WEBVTT

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Bankless Nation, I'm here with Austin Barak.

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He is the founder and managing partner over at Relayer Capital.

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Austin, welcome to the show.

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Hey, David.

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Glad to be here.

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Austin, we're going to talk about tokens today.

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You and I share a lot of the same ideas about a lot of the same tokens.

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We're going to talk about Venice.

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We're going to talk about Pump.

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We're going to talk about Hyperliquid and Etherfy.

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Maybe a few others if we get enough time.

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But I first want to talk about kind of your lens for investing in crypto.

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Talk to me about Relayer Capital and the strategy that you guys have over there when you guys look at investing in crypto assets.

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So it's an interesting question because crypto markets have changed so much over time.

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So you're forced to evolve.

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Otherwise, you end up in a stagnant strategy.

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You know, what worked in 2017 or what worked in 2021 or two or 2024 doesn't necessarily continue to work.

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But there's certain themes that I think have...

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found replicatable success.

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And those are being at the intersection of growth and value.

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And what I mean by that is no one comes to crypto because they're looking to find a company that's, you know, growing 10% a year and trading at a 4x multiple.

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That's not interesting.

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They can buy like a power utility.

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Well, actually, power utility is getting a little more interesting with AI data centers, but you kind of get what I mean.

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So when I say growth and value,

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companies and tokens and projects that are growing most quickly.

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But also, you have the most margin for opportunity when they're also valued very reasonably.

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And because capital in crypto has these very cyclical patterns, where at times things are very overbid, and at times things are, you know, very oversold, you get these moments in time that often persist where there's actually growth and value, which is something you typically don't see.

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So that's kind of the overriding theme in terms of what I look for when I look for an asset.

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However, taking a step back, you know, I found a Relayer Capital about two and a half years ago.

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Before that, I was a partner at CoinFund.

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A Relayer, we do Liquid and Venture.

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But, you know, leaning quite a bit more to Liquid recently because I think that's where there's more opportunities.

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And the two segments of the market that I found most interesting are...

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the intersection of crypto and AI, and 24-7 trading slash tokenization.

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And those have been the two core themes of what I've been looking at, especially this year.

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So that includes many of the assets that you mentioned at the beginning, whether it's Venice or Pump or Hyperliquid or Etherify or others.

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But yeah, that's the general lens through which I look at the market and try and find opportunities.

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How do you think about like the typical VC strategy of very early stage, like speculative bets, you know, all or nothing?

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Is that how you lead the VC side of Relayer?

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Or does it kind of stick with the public token side of things where you're at the intersection of growth and value, as you said?

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Do those things...

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match?

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Yeah, so that's a good question.

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And I guess a good distinction, because that's really on the liquid side.

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In venture, I'm a firm believer that like, it's very rare that the best deals are also priced cheaply.

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So if you want to get into what you consider to be the most interesting opportunity, you're usually going to have to pay up for it.

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However, if

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you can get in early enough, that means at least on an absolute valuation basis, you can get in at an attractive level.

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So on the venture side, I still am looking at those major categories, whether it's like neobrokerage, on-chain DeFi, tokenization, 24-7 trading, AI and whatnot.

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But really the focus there is getting in at the pre-seed or seed level where the valuations are most compelling and ultimately,

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When you're a venture investor, you're making a bet on the team, the market opportunity, and as an extension of the team, their ability to execute.

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So that's where I like to get in at that stage.

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Between the two sides of Relay, or between the liquid public token and the private VC side of things, which side has been capturing your attention more?

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Which side has been winning in the tug of war, if you will?

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Yeah, so I would say maybe like the first three quarters of the year of 2024, when I was live with the fund, I would say it was pretty 50-50.

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Now it's 95% liquid.

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I think most of the deals that you're seeing on the venture side come to market are

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You know, there are interesting deals, but they're growth stage deals.

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They're more like traditional payments and fintechs companies, which I think are also compelling.

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And I like on the public equity side, when you think of like crypto linked assets, so something like a new bank or a D local or a figure, but something that I'm a little bit less excited about on the venture side.

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So at this point, it's like 95 percent liquid where I'm spending my time.

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Do you think that's just downstream of where we are in the cycle?

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I mean, it's a very interesting week for me to even ask that question because Bitcoin just ripped from like 62 to almost $80,000.

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And so, you know, potentially, potentially the bull market is on.

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But, you know, nonetheless, like last week, if the bull market is indeed on, the last week would be like the last week of the bear market.

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And so a lot of the liquid tokens therefore present themselves.

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as very, very valuable deals.

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Do you think that's part, like the reason why liquid tokens are so favored right now by you at Relayer is because of where we are in the cycle?

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No, I think even more so than that, you know, this has been core focus for probably about a year now.

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And I think we've,

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It's because we've been in such a deep bear market for such a long time that you've been able to see this separation of instead of looking at 100 tokens.

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All right, there's actually 10 maybe or five that are really, really compelling that are compelling.

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finding product market fit that are growing quickly, you know, it's an extension of that.

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And then are also priced really attractively.

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And if anything, actually, some of these assets are now priced a little less attractively, but in the grand scheme of things, still pretty good.

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I mean, you see something like Athena, which I think everyone was looking at as like,

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let's say if the bottom is the first inning and then the first recovery of assets is the second inning, I always thought of like Athena and Pendle as third inning assets, where it's like once things heat up and on-chain yields increase, those are two of the protocols, like these native on-chain yield protocols that benefit most.

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And, you know, Athena's up 40% in the last like,

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30 hours or something.

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So we're definitely seeing this play out.

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Let's talk about Venice.

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Let's get into some of the specific tokens here.

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There's a tweet from you that I'll read.

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In my opinion, that Venice, it is my opinion that Venice's token is materially underpriced at $1 billion FDV.

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I think the price is a little bit higher now today, or actually quite a bit higher.

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Price target based on what I consider to be a realistic scenario is $43.90.

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$43.90.

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Talk to me about how you backed into that model.

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How do you think about VVV?

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Because it's not a token that really we've seen before.

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It's very interesting in terms of its value capture story, and it's very specific in its value capture story.

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So when you think about valuing VVV, what are the most important things to consider when you create a model around it?

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Yeah, so...

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So I think right now it's actually interesting because I think a lot of more people are creating like more sophisticated models because AI allows you to kind of build things so quickly.

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But I actually started my career in corporate development and FP&A at a payments company, actually.

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So I built this model the traditional way from scratch, which, you know, maybe it's a little crazy to say, but I found fun.

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Yeah.

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But the way I built this model is like, all right, you got to start at the top.

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What is the business, right?

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And the business is...

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private and uncensored AI use, being able to access kind of AI as an application through or be able to access any sort of model, whether it's a frontier model or an open source model.

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And they monetize primarily in two ways.

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So there's people that sign up for subscriptions.

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It's freemium.

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So you don't need a subscription, but you can access all the products.

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And then it's

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You know, unless they've changed the tiers recently, it's $18 a month, $68 a month, or $200 a month.

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But as consumers of AI know, that gives you a certain amount of credits.

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And when you run out, as people often do, if you want to keep using the product, you need to pay for additional credits.

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So that's really the second major revenue line right now, which is credit purchases.

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And then now you have to think about like, all right, so what does this mean for the token?

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And in June, or I guess maybe it was the very beginning of July, they raised an equity round or $1 billion valuation, equity and token to be clear.

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So alignment across both.

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And, you know, there's a lot of scar tissue in crypto.

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So people are like, oh, what does this equity mean?

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And I think Venice has actually created one of the most

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elegant balances of token and equity where this is an off-chain business, right?

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Like the majority of this is just people using AI as a consumer application, signing up with a credit card, using it on their computer or their phone.

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So in order to create all of the relationships and, you know, access all the compute they need and everything, like,

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running a fully on-chain business as a foundation is just very operationally complex.

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So most companies will need an equity business.

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So what they've done is you have this token where the token benefits from burns that are happening on-chain.

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It also has a certain utility in terms of tokenized computing.

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And I'll get back to that in a second.

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And the idea is like, all right, well, they're reinvesting in growth as any business should do at an early stage when they're growing so quickly.

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However, all of or the majority of free cash flow of, you know, the excess of what's spent goes into the token.

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And that's the plan long term.

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They've been very explicit about that.

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And right now they have two programmatic burns.

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So for every new sign up, whether it's, you know, depending on the tier, they burn a certain amount of tokens.

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And for every credit purchase, they also burn a certain amount of tokens.

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So from there, you can back into like, all right, this is the revenue for the business.

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Now, let me assume, let me make some assumptions on what the gross margins are at the business level.

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So, you know, this is not hyper liquid with like 100% margins.

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It's a business with costs.

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So what are, you know, the cog?

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So what are like the inference costs and the related things?

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And then what's the op-ex?

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So marketing, customer acquisition, headcount, all of that.

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So that when I think about burns, I think about in the context of like, what are they reinvesting in the business?

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What are their costs?

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What's actually feasible to burn?

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Because, you know, people say they're burning 8% of revenue.

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Well, if let's say as an example, their gross margins are 50%, they're reinvesting in the business.

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And right now, let's say their EBITDA margins are 10%.

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If they're burning 8%, that means they're burning the majority of the free cash flow.

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So I think that's like a nuance that needs to be understood.

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So what I've done in my model is I look at where are...

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credit burns today?

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Where are new subscription burns?

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And then what do I project those line items to grow based on, of course, how do credit purchases grow and how do subscriptions grow?

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And then, you know, I'll pause in a second.

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Then I think about like, all right, what are some new business lines and what are potential burns from that?

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That's the Minds product that they've been hinting at for a while, which is kind of like,

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an app store for AI products, which is very interesting.

