Chaos and Fragility

Welcome everyone to POV Crypto the only podcast that both big corners and a theory is listened to. I'm David Hoffman here with my buddy Christian, Christian, how you doing? Doing great man. Like life is beautiful these days, even even amongst all the chaos in the real world. I feel like the crypto world in the Bitcoin world is so freaking zen. I've been thankful for a while,

but I feel especially thankful these days. Every single week, like it's like, oh man, what a week. Except like I think Matt Walsh says this on the on the brain podcast. He goes, Oh, what a week. And then for the last three weeks, he go, he's been saying like, I know I've been saying what a week for the past like, you know, two months, but oh

man, what a week. And like that is absolutely right. Like Jesus Christ. What a fucking week. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think though what a fucking week has fully expanded beyond crypto, although I mean, actually it's been pretty crazy outside of crypto for a while now. But last week was a doozy. I know in particular, you are living with a man who really took full advantage

of that. So I'm kind of curious what's been your preview on the whole Wall Street beds, GME and all the degenerate happening in the traditional market. Yeah, I think it's really, it's going to be something that takes time to process and understand for me and for everyone, for the whole world. I think the really just the takeaway message is that like retail, especially with like, you

know, the $600 demi checks in the $1200 demi checks and the coming checks like retail is a force to be what reckon with it at this point. Because like, you know, Robin Hood for better or for worse gave them the financial tools they needed to be a big player like retail in like each individual retail player doesn't move the needle. But like retail as a whole

are now overpowering hedge funds, right? And importantly, they are paying attention to markets in ways that hedge funds can't or won't pay attention to or think about. They're consuming and interpreting information in ways that, you know, hedge funds will not be able to get to that level of retail. You know, retail is just like unlocked. They have certain capabilities or interests that hedge funds just won't

be able to capture. And also now because of money printer go bird, these players are fat capitalized. And not only because of money printer go bird, but because Wall Street bets, like all all those deep, the deep people in Wall Street bets that pay attention to Wall Street bets for the financial opportunities, the ones that are moving the needle. All are super fucking capitalized now. They

all just made a fuck ton of money. So not only do they know that they are movers and chakers as a collective unit. But now they, they, they were movers and chakers before they just made a fuck ton of money on GME. And now they understand both that they are movers and shakers. And they have 10, like a hundred times more cash than they did previously.

Like this is just the beginning of this story. Yeah, no, I actually fully agree. And over the weekend, we saw a bunch of like billboards going up, like promoting Wall Street bets. I don't know if you saw on Twitter, but Popeyes was running a promoted ad for attendees with cash tag, GME, cash tag, AMC, and some of the other kind of meme coins or meme, meme

stocks that were being pumped by the Wall Street bets crew. So yeah, you're, you're exactly right. This group, which in my opinion, like, okay, let's say, you know, 80% of them are just people, free loaders who are on Reddit who are just, you know, aping into stuff. But 20% are doing some very, very legitimate research. Like finding out that this opportunity existed with GME, you know,

it required someone who understood what is happening. Right. It sounds like deep fucking value. The reddit that found the, the GME opportunity. Like they're not a pleb. Like they are a relatively sophisticated retail investor. Yeah, yeah, I would already agree with that. And it's interesting to see like the similarities in culture behind like, shit coin ape culture in the crypto world kind of find itself in

the legacy world. I would like to say that like we exported that culture from the crypto world to the Wall Street bets world. But apparently Wall Street bets is kind of anti crypto anti as one would expect as because like, you know, most people's perception of crypto is from the 2017 ICO mania, which is right full of scams. But like, there's like a similar culture behind

like these Wall Street Wall Street bets apes and all the shit coiners out there. And I would include myself in the shit coiners. I own shit coins. I trade shit coins. And shit coins is a Bitcoin or word word. If I was on an Ethereum podcast, I'd be calling them defy tokens. But like these cultures are similar. Right. And I'm kind of like bullish on that

resonance between these two cultures, because I think our community is going to meld in the future. Yeah, I mean, I don't think there was any group of people who are more excited about what happened last week than Bitcoiners and people who are into defy, you know, individually, they were both sides were extremely excited because I think, you know, at least for Bitcoiners, we saw this as

like, wow, this is like a come to light moment for a lot of people that were anti crypto who learned through experience. Why crypto, why censorship resistance and decentralization is important. Yeah, and I think we should go into why Bitcoiners are stoked versus why defy people are stoked because I think there might be a difference there that we should toss out. I'm my gut take before

before talking to you. We haven't really talked about this until now is that, you know, Bitcoiners could really take this and perhaps like the deep bit, Bitcoiners like the Pierre Rishards or the or the Bitsteens would take this to talk about like the systemic risk behind risky behavior due to a surplus of fiat where like the defy people are like, you know, Robin Hood, you can

turn off, but you know, swap you can't turn off, you know, you know, defy fixes this because they're unsuit's unstoppable code. Whereas Bitcoiners are more per I would think would be more along lines of like, this is the re the natural repercussions of a fiat based system. This is like, what happens when there's too much cash injected into the economy, people take crazy risks. And then

all of a sudden, these crazy risks explode. And then there's systemic, there's systemic risks because of how they economy set up like how do Bitcoiners think about this? Let's start there. Well, yeah, I would say that. That's like, that's like what Bitcoiners would describe is like the cause of a lot of these incentives. But I think what Bitcoiners were excited about was the fuck the man

mentality. The let's burn this all fucking down mentality. Let's destroy the suits. Like that's what the Bitcoiners were excited about because that's what Bitcoin is about is fucking destroying the suits fucking taking down the man and taking power away. And again, I think that a lot of people in the the defy the Wall Street bets community, they, you know, they were radicalized to some degree because

they were just, you know, some plebs trying to make money. They're on this Reddit page, you know, they obviously saw what they believe to be a fair market opportunity. And then they also saw the news, all the companies that all the brokerages, all the companies behind the trading effectively turn on them, you know, as soon as it wasn't profitable for the big hedge funds. Yeah. Yeah.

