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 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 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 I'll say, well, I think that's a good thing. 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 shakers as a collective unit. But now they were, they were movers and shakers. And they have 10, like 100 times more cash than they did previously. Like, we, 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, and so on. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. 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, you know, like, find out what

they're doing. And 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. And I would 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

I see Omania, 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

DeFi 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 DeFi. 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 DeFi 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 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 DeFi people are like, you know, Robin Hood, you can turn off, but you know swap you can't turn off. You know, DeFi fixes this because they're on its 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 the economy set up. Like how do big coiners think about this? Let's start there. Well, yeah, I would say that that's like that's like what big coiners would describe is like the cause of a

lot of these incentives. But I think what big pointers 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 big coiners 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 I think again, I think that a lot

of people in the DeFi bet or sorry, the Wall Street bets. And then the community, they, they were radicalized to some degree because they were just, you know, some clubs trying to make money. They're on this Reddit page. You know, they obviously saw what they believed 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, I think that's interesting. That is like in the in bankless, we use the band 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 there is an ironic. Why are they ironic? I don't know. Because you are not a calmer. Where the mitzah, Ron, there you go. There's the irony. Oh, man. So what do you think is like what do you think? So I picked up my roommate from the airport. When he was gone

for like during this, this, all this game stopped to buckle until I pick him up. And the first thing I say to him is like, dude, everything is totally different now. Like the world is a different place. As a result of this like GME short squeeze. Like, would you say, 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 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 Robin Hood also recapitalized 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 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. So 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 they're for Robin Hood was the 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 Robin Hood can really do is like buying and holding. But that's not who these Wall Street bets degen where they are, they are a person who ape in and out of the position all the

time. But apparently like there's this brokerage that pays Robin Hood for their order flow. And that's like that's like, on if you're Facebook, that's like the advertising paying you citadel. Yeah, there 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. Ah, yeah, that's the connection. Yeah,

I'm I'm so excited for like the post mortem to come out on all this. And like, you know, you're going to get it. We were seeing both the populist left and the populist right. And an issue. And so like, I'm I think there's going to be an extensive investigation from most multiple different fronts. So like, we're going to be sussing this thing out for a while.

Yeah, no, I mean, very few things bring the right and left together these days. And surprisingly, you saw folks like a OC from the left and then Donald Trump Jr. on the right tweeting about this. And so it's absolutely a uniting factor. And I think to ban on a day. And I think that's 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 Portinoi, although he is a week handed son of a bitch. But, uh, 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 the 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 fairness that comes from open source crypto crypto. Graphically 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, you know, 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 what is 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 on the right. 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 populist stuff like Stimichex populist. I would say Biden's 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 right motivated. Or sorry, is kind of populist left motivated. And I mean, I personally think that Stimichex 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've been

put into that position. 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 like kind of argument. And

it 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 and the devaluating 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,

I was like, there's a bad guy and a good guy in the GME story. And the short and the short head funds 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 to the 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 proximate and wealthy, right. That 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 bankless. 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 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 akin to FUD. 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 FUD 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 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. 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 like 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. 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 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, you know,

oh, we're talking stocks and then Christian always just comes in with his Bitcoin comment. I mean, pretty much like I mean, you once you're in the 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 your

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

collapse of the banking and payment rail system. Because if I have Citadel can't fulfill our 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. I 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. But I just give Hunter credit like Hunter played GM me perfect. He called GM me weeks ago in our chat. I ignored it. But

it wasn't until everything like the firework shows a holy shit. But I mean, dude, he nailed it, man. He really did. 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 incredibly fragile.

