like Say, which have more of a trading focus. What's happening? But yeah, which ones can step in here? Hold on, hold on. Before Jose tells us about his favorite layer one cryptos, I want to give a quick shout out to one of our show partners Smartdex, who are partnering with Crypto Banter to give away an airdrop of one Ethereum every single week to a liquidity provider. So basically, Smartdex is a DEX which offers pretty insane APRs on their LP pools. I'll just go across some of the pools now so you can have a look. Across Arbitrum, you can see their ARBUSDC pool is paying 27%. Their S-DEX pool with ETH is paying over 106%. If you go into the BNB chain, you can also see they have USDT and BNB paying 30%. Their Bitcoin and S-dex paying 92% and so on with pretty massive multipliers as you can see via the column in the right. So basically, they are paying some of the highest yields in crypto right now. And if you deposit into any one of their liquidity pools across Polygon, Arbitrum or BNB, you will be eligible to win a one Ethereum airdrop, which we are going to give away here on the show. Simply, all you need to do is deposit a minimum of $50 into any of the pools on any of the networks apart from Ethereum. Once you've deposited a minimum of $50 in liquidity into one of these pools, then you can come and submit your wallet address. Once you've submitted, then I will go through on the show and pick a random winner to win a one Ethereum airdrop, which is about $1850. So just remember how liquidity pools work, you still own the assets, you still own the Bitcoin that you stake, you're simply earning yield on those coins on the Smartdex platform. And you will not only earn the yield, which can be a great opportunity to get some passive income going, but you can also qualify for the airdrop. And we're going to be giving away some cool prizes on the show. So link in the description to Smartdex if you would like to provide liquidity. Now to Jose for his response. Yeah, I'm very bullish on Solana. I think Solana has like a differentiated both sort of like product market fit in terms of the tech, but also like a differentiated community. I think the Solana vision of the world is scalability. First of all, like obviously a highly scalable chain. And rather than sort of fractionalizing state, fragmenting state with all these layer twos or with app chains or whatever, Solana is like a world of like completely shared state, which allows for like much greater kind of composability. And I think that vision has a lot of merit. Like I think they're clearly like a lot of the coolest stuff that happens in crypto is enabled by composability, whether it's yield farming or a lot of the DeFi stuff or things like that. And I think as of right now, Solana is really the front runner in that like monolithic world. And like monolith has become kind of a kind of a negative word when we I think partially because of how strong like the modular thesis has become. But like monolith, as kind of the multi coin guys point out, is also like known as integrated in the traditional world. And that's like a good thing, right? Being able to it's much easier to deploy an application on a monolith where you get data availability and consensus and even like stuff like wallet integrations and everything kind of bundled in than spinning up your own app chain. And so I think like that's so that's like one side of the spectrum for me that I think in the monoliths and like the already integrated thesis, I think Solana has a huge lead. Aptos I think is, in my opinion, like a little bit lost. I don't know the ecosystem well enough to really have like a strong opinion. So but my impression is from from a distance is just a little bit like of a kind of boomer take to BD and sort of like not not very crypto native. And although the tech is good, I just don't see a lot of interesting ecosystem stuff happening there. Like the projects that we've seen raising there haven't been particularly interesting. I think SUI is slightly better in that in that respect. Like we've seen more interesting high quality projects on SUI both on the gaming side and on the DeFi side. And also the developers we talk to, they like have a preference for SUI tech stack over Aptos. But I'd still say Solana is like much like further far ahead of both of them in terms of both community. And that's the other thing with Solana is it's a very differentiated community, like the ETH people are like researchers, kind of mad scientist types, libertarians. And the Solana community is much more like high frequency traders from Chicago. And then like Web2 entrepreneurs, right. They just want to build like high throughput applications that kind of can be used in the real world.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think it's hard to deny that ETH has like all the momentum right now. Like it's proven to be kind of like Lindy to some extent, like it's survived. It has L2s now, which have a lot of like cheap block space. Obviously Coinbase choosing ETH and the optimism stack was pretty big as well. You're seeing stuff like PayPal deploy their stablecoin on ETH and ETH really become like the settlement sort of network. I think what I think that says for all L1s is kind of similar to what I've been saying for a while that I think all L1s really need a strong reason to exist as in that they need to sort of innovate on a dimension where they're like 10x better than ETH. Right. Like it's not enough to be a little bit faster to have a little bit better user experience. You really need to be kind of like 10x better to have to have a reason to exist. So I still think there are a few layer ones that fit that description. Yeah, we can talk about that. But then I also think like with ETH, it's sort of similar to like the Bitcoin maxis in kind of the bear market of like 2018, 2019, where it suddenly became trendy to be a Bitcoin maxi. Right. It was kind of like the status quo. It was kind of like the obvious take. Like Bitcoin's digital gold. Ethereum is a scam. Like ICOs are all scams. The only use case for cryptocurrency is like self-sovereign money or like digital self-sovereign store of value. Everything else doesn't exist. And I think that was wrong then. And I think being an ETH maxi is sort of wrong on a similar dimension now. Like I think there is space for other L1s. Although obviously, ETH has a lead and is like the most likely to succeed. But there's going to be room for other L1s too. It's just that in a bear market, like people don't want to bridge outside of ETH. There's also been like a lot of bridge hacks over the years, which by the way, L2s aren't immune to that. Right. Like the bridges, the L2 bridges are called trustless bridges, but they like all the hacks on existing bridges were pretty much either smart contract or like signature hacks. Right. Both of which could affect L2 bridges. So, yeah, I think people are scared of bridges. There's also like a wealth effect where ETH has like the richest sort of like the biggest wealth effect as a community. And ETH people want to support like ETH aligned projects so that they like venture out to L2s much more readily than they do to all L1s. And so I think all of that contributes to Ethereum looking really strong right now and L2s looking like