0:00
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0:05
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0:05
This podcast is for informational purposes only, and the views expressed by
0:09
anyone on the show
0:11
are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of
0:16
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0:27
Monitoring the situation. Say, at least. Why don't we just start there?
0:31
Probably market analysis opening a bar in New York.
0:33
Look, it's in DC. It's in DC. There you go. I'm going to DC to monitor the
0:40
situation next
0:41
time. When is it opening, by the way? I think it's opening either this week or
0:45
early next week,
0:46
sometime next week. When I think about all the things that you can use the cash
0:49
that they've
0:50
raised, that is probably one of the better things to do. Looks pretty cool.
0:55
Have you ever been, there was a bar or a restaurant in New York City in Times
1:02
Square
1:02
called ESPN Zone? I'm guessing you've never been to, so I don't even know why I
1:06
asked you that
1:06
question. You do not look like an ESPN Zone guy to me. When I was younger, the
1:12
first time I went
1:12
to Times Square, I went to ESPN Zone, and it's literally a million screens
1:19
everywhere showing
1:20
everything. You can drink and eat. This is that for all of Twitter. That
1:27
actually sounds like
1:27
a lot of fun. I'm in it. I thought you were going to say, there's a bar, I
1:32
think, in Germany
1:33
that tracks the price of beer, and it's a real-time consumption. You could see
1:37
how many people are.
1:38
If a particular pint or craft is getting more traction, it's basically real-
1:43
time markets.
1:45
I mean, again, the name of the game here is customer retention. Can I just say
1:49
something to that
1:50
before you go into that? There's nothing that highlights the difference between
1:54
you and I more,
1:55
that I'm like, "Hey, have you been to ESPN Zone?" And you're like, "Have you
1:59
been to this
1:59
esoteric bar in Germany that tracks the price of different beers?"
2:04
Well, conversion probably marketed. The reason I bring it up is we got to start
2:11
with macro.
2:12
We are not geopolitical experts, but it's pretty. I mean, oil is sitting at,
2:18
what is it, 116 bucks
2:21
or 120 bucks? They traded up again this morning. So yeah, what's a read on
2:26
macro? What's a house
2:27
view out there? I mean, obviously, did you read Bologie's tweet yesterday? He
2:34
talked a little bit
2:36
about what the broader macroeconomic effect might be of this war. Clearly, the
2:45
market has been
2:46
trying to digest what has happened. And I think originally when the war started
2:52
,
2:52
there was a perspective that, "Okay, maybe this would be like Venezuela."
2:55
Clearly, that's what
2:57
the administration had been saying, and this will be over quickly, and that's
3:00
probably good because
3:01
there's more. We've killed a lot of this leadership who might be looking to
3:06
destabilize the region.
3:07
And as time's gone on, it looks very clear that that is not true. And not only
3:14
is that not true,
3:15
I think we clearly did not foresee that the IRGC would look to harm and attack
3:27
a lot of the
3:28
infrastructure in the region. And so we had this period of time where the
3:34
market was very shaky,
3:35
we traded down. But it was still clear to me that the equity market expected
3:40
that we were
3:41
probably going to get a relatively good resolution within maybe four to eight
3:46
weeks. I think the
3:47
administration had 1.4 weeks, and they said eight weeks. And then what happened
3:52
in the last
3:54
couple of weeks is that the Strait of Hormuz has been closed, which a
4:00
significant amount of the
4:02
world's oil supply goes through the Strait of Hormuz. The administration has
4:07
been trying to get
4:09
other countries to come and help open the Strait, and that hasn't happened
4:16
today.
4:16
And so there's been, of course, a supply shock in oil, and that's why we had
4:20
the initial
4:21
oil trading update. I think we traded up to about 110. Then the administration
4:27
came out and said,
4:27
hey, listen, this will be OK. We're opening it up. We see that there's
4:31
potentially going to be a
4:32
resolution. Oil came back down to like $90.95. And the market kind of really
4:37
traded up at the
4:38
end of last week. And we saw crypto really rally on this. So I think Bitcoin
4:43
ended up going up to
4:44
about 70, maybe it was earlier this week, but it went up to about 75 bucks or
4:48
75k, and hype went up
4:50
to over $40, $40. We saw pretty much everything up 10, 20, 20, 30%. And it was
4:56
clear that there
4:58
was a bit of a relief and an expectation that now this is over. And then all of
5:03
that changed
5:04
yesterday, or I guess the last two days, when the IRGC struck a, I think it is
5:14
the, it's called the
5:15
South PARS field in Qatar, that is part of the same reservoir that also Iran
5:24
has a piece of,
5:25
that is 20% of the world's liquid and actual gas supply. It's estimated to have
5:31
cost like $70,
5:32
$80 billion to build the infrastructure to take that natural gas out of the
5:36
ground. And then we,
5:38
I mean, we're denying it, but some version of us, Israel, et cetera, looks to
5:43
have then
5:44
struck the Qatari side of that same reservoir. And we've now, it looks like
5:50
potentially that the,
5:53
you know, something like 20% of the world's liquid natural gas supply might go
5:57
offline
5:58
for a very extended period of time. And that has downstream effects that are in
6:03
every way inflationary
6:06
and bad for growth. And so now you've seen it happen. We, you know, the Fed
6:11
held rate steady
6:12
yesterday, and they, now the market was only priced in one rate cut this year,
6:18
which is obviously bad for risk assets. And the, if you looked at the front end
6:23
of the UK Treasury
6:24
market this morning, like it was clear that there, a lot of macro funds were
6:29
really struggling
6:30
with what was happening in the market as well. And if we were going to see a
6:33
lot more inflation
6:34
and how they should react to the rate hikes. And so I say all of that to say
6:38
that this is a,
6:40
really an Iran inflation growth story, and all of it is downstream from what's
6:45
happening in
6:46
the energy markets. And we just really do not know. And I do think crypto has a
6:51
good backdrop
6:52
right now more broadly and Bitcoin has traded relatively well. But, you know,
6:57
if there continues
6:58
to be this macroeconomic shock, and we have this downstream effect that is, is,
7:03
you know, quite
7:04
impactful, I don't know if we're going to be able to have risk assets really
7:08
take off in the near
7:10
medium term. Yeah, just to give people some context. I mean, before this
7:16
operation epic theory, I mean,
7:17
oil is traded up roughly 50%. I mean, it started out 70 bucks a barrel. Right
7:23
when the
7:24
war broke out with weekend, a couple of weeks ago, it was traded up to 86 bucks
7:30
on hyper liquid.
7:32
Now it's sitting at like what 116 120, I think it hit a peak of 130. So yeah, I
7:38
think it's been
7:39
a deteriorating situation. We're going to continue to monitor the situation.
7:44
But what's interesting
7:45
though is like, we should probably have a commodities kind of expert come on.