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And, you know, I imagine coming in the next couple of weeks.

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And then the other piece is, what are subsequent burns that can be rolled out?

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Because, you know, they started first just with a discretionary burn, then they did it for new subs, then they did it for credits.

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And what are new ones that can be added?

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And how does that all roll up?

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So, you know, right now, as of, you know, August, they are run rating at an

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in my estimate, at $107 million of annualized revenue and at $8.3 million of annualized births.

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I have that in 2027, scaling up to 336 million in projected revenue and 70 million in burns.

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So from there, I just look at, you know, what's a reasonable multiple on earnings like a P ratio.

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And I think for a token, buybacks to market cap is a very reasonable way to think of an equivalent for a P ratio.

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And for a business that's growing directionally like 5 to 10x year over year, which is just astounding growth, 50x is a reasonable comp, if not like potentially even cheap looking at stock market.

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And 70 million times a 50x multiple, $3.5 billion for the token.

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Thinking about the projected token supply at the end of 2027.

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And that's how you get to $43.89, which, you know, versus the current prices today at, you know, about $16.

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It was, you know, $12 when I updated the model a few days ago.

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I think it's very compelling.

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I've been trading crypto for almost a decade, and I've used so many different wallets, exchanges, aggregators, different front ends over the years.

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And I'm always kind of looking for the same thing.

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Just one interface with deep liquidity across a bunch of chains and assets where I can access all the markets like perps, earn yield, trade confidentially and still control all my own funds.

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And I've never really found this experience.

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And I'm always switching wallets, juggling gas fees and just getting eaten by slippage.

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Near.com is not that.

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It feels fundamentally different to me.

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I can do everything I want from any chain and I keep all my activity confidential.

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I can even earn yield confidentially.

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It's the way crypto should work.

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The Near.com wallet is powered by Near and it's moved over $25 billion cross-chain using post-quantum signing and has run over five years on mainnet with zero downtime.

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Get 20% of your trading fees back using the bankless link in the show notes, not investment advice.

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Self-custody won, but it still has a usability problem.

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What are the biggest assumptions in that model?

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The most shaky assumptions that kind of require the most amount of faith.

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So like what are you kind of relying on in order to create a fair value of almost $44?

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Yeah, so I think of that 70 million, I have 29 million in burns coming from the mines product.

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So that's a significant assumption.

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That's 40% of 2027 burns coming from a new product.

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Yeah.

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However, you know, I don't make that assumption blindly.

207
00:16:13.533 --> 00:16:19.742
They, Venice didn't have a credit purchase product that existed in 2026.

208
00:16:19.762 --> 00:16:21.284
They rolled out in the very beginning of this year.

209
00:16:22.313 --> 00:16:29.721
And prior to that, you could, you know, use the frontier models and credits as, you know, to the extent that you had available.

210
00:16:29.741 --> 00:16:35.748
And then after that, you kind of had to use other products or other models or upgrade tiers.

211
00:16:36.609 --> 00:16:38.571
And they rolled that out in...

212
00:16:39.832 --> 00:16:42.714
January, or maybe it was February, but you know, beginning of this year.

213
00:16:43.355 --> 00:16:52.181
And based on current credit purchases, and this is something you can all track on chain, their run rating at $60 million of ARR.

214
00:16:52.942 --> 00:16:59.407
So a product that didn't exist eight months ago is now doing 60 million year of revenue.

215
00:16:59.867 --> 00:17:05.471
So I think, you know, thinking about what the business looks like in 2027, 30 million for mines,

216
00:17:09.072 --> 00:17:13.677
perhaps optimistic because, you know, this is a product that doesn't, that's not yet live.

217
00:17:13.737 --> 00:17:16.360
So there's a lot of assumptions required.

218
00:17:16.920 --> 00:17:21.805
I think it's something that's reasonable based on like what we've seen from the execution of the team so far.

219
00:17:22.446 --> 00:17:28.832
Let me give you some pushback on that one, which is that the credit purchases, you call it a new product product.

220
00:17:29.613 --> 00:17:32.695
It's the same product because they're just selling tokens.

221
00:17:32.735 --> 00:17:34.076
Venice has always been selling tokens.

222
00:17:34.096 --> 00:17:36.737
They were selling tokens with selling their subscriptions.

223
00:17:37.237 --> 00:17:40.959
And now buying credits is just like another way to sell tokens.

224
00:17:40.979 --> 00:17:49.084
So it's been the same product, but it's been just another way to take in revenue and really maximize, amplify a product that already exists.

225
00:17:49.584 --> 00:17:56.248
Mines, which I agree is exciting and potentially large, we just don't know.

226
00:17:56.728 --> 00:18:04.155
And so it could also potentially be a flop and a credit purchases are not going to be a flop because it's selling the same product that already exists.

227
00:18:04.256 --> 00:18:09.040
But mines is like a completely new line item in the Venice business.

228
00:18:09.501 --> 00:18:11.122
And we actually just don't know.

229
00:18:11.563 --> 00:18:15.086
And I don't think even the Venice team knows how well mines is going to do.

230
00:18:15.166 --> 00:18:16.187
How would you respond to that?

231
00:18:16.528 --> 00:18:16.848
Yeah.

232
00:18:17.028 --> 00:18:17.829
So I think that's fair.

233
00:18:17.849 --> 00:18:17.909
Um,

234
00:18:20.138 --> 00:18:23.440
And in that lens, let's look at credit purchases.

235
00:18:24.441 --> 00:18:26.082
It's an extension of just using the product more.

236
00:18:26.102 --> 00:18:26.502
That's fair.

237
00:18:26.843 --> 00:18:30.865
So let's call that like a two out of 10 in the like new product scale.

238
00:18:31.306 --> 00:18:32.567
Maybe mostly not a new product.

239
00:18:33.267 --> 00:18:41.833
I think you can think of mines as like five out of 10 in the scale of new product where it is a new product, but it's not like a 10 out of 10 completely new.

240
00:18:42.433 --> 00:18:49.018
And the reason for that is, so credits allowed you to use the existing product and the existing models more, the assets of it.

241
00:18:49.818 --> 00:18:55.820
And what Minds allows you to do is use the existing product more and better.

242
00:18:56.601 --> 00:19:09.466
And what I mean by that is whether you're building out agentic use cases or you're using coding tools as part of your existing Vanish experience, or you're just doing chat prompts,

243
00:19:10.823 --> 00:19:20.366
The way people currently use AI today, like as a regular user versus a pro user, it's like you're using different products.

244
00:19:20.806 --> 00:19:22.567
The difference is vast.

245
00:19:23.287 --> 00:19:32.370
And that's the core of what Minds is building, whether it's like these structured prompts or like applications to help you use AI better.

246
00:19:33.351 --> 00:19:38.673
That I look at as just like making the existing product suite easier to use and easier to use more.

247
00:19:41.572 --> 00:19:58.564
And maybe I'm actually overestimating the revenue that will come from mines and I'm underestimating how much mines may just increase the pace of subscription growth and credit purchases because now they're going to be using mines, but in turn, like using the existing products more because it's more useful.

248
00:19:59.104 --> 00:20:03.207
So I continue to look at it as an extension of what's being built.

249
00:20:03.747 --> 00:20:06.869
But yeah, I think that's fair pushback.

250
00:20:06.909 --> 00:20:10.832
It's definitely more new than credits versus like extension.

251
00:20:11.172 --> 00:20:21.336
On the flip side, the bullish side of Mines, I think, is also worth talking about and illustrating because it also kind of discusses Venice's positioning as a company, as a product.

252
00:20:22.357 --> 00:20:30.861
Maybe just to illuminate Mines even more as a product, there are a handful, a good handful of Venice users who are like super users.

253
00:20:31.101 --> 00:20:33.542
And the cool thing about Venice is that it has all the models.

254
00:20:34.222 --> 00:20:42.090
And some of these super users, all of these super users, have gotten really intimate about which models do what very well.

255
00:20:42.551 --> 00:20:49.938
And so some of these super users are super prompters, and they pick and choose the right models for the right circumstances.

256
00:20:50.419 --> 00:20:54.603
And the idea behind Minds is that it gives these developers a sense of the idea.

257
00:20:54.963 --> 00:21:01.408
like a developer platform, like a sandbox to create a structured model product.

258
00:21:01.448 --> 00:21:10.434
Like this, like use this model and this model and this model in these ways to amplify the experience of like an average user.

259
00:21:10.495 --> 00:21:14.698
So a Venice Super user can create a structure

260
00:21:15.438 --> 00:21:20.361
And they can present that to the rest of the Venice user base.

261
00:21:20.661 --> 00:21:23.964
And I think they kind of hinted at a way for developers to actually monetize this.

262
00:21:23.984 --> 00:21:27.726
So if your mind gets used a lot, you get a kickback.

263
00:21:28.166 --> 00:21:31.649
And so it kind of turns it into an Apple App Store experience.

264
00:21:32.699 --> 00:21:39.624
And the reason why I think this is uniquely interesting about Venice is because Venice touches the end user.

265
00:21:39.684 --> 00:21:44.707
And I want to talk to you later about OpenRouter and the $7 billion OpenRouter Stripe acquisition.

266
00:21:44.987 --> 00:21:56.315
But this is something that OpenRouter or any generalized model aggregator doesn't have as an option to them because Venice owns a direct relationship to the user.

267
00:21:56.735 --> 00:22:11.703
So like talk about talk about the bullish side for mines from that perspective where like Venice actually gets to they have a direct user relationship and the potential like how Venice might re-rate if it actually does turn into like an open developer platform.

268
00:22:11.843 --> 00:22:19.448
Yeah, and I think that's a big reason for why I'm modeling it at 44 and it's currently trading at 16 because I...