super strong right now too. It was quite interesting. We saw Andre Cronje, I think, in a podcast with The Block talk about how Phantom might like spin up an optimistic roll up, essentially, like, I guess joining this Ethereum wave, although he made a comment that I want to get your opinion on about layer twos, like Arbitrum, Optimism, etc. Like not even being layer twos. He's like, well, they're sidechains. They're not scaling anything. Would you agree with that statement? Like these definitional kind of debates or like semantic debates end up getting pretty heated. It's also, I think, a symptom of the bear market, I think. Like, you know, the Jon Charbonneau post about what is a layer two, what is a sidechain. I think I do think eventually layer twos do become sidechains to some extent, like they will need because like right now they still have like effectively like a multisig governing at least the bridge portion. Right. I mean, a lot of them have multisig governance for everything, for all upgrades. Some of them have it just for the bridge. But it's hard to see how they can fully get rid of that because they need to be able to make changes and upgrades and stuff like that. And at the same time, if you like right now, it's sort of a single sequencer. If you decentralize a sequencer, then you need some kind of consensus. Right. Some way to arrive at like consensus of the order of the transactions. Even if you don't need it for security, you still need it to kind of order the transactions. And then you also have situations where like, what if the hack happens on a layer two right now? Right. Like what if the arbitrum bridge gets hacked or something like that? Does ETH actually fork to like, so I think it's like social consensus sort of all the way down. So I do think L2 is eventually sort of become like they inherit Ethereum's security, like consensus level security, but they do have their own like tradeoffs and consensus. I think eventually that makes them somewhat of a sidechain.
Crypto Banter
"delphi" Discussed on Crypto Banter
"What's up, Banta fam? I'm here with Jose from Delphi Digital. Today, we're going to be discussing all about the crypto markets, DeFi, altcoins, layer twos, and more. We've got some awesome topics lined up for today's interview, which is part one. And we're also going to be doing a part two as well to discuss some other altcoin stuff. So Jose, welcome to the channel. Hey, Maz, thanks very much for having me. So I did an interview with you, I think it was like six months ago, and we went into a lot of the, like the basic fundamentals of your investing, your strategy. I want to focus more on current events in today's podcast, because obviously, a lot has happened since then. So I wanted to get an update from you. Like, what are your thoughts right now in terms of where we're sitting in the market, kind of in a weird low volatility period with people hanging on for this Bitcoin spot ETF approval? Yeah, definitely, definitely a bit of a weird sort of period. I think this is kind of always the case with with like bear markets, where it starts with kind of like fear and panic and volatility. And then it kind of gets like it continues to like indifference almost right where the market really slows down, volatility goes away, people start to think and that's when people really start to think it's dead. And like it kind of drives people insane, especially trader types who just get like wrecked with the with the chop. From my perspective, there's loads of loads of cool stuff happening in the background. I mean, I think infrastructure is progressing really well. There's now like multiple options for devs to launch applications in ways that are like very scalable. There's, there's a lot of development happening on the application front as well, although it's like largely unseen. But like, there's billions of dollars raised for crypto games. We like invested a lot of crypto games. So we get kind of a sneak peek and pretty exciting some of the stuff that's going on in the background there. I think, like, DeFi gets a lot of hate. And obviously, he's been in a famous the Gen Spartan kind of 36 month bear market. But I think DeFi has shown like how resilient it is through throughout everything that happened here, both with Curve and with with the stuff in 2022 too. So overall, I think we're in like, pretty good spot. Yeah, I mean, obviously, Bitcoin ETF would be would be huge. But I think there's like enough kind of natural momentum from from stuff that's being built that. Yeah, I'm pretty, pretty bullish from where I'm sitting. Amazing. Yeah, I want to ask you about some of those like protocols and altcoins specifically. But first, to just touching on the ETF, once again, what are your thoughts on the implications? How do you view view it overall affecting like the Bitcoin flow structurally? Yeah, I don't know that I have like a particularly interesting or good take on this. I think it'll make it much easier for external money to enter into Bitcoin. And it will also kind of like be a stamp of approval for Bitcoin from TradFi. And like once you have like, obviously, BlackRock itself has has like $10 trillion under management. And I think there's there's multiple spot ETFs filed by like massive entities. And once they start putting their marketing dollars behind the behind it, and you're kind of like aligned with them, it kind of changes the game for Bitcoin a little bit and makes it makes it much more unstoppable. And then, I mean, obviously, what we always see with Bitcoin is if Bitcoin like the a lot of the bull runs kind of start with Bitcoin, and then people move, like take their Bitcoin gains and move further out the risk curve to ETH and then from ETH to alts, right, so should be very kind of positive for the entire crypto market. But I also think a Bitcoin ETF kind of makes an ETH ETF, like inevitable from my perspective, and it'll just take a bit longer. And so that'll be super positive, too. I think once like if TradFi likes Bitcoin, I think they're gonna love ETH with like a yield and deflationary narrative and all this stuff. Yeah, so I think it's very positive. And obviously, like the approval is likely to to coincide with like the happening, which is just like, I think going to end up being pretty explosive, pretty explosive, explosive combo. So yeah, I don't have like a very original take. But yeah, I think it's obviously very, very bullish. Well, I want to touch on the second half of what you're saying just there like referencing like Ethereum and how it could potentially lead to an ETH ETF as well. I want to refer to a tweet that I did yesterday kind of listing some of the reasons why I'm personally bullish on ETH. So we're seeing, I feel like a shift in the market, like with a lot of L1s rebranding to like ETH L2s, obviously, the layer two TVL keeps increasing. And you also have specific ETH catalysts that are on the horizon. You could think of like EIP 4844 as one we'll probably discuss later. But like, generally, just there's a lot of bullish momentum for Ethereum. Do you see this trend continuing? Like what do you think this means for the overall layer one, layer two landscape? Because it just seems like yeah, there's just a lot of momentum for Ethereum that continues to be built.