7:50
But one of the things is like, what does the curve look like for oil? And I
7:56
think it's still
7:56
very much like, like WTI futures, like they're like, like, it's there's massive
8:03
backwardation,
8:04
which means like, you know, the front of the curve is much higher than the back
8:08
end of the curve.
8:10
That tends to be kind of like common when there's these supply shocks. But that
8:16
's
8:16
something that I am monitoring is like, how does that curve look like? And how
8:19
does it shape up?
8:20
Because I think typically the market would have assumed like, hey, this is
8:23
going to get resolved,
8:24
the straight home is going to open up. And this is going to be like a Venezuela
8:28
type situation,
8:29
but it's starting to look like it's probably going to be a bit longer. I don't
8:32
know if it's
8:33
going to be like an Iraq Afghanistan type situation. But yeah, I think there's
8:37
uneasiness in the
8:39
market. And I think who knows how quickly this gets resolved. But certainly to
8:45
your point, like,
8:46
things have escalated. I was a bit shocked of the retaliation. Like a lot of
8:52
these,
8:52
you know, Iran is basically, I think, send a communication around anyone that
8:57
isn't like these
8:57
oil fields should probably evacuate, which means that they're going to target
9:01
them and
9:01
want to avoid casualties, but they're looking to destroy massive amounts of
9:05
infrastructure.
9:07
There's no amount of like theories of 3D chess of like, what this means, like,
9:12
I don't know if I buy any of those or nor should we necessarily talk about them
9:18
here. But what is
9:20
interesting though is, you know, hyper liquid continues to get a ton of
9:24
traction that continues
9:25
to be a strong theme as a result of all of this. Should we briefly touch on S&P
9:31
perps that I think
9:32
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Empire 200 for $200 off at checkout. Yeah, I mean, super interesting. The S&P
10:50
has been pretty
10:52
forward thinking around this space. I actually did. I worked with the team over
10:57
there to do an
10:58
announcement for they did a tokenized index fund last year in 2025. I think it
11:03
actually launched
11:03
in September. And so we announced that I helped them do that announcement with
11:07
CentralFuge and
11:08
I think it was Janice Henderson like last July or so. And that funds them
11:16
pretty well. I think it's
11:17
$500, $600 million of AUM right now. And so the clearly, S&P was already
11:24
thinking about like,
11:24
okay, how do they want to be on chain? What sort of like tokenized asset
11:28
strategy should they be
11:29
should they be doing? And to your point, trade XYZ with these hip three markets
11:37
has just really kind of come to the forefront of just everybody's like every
11:44
trader is thinking
11:45
through, you know, how do I get access to the things that are happening over
11:49
the weekend 24/7.
11:50
There was no kind of centralized exchange way to do this with real liquidity.
11:54
It is hyper liquid
11:55
today that dominates that market. I mean, we've seen it be on the front of the
11:59
journal in front of
12:00
Bloomberg, like everybody's talking about this right now. And so, you know,
12:04
obviously they would
12:04
have been working on this for for a long period of time when it started today.
12:07
But it seems very
12:08
timely that now, you know, it it's not just, hey, okay, well, we're going to
12:13
launch a hip three
12:13
market that has some sort of, you know, kind of pulled together oracle that we
12:17
did, right, right,
12:18
from like a data feed that we're getting from, you know, that we're paying for
12:23
it from, you know,
12:23
one of the exchanges or something. But now we're going to work directly with
12:26
the S&P to be able to
12:27
offer like an official product. And that does, to me, signal a world where
12:35
right now,
12:35
hyper liquid is still very much a prosumer product. And maybe to me, signal is
12:40
a place where we can
12:41
maybe in the future get institutions trading these markets as well. There's
12:45
still a bunch of KYC
12:46
and other other concerns that you need for the institutions. But this is
12:49
obviously a really good
12:50
step in that direction and congratulations to to show crew and the team there
12:54
for freedom is done.
12:55
Yeah, no, it's big. I wonder how much volume they're going to get over the next
13:01
like,
13:01
if you were to predict like how much volume these guys get versus like some of
13:05
the commodity like
13:07
oil or copper or silver or gold that is pretty active, do you think this
13:11
actually surpasses them
13:13
fairly quickly? No, I mean, you have traditional markets, right? Like, you know
13:16
, FX commodities,
13:18
they trade more, right? I would think that these markets and they've traded
13:22
more on hyper liquid.
13:23
I would think that these markets would mirror traditional markets because it
13:29
just premieres
13:30
interest. I do think, you know, sometimes you see these like volume blowouts on
13:36
specific
13:36
equity names because they become like meme points for the retail crowd, right?
13:40
I think for the index,
13:41
like, I think it'll do well, but I would expect it not to, you know,
13:45
necessarily be, you know,
13:47
outsized relative to other stuff. Yeah, hyper liquid sitting at 40 bucks. I
13:54
mean, that's a
13:55
37 billion FDB, roughly nine billion market cap. I've heard a lot of chatter on
14:04
the timeline
14:05
around, hey, look, it's kind of over for some of the other networks, like hyper
14:08
liquid was just
14:08
dominated, perps are a killer product. What's a, I mean, it's still a fraction
14:18
of some of the other
14:18
networks. Like, what's a, what's the argument around can hyper liquid, where
14:24
the validity
14:25
around can hyper liquid just become bigger than Solana, could it become bigger
14:29
than some of the
14:30
other networks? Or like, what is the argument of it being pretty fairly priced
14:36
at this point?
14:38
I mean, if you look at like a traditional like, you know, exchange multiple and
14:45
decide that like
14:46
fees are, you know, entirely just revenue of fees and revenue are the same
14:50
thing, which I think is
14:51
probably not the right way to think about it, but some people do. Both hyper
14:55
liquid and lighter
14:56
actually traded discounts to on a multiple basis to traditional exchanges. I
15:03
think the
15:03
secrecy guys put out a, you know, some some data around this, this week that I
15:08
saw, and I haven't
15:09
looked at it. I haven't checked their work, but I'm just assuming they're right
15:12
, based on the data
15:14
they put out. And so I think there is obviously, you know, a world where these
15:19
markets continue to
15:20
get, I mean, these applications should continue to get bigger. Like, I think it
15:24
's very clear
15:25
that, you know, perps markets on chain offer a very good product, and they will
15:29
continue to grow,
15:30
they will continue to take market share from the, you know, centralized
15:34
exchange venues
15:35
over time. The real headwind or the real risk right now is definitely
15:41
regulatory and what that
15:43
means over time. But, you know, it hasn't, you know, in this, with these
15:48
regulators who definitely
15:49
want to be pro innovation, you know, I think that's less of a risk than maybe,
15:52
you know, another time.
15:55
And so they're going to continue to grow. Right. And obviously they're in with
15:58
a grow revenue
15:58
will grow. And there hasn't been a, you know, a fee compression or anything yet
16:02
at this point.