That's interesting. One thing I've always said is like in the in bankless, we use the ban for the bankless nation at this nation of online people. I all one of the frequent things I say is there are no ties in the bankless nation. The bankless nation does not wear ties. Ties are the symbol of the oppressors kind of an inside joke that I have. That's funny.

Yeah. They are fun ties. Yeah, ties are fucking dumb. Who the fuck wears ties only acceptable ties are bull ties. Are those the ones with the strings? Yeah. I don't have an opinion on those except except I know that they come from the South and the cowboy cowboy stuff. Yeah. You know, I think they're ironic. Why are they ironic? I don't know. Because you are not

a calmer. Where the mitzahirani is back. There you go. There's the irony. Oh, man. So what do you think is like what do you think? I picked up my roommate from the airport when he was gone for like during this all this game stopped to buckle. I pick him up and the first thing I say to him is like, dude, everything is totally different now. The

world is a different place. As a result of this like GME Shorce Quees. Would you say that's true? Yeah, I would say the world is different. But Hunter in particular, he's a fiat apologist big time. So he went from radicalized to rationalizing what went down pretty quickly. So I thought that that's what that was kind of interesting. So like the rationalization that I got was that,

you know, Robin Hood didn't succumb to some like phone call from Melvin Capital. Like that's not what happened. What really happened was that there was systemic risk as a result of like Robin Hood being able to fulfill their brokerage commitments. And they didn't have enough capital. And so like it wasn't this like collusion between like Melvin Capital and Robin Hood. Although there is allegedly still plausible

that that's still a plausible scenario. But what the more the the alleged reason why Robin Hood only allowed selling but not buying was that buying required like an intensive amount of capital that Robin Hood didn't have available to them. And so they had to stop by. And so I would also recapitalize heavily today. Did they? Yeah, they raised millions of dollars from existing from existing shareholders.

And they are seeking debt financing as well. So I mean, there could be some truth to that. But with that being said, you know, I'm a fidelity customer and a Robin Hood customer and fidelity didn't freeze my shit. But Robin Hood froze my shit everywhere. So maybe Robin Hood is like more susceptible to degen behavior. Whereas fidelity has a lot more like maybe, you know, older

older generation of customers as well as more institutional customers. But I mean, it was interesting that all of the all of the products that I used that shut down were effectively like the free millennial products. And it wasn't really like the it wasn't the fidelity. So it wasn't the child swabs. It wasn't the more kind of, you know, boomer oriented brokerage accounts and products. Right. So

we had the Winkle Voss on today. We were recording with them episode comes out tomorrow, which is going to be Tuesday of this week. And they were talking about how like Robin Hood as a product is fundamentally broken in the same way like all the other social media products are broken. We're like, if it's free, then you are the product. Right. And so Robin Hood doesn't

charge commissions on trades. And you know, perhaps that's some like revolutionary democratizing of finance. But then the other side of the things is that you know, you are actually just like the sheep getting cheered. Like the only people that can really benefit from Robin Hood are a the people that couldn't have signed up with the TD Ameritrade account or some like more formal brokerage and actually

those fees would have actually really just cut into what they were able to do. And so if therefore Robin Hood was your only choice. And then they never ever trade it. Right. If you if you are trading on Robin Hood, you are just like paying for giving out free money to the brokerage. But if you buy and hold that like that's the only viable thing that

is like advertisers are paying Facebook for the views. It's the same thing. Citadel is 40% of Robin Hood's actual revenue and Citadel owns a significant portion of Bolvin capital. Yeah, no, I mean very few things bring the right and left together these days. And surprisingly, you saw folks like AOC from the left and then Donald Trump Jr. on the right tweeting about this. And so it

was absolutely a uniting factor. And I think to ban our Dave Portnoy was the one that made that tweet, right? So like this thing is going up all over the place. Oh, yeah. I've never had more respect for Dave Portnoy, although he is a week handed son of a bitch. But yeah, I mean what was I going to say? In general, like the fact that the

kind of the man or the suits versus the plebs kind of narrative played out last week. And we saw the political appetite for that debate made me really bullish for the idea of open source financial technology moving forward. Because obviously both sides care about taking care of the little guy or at least they posture that way. And if we can align, you know, this crypto revolution

with that better. And we can hope like open people's eyes to the inherent f fairness that comes from open source crypto cryptographically enforced tech financial tech. I feel like that is that was the biggest bullish indicator or signal that I got from this entire kind of play by play. Yeah, yeah, that is interesting. Like the populist conversation, I think, is kind of going to be the

one of 2021 because the left other than just like the party that succumbed to like the left populism. And then what is the right other than like a party that got taken over by populism and the populism on the right, right? Like populism is in like regardless. And it's just pick your flavor. And the funny thing is that the current administration is like not populist at

all. It's like it's like the suits from both sides kind of coming together to some degree. Yeah. Yeah. So all the all the Bernie bros who were super bummed that like Bernie loss the election. That was like kind of their their critique of Biden was that like, you know, he's not he's not anything other than like the continuation of the establishment. Although I would say that

Biden is doing pretty popular stuff like Stimichex populist. I would say Biden's relatively well. Yeah, I would say Biden's relatively populist. At least he's more much more so than Obama. Yeah, but Obama was kind of like the last bastion of the old world, you know, Trump was the insane populist right. And then I mean, I think that Biden was just the anti Trump candidate, but a

lot of his party is not going to be a big deal. It is right motive. Or sorry, is kind of populist left motivated. And I mean, I personally think that Stimichex are are politically palatable on both sides of the aisle. Maybe that's just that's the populist side of things. But I think what that's really showing is that people are hurting. Like the average person is hurting

really bad. And a lot of the people on these Wall Street bets accounts that were aping into this stuff. They they literally were aping with the last dollars they had because they. They've been put into that position where they have no more job. They have, you know, they have all this time on their hands. They're losing funds and you know, they're backs against the wall. They