Crypto Banter
A highlight from Crypto Investors AREN'T READY For What Happens Next, Top Altcoins & More - Jos (Delphi Digital)
"What's up, Banta fam? I'm here with Jose from Delphi Digital. Today, we're going to be discussing all about the crypto markets, DeFi, altcoins, layer twos, and more. We've got some awesome topics lined up for today's interview, which is part one. And we're also going to be doing a part two as well to discuss some other altcoin stuff. So Jose, welcome to the channel. Hey, Maz, thanks very much for having me. So I did an interview with you, I think it was like six months ago, and we went into a lot of the, like the basic fundamentals of your investing, your strategy. I want to focus more on current events in today's podcast, because obviously, a lot has happened since then. So I wanted to get an update from you. Like, what are your thoughts right now in terms of where we're sitting in the market, kind of in a weird low volatility period with people hanging on for this Bitcoin spot ETF approval? Yeah, definitely, definitely a bit of a weird sort of period. I think this is kind of always the case with with like bear markets, where it starts with kind of like fear and panic and volatility. And then it kind of gets like it continues to like indifference almost right where the market really slows down, volatility goes away, people start to think and that's when people really start to think it's dead. And like it kind of drives people insane, especially trader types who just get like wrecked with the with the chop. From my perspective, there's loads of loads of cool stuff happening in the background. I mean, I think infrastructure is progressing really well. There's now like multiple options for devs to launch applications in ways that are like very scalable. There's, there's a lot of development happening on the application front as well, although it's like largely unseen. But like, there's billions of dollars raised for crypto games. We like invested a lot of crypto games. So we get kind of a sneak peek and pretty exciting some of the stuff that's going on in the background there. I think, like, DeFi gets a lot of hate. And obviously, he's been in a famous the Gen Spartan kind of 36 month bear market. But I think DeFi has shown like how resilient it is through throughout everything that happened here, both with Curve and with with the stuff in 2022 too. So overall, I think we're in like, pretty good spot. Yeah, I mean, obviously, Bitcoin ETF would be would be huge. But I think there's like enough kind of natural momentum from from stuff that's being built that. Yeah, I'm pretty, pretty bullish from where I'm sitting. Amazing. Yeah, I want to ask you about some of those like protocols and altcoins specifically. But first, to just touching on the ETF, once again, what are your thoughts on the implications? How do you view view it overall affecting like the Bitcoin flow structurally? Yeah, I don't know that I have like a particularly interesting or good take on this. I think it'll make it much easier for external money to enter into Bitcoin. And it will also kind of like be a stamp of approval for Bitcoin from TradFi. And like once you have like, obviously, BlackRock itself has has like $10 trillion under management. And I think there's there's multiple spot ETFs filed by like massive entities. And once they start putting their marketing dollars behind the behind it, and you're kind of like aligned with them, it kind of changes the game for Bitcoin a little bit and makes it makes it much more unstoppable. And then, I mean, obviously, what we always see with Bitcoin is if Bitcoin like the a lot of the bull runs kind of start with Bitcoin, and then people move, like take their Bitcoin gains and move further out the risk curve to ETH and then from ETH to alts, right, so should be very kind of positive for the entire crypto market. But I also think a Bitcoin ETF kind of makes an ETH ETF, like inevitable from my perspective, and it'll just take a bit longer. And so that'll be super positive, too. I think once like if TradFi likes Bitcoin, I think they're gonna love ETH with like a yield and deflationary narrative and all this stuff. Yeah, so I think it's very positive. And obviously, like the approval is likely to to coincide with like the happening, which is just like, I think going to end up being pretty explosive, pretty explosive, explosive combo. So yeah, I don't have like a very original take. But yeah, I think it's obviously very, very bullish. Well, I want to touch on the second half of what you're saying just there like referencing like Ethereum and how it could potentially lead to an ETH ETF as well. I want to refer to a tweet that I did yesterday kind of listing some of the reasons why I'm personally bullish on ETH. So we're seeing, I feel like a shift in the market, like with a lot of L1s rebranding to like ETH L2s, obviously, the layer two TVL keeps increasing. And you also have specific ETH catalysts that are on the horizon. You could think of like EIP 4844 as one we'll probably discuss later. But like, generally, just there's a lot of bullish momentum for Ethereum. Do you see this trend continuing? Like what do you think this means for the overall layer one, layer two landscape? Because it just seems like yeah, there's just a lot of momentum for Ethereum that continues to be built.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from 1194. Crypto Crash Catalysts What Could Crash Bitcoin & Ethereum Soon?