If like a bunch of Wall Street bet yellowers just purchase a stock and that collapses the financial system, our financial system, it's deserves to get like collapsed like fuck like that cannot be our financial system. That is our financial system. That is right. Yeah. So, so Ansel Lindner, my co host for Fedwatch made a really, really great example of like trying to like understand from a

blockchain perspective, how like the current financial system stack works. And the way that he, so I don't know if you've been paying attention at all with the repo markets. Do you 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, it's because they're not covering it. But so, you know, what Ansel kind of connected the repo market. So he's like, the repo markets are like the base level blockchain. Right. 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. Three, lower 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 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, 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 that the last time we talked about this on the on P on this podcast was I pose 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 on 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. 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 the their commitments? I thought we had too much cash. Well, that's that's the exact problem. There's interest rates or 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 kind of like those issues just stack up. Right. That's crazy to think about. I try to bring it to the. Sorry. I tried 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 the future. Well, like I mean, I can be like a little bit more than that. Like I just want to be like, I can't just add that. Yeah. But 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, right? Right. So like this is like, this has been baked in for a long time. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And presumably not going anywhere either. Um, more and talk to them 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, rep, uh, I guess just understanding the, uh, 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 Jean Simmons who are, you know, just tipping their toes and like, I just bought some Bitcoin and ripple like, you know, we're seeing the whole gamut. Yeah. See, we're seeing soldier boy and come into the space and start to mint NFTs. I thought I 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 fun. And then finally enough. What's his face? The guy from Tron, the Tron guy, I can't remember his name. Just, just in

son. He was like, come and mint your soldier boy token on Tron. I thought that's just a position was pretty funny. Um, and interestingly, Mark Cuban, you had to figure out money a little bit. Yeah. Sure. Um, Mark Cuban also came in with a massive tweet thread talking about the comparisons between DeFi and this whole CME game style. So 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. Um, mainly because I don't want it to be the top. Um, but like, wait, there's a top signals for a crypto. Top like Gene Simmons is buying Bitcoin and Ethereum. Like, that's a top signal. Right. Like, they need to be addressed. They need to readjust their mindset. This is

just a bigger bubble. Okay. We're at the top. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Like the top signals are going to be 10X is large as they were last cycle. We need way, dumb or celebrities. But we want money in first. Thank you. Thank you. That makes, that makes me feel better. Um, yeah. Anyways, lots of people, lots of people getting exposure. Um, the Winkle Voss twins are,

are, they're coming on bank list to talk about their CNBC interview that they did and, and, you know, people, people are, are, are talking about this and, and, or the whole game stopped to buckle. And like, crypto is just like one hop away from that. Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing is, is like, Bitcoin is 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 it up in the same breath all the time. And like, usually a negative light. But I think, um, I think that this whole, uh, game stop 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. Um, 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

as in the same breath as a bubble and speculatively drawn whatever. Um, I think it's ultimately good for the price. Yeah. And good for the bubble. It's one of those things we're like, if you, if people on CNBC or whatever say like Bitcoin's a bubble, people like retail will pull out their walls 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 short. They're like, oh, really? Yeah. Let's squeeze those motherfuckers. Yeah, dude, I, I can't remember where I saw it, but I saw like a tweet or message today about how hedge funds are shorting Bitcoin. I'm like, oh my God, I can't get any more bullish. So, uh, specifically on this point, uh, it was a zero hedge

article over the weekend that cited the block cryptos graph that, uh, that showed like, you know, a lot of outstanding short, uh, 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 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, in forces. I trust that guy. Like 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 the crowdsourced independent content. You know, independent contributor world. Like 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 thing. 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. Bellagy 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 podcast. Anyone can start a podcast. And I think that's what I think is the most important thing to do. And so, like, what you used to be just like three sources of information turned into like three million sources of information. And again, like you're not actually necessarily going to get more signal out of that. But at least you

do have more optionality with your signal, which is important. Well, I would argue that the optionality creates more signal. Like no traditional finance media is given to you. And I think that's what I think is the most important thing to do. So, just like I'm not really sure if you're going to get more information about the information that Ben Clesson and Bitcoin magazine are giving about

our respective kind of areas of expertise. Like from Bitcoin magazine's perspective, today is day and age, we're publishing Bitcoin plubs. 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, an incredible analysis. Like this is a pleb article. That's 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 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 overtoned window. So 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's what I'm going to say. 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 theater 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. And 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 Ethereum 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 is not like everybody. 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. This 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. I'm not thinking. 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 both are very much at play in my opinion. Yeah.