might as well try to do something, you know. Mm hmm. That's what Demetri Caffeinus on his hidden forces podcast. That's what he talks about a lot while like there's the he I think what he tries to identify is like there's just this like. Destituteness about people who aren't anyone below the age of boomers right like as you get younger and younger. People are becoming less and

less like optimistic and more and more. cynical about their future financial situation. And so they're doing more and more yellowing because like what the fuck else do they have to lose? Like either they yellow all of their savings into GME and try and retire. Or they're working for the rest of their lives. And they're working the rest of the lives like regardless. Like like only only

a yellow can save them from like the nine to five until they're like 68 68 years old or something. No, absolutely. And that I would say that's where the Bitcoin. And like kind of argument comes in like this is the obvious end result of the incentives are created by Fiat money and the STEME checks and the printing and all this kind of stuff into the evaluating

of the base currency. You know, this is this is the end result is those who have assets keep getting richer. Those who don't have assets lose more and more of their ability to acquire assets. And those without assets, you know, are more and more destitute in taking more and more irrational behavior. What I saw was really just heartening. Was just the like the complete apologizing of

the shorters and of the hedge fund from all of the financial media. Like across the board, the financial media had one narrative and one narrative only. And I think that even today on CNBC, it was like there's a bad guy and a good guy in the GME story and the short and the short head fund were the good guys. Like that was published on CNBC today.

Like that's insane to me. Like wow, just I feel like I feel like the media is really showing its cards. Yeah, totally. Like CNBC more or less one part news, one part, you know, background entertainment for the people that like to pay attention to money and markets. But that's like on a good day on a bad day. It's a tool to control control information just like

every other form of media out there. And like there's not sound like secret basement cabal, like determining what goes on CNBC. It's just short like local personal friendships and connections and incentives. And so if like all of the hedge funds are who are local to people who are going on to CNBC and interviewing on CNBC and basically advertising for CNBC. If all those people are hurting,

like well CNBC is going to be on the side of those people, right? They are the people that are going to be on CNBC. And so that's like the kind of things that they're going to do. People that are proximate and wealthy, right? That's just how this works. And I feel like that we can extend this to crypto as well. I was like, thank God crypto

is such like a media heavy ecosystem. Because if we didn't have our own PR and our own like media entities, like, you know, like what you're doing at Bitcoin magazine and what I'm doing at bank list. If we didn't have any of that, like we'd be fucked. You would have no narrative control at all. It would be at the whims of, you know, the legacy media

institutions who we know. We can't get anything right about crypto. You know, to be honest, Bitcoin and crypto kind of made me start to realize that everything that is coming out of the legacy system and the traditional media is pretty much all a kind of fun. Like if the level of research that they're doing on Bitcoin and Ethereum equates to the level of research that they're

doing on any other nuance topic that they're covering. Like all of it is garbage. Like and the only reason we can identify in the Ethereum and Bitcoin space is because we are effectively Bitcoin and Ethereum experts. Now take that with a grain of salt, neither of us are technical, but you know, for whatever it's worth, you know, we are expert enough to like know what is

fun and what is like real information. And I don't have that information about any other subject that the news is covering. But again, like the one thing that's constant is it's pretty much the same reporters editors and staff that's running, you know, these news decks across all of them. And I think that's all subjects. So my assumption is that, okay, well, it's all garbage. I'm reminded

of that comic where it's a two panel comic and there's this massive, massive like boot. And then there's people who are carrying that boot in both in both sides of the panel. And on one side is communism. And it's just like dreary and desperate. And on the other side is capitalism. And it's the same boot with the same people supporting that boot, except there's like circus

animals and entertainment going around. And like, there's still the boot there, like squashing all these people. But at least they have like this circus to like entertain them along the way. I was reminded of that this week. Yeah. Is that capitalism though? Or is that just a better propaganda? Like, doesn't the boot kind of represent just like repression no matter what? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, top down

top down control based off of the wealthy privilege. Yeah. So hunter hunter and I are in this group. With all of our fraternity brothers. And we, you know, they they talk, you know, stocks most of the time. And I'm just the token Bitcoiner in there. I'm kind of the same commentary on the other side of things where like hunter says, yeah, oh, we're talking stocks and

then Christian always just comes in with his Bitcoin comment. I mean, pretty much like I mean, you, you, once you're into crypto, like, you don't give a shit about stocks that much. And I'm like way more into stocks than you. So that just just how not into. Stocks I am. But yeah. So, you know, I'm in this group. I'm always like kind of like dropping bombs

about Bitcoin. And there's, you know, sometimes there's people attached to it and kind of reminiscing like a can can can. Can see my points. And a lot of times there's just a lot of I roll and kind of going on. And I'm kind of curious. Like what's what's been like the narrative that you've been spinning around this, right? Like, obviously, you're a gentleman. And that is

more around like, you know, showing value and defying. This is why the defying infrastructure is valuable and in meets the need. You know, how are you kind of like addressing, you know, the pain that the the the Wall Street bets cohort is feeling? The thing that I've been thinking about is that, you know, apparently, there is this potential for this systemic collapse of the banking and

payment real system. Because if, if, um, Citadel can't fulfill their obligations because Melvin capital went bankrupt and there's all this other stuff that like if you want to know more about what I'm what I'm trying to reference. You need to do your own research because I can't regurgitate it right here. And now, but apparently there's like a bunch of systemic risk. If Melvin capital goes tits

up, then so does the brokerage that is far are facilitating these trades. And so, you know, Hunter, my roommate, who's now this the example are just like equities guy in this in this episode of P over crypto. Uh, but I just give Hunter credit like hunter played GME perfect. He called GME weeks ago in our chat. I ignored it. But it wasn't until everything like the

firework shows a coldly shit. But I mean, dude, he nailed it, man. He really did. Um, and so like I was talking to him about this where like if there is this systemic risk thing where like if Melvin capital collapses, then Citadel collapses, then other brokerages collapse. Like if that is true. Like holy shit, our financial system is so incredible. So it's incredibly fragile. If like