"All right so we'll get into why crypto and is crypto under attack and what's causing it. Some of the situations that are occurring right now not only in the DeFi space but also across the markets in general. Dive in deep. My name is Paul Barron. Welcome back into Tech Path. A couple of things to note on this and for many of you maybe you're brand new to crypto or you're brand new to blockchain technology and you're starting to learn this maybe a brand new Bitcoin. Point is is that there is so much technology advancement that is happening right now. A lot of things are really in a little bit of a state of flux and I'll break down into some of the things that this could be affecting here in the future. DeFi of course is one of the situations we'll talk about today. Before we get into that, why is the crypto market down today? A couple of points I want to kind of focus in on. This was August 1st crypto markets net cap fell 2 % to 1 .1 trillion. Not super you know super bad but Coinbase of course called the report a little bit inaccurate explaining that the Financial Times omitted the context regarding its conversations of the SEC. Another issue that we're seeing where there's a lot of political plays being essentially manipulated right now across the board including Coinbase going against the SEC and kind of calling them out with their most recent video campaign that we showcased Graywall yesterday on that very issue. Further in the article it says the index climbed about 0 .57 % to, this is of course talking about the dollar, about to 100 and 243 so this is the highest level in three weeks. Remember this is when we see the Dixie go up. Typically those are signals for you know getting out of the sky assets. So this is not something that is and was not anticipated but it is one of the reasons that we are seeing some of this flatness. Now what's surprised me is that we haven't seen massive moves up or down. Now we did see a little bit of a blip under 20 or under 29 ,000 for Bitcoin in the near term but I think the other things that are gonna play into this is how are the markets reacting and of course one of the big market players out there is Cathie Wood. She's starting to sell a little bit and she's selling both Coinbase and Robinhood. Both of these may be scenarios where she's taking some profits because both of these stocks have had some gains and we've also seen some gains across the board. Now I'd love to know what you guys are investing in because right now we're getting ready to see an earnings from one of my favorite projects and stocks out there and that's Unity. Obviously their play recently on AR and their connection to what Apple was doing but I think they're gonna get a pretty good lift on earnings this time which could see another bump in the Unity project and the Unity stock itself. So that is one that may kind of defy a little bit about what what is happening out there in the market itself. A couple of tweets I wanted to feature here of course this one from Delphi Digital yesterday several Curve Finance pools were exploited. This is talking about the Curve founder. Many of you probably know and have heard a little bit about what's happened but Michael Agarov basically has 100 million in alone backed by 427 million curves. About 47 % of the entire curve circulating supply. This is a big problem.
The Breakdown
Bank Regulators Say No Operation Choke Point 2.0! Seriously!
"One of the things that we discussed about this new entrance of coinbase into the L two space was how it seemed like their aggressive no token approach was at least in part trying to position coinbase in the regulatory clear. At least that was many people's first reading of it. However, some have argued subsequently that the move was still problematic from a regulatory perspective. Gabriel Shapiro, the general counsel at Delphi lab, said many people seeing some kind of regulatory strategy in coinbase's L two. No idea if that is coinbase's primary motivation or not, but if so, in my opinion, it is a massive miscalculation. Let me explain. Base is a stage zero optimistic rollup, AKA essentially a glorified enterprise blockchain that could become decentralized in the future. Coinbase hasn't added a token instead using eth, which provides some regulatory cover, SEC could claim any new token as a security, but in my opinion not enough. Keep in mind, coinbase is the only significant SEC registered company in crypto. Is very anti crypto SEC is likely watching every move coinbase makes, looking for vulnerabilities. A centralized layer two, the trades lots of tokens, any number of which could be alleged securities, or does lots of DeFi transactions that arguably might allege to be regulated, IE security swaps, opens the door to the SEC making new kinds of secondary market claims. Consider that the SEC has already proposed to change the definition of securities exchange to cover communication protocols, and the fact that this L two will essentially just be a messaging protocol, and you get some rough intuitive sense of the danger. It's one thing for the SEC to let optimism at all sit on the back burner, while the SEC waits to see how big they get, and racks up wins against token quote unquote issuers. It's quite another matter for the SEC to let coinbase an SEC registrant do the same. In my opinion, this will accelerate the SEC's secondary market agenda regarding blockchain security issues, because they can't let an SEC registrant get away with, quote unquote, potential violations, and build up a legal arbitrage strategy right under the SEC's nose. Many L twos have centralized aspects and the team's running core infrastructure will have a hard time defending allegations that they are functioning in broker dealer or facilitation roles regarding market transactions that may involve securities.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
The Crypto Reckoning Continues
"It's only the first week of the year and we clearly already need a Friday. Yesterday, Delphi lawyer Gabriel Shapiro wrote, we're looking at an almost total legal and financial wipeout of the crypto kingpins. Ready to rebuild from scratch, and that I think is pretty much the state of it. Yesterday was just another ravaging day in the reckoning and crypto cleanup following 2020 twos crises. Going in no particular order will start with Celsius. New York State's attorney general letitia James has sued former Celsius CEO Alex mashinsky for defrauding hundreds of thousands of investors by making false statements about the financial health of the company. Raising allegations dating back to 2018, the state intends to seek a court ordered ban on mashinsky doing business in New York State, as well as damages and restitution for harmed investors, according to a statement released on Thursday. The statement alleges that, quote, as the former CEO of Celsius, Alex mashinsky promised to lead investors to financial freedom, but led them down a path of financial ruin. The AG herself, James came even harder in her tweets, I'm suing the former CEO of cryptocurrency platform Celsius network for defrauding investors out of billions of dollars. Alex mashinsky lied to people about the risks of investing in Celsius, hit its deteriorating financial condition and failed to register in New York. Mashinsky tricked hardworking people into investing their life savings into Celsius, promising big financial returns, and claiming the platform was safer than a bank. Instead, Celsius collapsed in New Yorkers were left in financial ruin. I'm suing to get New Yorkers their money back and ban mashinsky from doing business in New York. We will continue to protect people from the risks of investing in cryptocurrency. Now I don't think anyone is particularly sad to see mashinsky on the receiving end of some serious legal trouble. My duties, for example, tweeted crypto fraud Domino's falling fast in 2023. Day has come time to pay the piper.