269
00:22:20.208 --> 00:22:26.313
believe, based on my research, that this is more likely to be successful than I guess perhaps the market does right now.

270
00:22:26.353 --> 00:22:27.995
And, you know, that's how you make a market.

271
00:22:28.715 --> 00:22:33.679
But I think the bull case is they have 4 million historical users.

272
00:22:34.060 --> 00:22:42.567
I mean, well, it's they haven't released what like monthly active or quarterly active numbers are, but by my estimates, that's like at least over a million.

273
00:22:43.307 --> 00:22:43.387
And

274
00:22:45.409 --> 00:22:55.596
So you have these very, very active seven-figure user base, and they're going to be marketing to each other, especially these power users.

275
00:22:55.857 --> 00:22:57.338
And it's not going to just be on Venice.

276
00:22:57.398 --> 00:23:07.045
It's going to be like wherever conversation is happening, whether it's on Twitter or Reddit or Telegram groups or Discord, because they're going to be incentivized to create

277
00:23:07.765 --> 00:23:11.247
earn additional income for things that they're already doing by sharing those products.

278
00:23:12.027 --> 00:23:14.828
And I think that's like a really, really strong bull case.

279
00:23:14.868 --> 00:23:24.373
And like we've seen with, you know, like ChatGPT tried to build out like additional tooling around the product and like an app store of sorts, but it wasn't very open.

280
00:23:24.813 --> 00:23:26.294
It wasn't prominently featured.

281
00:23:26.354 --> 00:23:30.656
Venice is actually going to feature mines in the midst of everything they're building.

282
00:23:30.676 --> 00:23:32.477
So it's not going to be this thing off to the side.

283
00:23:34.077 --> 00:23:34.958
So I think...

284
00:23:36.049 --> 00:23:48.140
you know, if you probability weighted, the $29 million number that I have is, is maybe like a fair, reasonable number, but there's opportunity for, for significant upside from there.

285
00:23:48.621 --> 00:23:52.965
And one of the things that I think is interesting is like, so they've been chatting about this.

286
00:23:53.646 --> 00:24:00.812
There's been like a few tweets and announcements around a film festival that Venice has been sponsoring and part of.

287
00:24:00.892 --> 00:24:00.993
And

288
00:24:01.633 --> 00:24:04.457
Yeah, the Lumara Film Festival in October in New York.

289
00:24:04.497 --> 00:24:05.558
Yeah, exactly.

290
00:24:06.399 --> 00:24:18.654
And I think that's one of the things where, I mean, you're seeing so much content created, but I think use of diffusion models is still pretty early in terms of image and video generation beyond just like,

291
00:24:19.295 --> 00:24:20.676
fun novelty creation.

292
00:24:21.477 --> 00:24:32.605
And those sorts of products, perhaps most specifically, are where a minds type product could be the most useful, because you have so many people that want to be creators.

293
00:24:32.925 --> 00:24:42.272
And it's not like using like AI chat product, where you can kind of figure out and you don't even know how much your prompt versus another prompt is

294
00:24:43.285 --> 00:24:43.865
not useful.

295
00:24:44.285 --> 00:24:53.309
Whereas like if you're trying to create a one minute video and you have no idea where to start, then an app store for that becomes incredibly useful.

296
00:24:53.669 --> 00:24:57.911
I want to talk about the tension between value and growth on the Venice side.

297
00:24:57.931 --> 00:25:03.493
Venice has been buying back and burning VVV with a share of its revenue from day one.

298
00:25:03.973 --> 00:25:10.956
And of all AI startups that exist right now, it's probably the only one doing the value thing instead of

299
00:25:11.456 --> 00:25:12.037
the growth thing.

300
00:25:12.057 --> 00:25:25.555
It's definitely still doing the growth thing, but they're, as you said, they're taking a very healthy chunk of their free cash flow and choosing to do essentially like, you know, stock buybacks in quotes, buy and burn of the VVV token

301
00:25:27.073 --> 00:25:31.016
And this just goes against like common sense about startups.

302
00:25:31.216 --> 00:25:37.380
Like Venice is a very young startup, just a couple of years old, and it's doing stock buybacks with some of the revenue.

303
00:25:37.720 --> 00:25:50.568
Now we can talk about the trust that needs to be imbued in the crypto industry because of this like token equity problem and the value that having programmatic buybacks brings to the trust around the VVV asset.

304
00:25:51.669 --> 00:26:02.477
But does it concern you at all that an AI startup is doing value-based activities rather than taking that revenue and reinvesting in growth?

305
00:26:02.497 --> 00:26:04.419
Wouldn't that be the more normal thing to do?

306
00:26:04.659 --> 00:26:06.300
Yeah, so that's a good question.

307
00:26:07.121 --> 00:26:10.644
So there's lots of positives, lots of negatives of having a token.

308
00:26:10.724 --> 00:26:11.945
So it cuts both ways.

309
00:26:12.665 --> 00:26:17.009
The positive is you're able to get a ton of attention and you're able to bootstrap quickly.

310
00:26:17.349 --> 00:26:20.932
You're able to create new types of token utility.

311
00:26:21.572 --> 00:26:28.636
Like I mentioned, you can lock up Venice to mint a token called Deem, which is essentially tokenized compute.

312
00:26:28.876 --> 00:26:32.578
Gives you a dollar per day of inference, which is really, really cool.

313
00:26:33.218 --> 00:26:35.079
And it allows you to acquire more customers.

314
00:26:36.079 --> 00:26:47.125
But on the flip side, until we have Clarity Act, you don't have necessarily those guarantees that the token is going to accrue the value of everything that's built.

315
00:26:47.857 --> 00:26:55.685
the team has been very explicit that they plan to return value to the token, predominantly so.

316
00:26:56.526 --> 00:27:02.192
And they also plan to like, they made it like burn every token out of existence.

317
00:27:02.232 --> 00:27:07.798
And like, I guess that's like asymptotically impossible, but like that's the plan of, or like the,

318
00:27:08.699 --> 00:27:11.703
The gist of what they're going after.

319
00:27:12.504 --> 00:27:18.090
But you need to, you know, walk the walk if you're going to say that pre-Clarity Act.

320
00:27:18.130 --> 00:27:19.171
And I think that's what they're doing.

321
00:27:19.191 --> 00:27:20.373
So they're walking the walk.

322
00:27:20.693 --> 00:27:29.163
But they're also doing it in a way that's sustainable where, you know, right now the burns are, it started with discretionary burns, which is just a couple hundred K per month.

323
00:27:29.602 --> 00:27:36.876
then they're like, okay, we're going to do for new subscribers, but we're not going to do it for existing subscriptions.

324
00:27:36.936 --> 00:27:39.882
So it's like you only get a cut the first month if you're a token holder.

325
00:27:40.408 --> 00:27:44.649
Then they're like, all right, well, we'll have this credit purchase line item that's growing really quickly.

326
00:27:45.189 --> 00:27:46.649
Let's do 5% of that revenue.

327
00:27:47.009 --> 00:27:49.010
So $5 of every $100.

328
00:27:49.350 --> 00:28:00.032
So they're being very deliberate to make sure they have enough money to reinvest in the business and, of course, be profitable, but also have this signal and provide this value to the token.

329
00:28:00.552 --> 00:28:07.194
One of the things that's most interesting about the array is that I think sometimes gets lost in conversation that Eric, the founder, was talking about is,

330
00:28:08.583 --> 00:28:18.007
they raised $65 million so that they'd have the ability to prioritize the token, but also be able to actively reinvest in the business.

331
00:28:18.047 --> 00:28:31.832
So if you think about what's been burned so far, I don't know, like the, I can actually pull it up from Venice stats, but like the historical number to date, it's, I don't know, like a few million bucks.

332
00:28:32.673 --> 00:28:32.953
And...

333
00:28:34.172 --> 00:28:35.894
They've raised $65 million.

334
00:28:35.934 --> 00:28:41.479
So they've raised, you know, 1020x what's been burned so far to be able to grow the business.

335
00:28:41.499 --> 00:28:55.831
So I think they've found a good balance where raising outside capital, getting other stakeholders involved, also making those stakeholders token the line because those stakeholders all have token warrants is...

336
00:28:57.170 --> 00:28:59.692
what gives them the ability to continue to grow so quickly.

337
00:29:00.873 --> 00:29:06.878
But yeah, it's an imperfect tension about reinvesting in the business and growth.

338
00:29:06.918 --> 00:29:26.173
And I mean, maybe Hyperliquid is just like an anomaly of anomalies, but I don't think it's reasonable for them long-term to be burning 99% of tokens, unless all of the customer acquisition growth comes from trade XYZ or is just funded by the team.

339
00:29:26.653 --> 00:29:30.096
But maybe that goes down to like 95 or 90% down the line.

340
00:29:30.436 --> 00:29:35.760
And they use some of that money to just like lean into marketing and customer acquisition and whatnot.

341
00:29:35.921 --> 00:29:37.182
And maybe they don't.

342
00:29:37.242 --> 00:29:39.443
And, you know, I'm a big fan of hyperliquid.

343
00:29:39.483 --> 00:29:41.345
So I don't mean that in any particular way.

344
00:29:41.805 --> 00:29:42.226
Yeah.

345
00:29:43.335 --> 00:29:47.159
But yeah, it's, you know, a certain amount needs to be reinvested.

346
00:29:47.179 --> 00:29:51.583
And I think like to the extent that is reasonable, Venice is straddling that line very well.

347
00:29:51.803 --> 00:29:55.066
So there's two main mechanisms that VVV gets burned.

348
00:29:55.266 --> 00:29:57.348
As you've said, it's new signups.