a bunch of Wall Street bet yellowers just purchase a stock and that collapses the financial system. Our financial system deserves to get like collapsed. Like fuck like that cannot be our financial system. That is our financial system. Bro. Yeah. Right. So So the way it works. And the way that he so I don't know if you've been paying attention at all with the repo market. Are

you familiar with the repo markets and like the turmoil that's been going down since before. Rona with the repo markets, right. Yeah. We've talked about that a few times, but I don't know if there's anything recent that I've been paying attention to. Yeah, because they're not covering it. So you know what answer. Uh, kind of a. Connected the repo market is. So he's like the repo

markets are like the base level blockchain. Right? So the so when the repo markets clear every single night, that's like blocks are clearing on the blockchain. And everything that we're dealing with are on higher levels. That's like level two, layer three, layer four, right? We're not dealing with like the base level blockchain of the, the, the, the legacy financial system, right? So if you were to

like say, okay, the repo markets, that's how all the banks and all the massive players that have access to the fed window, so clear their debts at the end of, or clear their books at the end of each day. Like that's the blockchain. The blockchain has not been clearing by itself without intervention of like the one master node in the system since before Rona. So like

if you can imagine, like there's this, you know, blockchain that's run, that's like the underlying infrastructure of the entire traditional system. And all the big banks are like master nodes. And there's one mega master node. That's the fed. All of the. nodes are broken except for the fed and the fed is the one that's pushing things along, clearing blocks, making sure that it's still going. So

like the base foundation is already broken. It's, it's being completely supplemented by the fed by the singular master node that's keeping things rolling. Like the, like the blocks are not propagating by themselves. So now we're just continually seeing the upstream effects of that brokenness. Yeah. So like there's a, there's a damn and there's just like the fed is just like, you know, holding up the damn,

right? But like the thing at the last time we talked about this on the on P on this podcast was, I posed the question is like, well, why can't the fed just keep on doing that? Like what's what's to stop them just to keep on just doing what they're doing and just manually clearing blocks like that manually clearing blocks seems to be working. Why can't they

just keep on doing that? Well, we're seeing the issues arise upstream, right? So like they're papering it over kind of on the base layer. But that brokenness is is kind of like showing its ugly face time and time again in other places where they don't expect it, right? So they don't know where where the issue is going to like kind of like rear its ugly head

until it happens and then they have to like paper over it. Make sure it's okay. And like sometimes it takes narrative manipulation and all this other kind of like, you know, stuff that were that we're seeing around like reprimanding the Reddit traders and call them out and like talking to every single brokerage and making sure they put certain limits around certain stocks and like they're constantly

playing catch up to try to get ahead. And I mean, it's just not sustainable. Like, yeah, they can do it. They can kick the can for a while. But, you know, ultimately, it's just going to blow up in their face. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. I don't know. It's massive fragility like we just saw. Yeah, I kind of have a grasp on it. I can't really

talk too much more about it because like that. I just don't know the inner inner working details of this. But like it all seems to make sense. But like, is this just like, but so why when when repo markets aren't clearing, what is what is that? What does that mean? Is there just like people just don't have the cash to facilitate their commitments? I thought we

had too much cash. Well, that's that's a exact problem because interest rates are nothing. There's no incentive to lend it out unless there's just insane amount of assurances that you that you're not going to, you know, that the risk isn't going to blow up in your face. So I mean, again, like the foundation, like if you were to say like, the base blockchain of the current

financial system is already completely fucked. We're operating 304 levels above that. And like imagine if you're an Ethereum world where all the insurances that are brought to you by the Ethereum blockchain, no longer can serve that you're operating on the L3 or an L4. And the UI seems to work. But on the back end when it's trying to like clear onto the blockchain, it's just not

doing it, right? Like eventually it's just going to come kind of like those issues just stack up. Right. That's crazy to think about. I try to bring it to the. Sorry. I try to like, I like Ansel's comparison to a blockchain. Just because that's what we're all familiar with, right? Yeah. I can picture that in other systems works. But yeah, if you were to think of

like how you would want Ethereum's ecosystem work, how you want big quads and ecosystem work. You know, and then how the current system is working. Like it's pretty obvious that there's some major issues. And again, like these issues in the repo markets, we're happening months before Ronan started to work. Right. Right. So like this is been like this has been baked in for a long time.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And presumably not going anywhere either. You want to pivot to people coming into crypto. Do you have more to say? Sure. Well, I mean, I think it's a great pivot because like the masses are waking up to these issues. Like and maybe they don't understand the issues from like a first principles perspective, but they know something is wrong. And we're just seeing more

and more celebrities, more and more big wigs. Like, you know, I guess just understanding the Bitcoin and the crypto pitch. And you know, we're, again, we're seeing guys like, you know, Russell Akun who are like big time big coiners to guys like Gene Simmons who are, you know, just tipping their toes and like, I just bought some Bitcoin ripple. Like, you know, we're seeing the whole

gamut. Yeah. See, we're seeing soldier boy and come into space and start to mint NFTs. I thought I'd thought it was a nice sign of maturity when soldier boy came in and he was like, yo, should I make my own currency? And like all the Ethereum people were like, no, don't do that. Don't make your own currency. Make an NFT. Do NFTs instead. And then finally

enough. What's his face? The guy from Tron, the Tron guy. I can't remember his name. Just in Sun. Just in Sun. He was like, come and mint your soldier boy token on Tron. I thought that's just a position was pretty funny. And interestingly, Mark, Cuban kids are figuring out money a little bit. Yeah. Sure. Mark Cuban also came in with a massive tweet thread talking about

the comparisons between DeFi and this whole CME GameStop debacle. So like, like one, one thing I keep on seeing is like, everyone's trying to call make top signals, which I've noise the fuck out of me mainly because I don't want it to be the top. But like, wait, they're saying top signals for crypto. Top signal like Gene Simmons is buying Bitcoin and Ethereum. Like, that's a

top signal. Right? Like, they need to be a just, they need to readjust their mindset. This is just a big bubble. Okay. We're at the top. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Like the top signals are going to be 10 X is large as they were last cycle. We need way, dumb or celebrity. But wait one money in first. Thank you. Thank you. That makes it. That makes