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"delphi" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"This is Bloomberg law with June grosso from Bloomberg radio. Her name is Anna Delphi, or anisa Sorkin, no one's sure she's either a mega rich German heiress, or she's flat broke, and maybe she's Russian. Vivian. That's the point. No one knows. But everyone knows her now. And a soric and was a con artist with an extravagant lifestyle who convinced New York's elite that she was a German heiress, conning acquaintances, banks and realtors. So the unadulterated foundation is a private club, but it's also a dynamic visual on sector. I wanted to be a place for people with taste. The drama series inventing Anna was an instant hit for Netflix. But now it's turned into a legal headache, one of Anna's former friends is suing Netflix for portraying her as a backstabbing freeloader. Big night out? I was, um, I couldn't sleep. Living your best life. I see you, Rachel Williams. My guest is intellectual property litigator Terrence Ross, a partner at cat and nuch and rosenman. Terry, this was not a documentary, Netflix called it a drama inspired by a true story. And at the start of every episode, there was this disclaimer. This story is completely true, except for the parts that are totally made up. Does that protect Netflix in any way here? Not necessarily, June. In fact, I can't imagine a worse disclaimer being used. I really wonder about who came up with this. This story is completely true, except for the parts that are totally made up, but we don't tell you which parts those are. I mean, it's this bizarre. Indeed, I think, to a certain extent, by saying at the start of the disclaimer, this story is completely true. You were sort of reinforcing the view that people have that this is just a recitation of the actual events as they occurred. So the complaint says that it's going to show that Netflix made a deliberate decision for dramatic purposes basically to tell a better story to show Williams doing or saying things that portray her as greedy, snobbish, disloyal, dishonest, cowardly manipulative, and opportunistic. So is this false light invasion of privacy? It might be. It's certainly not as clear cut as the plaintiff seems to present it in the complaint. The core of false light invasion of privacy, which has elements very similar to defamation. So you got to show a false statement that somehow places the plaintiff in a false light. You have to show by clear and convincing evidence, actual malice. And then you have to show that it was highly offensive. The portrayal was highly offensive to a reasonable person. Some of these factual claims, even if accepted as true, I'm not sure that in this day and age that a jury would find them highly offensive. Now, I will set aside the parts about the purported false billing on her credit card back to her employer. But these comments greedy snobbish, manipulative, disloyal. Even if true, they don't really shock the conscience, given what goes on in the world nowadays. And so I think that's a big problem for the plaintiff here as to whether a jury in this day and age would find this to be quote unquote highly offensive. And a lot of those traits, like disloyal dishonest, cowardly manipulative opportunistic. Williams did work with police to get Sorkin arrested and testified against her and some people might view her. In that way. So that goes
The Mason Minute
Cold Case (MM #4032)
"The NASA minute. With Kevin mason. I'm not the biggest fan of TV shows like NBC's dateline or even 2020 or all those kind of cold case missing people shows. But I do get interested every now and again, especially because I think every one of us have cold cases that happen throughout our lifetime in the different cities we've lived in. We've always wondered what if. We had a lot of cold case mysteries here in Nashville over the years, some that have been solved in some that never were. Where my wife grew up in Indiana, a bunch of cold cases right now, the Delphi murders, and that's almost become a cold case in the last four or 5 years. But there was a cold case I didn't know about until recently that they just solved, but he ended up killing multiple women that happened back in the late 1980s, one in Kentucky to an Indiana. They think he killed someone in Iowa as well. His crime spree, they say, could be getting bigger. He died of cancer back about 8, 9 years ago. These are the fascinating stories that we all learn about that we all listen to and to be honest with you. Even if you're not a fan of the mystery, you're fascinated because they're a part of your history. Some fascinating things when you look into those cold cases, and boy you want to talk about going down rabbit holes.
The Mason Minute
Cold Case (MM #4032)
"The NASA minute. With Kevin mason. I'm not the biggest fan of TV shows like NBC's dateline or even 2020 or all those kind of cold case missing people shows. But I do get interested every now and again, especially because I think every one of us have cold cases that happen throughout our lifetime in the different cities we've lived in. We've always wondered what if. We had a lot of cold case mysteries here in Nashville over the years, some that have been solved in some that never were. Where my wife grew up in Indiana, a bunch of cold cases right now, the Delphi murders, and that's almost become a cold case in the last four or 5 years. But there was a cold case I didn't know about until recently that they just solved, but he ended up killing multiple women that happened back in the late 1980s, one in Kentucky to an Indiana. They think he killed someone in Iowa as well. His crime spree, they say, could be getting bigger. He died of cancer back about 8, 9 years ago. These are the fascinating stories that we all learn about that we all listen to and to be honest with you. Even if you're not a fan of the mystery, you're fascinated because they're a part of your history. Some fascinating things when you look into those cold cases, and boy you want to talk about going down rabbit holes.