349
00:29:58.009 --> 00:30:04.095
So different dollar amounts of VVV gets burned based off of the tier that somebody signs up for a Venice subscription.

350
00:30:04.615 --> 00:30:07.437
And then the second one is API credit purchases.

351
00:30:07.477 --> 00:30:11.899
So you buy $100 of credits, you burn about $5 of VVV, it's about 5%.

352
00:30:12.259 --> 00:30:22.445
There's one more possible mechanism for VVV burn that the team has potentially raised as a mechanism for burn without...

353
00:30:22.585 --> 00:30:26.326
any committing to it in any particular way, which is resubscriptions.

354
00:30:26.606 --> 00:30:29.947
So like you buy a one year subscription and then it runs out at the end of the year.

355
00:30:30.768 --> 00:30:37.810
And then if you resubscribe, if you have like a rolling over subscription, no new VVV gets burned because it's just on initial signup.

356
00:30:37.830 --> 00:30:47.293
So there's potentially one more addition to the VVV burn mechanism, which is subscriptions rolling over and then they're buying another year's worth of subscription

357
00:30:48.053 --> 00:30:51.974
Do you have that as an input into your model for Venice?

358
00:30:51.994 --> 00:30:55.015
Is that part of the $43.89 model?

359
00:30:55.095 --> 00:30:58.036
Or is that something that you haven't integrated yet?

360
00:30:58.076 --> 00:31:04.578
That's part of where, depending on your view of where the token is headed, my model is reasonable or optimistic.

361
00:31:04.998 --> 00:31:06.979
But I do have that part in my model.

362
00:31:07.019 --> 00:31:12.561
They've rolled out new burns over time, programmatic burns, and I think they'll continue to do so.

363
00:31:13.501 --> 00:31:16.442
So in my model, I have that beginning...

364
00:31:17.162 --> 00:31:18.283
just looking.

365
00:31:18.783 --> 00:31:19.044
Yeah.

366
00:31:19.064 --> 00:31:28.112
So I have that beginning later this year or early Q1, depending on like the different scenario analysis that I have.

367
00:31:28.752 --> 00:31:34.077
I think that's something that they're likely to do, but I think that's also a place where they can be measured.

368
00:31:34.157 --> 00:31:38.441
So, you know, if the subscriptions are 1868 or $200 a month,

369
00:31:41.003 --> 00:31:48.228
They could start low, see how that impacts their ability to reinvest in the business, and then grow that over time.

370
00:31:48.608 --> 00:31:55.713
So that's also what I'm modeling out over time, that it starts low, and then over time they increase that number.

371
00:31:56.173 --> 00:31:59.896
And for what it's worth, that's actually what I model out for credit purchases as well.

372
00:31:59.936 --> 00:32:04.239
So right now, it's at 5% of every credit purchase is burned.

373
00:32:05.119 --> 00:32:11.144
In 2027, I have that becoming 10% because, you know, I think they'll be able to actually increase that.

374
00:32:11.384 --> 00:32:11.684
Oh, wow.

375
00:32:11.925 --> 00:32:12.145
Oh, wow.

376
00:32:12.225 --> 00:32:12.445
Okay.

377
00:32:12.465 --> 00:32:16.728
So I was understanding a little bit of your model and your like stance towards it.

378
00:32:16.748 --> 00:32:23.354
It sounds like your model is optimistic and reasonable as in nothing is ridiculous.

379
00:32:23.914 --> 00:32:33.602
Everything has had evidence or some supporting evidence somewhere, but nonetheless, it is an optimistic model where like all of the, all of the things that are reasonable, but optimistic are included in the model.

380
00:32:34.196 --> 00:32:35.776
Yeah, I think that's fair.

381
00:32:35.816 --> 00:32:39.358
Let's call like ultimate bear case is zero out of 10.

382
00:32:39.818 --> 00:32:40.858
Base case is five.

383
00:32:41.338 --> 00:32:42.779
You know, full bowl case is 10.

384
00:32:43.899 --> 00:32:47.880
You can probably call it at like, I would call it a six.

385
00:32:48.200 --> 00:32:50.461
A six on the optimism spectrum.

386
00:32:50.821 --> 00:32:51.001
Yes.

387
00:32:51.999 --> 00:32:52.199
Cool.

388
00:32:52.720 --> 00:32:52.900
Cool.

389
00:32:53.180 --> 00:32:55.602
What do you think about just Venice growth to this point?

390
00:32:55.702 --> 00:32:57.724
Has it like exceeded your expectations?

391
00:32:58.225 --> 00:33:00.447
The trajectory from from day one?

392
00:33:00.627 --> 00:33:03.570
Has it been about about meeting your expectations?

393
00:33:03.870 --> 00:33:09.335
What can you say about like Venice's growth up to this point and what you have imagined for it for it in the future?

394
00:33:09.555 --> 00:33:12.098
Definitely exceeded my expectations.

395
00:33:12.779 --> 00:33:16.864
I first started tracking Venice when they launched our token beginning of 2025.

396
00:33:16.984 --> 00:33:23.632
And, you know, that's because I was doing a lot of work in the virtuals and AI XBT and kind of related ecosystem.

397
00:33:24.013 --> 00:33:27.637
So I was fortunate to get a nice airdrop of VVV tokens.

398
00:33:27.697 --> 00:33:27.777
And,

399
00:33:28.718 --> 00:33:39.266
had started following in since then and it was something that was interesting and I kept an eye on but honestly lost a little bit of track of it through all the tariffs and crazy stuff that was happening in 2025 and

400
00:33:41.403 --> 00:33:45.365
You know, they changed their economic model.

401
00:33:46.365 --> 00:33:50.828
Originally, VVV was both the token and the inference compute token.

402
00:33:50.848 --> 00:33:54.229
And then later on, I think it was in August, they created the DEEM token.

403
00:33:55.210 --> 00:33:59.552
But it was actually very beginning of this year, Venice was trading at like $2.

404
00:34:00.452 --> 00:34:04.354
And Eric wrote this really long tweet thread about...

405
00:34:05.715 --> 00:34:13.178
the change in token economics, how their tokenized compute token worked, what some of the growth that they've seen lately was.

406
00:34:14.019 --> 00:34:19.781
And I, you know, sometimes it's nice to have this, like, blocked out periods of time where there's nothing else to do.

407
00:34:20.481 --> 00:34:22.262
But I was in a 40-minute taxi ride.

408
00:34:22.322 --> 00:34:24.403
I was, you know, traveling across town.

409
00:34:24.423 --> 00:34:27.524
So I'm scrolling Twitter, and I'm, like, reading through this whole thing.

410
00:34:28.045 --> 00:34:33.047
And I'm like, wow, I guess I hadn't, like, kept fully up to date with what they were doing with Diem.

411
00:34:34.168 --> 00:34:38.156
and started digging in, and that's when I started building a position for the fund.

412
00:34:38.176 --> 00:34:39.178
But...

413
00:34:41.398 --> 00:34:56.230
I did not anticipate that the token would 10 X the revenue, like what I estimated at the time was maybe like the 10 to 20 million range would do like a five to 10 X in a period of eight months, um, that they'd be at 4 million users.

414
00:34:56.250 --> 00:34:59.393
I think they were maybe at 1 million users at the time.

415
00:34:59.413 --> 00:35:02.716
Um, that credits would also grow so quickly.

416
00:35:02.736 --> 00:35:06.599
Um, so yeah, I've been really pleasantly surprised.

417
00:35:07.079 --> 00:35:07.660
You know, I, I,

418
00:35:08.240 --> 00:35:18.052
I chat with the team a lot just because I'm like an active community member and I love sharing ideas, suggestions, like unsolicited feedback.

419
00:35:18.072 --> 00:35:26.082
So I appreciate that they don't tell me to lay off and, you know, they listen to the ideas that I have.

420
00:35:28.044 --> 00:35:31.487
But yeah, it's really incredible.

421
00:35:31.527 --> 00:35:42.639
And I think one of the things that's cool is we've seen so few products in crypto that have legitimate mainstream consumer crossover that have found product market fit.

422
00:35:42.679 --> 00:35:44.441
And Venice is one of those.

423
00:35:44.701 --> 00:35:49.308
When you saw OpenRouter sell for $7 billion, what was your reaction to that from the Venice receptors?

424
00:35:49.488 --> 00:35:57.701
Was that confirmation of the sector that Venice is in, or did that add anything new to your perspective around VVV, the token?

425
00:35:58.101 --> 00:35:58.722
What was your reaction?

426
00:35:59.143 --> 00:35:59.764
Yeah, so...

427
00:36:00.853 --> 00:36:13.505
I think it just shows that we're moving to like a multi-model routing world where people are finding tons of utility of using different models for different use cases.

428
00:36:13.565 --> 00:36:15.226
And that's what Open Router is.

429
00:36:16.027 --> 00:36:19.448
but like more on the developer tooling level versus like the consumer level.

430
00:36:20.248 --> 00:36:22.848
And fundamentally, that's what Venice is as well.

431
00:36:22.888 --> 00:36:36.071
You go there because you want privacy, but also because if you go to ChatGPT, you're using whichever model of, you know, OpenAI's latest models that you pick to use.

432
00:36:36.631 --> 00:36:41.872
Or, you know, same thing with Anthropic if you're going there, you know, so on and so forth.

433
00:36:42.572 --> 00:36:50.615
But there's very few strong consumer products that allow you to pick whatever model is best for the particular use case they're using at that time.

434
00:36:52.216 --> 00:36:54.316
And that's just validating what Venice is doing.

435
00:36:55.537 --> 00:36:59.939
So, you know, OpenRouter raised at a $1.3 billion valuation.