me feel better. Yeah. Anyways, lots of people, lots of people gaining exposure. The Winkle Voss twins are coming on bank list to talk about their CNBC interview that they did. And, you know, people, people are talking about this and, and, or the whole GameStop debacle. And like, crypto is just like one hop away from that. Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing is, is like, Bitcoiners are

like Bitcoin whenever people are talking about this GME thing. But like, so is the mainstream media. Like the mainstream media, they're talking about Bitcoin and crypto. Like, they're bringing up a lot of money. They're bringing up in the same breath all the time. And like, usually a negative light. But I think that this whole GameStop thing also showed us pretty unequivocally that all press is good

press. If you look at Robin Hood's numbers, if you look at all the numbers of all the companies that were censoring transactions, they all had huge download weeks. They all like Robin Hood was the number one app and the app store for the Apple app store. All of last week. So I think it does show. That all press is good press. And I mean, absolutely, even

them, you know, financial pundits mentioning Bitcoin and Ethereum and crypto in the same breath as a bubble and speculatively drawn whatever. I think it's ultimately good for the price. Yeah. And good for the bubble. It's one of those things where like if you, if people on CNBC or whatever say like Bitcoin's a bubble, people like retail will pull out their wallets and be like, how much

of it can I have? Can I add to this bubble? And now if they're like hedge funds are shorting Bitcoin, they're like, oh, really? Yeah. Let's squeeze those motherfuckers. Yeah, dude, I can remember where I saw it. But I saw like a tweet or message today about how hedge funds are shorting Bitcoin. And I'm like, oh my God, I can't get any more bullish. So specifically

on this point, it was a zero hedge article over the weekend that cited the block cryptos graph that showed like, you know, a lot of outstanding short, short buying pressure from hedge funds in particular. And then Bitcoin. Yeah, against Bitcoin. And I guess that zero hedge article apparently was very poorly researched. I didn't read it. I just sent it over to Hunter and that crew. And

they like completely picked it apart. But the hilarious thing is that after that Bloomberg CNBC, every single other person, other media like major media company picked up the exact same thing. The exact same story with the exact same source. So again, shows you like how our news media works. It's, you know, it's kind of based on BS. Wow. Wow. That's hilarious. Yeah. There is no good

news anymore. There is no good. There is, oh, there's only podcasts. Podcasts are my only trusted source of news because I can under because I know like the cohosts like for Demetri Caffeines, Hint Forces. I trust that guy. I trust him to tell me the news. I don't trust anybody on the mainstream media anymore to tell me anything that's I'm remotely tied with reality. I trust

people that put their reputations on the line to deliver good news. Yeah, I mean, like, I think we're really seeing like the crowd sourced independent content, you know, independent contributor world. Like it just show more and more of its merits. And we're seeing like the traditional big broadcast media space just show more and more of its corruption. I think that's just that's a pretty big theme.

And I know that like Trump getting elected was all like kind of like fake news, like, you know, it kind of like brought that meme into light. But I think that meme is now kind of, you know, it's just a general understanding across party lines. Like I just don't think that anyone has a lot of respect for the current media establishment. Yeah, Belagie talks about how

back in like the 50s and 60s, there were basically three sources of truth. And that's why there was never any sort of like semblance of like fake news or any sort of like distrust in the system. Because how would you ever gain any sort of knowledge about the system because there was only one or two people that could tell you any sort of news or information.

But now in this day and age, like anyone can start a podcast. Anyone can start a blog. Anyone can report on their findings and like gain access to eyeballs and years. And so like what used to be just like three sources of information turned into like three million sources of information. That bankless and Bitcoin magazine are giving about our respective kind of areas of expertise. Like

from Bitcoin magazine's perspective, today's day and age, we're publishing Bitcoin plebs. Like we're sourcing Bitcoin plebs to publish on our website. And our CEO runs a fund with institutional investors and his institutional investors send them articles from Bitcoin magazine saying, wow, incredible analysis. Like this is a pleb article. That institutional investors like, wow, I've never thought of Bitcoin this way. And it's just like that's like

that's the world we're in. Like crowds, the power of the crowd is way, way better than some top down signal. And like Ansel says this a lot. He's like, hey, you know, in all of this chaos, the world is a better place. And all of this chaos. There is more free speech than there used to be. And all of this chaos. There is less censorship. And

I think he's right because like, hey, we may feel like we're being censored or all this stuff. But that's just because we're not going to be able to do that. Because we are so used to having so much ability to have free speech that anyone impinging on it, you know, it feels like censorship. But in the grand scheme of things, we still have way more free

speech than we ever had. Like the fact that I have X 1000 followers on Twitter and I can send out a message that's going to get thousands of impressions. Like that was not possible for me to do ever before in any other time period. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that just that just turns the conversation to like the overton window though. Because like, I have this fear

in the back of my mind that like, I will lose my Twitter account. And like my Twitter account with my X number of thousands of followers is like one of my most valuable assets that I have. Right. And so like fantastic. Thank you, Jack Dorsey for bestowing upon me this ability to have this speech that I have. But also like, it's, it would really have freedom

of speech if like Jack Dorsey can take it away from us. Like is that what freedom of speech is. And I guess no, the answer is that's not what freedom of speech is. And I guess we could go into a technical debate about like what our rights about my Twitter account versus not. But at the end of the day, I have this very valuable asset that

is in the hands of like the centralized company that could, that could kill it. I think that's where this like conversation around like platforms and media that kind of that's where that goes to is how do we turn these things into like closer, something closer to protocols. Yeah. I mean, I think that is happening. And I think that it's really obvious that censorship only makes the

anti fragile versions more and more lucrative. And I mean, if you lost your Twitter account, it would suck. It would suck really bad because you've built a fantastic Twitter account with an excellent following. But those people aren't going to forget who David Hoffman is, right? Like those people are going to find you somewhere else. And you already have assets that you control from like a foundational

level. You have multiple RSS feeds. You have a website like all of this stuff lacks third parties that can kind of get in the way. So yeah, Twitter is kind of like that town square. But like I think, you know, guys like American HODL who I know, although he's sustained in the The Thierrym community, he has had his Twitter account completely destroyed and completely blocked and

banned over 10 times. Every single time he spins up a new one, everyone refalows him. And he just continues to go like he has transcended beyond like one Twitter account like his persona is beyond that. And he he breaks 10,000 followers repeatedly. There's a website called hive one that kind of shows you the top influencers in both Bitcoin and The Thierrym based on who else is

following them. And the top 100 Bitcoin list is literally a graveyard of American HODLs. It's just like American HODL 6, American HODL 7, American HODL 8, it's just a graveyard of American HODLs. But like, you know, he has effectively transcended, you know, whatever his Twitter account is. And I truly think that David Hoffman, if put in a similar situation, can do the same. Yeah, that's interesting.