The Mason Minute
Cold Case (MM #4032)
"The NASA minute. With Kevin mason. I'm not the biggest fan of TV shows like NBC's dateline or even 2020 or all those kind of cold case missing people shows. But I do get interested every now and again, especially because I think every one of us have cold cases that happen throughout our lifetime in the different cities we've lived in. We've always wondered what if. We had a lot of cold case mysteries here in Nashville over the years, some that have been solved in some that never were. Where my wife grew up in Indiana, a bunch of cold cases right now, the Delphi murders, and that's almost become a cold case in the last four or 5 years. But there was a cold case I didn't know about until recently that they just solved, but he ended up killing multiple women that happened back in the late 1980s, one in Kentucky to an Indiana. They think he killed someone in Iowa as well. His crime spree, they say, could be getting bigger. He died of cancer back about 8, 9 years ago. These are the fascinating stories that we all learn about that we all listen to and to be honest with you. Even if you're not a fan of the mystery, you're fascinated because they're a part of your history. Some fascinating things when you look into those cold cases, and boy you want to talk about going down rabbit holes.
The Mason Minute
Cold Case (MM #4032)
"The NASA minute. With Kevin mason. I'm not the biggest fan of TV shows like NBC's dateline or even 2020 or all those kind of cold case missing people shows. But I do get interested every now and again, especially because I think every one of us have cold cases that happen throughout our lifetime in the different cities we've lived in. We've always wondered what if. We had a lot of cold case mysteries here in Nashville over the years, some that have been solved in some that never were. Where my wife grew up in Indiana, a bunch of cold cases right now, the Delphi murders, and that's almost become a cold case in the last four or 5 years. But there was a cold case I didn't know about until recently that they just solved, but he ended up killing multiple women that happened back in the late 1980s, one in Kentucky to an Indiana. They think he killed someone in Iowa as well. His crime spree, they say, could be getting bigger. He died of cancer back about 8, 9 years ago. These are the fascinating stories that we all learn about that we all listen to and to be honest with you. Even if you're not a fan of the mystery, you're fascinated because they're a part of your history. Some fascinating things when you look into those cold cases, and boy you want to talk about going down rabbit holes.
Ghost Town
"delphi" Discussed on Ghost Town
"Could walk fine on a bridge and he may have had a handicap or walked with a. You know an non normal gait just trying to give maybe more leads as to who bridge guy is or giving him some more distinction than we could. So what else do we get a new composite sketches released. The sketch looks very different from the first composite. Sketch in a lot of ways if you compare them. The sketch looks a lot younger than the first one. The police now believe that the suspect is between the ages of eighteen and forty and may look again younger than his true age. he also doesn't have a goatee like the first sketch and at the same time. Police reveal more audio from luby's phone. Please think the killer lives or works in the delphi area and or visits the area frequently and maybe even had been interviewed during the investigation. He is for sure familiar with the area and might be hiding in plain sight. A lot of people think this because the bridge was really remote when you lead someone through the woods. You're usually familiar with the area inasmuch as committing a murder there in more of the audio clip. You can hear a man saying it may have been part of his initial approach. The girls you can hear the word is before the familiar down the hill phrase so we don't get a ton from the audio just guys but but again guys is something guys would mean. Maybe you're familiar with some guys is a colloquialism from the midwest and a lot of ways people think that because of that might be a teacher but again would a teacher address their students as guys. I don't know it just feels familiar. So who did this. It may have been dale nations again. We talked about that but he was no longer a suspect at this point. Another person of interest was thomas. Bruce who formerly worked as a pasture and was charged with fatally shooting. One woman sexually assaulting two others after having ordered them at gunpoint into the back room of a suburban st louis shop for religious supplies. Some there were some similarities. Between that case and the delphi murderers so bruce committed his crimes in broad daylight on number nineteen two thousand eighteen. He's also similarly built to the man in the clip around five foot seven five foot nine inches but again. It's hard to verify the height of the person the clip also. He was wearing a flat cap and navy blue jacket during his attack again bearing some similarity to the delphi suspect and december fourth. Bruce was charged with seventeen. Felony counts related to the saint louis case and is in jail awaiting trial. It could be a man named charles eldridge who also looks like the old composite sketch. He was arrested on january. Eighth two thousand nineteen in union city indiana. On charges of child molestation and child solicitation a lot of people read it talk about it being a school employees. Like i mentioned before as everyone was out of school that day or it could have been someone who worked at the school again. What what would make these girls feel comfortable enough to maybe not. Where is the line or you know uncomfortable enough to start taking video..