436
00:37:00.919 --> 00:37:03.020
It's like two months ago, like not really long ago.

437
00:37:03.501 --> 00:37:09.845
And now it's like 7X or more than 7X at 10 billion.

438
00:37:10.386 --> 00:37:17.631
So I think that just reflects on what a reasonable multiple should be for Venice and like,

439
00:37:18.551 --> 00:37:21.772
Maybe the right number was 30x before or 50x before.

440
00:37:22.172 --> 00:37:25.933
But if they continue to see this growth, maybe 70x is the right multiple.

441
00:37:26.813 --> 00:37:31.035
So that just gives me more conviction in the valuation analysis that I've done.

442
00:37:31.255 --> 00:37:42.878
There have been a few tokens in the last like six months to a year or so that have grown in price, grown in value, idiosyncratically like out of the bear market, where

443
00:37:42.938 --> 00:37:50.207
where Bitcoin is down to flat, ETH is down to flat, but hype just blew up in the last 12 months or so.

444
00:37:50.347 --> 00:37:55.113
Venice really grew despite the bearishness in the macros.

445
00:37:55.233 --> 00:38:01.441
And there's been a few of these tokens that have grown despite just the broad bearishness in crypto.

446
00:38:02.300 --> 00:38:09.086
So there's one take where it's like, oh, well, like once Bitcoin goes, then like, oh, my God, these are going to go even further.

447
00:38:09.667 --> 00:38:13.670
But the bearish take is like, oh, no, these like, you know, what is Venice exposed to?

448
00:38:13.751 --> 00:38:19.316
Like Venice is exposed to or VVV is exposed to the success of Venice, obviously.

449
00:38:19.876 --> 00:38:28.139
And actually, if Bitcoin goes to all-time highs and beyond, say Bitcoin goes to like a quarter million dollars, actually VVV has no exposure to that whatsoever.

450
00:38:28.499 --> 00:38:37.622
Do you think there's any sort of coupling between the macros of the crypto assets and things like Hype or VVV, which have grown according to their own revenues?

451
00:38:38.002 --> 00:38:45.164
Or do you think these things are like actually meaningfully decoupled and, you know, macro growth in crypto as an industry actually won't really show up

452
00:38:45.744 --> 00:38:46.886
in things like VVV or Hype?

453
00:38:46.926 --> 00:38:48.248
Do you have an opinion about that?

454
00:38:48.308 --> 00:38:49.530
Yeah, so that's a great question.

455
00:38:50.531 --> 00:38:55.838
So I think they're partially coupled, partially decoupled, but the decoupling part is in a positive way.

456
00:38:56.019 --> 00:39:01.707
So I'll start with the decoupling, which is the performance that we've seen before the move in Bitcoin and majors.

457
00:39:03.013 --> 00:39:06.375
These are businesses that are growing really quickly.

458
00:39:06.695 --> 00:39:10.237
They're seeing like fundamental value being returned to token holders.

459
00:39:10.818 --> 00:39:15.680
That gives them a strong floor valuation based on just the business that's being done.

460
00:39:16.341 --> 00:39:23.145
And depending on how much you want to underwrite the value for the growth that they have, you can price out what they should be worth.

461
00:39:23.225 --> 00:39:29.428
A lot of them have been growing faster than people expected and were valued cheaper than was reasonable.

462
00:39:29.468 --> 00:39:31.790
And that's why we saw this re-rating earlier in the year.

463
00:39:33.003 --> 00:39:36.105
I think that continues as the business fundamentals continue.

464
00:39:36.425 --> 00:39:38.706
And I think the business fundamentals continue.

465
00:39:38.746 --> 00:39:43.749
So that like non-correlated aspect should continue to do well.

466
00:39:44.609 --> 00:39:51.773
Now let's take like three particular assets as examples on what their coupling and correlation is to the broader market.

467
00:39:51.833 --> 00:39:53.454
Let's use Venice hyperliquid and pump.

468
00:39:54.094 --> 00:39:54.415
So...

469
00:39:55.473 --> 00:40:04.259
Venice, I think all of them, I think, benefit from the fact that they are fundamentally tokens, not equities.

470
00:40:04.840 --> 00:40:09.824
And tokens have had negative drift for the last 18 months.

471
00:40:10.184 --> 00:40:14.947
What I mean by that is there's no capital flows coming into crypto, probably, or...

472
00:40:16.128 --> 00:40:23.297
definitively capital leaving tokens, leaving crypto, moving to equities, moving to AI, moving to other asset classes.

473
00:40:24.178 --> 00:40:30.866
And you look at equities, equities just because of 401ks and pensions and whatnot, they structurally have positive capital flows.

474
00:40:31.347 --> 00:40:33.350
But the negative drift in crypto

475
00:40:34.673 --> 00:40:35.575
is cyclical.

476
00:40:36.055 --> 00:40:37.117
I don't think it's going to persist.

477
00:40:37.157 --> 00:40:38.679
I think that flips over time.

478
00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:44.628
I think it's probably just flipped, which is why we're seeing this massive movement across the board.

479
00:40:45.249 --> 00:40:50.396
So to the extent that VVV, POP, HYPE, these other assets are tokens...

480
00:40:51.671 --> 00:40:56.215
they're going to benefit from more capital going to tokens as an asset class.

481
00:40:56.595 --> 00:40:58.477
So I think that's a tailwind regardless.

482
00:40:58.497 --> 00:41:00.879
And that's a very meaningful tailwind.

483
00:41:00.939 --> 00:41:17.354
Because when people say like, I want to allocate to tokens, those are some of the ones that are going to be top of the list, especially for the people that are trying to underwrite fundamental value, whether you think about it as like traditional hedge funds or liquid hedge funds or like family office, high net worth type investors.

484
00:41:17.935 --> 00:41:18.095
Yeah.

485
00:41:18.455 --> 00:41:22.780
And also retail that is just looking at it from that lens as well.

486
00:41:23.481 --> 00:41:29.387
The part where it's coupled further, I think Venice has that piece.

487
00:41:29.808 --> 00:41:33.011
I think hyperliquid and pump actually have some further coupling.

488
00:41:33.051 --> 00:41:33.171
So,

489
00:41:33.932 --> 00:41:38.695
Pump benefits their fundamentals from when there's more on-chain activity and more meme coin trading.

490
00:41:38.875 --> 00:41:43.417
We've seen an acceleration over time, but I think that's just going to like massively grow from here.

491
00:41:43.757 --> 00:41:51.902
And we could see revenues, you know, over the last 90 days, like the 90 day average versus, you know, what we've seen recently, it's grown like 80%.

492
00:41:52.582 --> 00:41:56.224
I think we could see like a doubling or tripling even from here.

493
00:41:56.684 --> 00:42:01.167
So just return of on-chain activity and meme coin trading, very positive for Pump.

494
00:42:01.827 --> 00:42:12.832
For Hyperliquid, most of the re-rating came from volume in their HIP3 markets and their like RWA markets, whether it's commodities, stocks, indices.

495
00:42:13.632 --> 00:42:19.075
And that hasn't generated a lot of revenue so far because they're all in growth mode.

496
00:42:19.815 --> 00:42:29.620
The revenue, the top line hasn't actually grown that much because while volume is growing so much from the RWA markets, not generating a ton of revenue, the cash cow has always been the crypto token business.

497
00:42:30.480 --> 00:42:43.813
And if we see a return to flows moving into crypto and lots more activity, then that's something where they're going to benefit in the part of the business where they have the highest take rate and they're actually earning the most fees.

498
00:42:43.833 --> 00:42:52.301
So, you know, if you look at they were generating, you know, like directionally just under a million dollars of fees a day a week ago.

499
00:42:53.362 --> 00:42:58.825
Now they generated about $5 million of fees in just one day a couple days ago.

500
00:42:58.885 --> 00:43:07.350
So I think the cycle reflexivity is very, very strong for something like a pumper or a hype in the fundamentals as well.

501
00:43:07.490 --> 00:43:12.053
So you think that a handful of these tokens that we've talked about actually get the best of both worlds?

502
00:43:12.093 --> 00:43:15.775
They get exposure to their own growth, which obviously they do.

503
00:43:16.195 --> 00:43:27.537
But they also get exposure to just like the tide that lifts all boats, which is the crypto markets pump and the purse platforms, especially just because like that is they are the crypto markets.

504
00:43:27.558 --> 00:43:28.598
That's literally their product.

505
00:43:28.918 --> 00:43:29.198
Yeah.

506
00:43:29.298 --> 00:43:38.640
And the nice thing about Venice is like, well, it doesn't have the full extent of the tide that lifts all boats with crypto because it doesn't have that reflexivity with on-chain trading or whatnot.

507
00:43:40.005 --> 00:43:50.628
it has at least as big of a tide that lifts all boats, which is just AI adoption, which is why I'm so excited about it because more people are using AI every day and that's not changing.

508
00:43:50.828 --> 00:43:58.370
There's a bunch more tokens that I want to talk to you about, but I don't want to prime you in any particular way.

509
00:43:58.410 --> 00:43:59.310
So what token...

510
00:43:59.870 --> 00:44:01.512
We've talked about VVV, so that one's done.

511
00:44:01.532 --> 00:44:02.894
Checkbox on that one.

512
00:44:03.395 --> 00:44:05.919
What token excites you the most?

513
00:44:06.019 --> 00:44:10.726
What gives you the most intellectual fodder to work with?

514
00:44:10.806 --> 00:44:11.807
What gets you going?

515
00:44:12.208 --> 00:44:15.132
A couple from different lens, from like a

516
00:44:15.872 --> 00:44:20.694
finance and valuation analysis perspective pump, I think it's still incredibly cheap.