I only know American HODL because of that he yells and calls me bad names on Twitter. He doesn't like him. No, he does not like me at all. He's a toxic motherfucker. I can't I can't excuse that. It's just reality. Yeah. Yeah. I think any Ethereum he doesn't really like either I have him blocked or he has me blocked one of the two. Well, I always

tweet you I feel like I always tweet you out. And then he just blocks you immediately. So you being blocked is because of me. I'm sorry. I'm not too worried about missing out on that that perfect American HODL content. It is hilarious though, in my opinion. But yeah, let's okay. So, you know, I feel like this has been a very high level conversation so far. I

think it's been fantastic conversation. But let's talk about crypto a little bit more like what are you seeing right now? Like how do you feel like personally? I think that Bitcoin can either go up $10,000 or can go down $10,000 in the next seven days. Like that all both are very much at play in my opinion. Yeah. So it's it's I'm very wary about how far

away we are both eth and BTC from the 20 week moving average. We're very far away from those numbers. Like the eth moving average 20 week moving average is like $650. And the Bitcoin 20 week moving average is like. Oh God, I don't even know. I'm about to pull up the eth 20 week moving average. Yeah, pull them both up. But I mean, like while you're

doing that from my screen or just want me to tell it. Yeah, I can I can do that here. Give me one second. Yeah. So. But yeah, in my experience Bitcoin and Ethereum, they earn their prices. Like they move quickly. But then they in retrospect, they go back and they earn every fucking dollar of price action upwards. So when I see them move up very quickly

with very little kind of like price discovery in between, I generally have a gut feel that we're going to go back and earn those prices and test those levels again. Oh, you think so, huh? I'm ready for this to be the new floor. I'm ready for $1,000, $1,000, $30,000 Bitcoin to be like the new floor. I could be I'm I'm of position for, for $2,000, $1,000,

and like 50 plus $1,000 Bitcoin. That's where I'm positioned. And then the one thing. And so like I started this conversation off saying I'm, you know, I'm wary as to how far away from the 20 week moving average, we are. So it's waiting, DeFi versus ether. And doesn't have that much price history. This, the DPI index only got started in like, like early November. So the

chart doesn't have much history. But there's already like this basing pattern that we are starting to break out of. And so like my I'm positioned for a DeFi summer. That is like the new wall seats. So like throughout the spring, I think that we're going to start seeing a lot more insane volatility to the upside in the entire crypto space. But you know, kind of in

these early, the early part of the year, again, I would not be shocked if we see some downturn just because we haven't earned those prices yet. And on top of that, I think institutions want in at lower prices. And we know that they can move the market around. This these markets are shakeable. Yeah, but they're only shakeable if you have assets to sell, not if you

don't, if you don't have any Bitcoin on the balance sheet, how can you shake the market? You can only shake it to the upside. I mean, you can take short positions on CME. But that doesn't mean the market's going down. That's not going to. Because it does taking a short push spot down. Oh, I guess it does. I guess it kind of just depends on how

everything else plays out. But again, like, yeah, you can own Bitcoin, sell it by a lot more cheaper too. Like that. Right. Just because like I think that big players are going to continue to push things around. Like we know that that's happening in legacy. So they can definitely happen in crypto. I don't know. I get I just add in the fact that money is going

to be going. And there's a lot of cash out there combined with the fact that like we are quote unquote inside a new paradigm with institutions that are well capitalized wanting to get Bitcoin on the balance sheet. I think any single dip just gets bought just like really quickly. And I think we've seen that over the last like six months, like dips just get bought, dips

get bought hard. Yeah. So what you take on Elon Musk kind of jumping into this and even doing that that clubhouse chat last night. And I think that's what I'm going to do. Yeah. Do I haven't gotten any of the takeaways from the clubhouse chat. The only thing I know about Elon is that like he tweeted it out about GameStop and then he added Bitcoin to

his bio. I don't understand why so many people are like stoked on that piece of news. Like Elon has been a Bitcoin bowl. He just hasn't been like a Bitcoin fanatic. He knows about Bitcoin. He's bullish on Bitcoin. We've always known this to be true. I don't get what the new news is. Well, it was always cryptic. And now it's straightforward, I guess. You're muted. I

mean, that's just like, that's not that's not news. I guess, I mean, I guess he's the world's most wealthy man. So I guess that's news, but like it's on news. I think the bullish thing is the fact is just all the alignment with Elon Musk and Bitcoin, right? Like he is obsessed with energy production and energy storage and Bitcoin, prove of work fits into that perfectly.