So it's it's very 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. Hang on, I'm about to pull up the ETH. Yeah, pull them both

up. But I mean, like while you're doing that from my experience, 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 ETH or $30,000 Bitcoin to be like the new floor. I could be

I'm I'm of positions for for $2,000 ETH 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. Yet I'm still super bullish. And the thing that I have my eye on the most is the DPI

ETH chart, DPI is like the DeFi pulse index DeFi index. So I'm it's it's waiting DeFi versus Ether. And does I have that much price history? This the DPI index only got started in like, like early November. And 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. Well, I mean, it is February. But I feel like February is the end of winter and the beginning of summer. 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 the, you know, kind of in these early years, 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 be a big deal. And that's not going to be a big deal. I mean, I think that's going to take 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. 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 I'm going to be able to do that. Money printers going, but 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. 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 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 proof

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 the new me more years of crypto. Like they're having an impact and things are just getting started. And again, I'm going to plug the Bitcoin 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. Can like in ways that we don't understand yet. Um, 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's not the way to get the money back? And it 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 just a flat line. Yeah. Well, that's the right perspective. But no, you're right. And the whole point of me in Bitcoin, you know, 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 reprises 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 pull off. 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 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. 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 hardcore 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'm happy. I don't have any, any more opinions. My only, 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? Um, I mean, it's, it's, I don't, 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 things that I'm going to do. I think we're all ready seeing that. Um, 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. Um, 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 resilient. What are the key differences in your opinion? That the token tokens are coming after the

labor and value was created not before, as with the ICO, and ICO, you would 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 ICO was a question of which is possibly when it came out of the blockchain application. The only people spinning up

shit working code, so I guess that's 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. Cream has also had their code heavily critiqued, but yet it still has attracted an army of developers and community members. I think that the stickiness is going to the Ethereum and DeFi is going to be 100 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 was back in 2017. There's a lot more reasons to stick around. A lot of the tokens that I owned in 2017, 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 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 excited about. I'm extremely interested over the summer of 2020. It seems like you're slightly less interested in. I do get a sense that, you know, while Bitcoiners are like Bitcoin only

and they're pretty fucking consistent that, you know, Ethereum's kind of have, you know, 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 no matter 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 that really the question is like all this yield aggregation, which is what yet why iron

is like is that really a cap for a whole thing or it's just like, you know, because the yield actually hop from DeFi to protocol to DeFi protocol as like as the ecosystem develops. And so the tokens that I'm 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 fostered a fantastic. So I can go deeper down the DeFi token rabbit hole if you're on me to I'm looking at. 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. Alright. 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 the. That value to take leverage yield farming positions. And so you can get somewhere between

like eight to 12% yield on your on your eath, 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. And then you can do that with a spice and SFI. 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. Sushe 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 theory. ecosystem is constantly evolving. 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 hard cap 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, meant some more Wi-Fi for a dev fun to get world class developers. Whatever narrative you know gets that done. You're saying you know, it's unsure if 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 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 I 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 that thing tends to have pretty good sticking power. I also feel like Uniswap is also not going away. Uniswap sticking powers 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's life space. 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. But like does that have long term systemic issues? Well, I mean maker Dow it's like 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 big. Coin, 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. Maybe but I think what Bitcoin represents is like a defynantialization. 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. I've constantly said that DeFi the Ethereum ecosystem is kind of skew more fake. It's kind of based on existing paradigms. But I would say it's the exact opposite. I would say DeFi is also the defynantialization 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 the intervention at the brokerage level in order to keep this going. So I mean I could see that too. Yeah. Well if that is the future that plays out the difference there is that like as a trans actor in the Ethereum economy you always have the option to

be independent and not be reliant on any one specific thing. So like there's no one should ever like force you to be in your world guarded in the way that the legacy system forces you to be. Yeah that's true. That's that's the bullish innovation there that comes with open source tech permissionlessness 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 is do a lot more than anyone in the legacy system. So it's absolutely a step in the positive direction. Sure. I'll just 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 bank list. That's 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 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 good for our health I think and yeah I'm extremely excited you can get your tickets at B.TC backslash conference. Awesome. Yeah. Oh will you just see. Will you just see. pull. So here you are, baby, I'm your son. So here you are, baby, I'm your son. So here you are, baby, I'm your son. So here you are, baby, I'm

your son. So here you are, baby, I'm your son.