517
00:44:21.034 --> 00:44:29.137
It's trading at 5x buybacks, where if you look at, you know, hyperliquid and lighter in the 30 to 40x buybacks range.

518
00:44:29.457 --> 00:44:31.077
So those are much higher.

519
00:44:31.117 --> 00:44:37.900
But I think people ascribe a higher multiple to a perps business than pump, which, you know, I think you can call it

520
00:44:39.359 --> 00:44:42.360
I think it's not unreasonable to call it a durable casino business.

521
00:44:42.380 --> 00:44:50.902
You know, people go to pump and trade meme coins looking for asymmetric returns, have very short trading time horizons.

522
00:44:51.002 --> 00:44:53.602
And I think it's similar to gambling in many respects.

523
00:44:53.943 --> 00:44:55.203
But there's nothing wrong with gambling.

524
00:44:55.243 --> 00:44:56.203
It's a very big business.

525
00:44:56.263 --> 00:45:02.985
Like people are investors in Wynn and Las Vegas Sands and MGM and Giraffe Kings and FanDuel and

526
00:45:03.985 --> 00:45:09.390
I don't know, like you look at prediction markets or, you know, zero data expiry options on Robinhood.

527
00:45:09.450 --> 00:45:09.630
It's...

528
00:45:10.908 --> 00:45:16.792
A form of speculation on the line with gambling that I think is not an unreasonable comparison.

529
00:45:17.593 --> 00:45:21.516
And trading at a 5x multiple to earnings is crazy in my opinion.

530
00:45:21.556 --> 00:45:24.398
I think 10x multiple to earnings is much more reasonable.

531
00:45:24.698 --> 00:45:28.041
That would be a 2x from current levels, assuming no further growth.

532
00:45:28.121 --> 00:45:29.902
I think it grows further from here.

533
00:45:29.962 --> 00:45:35.527
So even though Pump has done a 3x in the last month and a half, two months, something like that,

534
00:45:36.388 --> 00:45:42.340
I think it has, you know, a lot more room to grow based on, you know, these multiple re-rating and value plays out.

535
00:45:43.021 --> 00:45:46.909
Hype, I think, is incredibly interesting just because it's...

536
00:45:48.435 --> 00:46:11.403
maybe other than stable coins, the best, and you know, Bitcoin and Zcash and like money from a perspective, I think it's one of the best examples of the crypto thesis playing out, which is instant settlement, 24-7 trading, bringing all assets on chain and like shifting the financial system onto blockchains.

537
00:46:12.723 --> 00:46:16.785
So it's really fascinating to see like markets grow and also new use cases like

538
00:46:18.452 --> 00:46:27.978
price discovery for SpaceX or someone like Cerebris or, or Unitary or a lot of the new IPOs happened on hyperliquid.

539
00:46:28.278 --> 00:46:37.544
Like I think increasingly bankers, as they set what the price for an IPO should be, are going to look at their hyperliquid screen and it's like, all right, well there, that's where it's priced.

540
00:46:37.564 --> 00:46:40.386
I guess that's what the market is willing to pay.

541
00:46:41.307 --> 00:46:41.467
Um,

542
00:46:42.088 --> 00:46:43.208
EtherFi is another one.

543
00:46:43.509 --> 00:46:48.953
EtherFi I've been following probably closer than most for a very, very long time.

544
00:46:48.973 --> 00:46:54.058
And the fun reason for that is it was actually my first venture investment in the fund.

545
00:46:54.318 --> 00:46:54.518
So

546
00:46:56.180 --> 00:47:00.363
I started chatting with them in January 2024 before the fund was actually even live.

547
00:47:00.963 --> 00:47:06.707
And the fund went live February 1st and made an investment in their Series A then.

548
00:47:07.528 --> 00:47:10.570
And at that time, they were just a liquid restaking business.

549
00:47:10.690 --> 00:47:19.376
But, you know, I was after speaking with Mike and Rock and the team there, they just struck me as a team that was

550
00:47:20.907 --> 00:47:40.159
like really top decile, top percentile in their ability to execute, but also build new products based on where the puck is going and understanding that like certain products can be useful for customer acquisition, but they could become commoditized over time and like liquid staking is one of those products and

551
00:47:40.919 --> 00:47:52.583
Their ability to move from liquid restaking to yield products to a credit card product to now a full-fledged NIO brokerage where you can trade any asset on chain.

552
00:47:52.803 --> 00:47:54.464
You can borrow against those assets.

553
00:47:54.804 --> 00:47:57.065
You have like an incredible credit card offering.

554
00:47:57.405 --> 00:48:04.968
They have their own instance of Aave V4 where they can facilitate borrow, lend and monetize that.

555
00:48:06.258 --> 00:48:15.700
And the way they're using stablecoins to access a global market kind of reminds me of like a mini on-chain NewBank.

556
00:48:16.080 --> 00:48:20.641
And NewBank, you know, it's like a very flattering comparison for EtherFi.

557
00:48:21.301 --> 00:48:29.642
And if they can achieve a fraction of NewBank's success, that would be awesome because NewBank is worth, you know, like $80 billion and has 139 million users.

558
00:48:30.142 --> 00:48:33.463
But I think the thesis is somewhat the same in terms of,

559
00:48:34.844 --> 00:48:52.137
offering compelling products to users on a global basis, but doing it in a way that was fundamentally different than what was standard at the time with NewBank offering products that were much more consumer-friendly and more internet-native and

560
00:48:52.918 --> 00:48:57.779
EtherFi doing the same thing in a global stablecoin driven on-chain context.

561
00:48:58.119 --> 00:49:01.880
EtherFi is also doing buybacks of their own token.

562
00:49:01.900 --> 00:49:14.082
Their own token, unlike all the other tokens that we've talked about, Venice, Pump, Hype, their own token, EtherFi has really felt like it's been in a hangover from like the infra phase of crypto, which we have firmly left.

563
00:49:14.442 --> 00:49:16.883
But nonetheless, like EtherFi is making revenue doing buybacks.

564
00:49:17.843 --> 00:49:22.006
How do you think about Etherify on the growth versus value spectrum?

565
00:49:22.066 --> 00:49:29.651
Are you in Etherify because there's a lot of growth left to do because the Neo brokerage is a phenomenal product that Etherify is really a first mover on?

566
00:49:30.291 --> 00:49:37.235
Or is it just because like actually they're making revenue and they're buying back the token and based off of that, there's actually some dislocation in the market?

567
00:49:37.696 --> 00:49:38.856
How do you think about this thing?

568
00:49:39.477 --> 00:49:40.477
So it's both.

569
00:49:41.018 --> 00:49:41.238
Yeah.

570
00:49:42.795 --> 00:49:43.376
It's both.

571
00:49:43.416 --> 00:49:44.558
And let me explain why.

572
00:49:44.578 --> 00:49:54.212
On the valuation, they've been fundamentally valued like a liquid staking or liquid restaking business.

573
00:49:55.228 --> 00:49:59.331
for most of their history, which meant people were really excited about in the beginning of 2024.

574
00:49:59.351 --> 00:50:06.097
It was like an 8 billion FDV at the peak at the time that people thought Eigenlayer was going to be worth 15 or $20 billion.

575
00:50:07.017 --> 00:50:12.662
And, you know, valuations declined over time as there's been less excitement in liquid staking and liquid restaking.

576
00:50:13.142 --> 00:50:14.262
or restaking generally.

577
00:50:15.022 --> 00:50:27.105
And you even see this play out as recently as the Ethereum inflation reduction proposal where EtherFi was down 10 plus percent on that day, as was Lido.

578
00:50:27.785 --> 00:50:31.426
And EtherFi is a fundamentally different business today than it was then.

579
00:50:32.006 --> 00:50:34.267
And it's definitely not the same business as Lido.

580
00:50:34.307 --> 00:50:40.188
So it just shows how the market is like still not that made that transition in perception of Bitcoin.

581
00:50:41.380 --> 00:50:43.182
what Ether5's business is today.

582
00:50:43.222 --> 00:50:51.809
And when I say that, what I mean is today, 65 plus percent of Ether5's business comes from their NeoBank product.

583
00:50:52.209 --> 00:50:56.252
So it's from credit card usage and it's from...

584
00:50:57.253 --> 00:51:02.096
borrow revenue of people borrowing against their balances to use the credit card.

585
00:51:03.037 --> 00:51:06.119
And only 35% is from yield and staking.

586
00:51:06.259 --> 00:51:11.382
And that's something that's been shrinking as a percentage of business with the neobank part growing over time.

587
00:51:11.782 --> 00:51:12.243
I think that

588
00:51:13.360 --> 00:51:21.428
portion of the business even accelerates further as they've offered access to tokenized stocks, wide variety of assets.

589
00:51:21.448 --> 00:51:31.359
So now instead of a handful of assets, hundreds of assets, and a much more compelling product than they even had before, which I think was already compelling with some of the updates that they recently released.

590
00:51:31.959 --> 00:51:32.199
So

591
00:51:33.579 --> 00:51:36.822
I think it's something that should be valued differently than it's being valued today.

592
00:51:37.283 --> 00:51:39.966
And on that context is actually quite cheap.

593
00:51:40.026 --> 00:51:48.494
It's, you know, in the, in the range of, you know, 10 to 15 times earning, depending on like what price you look at, because it's moved quite a bit recently.

594
00:51:49.175 --> 00:51:51.177
Um, on the other side, um,

595
00:51:53.299 --> 00:51:55.982
I think the growth opportunity is really, really massive.

596
00:51:56.283 --> 00:52:02.530
So first of all, like if you look at the credit card product, a year ago, they were doing $300,000 of credit card volume a day.