That's like a huge part of the Bitcoin narrative. So I think that that's bullish. Again, like there's one thing between like Elon tweeting cryptic shit about Bitcoin and dogecoin to him, like, you know, putting hashtag Bitcoin as the only thing in this bio. Like I don't know how much of that was caused by, by Michael sailor or Jack Dorsey, but like it's pretty obvious that like

the big players, like the new meme warriors of crypto, like they're having an impact and things are just getting started. And again, I'm going to plug the big coin. Tina special. I just put out two weeks ago, the hardest trade, but he talks about this. He's like, we are going from Bitcoin being an illegitimate asset to being a legitimate asset. And that change is going to

change the market. Like in ways that we don't understand yet. So I mean, from what you're seeing, like we've talked about like playing the crypto cycle, selling the top, you know, getting some buying powers that way you can buy back at the bottom. Like what if that never really happens? Like why what if every single dip gets gets gobbled up by institutional institutions that are, you

know, physically short crypto and they're trying to, you know, they're trying to acquire. If that happens, then I mean, I think we're all really, really wealthy because then we just keep on selling all the way up to the top. But I guess we're only wealthy in dollar terms. So I guess what does that even mean? Yeah, Bitcoin or some value dollars. Yeah. And we'll accept you

guys. Everyone values dollars because it's the frame of reference. The whole one BTC equals one BTC thing. No, like you would be all still value it in dollars. Bitcoin is actually believe that. Believe what? One BTC equals one BTC. I mean, I believe I believe that too. But like that still doesn't stop everyone from like looking at the Bitcoin chart in dollar terms. This don't what's

the point of looking at the Bitcoin chart in Bitcoin terms. That's a dumb chart. That's a fine line. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good thing. That's the right perspective. But no, you're right. And the whole point of me in Bitcoin, and making that podcast is he thinks that Bitcoiners don't believe that. He thinks that Bitcoiners are going to try to sell the top and that

they're going to, you know, they're going to value dollars over Bitcoin. And he personally thinks that a lot of them are going to get wrecked. Again, his two scenarios are scenario. You know, scenario number one is blow off top dip. Right. That's that's what I never expected. That's the deep consensus scenario number two is every 30% dip gets bought up and it just keeps going up

and up and up. So scenario number three is similar to Walmart and Tesla, where it's flat, flat, flat, completely repricises this year and then just goes flat for the next four years. And that's what he considers to be the hardest trade because that's the hardest thing if you're trying to trade this thing to actually. That's what the hardest trade is. I'm only like halfway through the

episode. That's interesting. That's interesting. I feel like the, you know, we've just get 30% corrections and other than that, it's up into the right. That feels like hope. You know, people like at the end of the day, too many people are going to get too wealthy too quickly. And like, that's where blow off tops always happen. I really, I think, I think we are going to

go into a blow blow off top and then I quote unquote bear market. I just think it'll be severely muted on both sides. It'll be a muted blow off top and then a muted bear market, but they'll still be there. Yeah, I mean, I could see, I could see a blow off top and then a muted bear market. Again, I think that's the difference between going

from illegitimate to legitimate is the just that huge dump is not going to happen because people might actually value this thing instead of just, you know, thinking of it as like a GM E Ponzi where, you know, they're going to make the 300 bucks per share and then who cares. So, I mean, I don't know. We'll see. It's difficult to tell how much people actually are

valuing this thing versus like just thinking it's a hype stock or whatever. From what I've seen, like some people kind of like get the hard core foundation, the radicalized opinion of, you know, what Bitcoin is and what crypto offers. But a lot of people just kind of see it as, you know, a new flavor of stock number go up. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's interesting. I

don't have any more opinions. My only opinion is, we are in Coinbase listing token pump phase of the market. That's where I think we are. So 2017, how much is 2021 going to rhyme? I mean, it's, it's a, I don't really know what you mean by that. But other than like, I do think that like, you and a swap is the new finance. I do think

that there's going to be a bunch of specular of mania around DeFi tokens. I think we're already seeing that. And I think there's going to start to become so much noise in this space, so much signal in this space that it starts to drown out everything. And all the signal just turns into noise. I think we're going to get a flood of new entrance into this

space to speculate on. So like, those are all all things that rhyme with 2017. So to that degree, I think, yes, those that that will be significantly resemble what we know of 2017. was created not before as with the ICO with an ICO, you would just spin up a website and a white paper. And then you would get millions of dollars in funding. That's not going

to happen anymore. We haven't seen any of that happening now. The only. We still. I mean, we've seen people spinning up shit working code. So I guess that's yeah, better. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Like there is some labor and value first. And sometimes that code is completely shit. But we've also seen shit code get deployed and then fixed over the over the long term. And then those

applications turn into vibrant communities with a bunch of community members who think that the project is legitimate and where they to be worked on. And so I think the are you talking about. She swap. She swap is a good one. She also had there code heavily critiqued. But yet it still has attracted an army of developers and community members. I think that the stickiness is going

to. Ethereum in DeFi is going to be a hundred times more sticky than the ICO mania was back in 2017. I think there's a lot more media and content in the Ethereum landscape than there than there was back in 2017. There's a lot more reasons to stick around. A lot of the tokens that I owned in 2017. I think that's what I'm going to you know

my mind. I can't even remember the names of now. But now a lot of the tokens I own now are also products that I use on a daily basis. Right. So I think there's a lot more sticking power this time around. So speaking of the fleeting stickiness of tokens, which tokens are you interested in these days just because even you know even Wi-Fi is something that

you were extremely interested over the summer of 2020, it seems like you're slightly less interested in like I do get a sense that you know while Bitcoiners are like Bitcoin only and they're pretty fucking consistent that. You know the. The theory is kind of have you know that their tastes kind of evolve as the ecosystem evolves if you will. Right. Yeah. And I feel like that's

what you would expect. Bitcoin is meant to not evolve right. Bitcoin is supposed to be the thing that stays the same that is the rock that you can depend on. So it's like a lot of the things that are not that are as the universe changes around it. Whereas Ethereum is like this DeFi ecosystem that is learning how to how to be right. And so like

where the energy from from Wi-Fi and urine kind of got drained a bunch of other applications have started to capture some of that similar energy. There's and now it now the really the question is like all this yield aggregation, which is what yet why aren't is like is that really a DeFi protocol to DeFi protocol as like as the ecosystem develops. And so the tokens that