16:02
Yeah. But, but then your question is, okay, well, what does that mean in terms
16:07
of like a broader
16:07
network? Right. And I think on the broader network side, it is, it's
16:14
interesting because
16:15
applications can definitely be more valuable than some of the networks. Like,
16:18
there's no doubt that
16:19
Pauli market and maybe hyper liquid and, you know, some of these, these big
16:22
guys will be more,
16:24
like, like Pauli market is, is worth more than the polygon is today, right? And
16:28
yet they, they
16:28
have all of their, all of their volume on polygon. I think that will, that type
16:33
of flip will continue
16:34
to happen where the best applications accrue more of the value. But do, do I
16:40
think hyper liquid is
16:41
going to, you know, hyper EVM is going to become like a huge Solana competitor
16:46
for like everything
16:48
else that happens on chain? Like, probably not, right? But they're going to
16:51
continue to build this
16:52
incredibly robust and a really great application and ecosystem around trading
16:57
that they're doing.
16:58
Yeah. I mean, just to give folks some perspective, our last 90 days hyper
17:02
liquid is
17:02
top of leaderboard in terms of rev. They've even total revenue, they pulled in
17:12
140 million
17:13
over last 90 days. Second of that is Toronto 82, then Solana, you know, 90,
17:18
then Ethereum at 60,
17:19
the L one. So on that base, I mean, hyper liquid continues to be probably the,
17:25
and my, my estimation
17:27
is it, it likely dominates, like if you're over the next 12 months in terms of
17:32
fees,
17:32
just given the, I'm continually very encouraged by hip three and the activity
17:37
you're seeing there.
17:38
So I don't necessarily like would attach that much value to the hyper EVM. Like
17:45
, I actually
17:45
don't necessarily care that much about that. Other than like, do you continue
17:49
to believe that people
17:49
are going to trade these things? And if so, they're likely going to trade on
17:52
hyper liquid.
17:53
And so, yeah, I mean, on a, you know, me, I'm a mid curbing it on a, you know,
18:01
revenue
18:01
sort of basis, but yeah, it's pretty impressive what they've done.
18:05
Yeah, I mean, literally like their ability to launch markets quickly, a lot to
18:10
bootstrap liquidity
18:11
quickly to build a lot as, you know, a really great product from a technical
18:15
perspective in the way
18:16
that they think through, you know, how fees are out, how trades are ordered and
18:20
, you know,
18:21
how people get are able to, how the matching works, like, very clearly, like
18:27
they've done an
18:28
incredible job, you know, great product, it'll continue to grow. There's
18:30
definitely headwinds
18:32
around the regulatory side, but there's people like S&P who are willing to put
18:35
their, you know,
18:36
institutional stamp on it, which is, which is awesome. And I do still continue
18:42
to believe that,
18:43
like, you're wrong about, like, how these, the broader networks get valued.
18:47
Like, it's not a,
18:48
nobody's going to dead. Like, what do you think HTTP is worth today? Right?
18:53
Like, you tell me
18:53
what that what it is worth, but it has no value. It's a relevant question
18:56
because the value crew
18:58
just was not there or designed to do that, right? But, but I think I would
19:04
argue that, like,
19:04
Solana wasn't really designed to grow value either with how low their fees are.
19:08
But yeah, but when you look at the, the composition, like, my, when I invest in
19:15
these
19:16
things, I don't assume fees are going to be the bulk of the revenue. It's
19:18
actually MEV, right?
19:19
So REV, like, collectively, like, if you're creating, like, heterogeneous
19:24
markets,
19:25
it will always allow for MEV, right? There's always going to be someone that
19:29
wants to pay
19:30
for block inclusion, and that allows for higher margin products. In this case,
19:36
like,
19:36
I'm never going to bake my assumption. It just fees being the dominant. In fact
19:40
,
19:40
over the long-term fees should encompass less and less of a share of how much
19:45
value gets captured
19:46
by the L1. I do also agree with your point. Like, apps should, collectively,
19:51
the apps sitting on
19:52
top of the L1 should be worth more than the L1 itself. But that does mean the L
19:59
1 itself should be
20:00
directly compared to its revenue for, in terms of value, right? And how do you
20:04
think of it through
20:04
the value of, you know, what that token is worth, or what the L1 itself is
20:08
worth?
20:08
I mean, you could argue that a lot of it is, I mean, clearly, the market sees
20:14
value in some sort of
20:15
memetic component and wealth creation and brand and goodwill. I just don't like
20:20
underwriting that.
20:21
But I am, like, if you look at this chart for instance, I am encouraged by
20:24
hyper liquid, you know,
20:25
revenue continues to grow up, grow quite a bit. You know, you have a reasonable
20:33
price to sales,
20:34
like, here that is not totally disconnected from reality, right? When I look at
20:38
,
20:38
should I actually put a position on this thing or not versus go buy something
20:41
in the real world,
20:42
like figure at seven billion, you know, market cap and growing and pretty
20:46
interesting, like,
20:48
that's what I'm saying, like, I want to bring on the frictionless guys who've
20:55
done a lot of
20:55
thinking around valuing these things. I'm not saying like, you strictly should
20:59
look at it through
21:00
its lens, but I do think that it is a forcing function of saying, okay, what do
21:05
I need to believe
21:05
for this thing to actually eventually chose up in revenue? If you're not
21:09
capturing that much revenue,
21:11
all this hypothetical discussion around modes, and, you know, if you can't acc
21:16
rue value, then that is,
21:18
you know, representative of the quality of the product, the community, all this
21:23
stuff that
21:23
people talk about. And so... There are a lot of technologies that are sell for
21:34
very high valuations
21:35
or worth very high amounts of money who don't accrue a lot of value, right? But
21:43
they enable a lot of
21:44
value to be... What's a good example of that? I mean, like, obviously, we
21:50
talked about HTTP,
21:51
right? But there's a significant amount of HTTP, like, no one ever attached
21:55
value to that.
21:56
They provide a useful service. It's a common good in the same way that, you
22:00
know...
22:01
Well, there's a lot of common goods, right? And that are worth something, right
22:04
? And there's a lot
22:05
of... I mean, there's a lot of businesses. I don't want to name specific
22:07
businesses, but you and I both
22:08
know there are a lot of businesses that have sold at 300 times revenue because
22:14
of the revenue,
22:16
the value that they allow someone else to accrue, right? Or the synergies that
22:19
they allow for
22:20
somebody else, right? Who buy themselves, and we've seen this in crypto, we've
22:23
seen this in AI,
22:24
that by themselves, they actually don't capture a lot of value. There are a lot
22:28
of companies
22:30
in our space, in AI right now, some of the deep tech spaces, who are not by
22:35
themselves
22:37
good businesses, but they are really good technologies that enable other
22:41
businesses to be built on top
22:43
of. And that is worth something. What is that worth? Is it worth? Is it Moore's
22:47
Law? Is there,
22:48
you know, network value? And, you know, it's some, you know, call it multiple
22:53
of the amount of value
22:54
that exists in the amount of nodes or the amount of value that is built there?
22:58
I don't know if that's
22:58
true. And exactly how to value them is, I think, still very up in the air. But
23:03
I think what is true
23:04
is that, you know, assigning a revenue multiple to an L1 is the wrong way to
23:09
think about it.
23:11
Sure. I mean, look,
23:13
you and I can have different opinions on that. I think about railroads.
23:19
No, we have to agree on everything. No, no, no. I mean, railroads are a good
23:23
example of this.
23:24
Like, historically, you can look at that, like, who actually accrued the most
23:26
amount of value.
23:27
It wasn't railroads. It was the cities that were connected and all the values
23:30
and services that
23:30
were built on top of that. I do think that this is like one of the things like,
23:34
I'm not going to go
23:35
out and short L1s because crypto markets defy rationality by any stretch of the
23:40
imagination.
23:41
And so, you know, I don't think it's a useful exercise to go on short these
23:44
things. But I'm not
23:45
going to put in a position on them. I'd rather invest in applications sitting
23:48
on top of these
23:49
networks that are reaping the value of that. Like, you know, you know, fees to
23:54
go back to fees,
23:55
like the average transaction price has gone dramatically down even in Ethereum
24:00
L1.
24:01
If you were to have built your analysis around, oh, that fees being high, it
24:07
actually like just
24:09
G-Mons paradox, right? Like, fees should continue to go down to allow for more
24:12
transactions and what
24:15
have you. But it's probably something that over the next five, 10 years, I don
24:22
't think that a lot
24:23
of value will accrue to L1s unless they diversify. And like there's growing MEV
24:29
. But like, let's talk
24:31
about tempo because I think that's something that we should, we should just
24:33
kind of like not have
24:34
this theoretical discussion on price to sales by revenue. Like, who cares,
24:37
right? Ultimately,
24:38
the market believes there's a dwelling buyer and seller at that price. So, you
24:41
know, we're not
24:42
here to fight that. But tempo is interesting because like, I've heard a lot of
24:48
folks just
24:49
converge on this idea that like stablecoin transfers in and of themselves don't
24:54
accrue
24:54
like much value. It's the values that the other things that are enabled by, you
25:00
know, having stable
25:01
like instant settlement and instant, you know, payouts. So, yeah, like, why don
25:07
't we just touch
25:08
on tempo if you want to give us a rundown and then like, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I
25:15
think everybody
25:15
at this point knows about tempo. Obviously, it's the paradigm plus, you know,
25:21
stripe collaboration
25:22
for, you know, really trying to build a payments focused or payments first
25:26
blockchain. The ways
25:29
they do that are a couple of different things. And there's some technical
25:32
nuances to how they
25:33
have built certain products that are embedded into the chain. The main thing
25:39
that I think matters
25:40
is that they basically preserve the majority of the block for stablecoin
25:46
transfers.
25:47
And they basically deprioritize any non stablecoin transfers. And they also
25:55
provide it's also,
25:56
there's like a fee schedule and they do kind of dynamic fees. And so it's very
26:00
much trying to
26:00
incentivize stablecoin transfers. And the idea is that like, instead of being
26:06
permissioned,
26:07
you're just putting the right economic incentives in place. So that the only
26:10
thing people actually
26:11
want to do on the chain or the thing that people will hopefully want to do on
26:13
the chain is do,
26:15
you know, payments, essentially. Now, you know, it launched yesterday, made it
26:19
launched and I
26:20
think within 10 minutes, there was a Epstein related meme coin on a tempo, but
26:24
maybe that's
26:25
just that's just crypto. But clearly, what they've done is they've built it in
26:30
such a way that's
26:30
supposed to be like, this is for payments, right? And all of their business
26:33
development around what
26:34
they're doing with Stripe, bridge, privy, the entire ecosystem there has been
26:38
about how do we
26:39
bring people a package of doing on chain payments inclusive of this thing,
26:44
right? And so they
26:45
launched yesterday, they also announced a, I forget is that it's called MPP, I
26:48
forget exactly what MPP
26:49
stands for now machine payments protocol opens machine payments. Yeah, and so
26:55
that's like an
26:55
agent payments protocol that you can use, your stablecoins or, or cards or a
27:00
bunch of different
27:01
types of payment mechanisms, and trying to be kind of an open standard for, for
27:07
, for, for, you know,
27:08
agent payments in agent, economic activity. That is anybody could technically
27:14
extend it, but most
27:16
of the, the governance, like basically all the governance right now is done at
27:20
like, you know,
27:20
the tempo level. And so it's not quite an open source, you know, project yet,
27:24
but in terms of like,
27:26
you know, actually being able to have, you know, other people unpack the way it
27:30
works. But I think
27:32
I expect they'll do that over time. But that competes, you know, kind of
27:36
directly with, you
27:37
know, some of these other protocols are these, these kind of standards, it's
27:40
really a standard
27:40
for, you know, agent economic commerce, things like X402, which, you know,
27:45
Coinbase is obviously
27:46
behind. And, you know, open AI and the foundational models all launched their
27:50
own Google launched
27:52
their own. And so there's a lot of these people kind of have these standards
27:54
out there. And so,
27:56
you know, that's also, I think, somewhat interesting at the time, when everyone
27:59
's thinking about
27:59
agentic, agentic activity, but all of that to be said, that brings it back to
28:04
your original
28:05
question, which is like, okay, so this is an interesting piece of the, you know
28:09
, stripe,
28:10
you know, pie, right, but does tempo itself a crew value, right? And that was
28:16
kind of what
28:16
you're asking because it raised at a $5 billion valuation. But will the fees
28:21
and all of the economic
28:23
value accrual be done by other strike products, or, you know, other bridge
28:28
products or privy,
28:29
not tempo itself, unless maybe launches a token. So I don't know, what's your
28:33
perspective there?
28:35
Yeah, I don't think like stablecoins along carry the boat to justify that
28:42
valuation. It's what
28:43
it allows, like value added services on top. So is it worth $5 billion today?
28:50
Probably not.
28:51
Is it going to be useful in the area for stripe? Yes, you know, providing
28:58
better services to their
28:59
customer base? What was interesting is, I mean, part of part of the benefit
29:03
here is the muscle
29:04
that they have. I mean, out of the gate, they have visa collaborating with them
29:07
. We have a bunch
29:08
of other ecosystem partners. You know, I quote, for example, our design partner
29:14
visa has already
29:15
extended MPP to support card based payments on their network. Stripe has
29:19
extended it to support
29:20
cards while it's another payment methods through their platform. Lightspark has
29:24
also extended for
29:25
Bitcoin payments or the lightning network. And I think like that's, you know,
29:30
we've talked about
29:30
it here at length, which is like, this is kind of like when we were at lunch
29:33
with a very impressive
29:34
set of partners and never got off the ground. Obviously, I am very curious
29:40
about what how much
29:41
traction they get. I forget, but I saw a chart around like, was X402 payments,
29:46
or the activity
29:47
there's like kind of been declining. And it was all the rage a couple months
29:52
back. And now there
29:53
has been that much activity. I am curious. There's been basically no organic X
29:59
402 activity ever.
30:02
So there was like some people, there were some like people who were like
30:05
launching
30:06
on top of X402 that if you look, it looks like watch trading and people thought
30:10
maybe there would be
30:11
some, you know, base or X402, like, you know, value, you know, token value acc
30:15
rual to at some point.
30:16
But there's basically never been any real activity on X402. Yeah, anyways.
30:19
Yeah. Yeah, I, I'm looking here a cumulative stats 75.4 million transactions 24
30:27
.2 in total volume,
30:29
less than 100k buyers. I am, when you look at that, like, does that, I don't
30:36
know if you guys
30:36
made an investment in like a gente comm or so it is a it is a key narrative,
30:39
right? Around like,
30:41
you know, people get excited. Like the the common thread that I'm hearing now
30:45
is like,
30:45
you know, blockchains were not built for humans, they're built for robots. And
30:48
you know,
30:49
this is crypto trying to be relevant at an age of AI. But how do you, how do
30:52
you see?
30:55
I actually do think it will it makes sense to spin up an agent and give it, you
31:01
know,
31:01
for an agent to use stablecoins when it can't care what I see and what not. I
31:06
do bind to that
31:06
narrative. I think it's quite real. But what would you attribute the the is it
31:11
just the X402?
31:12
Like it was that just there's not enough use cases people are not thinking
31:18
about it.
31:19
There is no agent to commerce today. Like that there is no agent to commerce at
31:23
all.
31:23
Like it is like we are all talking about a jump to commerce. It does not exist,
31:26
right?
31:27
Now doesn't mean it doesn't mean it. I mean, not zero, obviously, but like it's
31:30
de minimis, right? And all of the agenda commerce that is happening today is
31:34
happening through
31:35
traditional rails using stripes API's for the most part, right? Now, does that
31:39
mean it won't
31:40
exist in the future? No, that's not what that means. But X402 and the Google
31:45
and open AI and
31:46
anthropic and now MPP, all of these standards exist. But nobody has agreed on a
31:52
standard yet,
31:53
right? And there needs to be some agreement on a standard in the future to us
31:57
to continue to build,
31:58
you know, more economic value around that and, you know, products around that.
32:03
So we're going to have to see one of these things win over time, right? We're
32:08
also just going to
32:08
have to see agents get better because agents are great in a lot of ways today.
32:14
But the near term
32:16
activity that we're seeing is things like enterprise use cases for, which is
32:20
like really like advanced
32:21
RPA, right? It's like automation work, right? Or it's, you know, helpers to you
32:27
and I, who on
32:28
research and on, you know, maybe, you know, some of our workflows, right? But
32:34
even it was not really
32:36
a way for us to do, I mean, there are a lot of people who have like perplexly
32:39
launched a product
32:40
and other people launched a product around like, oh, could we pay with an agent
32:43
to do something?
32:44
Those, those products are still very clunky today. And also the reality is, is
32:49
like,
32:49
because of the amount of approvals that you have to do in those today, it would
32:53
take me
32:54
longer to buy, you know, toilet paper through perplexity than it would just to
32:58
do it myself
32:59
and click into my Amazon app, right? And so it's like not a great user
33:02
experience yet. And also,
33:04
there's from a lot of things humans want to buy. They want to be buying things.
33:10
And so,
33:10
I think the story that you were, you were referencing earlier, which is the
33:14
better story,
33:15
isn't about merchant acceptance from agents. It's more about, is there an
33:22
economy that exists
33:24
outside of human to merchant, you know, payments or business to merchant
33:30
payments that is net new
33:32
and that agents are doing? I think that's the story. That market is very, very
33:36
far away from
33:37
actually existing. There are a lot of people building around it today. But we
33:41
haven't done a deal
33:43
there yet because it feels so far out in the future and so unclear how that
33:48
market will exist
33:49
that we're doing, we're having the conversations, we're meeting the
33:52
entrepreneurs, we're trying
33:54
to be smart about it. But it just hasn't yet felt like the risk reward is there
33:58
relative to how hot
33:59
the market is and the valuations that these companies are getting when, you
34:03
know, when it
34:04
doesn't exist yet. Yeah, I had a really look at a deal that this particular
34:09
individual was leaving
34:11
when a larger card networks and said, "Hey, I feel like this is going to be a
34:14
big thing. I want
34:14
to launch my own." I didn't end up investing that because I do think that
34:18
distribution is king here
34:20
and I did. It's very, what Tempo has gotten very well is like they just have an
34:23
impressive
34:24
beady muscle and distribution partners out of the gate. And it doesn't mean
34:29
that other,
34:29
you know, there isn't an opportunity for other folks to thrive, but it's just
34:33
hard to compete
34:34
again. So super well resource, very human capital dense organization that has a
34:39
lot of partners out
34:39
of the gate. But we'll see. I mean, I think, have there been projects that have
34:50
come to you in the
34:51
kind of early stage and said, "Hey, we're going to build on top of Tempo?"
34:54
Because that's an interesting
34:56
stat. Like if you look at like the, for instance, there was a time where like
35:01
there's 99% of the
35:02
projects were just purely Ethereum. And then that pendulum swung a little bit
35:06
more towards Solana.
35:07
Now you're seeing some activity in hype, like hype, like hype, BBM, like, you
35:12
know,
35:13
that ecosystem being built out a bit. Have you seen major changes or people
35:18
come to you and say,
35:18
"Hey, I want to build on top of Tempo. Is that even a thing?" Or is it most of
35:22
the close source
35:23
and people are just not building on top of it? So we haven't seen a lot in the
35:28
way of like net
35:28
new entrepreneurs yet. There are obviously people, I was sitting next to a
35:33
dinner last night next to
35:35
the founders of one of the largest DeFi protocols. And you know, I don't think
35:38
they publicly announced
35:38
it, but they've already been deployed there for a little bit and they'll do
35:41
some work there.
35:42
There are obviously a lot of people deploying there. And Tempo? Yeah, on Tempo.
35:46
They just haven't
35:47
announced it yet. But I think they did do is they like enshrined to their own
35:52
decks, right? And so
35:54
they will, I think, in the same way that, you know, some of the other more
35:57
commercially-minded
35:58
elements have done, they will just create winners because if they create
36:01
winners, then
36:02
liquidity will aggregate. And if liquidity aggregates, then like it's a better
36:05
product, right? And so
36:07
we haven't seen much in the way yet of what I would say developer, net new,
36:14
like, you know,
36:15
projects building there that are trying to raise capital. I'm sure it'll happen
36:18
, you know,
36:19
over time. But the business, you know, the way it's built, which is really
36:25
around payments,
36:27
like, they do not care. They are very opinionated about what they want to be.
36:32
And they don't care
36:33
if, like, the latest DeFi, you know, person or latest DeFi entrepreneur wants
36:37
to build there.
36:38
Like, that is not their business. And they've explicitly said that, right? And
36:41
they've made
36:42
design decisions to do that, right? And so if that's the case, like, you're
36:46
just going to see
36:46
the less new net new entrepreneurs. And what it is going to be, though, is it's
36:49
going to be
36:50
focused on this one use case, really focused on this one use case. And it's
36:56
probably at least in
36:56
the near term, it'll ever die based on the BD emotion of Stripe, right?
37:00
Eventually,
37:00
maybe it'll be broader. And there's, you know, referrals and there's liquidity,
37:03
sort of like liquidity, it's liquidity and being on the same chain as the
37:08
partner,
37:08
you know, is a good thing, right? But but today it's, it's, it's going to live
37:12
or die based on Stripe.
37:13
Yeah. Who, um, there's a lot of opinions on the timeline that we don't have
37:20
enough time to
37:21
discuss, but who stands to benefit other than Stripe, equity holders, I would
37:27
argue,
37:27
who stands to benefit and who stands to lose the most in a world where Tempo is
37:33
successful.
37:34
I can think of who loses, but I'm curious. You always go with this podcast Rob
37:41
since you're
37:42
the newest member here. You just want me to say the spicy things. So people,
37:49
you know,
37:51
I sort of stopped competing against who's going to get the first 10 seconds
37:55
clip of like, you know,
37:56
that's your role. I'm, I'm happy in my lane. Just I don't deliver that. I'm
38:01
like an old dog,
38:02
man. You know, my takes are watched down like, you know, I'm, you're like that,
38:07
that meme of like
38:08
the guy in the hot tub, you know, like, I'm bothered moisturizing my lane as a
38:14
world blows up now.
38:15
Um, but yeah, like, who, I mean, you and I share all, maybe all stuff. You and
38:20
I share this investment
38:21
present codex. First, you know, it is top of mind here. Very sharp guys. A lot
38:27
of really,
38:29
very opinionated as well. I think they have really unique insights, but they,
38:34
again,
38:34
super specific on this, like, um, you could argue they are now going to compete
38:41
against Tempo,
38:42
right? And I can think of others, but yeah, how do you think about though?
38:47
Yeah, the codex guys, obviously there's more to that story in terms of like the
38:52
partnerships.
38:52
They've actually pivoted. They announced it today. You probably haven't seen it
38:55
, but
38:55
they're now entirely focused on Fx business. Um, and so they, they kind of
39:00
launched their
39:00
rebrand today. Um, and they're actually doing a few hundred million a month in
39:05
Fx, but, uh, right
39:05
now, uh, so, um, they're, uh, and that's growing quickly. So kind of a
39:09
different business. Uh,
39:11
and I'd like to your point, I'm big fans of, of how Nann and, and Momo. Um, I
39:16
think on the loser side,
39:17
obviously, like, you know, who's competing the most? Like who has dedicated
39:21
payments teams,
39:22
it's competing on payments, right? Solana has a big dedicated payments team. Uh
39:26
, Monad has a
39:28
debt, big dedicated payments team and they have very good people there. The Raj
39:32
who, um,
39:32
came from Visa, uh, and then Portal, uh, runs that business for them. Um, you
39:37
know, there's a,
39:38
then there's kind of like the, it's like Circle Arc, right? Which hasn't
39:41
launched yet and there's,
39:43
um, you know, then there's the, you know, you can debate whether or not it's
39:46
not clear to me that
39:47
like plasma or stable or any of these guys actually wanted to be payments. They
39:51
just wanted to be
39:51
kind of like places for, for, you know, tether to sit. Um, but there's
39:55
definitely people of like,
39:56
you know, picks the stable coin chain before probably actually the one that the
39:59
other two that are
40:01
people talk about less, but I've been done more of the work there have been
40:05
polygon in and, um, uh,
40:07
and, um, no, uh, Tron. Yeah. And then there's the one, the first one that Strap
40:13
invested in, um,
40:14
which is, um, uh, I'll remember the name earlier, but the PayPal, the extra
40:21
PayPal out of crypto,
40:22
um, is there now? Uh, those are actually the guys. That's, uh, that's, uh, poly
40:27
gon. No, no, no,
40:29
uh, Polygon took somebody from Strap, a guy named John Egan. Yeah. Oh, paper.
40:33
Yeah. Yeah. But the,
40:35
um, uh, listen, polygon is actually doing like a lot of payments volume today
40:40
and they have a
40:40
bunch of institutional payments partners. Like they are now directly head and
40:44
they did that
40:45
acquisition or two acquisitions, I guess. It was the early January or December
40:51
that made them kind of
40:52
fully verticalized payments stack, right? And that's essentially what's
40:55
happening here with tempo
40:56
and stripe and bridge. And so, you know, they're that they're going to be a
40:59
real competitor.
41:00
Solana is obviously taking a little bit of a different approach because, um,
41:04
they started,
41:05
I think leading some VC deals. So they're definitely trying to, you know,
41:08
continue to put money into
41:10
and, and, um, you know, work to get the right people built on top of them. Uh,
41:15
but they're,
41:16
they haven't necessarily owned, you know, like all the fully verticalized stack
41:20
today. Um,
41:22
and so, you know, that's the competitive set, right? And those are the people
41:25
who obviously are
41:26
going to be going to be worried about about tempo. Um, I think to your point
41:32
around, okay, well,
41:33
well, what happens in a world where they're really successful? Like who accrues
41:37
value? Well,
41:38
yeah, I mean, clearly the stripe equity holders accrue value. Um, theoretically
41:43
, the tempo equity
41:44
holders agree value or if they want your token. Uh, I do a lot of economic
41:50
activity happening on
41:51
an EVM chain is probably just good for all of crypto. And some sense it is a
41:56
rising tide,
41:57
but it's, you know, it's probably less good for Ethereum than it is good for
42:01
tempo, but it's not
42:02
bad for Ethereum. If more economic activity from corporations is happening on
42:06
tempo in my mind,
42:07
right? Maybe it's bad for the payments to focus guys or, you know, the, uh, the
42:12
L2s. I don't think
42:13
it's bad for like Ethereum mainnet, right? Because that was never going to be a
42:17
place where you did,
42:19
you know, a large scale amount of traditional, you know, payments. Right. And
42:23
so I actually think,
42:25
I mean, I think there's a rising tides left all boats and that's happening here
42:29
with the Rosie.
42:30
That's always been the Rosie kind of, uh, you know, more activity lifts all
42:34
boats. And so the,
42:36
if someone wins in some part of the ecosystem and benefits everything, I
42:39
actually think
42:39
my stance is a bit more, uh, cutthroat now. I think, uh, you know, that there
42:45
is likely going to be,
42:47
um, you know, that's always the position of a week of a week player, right? It
42:50
's like, oh,
42:50
this is good. But the reality is I think probably
42:54
more concentrated volume, um, even though there's interoperability, even though
43:01
there's,
43:02
you know, uh, you know, the user that enters via tempo could maybe go to
43:07
Ethereum, uh,
43:09
probably maybe I'm, I'm not sure. Um, but, uh, we'll see. I mean, I, I think
43:16
the tendency for
43:17
companies, whether you're Solana or layer zero or Stripe is to own that user
43:24
and not share with
43:24
anyone else if you don't have to. Um, but, uh, I just have a perspective. And
43:29
by the way, it was,
43:30
it was stellar. I was talking about earlier because I actually today, stellar
43:33
and polygon are
43:34
definitely doing, um, probably the most payments in terms of like actual
43:37
payments. You know,
43:38
Solana is there as well, but, um, you know, they've started to get a lot of
43:41
partnerships on board
43:42
while those partnerships aren't really, haven't really scaled yet. Um, but the,
43:47
if more and more
43:49
of what you and I do on a daily basis, it happens to be on chain, more
43:53
businesses will build on chain
43:55
and there'll be more RWAs, there'll be more tokenized assets, there'll be more
44:00
stable coins,
44:00
there will be more, um, net new novel products that will exist because block
44:06
chains enable that,
44:07
right? And I think it's very clear that like, there's no one chain that will
44:15
win all activity,
44:17
right? Like I think that's a very myopic view that doesn't really make a lot of
44:19
sense. Uh, we will
44:21
probably eventually have a fully abstracted, you know, routing system at some
44:25
point that all of
44:26
these guys will plug into that will, you know, give you press price essentially
44:30
across all of
44:31
these different chains. Uh, and the fact that, you know, tempo might, let's say
44:37
tempo is really
44:38
successful and they own, you know, all of the like cross-border payments, right
44:41
? Um,
44:42
those after that cross-border payments happening, they're being delivered to
44:46
somebody. If it's
44:47
going to an end user, that end user will have a wallet, that end user with that
44:51
wallet will
44:51
figure out ways to spend and save and do all of these other things. And, um,
44:55
you know, the design
44:56
decisions that was made today is not to serve that ecosystem. It's to serve the
45:01
cross-border
45:02
payments ecosystem. Yeah. Uh, yeah, I think this goes back to what I was saying
45:06
earlier and, you know,
45:07
you've probably heard me say this year ago when I was starting off at Meru,
45:10
which is more valuable
45:11
accrue to, to the applications that Clark knows of the world, the new banks of
45:15
the world that can
45:16
choose the infrastructure beneath them, right? To lower the cost of, to serve.
45:20
Um, uh, I think
45:22
time and time again over crypto like once a new player comes in, it just
45:26
introduces more competition
45:28
at that infrastructure layer. And that's always been beneficial for the end
45:31
customer. Um, above
45:33
anything else, right? When Solana came in and like sucked in a lot of DeFi
45:37
activity from Ethereum,
45:39
that like galvanize the Ethereum community. Okay, we got to get our shit
45:42
together because, you know,
45:43
we're getting our out, you know, we're getting our ass kicked here. And I think
45:47
tempo coming
45:47
into the full, like in the same, the hyper liquid made it abundantly clear to
45:51
the Solana leadership
45:52
that they missed, like they dropped the ball on, on perps. Now you have bulk,
45:57
uh, response to
45:59
hyper liquid and then it launched like this week. And so that's something that
46:03
I'm paying attention
46:03
to. But I think that competition at the infra layer is good for the app sitting
46:07
on top and
46:08
ultimately the consumer that is seeing that because they have just access to
46:11
more products.
46:12
They don't really care what that gets routed to your point, right? I mean, it's
46:15
, you know,
46:16
going back to HTTPS, like all you cared about was like, Oh gosh, I can have
46:19
access to Gmail,
46:20
not just Hotmail. That's good for me. You know, this seems pretty good. And
46:23
commerce online just
46:24
became safer. So I think, um, that's where I sort of mean, like, I think I'd
46:31
rather be investing
46:33
and sitting a layer on top because it is just fiercely competitive about the
46:36
infrastructure layer.
46:37
And, um, but net net, it's good for apps. It's good for developers. It's good
46:41
for
46:42
and customers that are just going to benefit from greater ease and convenience
46:47
when they're
46:47
trying to use any sort of stablecoin or crypto enabled product, for that matter
46:51
.
46:52
Yeah. I mean, there's no doubt it's being on chain is better for consumers,
46:56
right? And like,
46:58
the consumers are the ones that we're going to win in the end.
47:01
Yeah, I got five minutes for I was having an expensive call with, uh, with a
47:06
lawyer here that
47:07
I don't want to be late for. But there's just a couple of things where we get
47:10
the content of the
47:10
week. My favorite part, uh, Kraken, we've talked about a length. They just came
47:14
out saying that
47:15
they're delaying IPO plans. I think so they didn't, they didn't say it. Well,
47:19
there was a coin.
47:20
There's a coin that's article that said it. Um, I don't know if that's actually
47:24
true or not.
47:25
And I will say that, you know, I know the team there pretty well. And I think,
47:29
um, uh, I don't
47:31
expect this to be a material, uh, bump in the road for that. Yeah. I think when
47:36
they were raising
47:36
the last round, a lot of there was certainly like a lot of SPVs, a lot of
47:40
people that came in. It
47:41
was a big round. A lot of them were kind of looking at like, Hey, there's,
47:44
there's a likely
47:44
going to be an IPO event. Uh, I don't think anyone underwrote this year. I
47:48
think most people assumed
47:49
it was going to be like, uh, within the next three years kind of thing. And I
47:52
would probably think
47:53
that that continues to be on track. Um, you know, irrespective of like macro
47:58
conditions and whatnot,
47:59
like they've been, they've been like in this IPO readiness track for quite a
48:02
bit of time and
48:03
they continue to ship really good products. And so I, I think it happens within
48:07
probably next year.
48:08
Um, unless there's some like major kind of catastrophic market event, I think
48:12
they could
48:12
probably be a Reddit IPO next year. Yeah. I, I, um, I still think this year is
48:18
possible. So, um, yeah.
48:20
Are there, are there on this point, are there other, uh, in the docket? Like,
48:23
uh, I think we saw
48:24
it just a huge wave loss from this bitco. Is there anything else that's coming
48:27
on?
48:27
There's a bunch of people who might come this year. Uh, I think nobody's
48:31
decided for sure. I think
48:32
it depends a little bit. The markets probably need to stabilize like, like the
48:36
IPO market,
48:36
all of a sudden kind of shot again with the, the war in Iran, right? And so,
48:40
you know,
48:40
tell the risk as risk markets are back. Like you're not going to see any good
48:44
IPOs, let alone, uh, the,
48:47
you know, got the crypto ones. You also probably don't want to be going at the
48:51
same time that
48:52
open AI and SpaceX are going. And so you probably want to avoid that. And so
48:57
you're
48:57
probably your window is like, you know, call it the next three to six months or
49:02
else you want to
49:02
push it to next year. So, but there's a lot of people, I will say that I do
49:05
think a lot of people want to
49:06
get, um, get out before the next election. Yeah. Yeah, we should, yeah, no, is
49:13
our rather, you know,
49:14
in-house political expert. We'll save that discussion for next week of DAS,
49:17
which I'm very
49:18
excited about. Um, and we should talk about like what it means for crypto. Uh,
49:23
if the war continues
49:24
and, you know, approval ratings go down, like, you know, you have a different,
49:27
you know, shake up in
49:28
the houses. Like what that means for the clarity, I can have a bunch of other
49:31
things, but I mean,
49:32
if you look at polywracker right now, it's, it's, it's flashing to you pretty
49:35
clearly what
49:36
they think is going to happen in the midterms. Yeah. Does that worry you? No, I
49:42
mean, it's also
49:44
typical in the midterms, right? Like the, um, the house is almost certainly
49:47
going to flip. Uh,
49:49
the Senate is in play. I don't think anybody thought the Senate would be in
49:51
play, but now it is.
49:53
Um, we'll see. I think, you know, the number one thing will be kind of the
49:56
downstream effects
49:57
from my ran war and how long the ran war goes to be honest. Yeah. Yeah.
50:00
Speaking of, as an aside,
50:03
before we go to content of the week, uh, we, so token got canceled. I think a
50:07
lot of conferences,
50:08
I think token Singapore is still going to happen, but, uh, you can expect the
50:12
airfare to be
50:13
dramatically more expensive, uh, going forward. Um, just kind of wild how that
50:19
spiked. I hope you,
50:20
I hope you booked your travel in advance for offer on some of these conferences
50:23
. I know you and I
50:24
are going to go to an event that you guys are doing in an undisclosed location,
50:27
but uh, um,
50:28
I'm glad I booked that airfare well in advance because it's looking pretty,
50:32
pretty steep now.
50:32
I've already got my airfare book to Monaco to come see you. So, yeah. Don't
50:39
worry. You have,
50:40
you have a couch, man. You know, um, all right. Well, that's a, at risk of
50:46
going down geopolitical
50:47
route. Yet again, uh, I think we, we've maintained ourselves pretty, pretty
50:51
good here. Uh, not,
50:52
not done too much of that. Uh, what's the content of the week here?
50:54
Two things. One, the most obvious thing, which is it's March Madness.
50:59
So like it is, you know, it's college basketball, one of the most fun times in
51:04
the year.
51:04
What's, what's March Madness?
51:06
No, you're not serious. I'm not, I'm not that bad. I won't let you, I won't let
51:12
you have that. Um,
51:13
so March Madness, you know, obviously that's all my mind. And then, um,
51:18
are you a Buckeye? Uh, yeah, a higher state Buckeye fan. So they have an eight
51:22
seed, you know, um,
51:23
so we'll, uh, you know, it's a football school, not a basketball school, but we
51:27
'll, we'll see,
51:27
the basketball team's had no case season. So we'll see how it goes. Um, and
51:31
then, uh, you know,
51:33
I have to get back to, to my horror movie roots. And there's, uh, there was a,
51:37
a movie called Ready
51:38
or Not, which was actually like a very fun, um, movie about a woman who, you
51:44
know, got married
51:45
into a family. And it turns out this family has sort of a very odd tradition
51:50
about, um, having to,
51:51
like, sacrifice, you know, kind of the new, uh, the new bride. Um, and then she
51:56
kind of ends up
51:58
beating the, beating the family and, and end up not being sacrificed. But the
52:01
sequel to that comes
52:02
out tomorrow. It's actually very fun. It's cool movie, you know, kind of a
52:05
action, a horror movie.
52:07
It's obviously in that opening day. So you're going to go to the movie theater
52:10
and popcorn and
52:11
all that stuff. Oh yeah. The, the, the, there's a, the one you go through is
52:17
like old fashions and
52:18
this. I mean, I'm going to have an old fashioned and maybe I'll have a, you
52:21
know, a popcorn or
52:22
maybe all the burger. You know, if you ever want to go on Friday, I feel like
52:26
we leak a lot
52:26
of off of you ever want to raise from, from drag and fly. You just have
52:30
basically gotten a blueprint
52:32
as to how to approach, uh, talk about horror, have an opinion on old fashioned,
52:38
um, and, and,
52:40
I mean, old fashioned kind of sore. You should know that. Yeah. I know. I know
52:43
that now. I think
52:44
the market now knows that. And so I think we use this podcast. If you ever want
52:47
to raise around
52:48
from drag and fly, there's a lot of primer, like alpha here that breadcrumbs
52:51
that you just pick
52:52
up and, and, and, and like show that you're prepared. Um, so my content of the
52:57
week is as
52:58
always more boring here. Uh, I started, uh, reading, uh, Carl Malone's book
53:02
Born to Be Wired. Uh,
53:03
just a really fantastic, I've always had it on my list. I read Ted Turner's, um
53:08
, book, uh, a while
53:10
back. And that's obviously the, uh, intertwined. Uh, but this one is just
53:14
phenomenal. Um, just a
53:15
really fascinating story of how they did roll ups of the cable industry. Um, of
53:20
course, they
53:20
now have Liberty Media. I know how much you like F1. They bought F1, which is
53:23
probably one of
53:24
a phenomenal investment in my mind, but it tells you everything like just, uh,
53:28
they laid the, the
53:29
fiber, um, first the cable than the fiber, uh, which obviously allowed for the
53:33
internet and whatnot.
53:34
And then, um, yeah, really, really fascinating story. Uh, that's called Born to
53:38
Be Wired. Uh,
53:39
I'm halfway through it. Uh, I started a couple of days ago and it's just really
53:42
, really, really
53:43
good book. So I recommend. Cool. I'll check it out. All right. So what next
53:49
week,
53:49
Dass, we're going to be recording live in person. Yeah. That's going to be fun.
53:54
Big time.
53:54
And it'll be Yano's big comeback. Come back. Yes. That's right. That's right.
53:59
That's
53:59
going to be fun, man. I'm excited for that. And, uh, if, if you guys are in New
54:02
York,
54:03
let us know. Uh, this is probably the time where Yano would be doing a plug to
54:06
get your tickets to
54:07
Dass. Prices are going to go up like in 20 minutes. I think it's almost sold
54:10
out. Sold out, sold out.
54:12
It's going to be a great event. Um, if you're in the area, let us know and
54:16
excited to hang out with
54:17
you guys in person. Cool. All right. All right. See you next week, guys.
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