597
00:52:04.574 --> 00:52:06.594
Now they're doing three to four million a day.

598
00:52:07.074 --> 00:52:08.715
So that's 10x year over year.

599
00:52:09.555 --> 00:52:15.636
That's something that I think starts to hockey stick and actually grow a lot faster than it's even grown.

600
00:52:16.236 --> 00:52:19.737
And in the grand scheme of things, three or four more million a day is nothing.

601
00:52:20.097 --> 00:52:21.297
It's a tiny, tiny number.

602
00:52:22.877 --> 00:52:31.899
And then now that you have buyback starting on a programmatic basis, similar to actually how Venice has done it, so a certain percent of interchange revenue and other line items,

603
00:52:32.996 --> 00:52:36.722
you can start to look at what does this actually return to the token?

604
00:52:36.962 --> 00:52:41.128
And the majority of the token supply is actually fully circulating at this point.

605
00:52:41.589 --> 00:52:45.895
So there's very, very little pressure from emissions.

606
00:52:46.236 --> 00:52:48.499
So now it's something like equities or like,

607
00:52:49.840 --> 00:52:56.181
Microsoft in the sense that there's structural buyback pressure with no new tokens coming to market.

608
00:52:57.642 --> 00:53:03.303
Blockworks did a really good analysis recently on their model for projecting growth.

609
00:53:03.363 --> 00:53:08.044
And they actually, to be conservative, cut growth rates in half from where they are today.

610
00:53:08.604 --> 00:53:11.644
I'm saying the opposite, that it should actually be faster.

611
00:53:11.905 --> 00:53:17.546
And they got to $21 million of buy and burns over the next 12 months.

612
00:53:18.386 --> 00:53:18.446
If

613
00:53:19.554 --> 00:53:28.098
you apply, let's say you use a number that's a little bit higher than that, say 30 million of buy and burns, I think can actually be quite a bit higher than that.

614
00:53:28.539 --> 00:53:33.481
And you apply a 30X multiple, which is very reasonable in the like neo brokerage world.

615
00:53:35.162 --> 00:53:37.324
you get to a token price that's over a dollar.

616
00:53:38.284 --> 00:53:41.387
And that's directionally 2x from where we are today.

617
00:53:42.248 --> 00:53:51.054
But that also doesn't factor in multiple expansion from there, from the fact that they're the category leader for on-chain NEO brokerage, but also...

618
00:53:52.155 --> 00:53:57.397
A business that I think can actually grow a lot faster than that 20 or $30 million number.

619
00:53:57.997 --> 00:54:01.938
And a team that I'm fortunate to know and know how well they execute.

620
00:54:02.698 --> 00:54:08.760
So yeah, TLDR, I think it's got a lot of triggers that can drive it forward.

621
00:54:08.980 --> 00:54:15.582
The thing I think is cool about Etherfy is that it's fitting the model of a modern startup, which is...

622
00:54:16.962 --> 00:54:20.585
don't have a big team and instead use big technologies.

623
00:54:21.365 --> 00:54:26.429
And so, you know, Ethereum, to me, they're just kind of packaging up Ethereum and selling it.

624
00:54:26.629 --> 00:54:28.350
Like, why are they doing a Neo brokerage?

625
00:54:28.490 --> 00:54:31.192
Oh, it's because we have tokenized real world assets now.

626
00:54:31.212 --> 00:54:32.273
We have tokenized stocks now.

627
00:54:32.753 --> 00:54:38.235
And it cost them almost nothing to evolve their product from a neobank to a neobrokerage.

628
00:54:38.595 --> 00:54:43.477
Because Ethereum has evolved from a neobank to a neobrokerage.

629
00:54:43.517 --> 00:54:47.879
And so Ethernet is like, oh, great assets you have over there, Ethereum.

630
00:54:48.059 --> 00:54:51.561
It'd be great if somebody just packaged this up and sold it to consumers.

631
00:54:52.221 --> 00:54:58.063
And so like they don't need it's a very lean, slim, like a low CapEx business, I'm assuming.

632
00:54:59.104 --> 00:55:09.487
And they don't need to like bring on and hire out a whole new arm of the business to evolve from simply stable coin spending to being a neo brokerage.

633
00:55:09.928 --> 00:55:12.629
Because like Ethereum does so much of the legwork for them.

634
00:55:12.669 --> 00:55:16.090
And so it can it can stay lean while it can scale pretty high.

635
00:55:16.750 --> 00:55:28.417
Yeah, and the cool thing is like, so you look at the evolution of neobank, neobrokerages over time, and over time they make more and more of their money from interest income on borrows.

636
00:55:28.677 --> 00:55:34.500
If you look at NewBank as an example, they make 60-70% of their revenue from that.

637
00:55:35.441 --> 00:55:38.863
If you look at EtherFi today, it's still very early, it's 4%.

638
00:55:39.363 --> 00:55:44.126
And to what you were saying about like leveraging existing infrastructure, initially they were...

639
00:55:45.635 --> 00:55:58.704
using their own systems and they were going like literally organizing deals with potential lenders directly to be able to facilitate borrowers on the platform.

640
00:55:58.744 --> 00:56:04.108
And, you know, right now they have about $20 million that their users are borrowing for the credit card product.

641
00:56:04.408 --> 00:56:04.789
And they're like,

642
00:56:05.529 --> 00:56:06.970
wait, this is on-chain.

643
00:56:07.370 --> 00:56:11.991
Aave has actually built a pretty good product to do borrow-land.

644
00:56:12.431 --> 00:56:15.353
Why don't we just have our own instance of Aave v4?

645
00:56:15.853 --> 00:56:17.653
We can do a revenue share with them.

646
00:56:17.693 --> 00:56:21.475
They did an 80-20, so 80 to Etherify, 20 to Aave revenue share.

647
00:56:22.515 --> 00:56:29.198
And now we can run it with like a best in class product with a really lean team and really low costs.

648
00:56:29.658 --> 00:56:33.039
Because like, hey, this DeFi product already exists and it's pretty, pretty good.

649
00:56:33.199 --> 00:56:34.840
Bankless Nation, we've built something for you.

650
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651
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652
00:56:46.744 --> 00:56:47.885
And the gaps will start to show.

653
00:56:47.985 --> 00:56:48.905
The problem is context.

654
00:56:49.125 --> 00:56:54.029
Bankless, on the other hand, has spent almost a decade building one of the deepest archives of crypto data anywhere.

655
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656
00:57:00.594 --> 00:57:03.857
And now we've structured all of that data into the Bankless MCP.

657
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658
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659
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There is a link in the show notes.

660
00:57:33.189 --> 00:57:37.370
And once you become a Bankless Premium member, you can hop into the Bankless Discord and let me know how you like it.

661
00:57:37.510 --> 00:57:38.170
Some exciting news.

662
00:57:38.250 --> 00:57:43.012
We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it.

663
00:57:43.092 --> 00:57:45.773
The best crypto cycle investor I know, his name is Michael Nato.

664
00:57:45.853 --> 00:57:46.913
He runs the DeFi Report.

665
00:57:46.973 --> 00:57:51.735
This is the guy that sent me a sell alert before the 1010 price drop happened.

666
00:57:51.915 --> 00:57:54.355
His cycle analysis has been absolutely on point.

667
00:57:54.455 --> 00:57:55.776
I've been following him for years.

668
00:57:55.956 --> 00:57:59.377
And this year we started recording weekly podcast episodes.

669
00:57:59.537 --> 00:58:07.299
Each one, we get into his portfolio, what he's holding, the market structure, entry targets, fair market value of Bitcoin and Ether, and where we are in the cycle.

670
00:58:07.399 --> 00:58:09.799
There's new episodes that are released every Wednesday.

671
00:58:09.879 --> 00:58:10.599
They're 30 minutes.

672
00:58:10.659 --> 00:58:11.139
They're short.

673
00:58:11.159 --> 00:58:11.799
They're punchy.

674
00:58:11.919 --> 00:58:14.300
I think this crypto cycle is harder to navigate than most.

675
00:58:14.540 --> 00:58:15.780
So let's do it together.

676
00:58:15.920 --> 00:58:17.140
Go subscribe to this podcast.

677
00:58:17.200 --> 00:58:19.781
Search The DeFi Report wherever you get your podcasts.

678
00:58:19.841 --> 00:58:22.922
YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or find the link in the show notes.

679
00:58:23.042 --> 00:58:24.602
There's a new episode waiting for you now.

680
00:58:24.822 --> 00:58:25.042
Yeah.

681
00:58:25.282 --> 00:58:30.146
Yeah, it does feel like the modern reincarnation of like OG money Legos.

682
00:58:30.166 --> 00:58:34.289
They're like, oh, let me just plug that into my product and boom, now I have that.

683
00:58:34.889 --> 00:58:36.651
Yeah, it's very cool.

684
00:58:36.731 --> 00:58:39.353
It's going to be a last few questions before I let you go.

685
00:58:40.133 --> 00:58:45.177
Why do you think the market ascribes such a low premium to pump revenue?

686
00:58:45.437 --> 00:58:48.480
Or is that like a dislocation that is an opportunity in the market?

687
00:58:48.520 --> 00:58:54.186
How do you think about the value that a dollar, that the market gives a dollar for pump revenue?

688
00:58:54.326 --> 00:59:02.735
Yeah, so I think the perception is changing and that's part of, you know, why it's done well over the last couple of weeks.

689
00:59:03.685 --> 00:59:07.766
One of the reasons is people questioned revenue durability.

690
00:59:07.906 --> 00:59:09.647
They're like, we've seen this story before.

691
00:59:10.027 --> 00:59:14.689
OpenSea was an often touted example of like generate billions of revenue.

692
00:59:14.769 --> 00:59:19.771
And then 12 months later, the business is doing like 95% less.

693
00:59:20.691 --> 00:59:26.333
And I think what we've seen over the last two plus years is actually this revenue is pretty durable.

694
00:59:27.250 --> 00:59:28.331
It's not going anywhere.

695
00:59:28.572 --> 00:59:29.513
It's actually growing.

696
00:59:30.454 --> 00:59:32.376
This is not something that's fly by night.

697
00:59:32.756 --> 00:59:35.279
Maybe individual meme coins will go up and down.

698
00:59:35.979 --> 00:59:42.967
But this is, to use hyperliquid language, like the house of all finance, this is the house of all meme coins.

699
00:59:44.008 --> 00:59:46.711
And I think that perception around durability is changing.

700
00:59:47.732 --> 00:59:52.479
Part of that was people questioned, like, really the veracity of that revenue.

701
00:59:52.499 --> 00:59:58.467
Like, is it real, even though it's on-chain, which is kind of funny, but, like, is it being catalyzed in any particular way?

702
00:59:58.487 --> 01:00:02.652
And the reason is most of the people on crypto Twitter and most of the, like,

703
01:00:03.473 --> 01:00:11.938
liquid funds or retail investors that are trading things, there's a surprisingly small overlap with meme coin trading, myself included.

704
01:00:11.958 --> 01:00:14.379
I'm not like a trencher on Axiom all day.

705
01:00:14.840 --> 01:00:24.785
So when people think about and see these numbers that even after 1010 last year continue to be really high, they're like, how is this still so high?

706
01:00:24.885 --> 01:00:25.966
Who are these users?

707
01:00:26.526 --> 01:00:28.127
I don't talk to anyone who's a user of this product.

708
01:00:28.147 --> 01:00:28.808
They don't trust it.

709
01:00:29.630 --> 01:00:32.411
But I think it's just fundamentally different users.

710
01:00:32.471 --> 01:00:38.452
And once you understand that you're not the target user, it's easier to understand why this business is so durable.

711
01:00:38.952 --> 01:00:43.093
And then the other piece is just like, I think there's a negative association to meme coins.

712
01:00:44.553 --> 01:00:55.655
But once you start to think about it as just like another type of speculative product, just like prediction markets or short expiry options or like casino games,

713
01:00:56.515 --> 01:00:57.416
that have been durable.

714
01:00:57.476 --> 01:00:58.356
Lotteries are huge.

715
01:00:59.017 --> 01:01:05.301
People know they have, unless you're like counting cards, a negative edge playing blackjack or like any other casino game.

716
01:01:05.841 --> 01:01:07.462
And they come back because there's variance.

717
01:01:08.503 --> 01:01:14.767
And I think people are coming around to the idea that like there is...

718
01:01:16.161 --> 01:01:19.502
a reason that people will use negative EV products.

719
01:01:20.062 --> 01:01:30.786
If like for the total user base, it's negative EV, that doesn't mean that you won't use it because then lotteries shouldn't be like the massive business that they are.

720
01:01:31.326 --> 01:01:33.406
So I think that's why it's traded so low.

721
01:01:33.447 --> 01:01:35.827
And I think that's, you know, that's changing.

722
01:01:36.207 --> 01:01:41.309
One other piece of course is there's an equity part of the business and there's a token part of the business that,

723
01:01:41.369 --> 01:01:45.691
they, it's not exactly clear what you control as a token holder.

724
01:01:46.072 --> 01:01:51.395
Initially, they had 100% buybacks, but that wasn't guaranteed for any amount of time.

725
01:01:51.815 --> 01:01:59.479
Then earlier this year, they said, we're going to do 50% of revenue into buybacks, and we're going to do it for guaranteed 12 months.

726
01:01:59.859 --> 01:02:03.021
And we can use that other 50% to grow the business and reinvest.

727
01:02:03.842 --> 01:02:07.003
That's something that, you know, is subject to renewal next year.

728
01:02:08.224 --> 01:02:17.477
I, for a multi-billion dollar asset that they own a ton of and are trying to build a generational business, I don't think they're going to abandon the token.

729
01:02:17.597 --> 01:02:20.160
But, you know, that is something that's a risk that

730
01:02:21.191 --> 01:02:34.036
You know, I think like depending on where you think that's going to end up, you can probably have your buyback multiple like six to 10 or 10 to 14 based on like how do you handicap that risk.

731
01:02:34.437 --> 01:02:36.818
But yeah, that's just another component as well.

732
01:02:36.878 --> 01:02:42.520
And hopefully with Clarity Act, that's something that makes it a little easier for them to be explicit.

733
01:02:42.800 --> 01:02:54.263
Austin, when you look forward to 20 at the end of 2026 and 2027 and really to the next cycle, how do you think this legacy of this incoming cycle will be defined?

734
01:02:54.583 --> 01:02:58.504
Which is a weird question because I'm asking you to go forward and then look backwards again.

735
01:02:59.524 --> 01:03:05.305
But we're firmly in a new era of crypto, like the hyper infra age is firmly behind us.

736
01:03:05.825 --> 01:03:12.347
Like I think the excitement around new chains, be it layer twos or layer ones, is mostly a thing of the past.

737
01:03:13.267 --> 01:03:16.610
But nonetheless, there seems to be plenty of energy and excitement in different pockets of crypto.

738
01:03:16.630 --> 01:03:20.973
So just how are you thinking about like what the future of crypto looks like for this next cycle?

739
01:03:21.193 --> 01:03:34.963
Yeah, so like one interesting chart, I think also BlockWorks chart is, for much of crypto's history, execution layer infra revenue generated like 95 plus percent of total crypto revenue.

740
01:03:35.912 --> 01:03:44.382
Now it's actually applications are generating about two-thirds of revenue, and about a third is generated by execution layers.

741
01:03:45.043 --> 01:03:52.411
I think that continues to move in that direction, and we're going to see 90-plus percent of revenue generated by the applications that's generated by the execution layers.

742
01:03:52.531 --> 01:03:57.795
I think we're going to find the most enduring tokens be applications and money.

743
01:03:58.735 --> 01:04:01.698
And so that doesn't mean that Bitcoin is going anywhere.

744
01:04:02.158 --> 01:04:07.262
It also makes me incredibly excited about something like Zcash, which is serving like a different,

745
01:04:08.421 --> 01:04:19.928
type of user in many respects is the original ethos of what crypto was 10 plus years ago and I think why it's resonating with so many OG Bitcoin holders and why it's seeing like these structural inflows.

746
01:04:20.988 --> 01:04:37.238
I think ETH is actually in a very interesting place to potentially be money depending on what happens with Bitcoin with quantum the amount of like concentrated ownership and risk related to Bitcoin ownership from strategy and other elements so it actually makes me

747
01:04:38.700 --> 01:04:46.429
more curious about like Ethereum from a money perspective than I've been in a very long time.

748
01:04:46.809 --> 01:04:52.816
I looked at it from a revenue perspective for a while, which made me think that Ethereum was quite overvalued.

749
01:04:53.437 --> 01:04:53.597
And

750
01:04:55.577 --> 01:04:59.459
I think it has this interesting optionality that's kind of coming back a little bit.

751
01:04:59.499 --> 01:05:06.043
But yeah, I think it's going to really be about applications, usage, and money.

752
01:05:06.143 --> 01:05:09.865
And when I say usage, you know, obviously Ethereum is highly utilized.

753
01:05:10.785 --> 01:05:13.567
You have things like Base and Robinhood that are highly utilized.

754
01:05:14.227 --> 01:05:18.232
But when you think of blockchains with the most activity, I think you have to look at Solana.

755
01:05:19.374 --> 01:05:22.157
Solana is what's enabling POMP.

756
01:05:22.217 --> 01:05:24.500
It has the most spot activity on chain.

757
01:05:25.241 --> 01:05:29.747
They're right now going through this transition where it's incredibly...

758
01:05:30.247 --> 01:05:36.172
utilized, but they're not generating a ton of revenue because there's not like the MEV that it had back in the day.

759
01:05:37.634 --> 01:05:42.598
But I think it's one of the most compelling bets for crypto adoption.

760
01:05:42.658 --> 01:05:46.281
It's just like you have to watch how that evolves quickly over time.

761
01:05:47.462 --> 01:05:54.088
But yeah, looking back, I think it's going to be a story of what are the zero to one applications that have

762
01:05:55.355 --> 01:06:01.659
really found this intersection of crypto and the rest of the world and what's the money that's resonated.

763
01:06:02.560 --> 01:06:18.410
And that's why I think, you know, the Venices, Hyperliquids, Pumps, Eats or Fives, Bitcoin, Zcash, you know, et cetera of the world are going to be the things that people look at and say like, wow, 2026 had some good entry points.

764
01:06:18.910 --> 01:06:19.151
Awesome.

765
01:06:19.171 --> 01:06:19.771
This has been great.

766
01:06:19.811 --> 01:06:20.592
Thanks for coming on the show.

767
01:06:21.420 --> 01:06:21.921
Great to be here.

768
01:06:22.141 --> 01:06:23.504
Bankless Nation, you guys know the deal.

769
01:06:23.524 --> 01:06:26.509
Crypto is risky, but not risky enough.

770
01:06:26.609 --> 01:06:29.635
The institutions have landed, so we are going even further west.

771
01:06:29.855 --> 01:06:30.616
This is a frontier.

772
01:06:30.697 --> 01:06:33.502
It's not for everyone, but we are glad you're with us on the Bankless Journey.

773
01:06:33.582 --> 01:06:33.942
Thanks a lot.