The .NET Core Podcast
C# And .NET For Beginners With Vijesh Salian
"So first thing i'd like to say vichy's thank you ever so much for spending your afternoon with me talking about what we're about to talk about. Usually so little bit of insider baseball we usually we have a topic and provide as we talk about. But you know it's an easy going show. We can go off in a different direction so at the moment akron idea of what we're going to talk about what we may end up talking about something else. I don't know as as a saturday afternoon. We're having some chill out time. You know we both saddens. Children is brilliant wherever just time to chill. It's a thank you for spending time with me. Cool thank you for having me pleasure. You're very very welcome. Very welcome so i was wondering before we get into the the topic that we're going to tackle today. I was wondering. Could you let listeners know a little bit about yourself. Give us a brief introduction in Sort of technical background the places. You've worked projects working on if you can talk about them kind of a minute And i'm a software engineer primarily in the talknet ecosystem. And i started my career coding in delphi and then moved on to see shop and i like to mentor big nurse and upcoming as well. So that's like You know. I've learned a lot from my pearson. It looks like giving back to people who want to learn more as well and I worked in bangalore in india. And currently i'm working in another lund's and i've been here for about three years now and i'm working for healthcare company which is vital images sparta cannon group and Yeah and i've been part of healthcare company before as well so i like the domain and it gives a sense of purpose of to what i'm doing
The Freedive Cafe Podcast
"delphi" Discussed on The Freedive Cafe Podcast
"Generally looked like he was in poor health and he was smoking cigarettes and one one of his eardrums was had a hole in it and the other one was completely gone. Or something like this. Oh paints this quite interesting picture of this fella iago suit who probably would have been quite interesting person to have a drink with no doubt back on back on the shore. You even have dances like traditional dancers that did the movements tried to mainly then seizures of Sponge divers who had issues with the nitrogen coming back and so we'll know how that works that they they basically couldn't i've anymore under they have all these health problems and this kind of They had these Shaky movements forever. There aren't even dancers the big thing Trying to mimic these movements and at the end of the dance of these professional dance. They kind of recover. Sally and i always thought is such a sad reminder. I mean that's beautiful. don't get me wrong. I love them. But if you think about it is basically dispersal. Who has destroyed. He's her or her health In this in this case is only his health male divers in the nineteenth twentieth century. destroy hill performing be super risky tasks at the end of the dance. They come back to normal. Which is something you not in one happen on real life you know. It's kind of expressing a wish of recovery. That is never going to happen. I always funny so so moving to be honest. So-so moving The beautiful beautiful dances If i just have three seconds if you allow me. Sorry i'm because i really would like to point out. I'm happiest about research is that i was able to discover that in ancient greece. At least three ninety was not only practice by men but also by women at least unmarried women they are. They're they're out. the are. Free diving are collecting a sponges. On in fact even one of the military actions. I was telling at the beginning of the of the of the interview. It lasts a father. We've heard daughter not song Skis daughter sorry that They were able to Seeing or help sinking to storm Personally when britain's were invading greasing for eighty and we are very sure about that because they put a statue of her in the and don't find the famous oracle of delphi and so on several authorised both for example records that these statues there. I saw it..
Oh No Ross and Carrie
The History Of Exorcism
"Tony us and carry the show where we don't just report on fringe science spirituality and claims of the paranormal. We take part ourselves. Yup when they make the claims we show up so you don't have to carry poppy and i'm becoming an exorcist me to a and so can you at the international school system bernadette dad too. That's my for everything now. Oh are you willing to give it to bob larsen. I'm willing to rent it to bob larson. Yeah you're welcome bob. Yeah bobo what is it that. Let's see your outing a little bit of a syncopation bad about up. But i'm different. Now you repeat all right. We'll know is asking myself if that was different from what you did. I don't know i anyway. it's beautiful. Thank you and we have taken. The course work to become exercises. We've told you a little bit about it in our previous episodes but now we're in deep dive mode. Yeah man. let's get into the history of exercises so put on your exorcism hat. Your student hat last time we left off at the end of level. One course one. I know big cliffhanger yes so. Let's talk about tanger absolutely. Let's talk about christian and pre christian exorcism. Okay well this is module two of level one apprentice level. Oh okay you're making the sound like a very long journey of the exorcist. They have all these like sort of sub descriptions. When you get in there it's not very easily delineated. Your but yes so. You're talking about macho to within level one to be fair level. One is synonymous with the apprentice level. Correct so there's going to be ten modules. And as i was telling you earlier today all ten modules basically amount to exercise been around a long time. It's not a new thing. I'm bob larsen. Just summed it all up for our show for show. Thank you so much. So they're christian and pre christian extra schism part is about how there were indeed exorcisms before jesus even right before. There were such things as christians. So don't be thinking that exorcism is just this new up start phenomenon or that. Bob invented So he let us know that egypt. Persians canaanites all had x.'s rituals. Yes mostly they were incantations or enchantment. There's always going to be kind of a rough line around exorcism as posession versus exorcism as occurs. That's influencing you or maybe laid upon an object so there's kind of squishy lines around all of this. I wonder if he would acknowledge that. Sometimes people did them for health ailments that we would now just acknowledge our health elements. Yes yes. yeah. I think bob's pretty weird that little bit of god of the gaps where god when used to explain things that we just don't understand yet like lightning for example like when a lot of churches and the late seventeen hundred started installing lightning rods. A lot of people were upset. Like oh well this is going to subvert. The will of god share so then when science steps in and explains that oh actually charged particles in quick energy transfer. And hey look you know you can actually take control of that aspect of weather. Then god stops being used as an explanation right. That's what i mean. When i say god of the gaps oh god gets increasingly small and one's world view if one defines god based on what we don't know the more we know the less god is invoked to explain. They should make that at the. Bottom of the nbc. The more you know you need to invokes to explain what are bypass about about so. While bob didn't used that terminology. I think he realizes yeah. Ok some things now. We do explain with medical science or just an understanding of the natural world and very late in this game hill. Really get into mental health issues. That definitely although i think he'd draw a hardline around anything that happened. During the jesus years everything jesus healed. It was whatever she said it was the bible. Says you're walking on water. You turned water into wine or something else involving water then. Yeah that was legit because the bible is absolutely correct about everything i was gonna say. Is there any area where. Bob is not a scriptural literalist. Oh good question you know. I feel like that is always hard to define. Because some people say they are and then as he listened to them describe their beliefs. But if you look through a certain lens you'll see that at the time they were encoding. They're under yeah virgin actually There's gonna be all kinds of ringing. But i feel for the most part bob pretty literal. Yeah he doesn't have to do a lot of back flipping to defend his literal biblical azam. So one thing. He said that i thought was interesting. Is basically everybody alive. During that time was an exorcist like it was kind of taken for granted. Something anybody could do if there are spirits in this world you talk to the spirits right being and when you live in that world where everything around you is kind of controlled by the whims of the gods and the demons. You have to deal with them and placate them. So you mentioned in ancient babylon you had priests like creating a clay figure of a demon and then smashing it. In hinduism you had demons and demigods. Who were understood to attack living beings in greece. You had the oracle of delphi and they were supposedly possessed to tell the future Andy pointed to other which and shamans and various cultures that have had the equivalent of these beliefs
Artificial Intelligence in Industry
Forging International Consensus About the Future of Intelligence - with Jerome Glenn
"So Jerome got a lot to talk about here in terms of artificial intelligence governance, artificial general intelligence. The reason I think this conversation will be fun is because you've thought through some future scenarios with with very large organizations for many years. Very High Level and you've learned a lot in the process of what is the process for pulling together different stakeholders imagining, what will the future be? What should we do I? Mean very complicated. You go about it. Of course, one of the first things you do is you gotta find out the state of the art of whatever it is you know is there is, let's say five elements to it or ten elements, and you know was the state of the art on this element on this element, this element, this element. Now myself I won't know enough to do that. So we have a global network of networks sixty five nodes. Return Network himself within countries, and so I can say, here's where we are so far and they tell me what else ought to be considered. So there's so as global sort of a state of the art assessment finger. Yeah and then within that with take a look and say what questions were not asked the authorities have been asked. and. What questions were as but answered, superficial. That gives us questions to as in a Delphi study, which is a questionnaire goes around the world. And the results of that then becomes guts content to create draft scenarios. We send address narrows back out and everybody hasn't at Pat and presides over, and then we can say, okay, what do you do about this scenario? What did you do about it? You'll see a good action as well as scenarios this sort of a general approach So you talked about the Delphi study I actually recall you bringing this up the first time you and I chatted I don't remember who has five years ago or something wild like that. Speak briefly about wooded Delphi study is so I like finger on the pulse what are we missing? Pulling, those ideas together and then there's this kind of dispersion to generate even more. What is the Delphi study. Delphi questionnaire. Whose second round. Is. Determined by the results of the first round. And third round is determined by the results the second route. the reason for it was that there were generals and admirals and experts that don't always the same room with each other at the Rand Corporation.
WTOP 24 Hour News
president vice former trump Joe
"The National Archives to find any complaint as former staffer terror read they have filed against him after alleging he sexually assaulted her while serving as a senator in nineteen ninety three I'm sorry for the sentencing day for Delphi whether any such document exists if it does make it public the former vice president emphatically denied he assaulted read never never happened Biden declined to speculate on what I read is making the accusations when he delights CBS news meantime president trump is responding to Joe Biden's denial president trump tells podcast host Dan Bongino if the allegations against Biden aren't true he should deny that just go out and fight it Mr trump insists he's been a victim of false allegations and I just deny it if it's not true you deny it still he says he finds Tara Reid story compelling certainly far more compelling than anything they had with respect to Brett Kavanaugh Mr trump told Bongino he doesn't know if Biden will be the democratic nominee CBS news White House correspondent Steven Portnoy and the university of Delaware has a trove of Biden's Senate papers but tell CNN there are still no plans to make them public now as pressure grows on the campaign to release records that some say could potentially shed light on the sexual assault allegations the
WTOP 24 Hour News
Washington D.C.-area forecast: Cool and rather dreary today, then briefly much warmer tomorrow
"The cold front went back through the area last night we have cool air wedged up against the mountains temperatures are not going to move very much today basically we're gonna be holding steady in the mid to upper fifties mostly cloudy some peaks of sunshine in far south from Virginia those spots will have highs and lows sixties later on this afternoon he's even gonna be a few stray showers maybe a rumble of thunder in far northern Maryland especially close to the Pennsylvania line overnight tonight cloudy damp and cool patchy fog in a few showers lows will be in the mid forties to low fifties and tomorrow the front we backed the north well to Pennsylvania partly sunny breezy and unseasonably warm highs will be in the upper seventies to low eighties could be a stray shower or thunderstorm late in the day with a weak cold front moving through what a not quite as warm but still quite mild upper sixties to low seventies Tuesday increasing clouds and mild highs will be in the mid to upper sixties I'm storm team four meteorologist Matt Ritter we've got fifty four in Suitland fifty six in Oxon hill fifty five in Burke and then fifty six in the Delphi fifty five degrees here in the