I'm list that I'm focused on are partly apart in the in the DeFi aggregation scene. But then and then there but there's also sushi swap, which is the fork of unit swap, I think is actually. Progressing and innovating in directions that unit swap is not and it's also faster to Fanta and it's also on fire. It's also fostered a fantastic community. I could go deeper down

the. I mean, I've been asking you for your DeFi shells for like three episodes now. So as my as well. Again, episode where I shut up long enough for you to actually give them. All right. Okay. So alpha alpha is the hot. Why you're in 2.0 you're in 2.0 with yield aggregation. And it's it's leverage yield farming. So it's complete product market fit. Right. So you

deposit your ether and then people borrow your ether and then they use that that value to take leverage yield. So you can get some where between like eight to 12% yield on your on your ether, which is fucking crazy. So that's what alpha is about. SF SFI is like a rent risk, tronching thing. SFI is spice. And so like if you if you want. To pay

out interest in dollars, but have some people take low risks and receive low rewards and some people take higher risks and receive higher rewards. You can do that with with spice and SFI. So that's what I'm going to do. Those are kind of my two like moonshot tokens. The ones I hope to like a 10 x to 100 x. Let's see what else I got. Sushi

already said. And then of course, there's just SNX and Ave for like your your DeFi staples. I feel like. Yeah, I think just alpha and SFI are kind of my my hidden gems that I have. So I mean, I understand like a bit points the rock. The theorem ecosystem is constantly evolving. There's always a lot of things that I can do. There's always this like new

hot thing that, you know, people want to latch onto like. Is that healthy? Like at one point, you know, 30 K hardcap Wi-Fi was the future. Like don't fucking question it. Like this is the thing. Now they're talking about, I guess today they had some vote to, you know, mint some more Wi-Fi for a dev fund to get world class developers, whatever narrative, you know, gets

that done. You're saying, you know, it's unsure. They're actually going to capture value. There's other things that are kind of capturing more of the energy. Like outside of, you know, insider's trading. Like, you know, what was the long game here? I don't know. I feel like I feel like that's that's a pretty simple answer. Like this is a this is a arena. This is this is

Darwin's evolution as an arena. This is evolution on a time scale that moves so incredibly fast. And so like sure, maybe the whole Ethereum ecosystem. Is completely like different in two years, but that's going to be as a result of like innovation development and research and understanding. And it's going to be better for that reason. Like there are some things like maker Dow is still one

of the core pieces of Ethereum. That thing tends to have pretty good sticking power. I also feel like Uniswap is also not going away. Uniswap sticking power is pretty, pretty strong. Ava is sticking powers definitely proving itself. A lot of like the DeFi summers, the things that are just like. Less than nine months old. That stuff is still settling. Yeah. But at some point like we're

going to latch on to certain levels of infrastructure and Ethereum and just like keep them for all of time. Like like I said, Uniswap. Uniswap has been here since day one and it hasn't gone anywhere. Same thing with maker Dow maker Dow is three years old now. Like that's pretty good. That's all DeFi. I've seen your interest in maker Dow like kind of plummet. Like do

you still participate so heavily? I know that there's so much more excitement kind of happening, but like. Does that have long term systemic issues? Well, I mean maker Dow it's like the at some point in time, some of these applications are going to just run as designed. And like then the price of the asset kind of settles and becomes more tame. Whereas like all the excitement

and like printing and speculative mania is happening elsewhere. Like the speculative mania isn't happening in maker Dow. It's it's like becoming more like Bitcoin, which which is like what I said it was would would do like two years ago when you were skeptical on it like two years ago, is that the whole point of these applications, these DeFi protocols Ethereum included is to settle and just

be and just run as as protocols. And so, I mean, I wouldn't say like maybe my interest in maker Dow has waned but my like commitments and beliefs about maker Dow are still as strong as ever. If not even more strong because of all the Lindy that maker Dow has gained in the last three years. Okay. I mean, I'm going to say that's really good. I

mean, I think that's a fair answer, but at the same time like I just see Bitcoiners like their commitment to Bitcoin has just increased exponentially. And you know, they don't have any other choice. Maybe, but I think what Bitcoin represents is like a defy financialization. So like that's why I see like the connection there like hey, you know, you don't care about other things because the

whole point is like let's burn down the system and rewrite it based on like new heuristics. Whereas like, you know, I've constantly said that DeFi. The Ethereum ecosystem is kind of skew more fake. It's kind of based on existing paradigms. Um, but I would say it's the exact opposite. I would say DeFi is also the defy an utilization of the legacy world and becoming much more

simple and much more reductive. Not as simple and reductive as Bitcoin is, but it's much more reductive of a financial system than the current financial system is. Yeah, I mean, I could I could I could buy the argument that it is like, you know, ultimately reducing the current financial system to new primitives. But I could also see like it's just the early financial system and it's

going in the same direction as the same fragile garbage that we are seeing nowadays where the the repo market is completely broken. And you know, you not only need intervention at the repo market level, but you need intervention at the brokerage level in order to keep this thing from blowing up. So I mean, I could see that too. Yeah. Um, well, if that is the future

that plays out the difference there is the same thing. Because that like, as a transactor in the Ethereum economy, you always have the option to be independent and not be reliant on any one specific thing. Um, so like there's no one should ever like force you to be in your Walt guarded in the way that that legacy system forces you to be. Yeah, that's true. That's

that's the bullish innovation there that comes with open source tech permission,lessness and open source. That is very, very key. I think the other thing is running your own hardware. I know Bitcoiners do that a lot. I know Ethereum's do a lot more than anyone in the legacy system. So it's absolutely a step in the positive direction. Should I wrap this up? Let's do it. All right,

guys, you can follow the podcast at POV crypto pod. You can follow me at trustless state, both on Twitter and on bankless Christian. You guys can follow me at CK Snarks and at Bitcoin magazine and Bitcoin 2021 just announced that we are officially moving to Miami. June 4th in fifth. Yeah, we were saying goodbye to Los Angeles. Sorry, we have no patience for the insane lockdown

measures that are happening there. And we are going to have an in person event in the United States. So June 4th and 5th in Miami. It's going to be hot. That's a good for our health, I think. And yeah, I'm extremely excited. You can get your tickets at b.tc backslash conference. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah.