Circle Soars on IPO, Pump.fun to Launch Token | Rekt Vision
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So here we are, Token 2049. It really is one of the most energetic, incredible events. Speakers from all around the world and visitors from every country you can ever imagine all trying to learn something together, something new, this exciting world of crypto and technology. It's where you go and make friends, lifelong friends. And what's so nice is to see people with big smiles on their faces, happy to be here and happy to be here.

we could do together. So hopefully, see you next time in Singapore. Real Vision will be there. I look forward to seeing you all. Welcome back to another episode of Rek Vision. I'm here with Owen Seth. It's not been the best week, I would say, in crypto, but definitely not the worst. It feels like it's bad for alts rather than majors. Bitcoin's still kind of hanging out above

Well, 104K roughly at the moment. ETH hanging out just shy of 2,600. We are doing this show a day early, by the way. We're recording this a day early because OSF is traveling. It's in Lisbon for a conference this week. So you're going to get the classic OSF doing the show from his lap on his bed. Not been the first time. It'll be the last time. How are you doing at the moment on OSF?

Yeah, I'm good. I feel a bit hungover. But other than that, I'm good, I guess. Yeah, it's just, it is nice to see people in real life, I think. I know like last week was Bitcoin Vegas and there's a few things, there's ETH, CC and CAN coming up. So there's a few things coming up while the weather is good right now in Europe at least. So yeah.

It is nice to get off the screens, I think. And it's been a quiet, it seems like it's been a quiet week, really. Like Bitcoin seems to be ranging between, what, 103.5 to 105K, it feels like. And I mean, there's a lot to talk about. Meme coins are obviously down quite a lot. The Solana ecosystem is down quite a lot. And some of the altcoins seem to be holding up kind of well. ETH seems to be holding up pretty well. So yeah, quite a lot to unpack, I think. But I haven't really been...

much to do, I think, in the last week or so? Am I just too disconnected to make that judgment? No, I think you've been right. I think we did say, I think we left the show last week when it was slightly selling off as well. And then we've kind of just tread water since then. And we said, look, we're going to use these opportunities to

to kind of go more risk on. I have been doing that in ETH, basically, which is kind of what I've been saying. And ETH has actually held up okay on the week. But if you started to catch some of the falling knives in some of the other altcoins, it's not been the prettiest, I think. Or at least definitely some of the more memecoin-based stuff. And I would agree with you that as somebody who is in the trenches every single day,

and by the trenches we mean like trading in the more left curve stuff, let's say, it has been a bit of a change of tone, I feel like, where people are really kind of saying this could be kind of the it of the meme coin on-chain Solana period, which has been with us for nearly two years, 18 months, really. Just because it's been very, very tough to make money in some of those sort of trades. And like even the more recent,

Let's say narrative, which is this internet capital markets thing, has also imploded. And then we got the news that Pump Fund are actually going to do their own coin this week. That was taken particularly bad by the market. Pump Fund, there was a story out, I think it was by BlockWorks, saying they are looking to raise a pre-sale for a coin, $1 billion, looking to raise a $4 billion valuation.

Let's break that down a little bit. Firstly, what did you think of the valuation? And then secondly, what do you think about what this means for the market? The valuation to me seems probably...

Probably in line. I know optically maybe it looks low if you look at their annualized fees that they've generated. But remember, that's just like one year of fees. And we don't know how sustainable those fees are. It seems like right now, actually, the fees are trending lower. So I think that's one thing to consider. Like, yes, maybe optically it looks low, but you have to have some guesswork involved with what the actual run rate of fees will be, the revenues will be, I guess, over the next year.

few months and years um the other thing is like do fees go back towards buying the token if so how much um how impactful can that be i know we were speaking about this just earlier but comparisons between hyperliquid and radium maybe i'll let you speak about that because it was your smart port you brought up i just consider stealing your point but um decided against it um um

So, yeah, I don't know. I just think it's one of those things where people immediately go, oh, they just, you know, they did 500 million revenues. How much revenues did they do like last year? Like 700, 800 million or something like that. And they think, oh, that means it's like super low. But remember, you have to like assume that they can, that's sustainable and that they can continue that. And revenues do seem like they are declining significantly.

alongside other competitor platforms etc so i don't know i actually think four billion feels about fair to me i can see it pumping just to pump because everyone just apes it at the beginning but feel like um you know it might be want to buy at four bill for a quick trade but i don't know if i would like hold on to that one that's the way i view it yeah

That's pretty fair. I think we do this a lot in crypto. We take one year's worth of revenue and we extrapolate it. I've seen it happen with OpenSea, with Ape, with Board Apes, right? Or sorry, Yugo Labs even. And now it feels like Pump Fund's the one for this cycle. It does feel that they've timed it at a time where it suddenly feels like the market's maybe drifting away from them.

um they can maybe still command a high valuation but maybe that would be lower firstly we've seen a lot more uh lower in a few months that is we've seen a lot more competition over the last few months and there's this sudden feeling that that it's not been easy to make money in these these sort of solana meme coins or solana on-chain games which pump fun was a big part of hi raul here

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The HyperLiquid point that I made is that a lot of people are comparing it to HyperLiquid, but I think HyperLiquid has two things going for it. Number one, it's an app which actually people use. I don't think many people actually open up Pump on a daily basis. They know it as the main launch platform for coins, but it's not a website I have up on my favorites. You barely ever go on it. People interact with it normally through some other form of tech, either...

a trading bot or they'll maybe see it on something like text screeners or that sort of stuff. It's not necessarily the best interface, which kind of goes against it, whereas HyperLake, what I think people use, actually use the app. And the second thing is, for now, it's not a chain. Now, if you're going to raise a billion dollars, I think there is a case that they could decide, look, we're going to do a meme chain here.

And maybe they run it back in the same way that Hyperliquid has, where it gets valued as a chain rather than an app. If you value it as a chain, it can be seen as relatively cheap. If you value it because it makes more money than Ethereum, it makes more money than Solana, etc.

But if you value it as an app, then some of the Solana apps aren't far off it. And it's tough to have like a $20, $30 billion valuation like Hyperliquid kind of has managed to get. So I think it's fair value. I think it probably rallies, but I don't think it does that well after that. I think it's some amazing trade. And I think I'd be worried about the trajectory in the current market.

The second thing is what you think about this means for the market, because a lot of people said that that was the other side moment, you know, like them coming out and launching this coin and that this is kind of the top. They are. It's the final exit scam, basically, of the whole thing. What do you make of all that? I think I think that's a bit overblown, in my opinion. Also, remember, this is the information we have is like,

they're rumors published by an article. So we don't even know if anything is like fully verified, but it does sound like there's some merit to what's coming out, but we don't know the exact mechanics. We don't know the exact numbers. These are just rumors. And meme coins have sold off quite a lot on it because people seem to be expecting people, I guess, to free up liquidity to put it all into, you know, into this, into the pump farm coin. So I don't know. Like, I think, I don't think it's that similar to other sides, you know, like if,

They do do this as a four-bill, and if it does do really well...

and it goes up a lot and people make a lot of money, I think a lot of that liquidity that's made flows back into memes, in my opinion. So it feels like the effect to me might be more of like, you had this temporary liquidity suck now, and then it reflows back in if it's successful. Now, obviously, if it goes down and it's not successful, then that's really bad. And that's what happened with other sides, right? It just went lower and the NFTs crashed. Then it ends up being quite a big liquidity suck because the thing that everyone sold to...

The thing that everyone bought and sold at other positions for is down and everyone's down money. So that, I think, is the risk. But I don't know. The timeline seems very overly bleak about it. Everyone seems to be like, this is the top, this is the end of meme coins and all that kind of stuff, the end of Slime Linker system. I don't think it's the end, but I do think it will go through a tough period for a while now. And I do think it's hard to...

sold any of that like Solana meme stuff now over the next few weeks while this pump fund thing is in the background I think and prices are showing you that now like you know we had a big drop yesterday and then we've had another big drop today and it seems to be very you know and it seems to be meme coins across the board to be honest with you but obviously the Solana memes are getting hit the most and it's not just even Solana meme coins it's even like Solana AI coins and like other stuff like a lot of stuff is down I think as people try to like

free up liquidity, I guess. Yeah, I think a lot of stuff is down. I think part of it's that, it's people freeing up liquidity to do the trade. And I think the second thing is people thinking the meme coin meta might be similar to the NFT one where you've seen this

which takes a long time to come back from. I'm not... I'm less bought into that too, but I do see the parallels. And I think it doesn't really matter what you believe or not. If enough people believe it, then the coins are going low. And it's not just been Solana. It's been across all kind of meme coins, except certain brand coins that have like headed... Had a pretty bad week, I would say. And I...

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I said it last week. I think the easiest trade really is to come back to ETH because I just think that it's more simple. And sometimes when you try these beta trades, they can be really dangerous. But I do think that now is the time, actually. Solana's tripping over itself. It feels like Sui had those exploits.

the ETH killer narrative is the weakest I've seen it for the last two years. And I think there's a good shot now that it can outperform. What do you make of Major Series? Are you also in the ETH camp now? Or are you still Bitcoin? I'm in the ETH camp. I think my view on ETH before was like,

you won't lose money buying ETH at 1500. Will you be the best performer? Maybe not. Now, I think like you, I'm a bit more bullish on ETH continuing to perform. It feels like the wind has changed in terms of sentiment.

I think if you look at charts, it feels like there's been a trend reversal. And as I've mentioned a few times on the show, I do believe in an alt season happening and coming. And I think ETH can do very well in it. So I like ETH a lot. And I think owning ETH itself is a good trade. I also like owning ETH beta trades as well. I do think that's just the way the market thinks. The problem is...

What's the ETH beta? What is the ETH beta? Exactly. That's the problem. So there will be some ETH betas that will do really well, but it's hard to identify them, I think. And I think we've spoken about how L2 is maybe not necessarily the best play. I think in the past, stuff like Lido, and then we spoke about EigenLayer last week as well, could be options. You know one that could be a good option, which is a bit of a rogue one, but Ethereum Classic.

It's a bit of a meme coin, really. But Ethereum Classic does move quite a lot when ETH pumps. So a bit of a left field suggestion there, but that's one to look out for. I like Aave. And maybe we'll get onto a bit more wire. But Circle now is trading at whatever it is, $10 plus billion on the break. Yeah. Where is it?

and it makes $200 million a year in net profit, suddenly maybe the trade can go back for sort of these sort of like DeFi, um, be multiple trades. I think that's, that's, that's now everything about bits is today. Like, wow. Like,

Circle suddenly proved that the stock market values these businesses much higher than the crypto market. And one of two things happens there. Either they all then decide to IPO or a lot of these coins start to reprice. So maybe that's a trade. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think that's a trade. I also think you shouldn't...

you shouldn't you should consider memes you know like i think pepe more wrecked um i think of things that can all do well if ethereally rally so um that's another thing to consider and then another slightly left field suggestion would be nfts and actually like you know some stuff has been moving you know punks are up me bits are up i spoke about this with with ral a couple of weeks ago um

But that's another thing to look at too. Like maybe I wouldn't go like balls deep in it. I wouldn't, it wouldn't be like my soul on full, full NFTs by any means, but I think having some exposure to it would be good. Good to know. I, I'll do it again. The, I do think that the NFTs can have a moment. I've been the one who's been pitching it to you a bit more and being like, look, our NFTs trade here, our NFTs trade here. I, I,

There's an argument here that punks could be a good buy. Obviously, they're expensive, but then you could, there's a range of other NFTs, even at lower price points, which I think you could look at. It may be the trade. Coupled with that narrative that people have slight, let's say, Solano exhaustion, or at least on-chain exhaustion, NFTs, I mean, you were at that NFT conference yesterday,

today, it's interesting to see how the NFT community has stayed relatively strong as its own thing. Its own community has done very well through the bears. There was a meme conference for a while, but it already feels like that's already shutting down. The community aspect of memes, meme coins at least, hasn't been as strong as NFTs. And there is an argument here that you could see a bit of a return to that, which I think would be the

would be interesting what other than punks what do you buy i would say red guy red guy's relatively well red guy red guy's interesting because if you compare so lots of nft projects have tokens now right and so let's look at something like doodles right like doodles what's the full price of doodles um like two e for something or am i just completely off there

one ETH. Doodle's floor price is one ETH. But the Doodle's token, DOOG, trades at a $24 million market cap, $30 million FTB. Now, RektGuy trades at a 0.4 ETH floor price, so it's less than half of the floor price of Doodle's. But the market cap of that, the FTB, is $120 million. So

The market cap there is like 4x what it is in Doodles in the token, but the NFT is like 50% lower than the Doodles NFT, which I think is quite an interesting comparison. And it's actually like that for all the... The Rekt guy floor price is very low compared to all the other NFT floor prices. And I get it. I get why, because people are realizing and understanding that Rekt is where...

The RET coin is where the value sits, and that's the thing that's moving. But I think, look at Pudgy Penguins. They have a really high NFT floor price and a very high FTV. I think two things can move up together. But I think that's an interesting one to look at because that screams cheap to me. Yeah, you've got RET high. Also biased. Crypto Dickbutts, I think. RAL is always really bullish on those. Pudgy Penguins, obviously, is slightly higher. I think those would be a good one.

Bored apes, we've said. We've said on this show. Yeah, bored apes. We're getting into some trade here. Get back in. And then punk. So the good thing about NFCs right now is because they're slightly unloved, or they have been for a while, you can't get in every single price point. Maybe they do come back. Maybe you have a little bit of a flurry here while everything is...

is falling apart in the rest of the left curve bit of the market. Let's get on to Cirque, because that probably has become the biggest story of the week very, very quickly.

It was a story that's kind of gone through a few twists and turns. Originally, we heard about this $4 billion valuation. Then they released the numbers and said they only made like $200 million a year, which is much, much lower than Tether, for example, which makes billions. So everyone was questioning the cost of the business. Then there were rumors that there was a bidding war for it between XRP, Coinbase, potentially, a couple of other names were mentioned.

Then they decided to price the IPO. They priced the IPO at $6.9 billion. It looks like it's doubled right out of the gate. So we're about $13, $14 billion in terms of valuation.

What I do think about this is that crypto companies with a unique story, I think, to generally trade at a much higher multiple. You can see that with what happened with MicroStrategy, where it trades two plus X book for a long time. This is the first way that anyone has been able to invest in the stablecoin narrative purely. And I think that's quite valuable. But

What do you think about that as a valuation? Are you a buyer here at 13 billion? So like, obviously it was cheap out the gate. 13 bill feels like it's more reasonably priced to me at current numbers. But if there is growth, which there could well be that, I think that could be an interesting trade. It's tempting, isn't it? Well, it's very tempting. The growth narrative is the one that you can question because,

Lots of banks, and we even heard about a lot of tier one banks, basically came out and said they're going to look at a stable coin. Everyone is trying to get into a stable coin market. So you could argue that they have had a head start, but they're about to come up against some of the biggest institutions in global finance, all trying to do the same thing.

But it's first, and you kind of feel like it's the first time to actually have that narrative. You wouldn't invest in JP Morgan for a stablecoin narrative, where you could just invest in this and just be like, I'm bullish on stablecoins, therefore I'm going to invest in Circle. In the same way that you may have invested in Coinbase back in the day, albeit that stock plummeted, or you invested in MicroStrategy, or now Strategy. So I think...

It will trade well from here. Let me put it that way. It's just got this unique story. And I think it's one of the only things that people are just relentlessly bullish on in crypto still. Whereas everything else is a bit like, oh, you know, it's become a bit tiresome. Stablecoins and stablecoin adoption, they had it at that Bitcoin conference, right? We're going to have to pop the guys on later who were there. But it felt like stablecoins was the name of the game.

even on Bitcoin conferences. Yeah, yeah. I think that makes sense. And the other thing about stablecoins is it has massive trad fight interest too. And that's obviously proven in the price action of the IPO today. But that's something that I think those guys can get their heads around and can jump on board pretty quickly. And there's also a relatively defensive side

business as well right it's not that cyclical if that makes sense compared to something like coinbase which is like super cyclical so um

Yeah, it's true. It's a pretty attractive business at all times. It feels like if we do ever get another bear market where everything gets nuked and Circle goes down with it, that's something that I think would be really good to buy in that nuke. That's what I would look at. In some ways, it would be a little bit pro-Circle because you can imagine in a recession, when bond yields come down, people will suddenly start questioning Circle's ability to make money, right?

We're in a high-end environment, but that's probably a good time to buy it because you know they're probably going to go back up higher and it's a good time to get involved. Do you think Pomfart is an IPO? It kind of makes you feel that. IPO? Oh, God. I don't know about that. Well, Pomfart made $800 million. Now they're trying to raise it $4 billion. It kind of makes you think about it.

So the thing with an IPO is you have to tell a story. IPOs are very much about storytelling. Remember, a lot of the retail market, and I know this because of speaking to my in-laws and stuff who buy into the IPOs. And they send me the one pages of stuff they get from their brokers.

for people upselling to them. And it like barely ever talks about financials. Like it has no multiples or anything. And it's very story driven. And it's like, if you like the story, then, you know, you kind of buy into it. So,

With Circle, there's a story that you can tell, which makes sense to a normal person who's not in crypto. But you can't really tell that story, a story of pump fund to people who aren't in crypto. Who's going to really understand that or get that? And that's what I think the hurdle is for them to IPO. It needs to be a story that not only people understand, but people believe in as well.

Yeah, I think that's fair. The story is less easy to tell with pump fund, like 4chan for memes, I don't think necessarily rolls off the tongue for a lot of different trap fund investors. I guess it's a more broad point, though, is that what I just was saying before. Do you think we're now going to see a spate of IPOs of crypto companies? Because what we're seeing here is that the IPO market is pretty hot for some of these crypto narratives, particularly unique ones.

And yeah, pump fund may be a little bit more difficult, but lending, that's been another big one. Are they potentially, or one of these other big lending companies could get involved? Do you think we're now going to see like a spate of IPOs for companies in the US? Yeah, I think so. And let's see why not. It seems like the natural progression of the way things are going, where the adoption increases and people are more on board with things and, yeah,

It's an exit as well. It's an exit for everyone who's been in it for a while. So yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see more of it. And I wouldn't be surprised, especially if, you know, something like Circle does super well and people make money for it. There's going to be appetite for more, I think. What else do you think could IPO?

Well, the names that roll off the tongue are like Ripple. Obviously, there's been a lot of talk about them IPO-ing for a long time. Some of the exchanges, again, like Kraken, they've talked about IPO-ing this year. But I think more broadly, this makes me think about DeFi companies. DeFi companies traditionally have been pretty decentralized because they were worried about regulation. But DeFi regulation seems to be coming to a head in the U.S., at least over the next year or two.

And you could see some of the tier one companies here. Think about Uniswap. Uniswap could IPA. They're based in New York. Aave, I believe, is more European-based, at least from the founding perspective. But that would be like a tier one curve. Companies that make money in crypto and haven't... Uniswap

Never turned on the fee switch, right? Yeah. And they could potentially just go, we're just going to IPO instead. Yeah. Because it's better for us. What do you think about the fact that many of these companies have offshore token foundations, which are separate legal entities to the off-racing companies, many of which are maybe like a US company, like the labs companies, right?

And in these offshore token foundations, many of these companies may have a treasury of tokens worth hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe even billions in some cases. How does that look when that gets pitched as an IPO? Do you think people bucket those offshore foundations in? Do you think they just view them as separate entities? Does it get baked into the valuations or not? How does someone...

Think about that. Yeah, it's a super interesting question. It's not something that I would necessarily know from a legal perspective. I would say that it really depends on the token. If the token itself has got some sort of explicit utility or flywheel in place, like, right, we are doing this with this amount of funds, we're doing it with this amount.

then I think it can be an impediment. If it's a bit more governance or undefined, then I think it doesn't necessarily become an issue. So I think it really depends. And I think you're going to see some creative solutions to this, basically. Like there's a lot of managers right now or owners of crypto companies that will look to

They'll look to do this. There's also been a lot of rumors of dissolving all these. So like, ApeCoin, for example, came out this week and said, we're probably going to get rid of ApeCoin now. It's been pointless for us. We're going to take over ownership of it and

You'll see what happens. They're going to have an unbelievable amount of lawyers, and there's a lot of value for that company in owning Ape itself, right? Because that's where a lot of the treasury kind of sits, quote unquote, for Ugo Labs now. So let's see how they do it. And then let's see. I think you've probably got a blueprint for how other people will do it. Yeah. But I think it's going to be an interesting one to watch, I think. It's the right question, because Circle suddenly now put the...

spotlight on, wow, there's going to be an IPO season here for crypto companies and who's the best position for that and who isn't. One more question also. If these IPOs do really well, let's say Circle obviously is killing it. Do you think that has an impact to current crypto prices like Bitcoin and majors and other stuff? Bitcoin hasn't really moved on it on today's price. For me,

even though there isn't necessarily a direct link, I would think like more attention for crypto to just generally be good for the market. Like I would have expected this circle price action to kind of like lift the entire crypto market, but it hasn't really. Am I just wishful in that thinking or do you think there is any merit to that thought? I think short term, it can be a bit of a liquidity event. Like the people that I know who participate in the circle IPO are all

in crypto, which makes me think that maybe some money was spent on this rather than on altcoins right now. And I do think there's a narrative right now, which could just be own Circle, own Bitcoin, own stablecoin exposure and sit back and relax.

So I would be a little bit wary of assuming it's going to be good. But if you want to ball people to crypto and the narrative around crypto, it's tough to be overly bearish because I think the only way that Circle really does well is also the chains start getting used a lot and you start to see real scalable TVL starting to get put on things like ETH and Solana. So I think it may be slightly responsible for the sell-off.

But I do think it will also rally in the longer term implications of it. So maybe before we get the icebox guys on, let's have a little bit of a refresh of where we're sitting then in terms of how risk-on you are, how risk-on... You were 80% last week. I don't feel like you've done anything over the last week. No, I haven't just been gallivanting around Lisbon, really. Yeah, so I think that's pretty much fair. And your risk is mainly...

Yeah, I feel like ETH, Bitcoin, that is generally where I am. I have some ETH beta players, which I think are like those meme coin stuff within ETH. That's where I'm at right now. We have remarkably similar bags right now. Yeah, it's tempting to dabble in other alts and stuff. I'm very tempted by that, but I think I'm happy with where I am at for now. I don't feel like I need to change anything.

Yeah, I've really put, I mean, obviously I told you when I parted down all my Solana exposure and started moving into more ETH and ETH Beta.

On the dip, I really just bought ETH. I bought a little bit of Farcoin again. Just to have a little... Couldn't help yourself. Couldn't help myself. It's down like 60% or 40%. But I don't want to steer too far away from just mages because I think this could also be a bit of a chop here. It seems a bit more persistent than I originally thought. And that could be very painful for some of this more dangerous stuff.

Okay, so we're not panicking. Feels like mages aren't really panicking either. But there is a lot of pain right now. A lot of people are here every single day because they're very exposed to non-mages, let's say. And we would both buy ETH and probably ETH Beta on any more dips. Cool. Let's get on the Archpublic, guys. Great to see you guys again. Yo. Here we are. And there were four. We hear you've had a massive...

a weekend or week in Vegas, but not how people often do a massive weekend in Vegas. You were there for the conference. How was that? It was fantastic from my perspective. It was Vegas...

Obviously, we can accommodate so many people under one roof that it was like a giant slumber party. Lots of gambling with nothing but Bitcoiners at the table and lots of excitement in the air. You could kind of feel the energy and a noticeable amount of politicians and foreign politicians there. A lot of Secret Service walking around during the conference. So I had a blast. It was exhausting. But the concentration of people

I think the stablecoin piece of it was a big deal. It was mentioned probably 6,000 times from the stage itself. But I also think there was a huge movement in terms of Bitcoin treasury companies and Bitcoin corporations and just adding Bitcoin to your balance sheet to kind of give you –

offset inflation, preserve purchasing power. But in some of these companies, you can double your net revenue if Bitcoin continues to perform with only a 10% allocation. So there's very little exposure, but at the same time can prove itself to be exceptionally valuable on your balance sheet. So I think those were the two narratives that stuck out to me.

There's going to be here in 2025 in the Bitcoin treasury movement, the balance sheet movement, and frankly, just, um, you know, crypto at large, uh, finding its way to traditional equity markets. That's going to be the story for 2025. Um,

First, you have Nakamoto. It may be trading at 17 or 18 right now, but if you got in at the pre-IPO shares, because they offered it to everybody at $1, it went up to 27. People are not going to stop doing those deals when you've got a 20 to 27X on your money. They're going to keep throwing money at it. Look at Circle, right? Circle today is up two, two and a half X from where it was first indicated last

to start the day. And everybody on this panel knows that Circle doesn't have this wildly thrilling and exciting business model and they're printing cash like crazy. They're giving half of their cash away to Coinbase, right? So it's not as if Circle is some tech company that's reinvented the wheel and it's gonna be doing all these things that we haven't thought of yet. That's not what Circle is.

So you're in a position now where there's going to be, you know, Ovi knows this, the actual IPO markets in TradFi have been basically dead for the last three or five years. Nothing, literally nothing happens of consequence there.

And we're in a position where we may be looking like the likes of exchanges, stable coins, other crypto projects, Bitcoin treasury companies are going to be reviving IPO markets in a very meaningful way. Mando, you mentioned, you know, is this move to traditional markets and IPOs? What's that going to do to the actual crypto markets?

You know, I think short term, there is going to be some turbulence because there's going to be a little bit of movement of capital in one direction or another. But over time, both midterm and long term, that just means that the industry itself is awash in new capital, huge.

huge amounts of capital, huge amounts of new currency in terms of shares. You know, go back and when Coinbase went public, they used their shares to buy however many companies, 20, 25, whatever the number is, they bought a ton of companies after the first year that they went public. So that same cycle is going to happen, except instead of one company like Coinbase, there's going to be 10, 15, 20 companies that have enormous amounts of

of um you know capital to be able to spend inside of the industry itself yeah look i think that has been a big thing right these reverse facts uh essentially or like bitcoin treasury we saw one first one for eath sharp link i think uh was this week but then you've had very big wins for nakamoto the trade really there is to get in at the pre-ipo or get deals right um which i think

Obviously, if you're in crypto, sometimes a lot of people have access to those sort of avenues. And that has been a bit of a pocket of everyone making money, actually, even during this period of chop for the last couple of weeks. It's interesting to see that happen. That's been like the thing that Wall Street has really picked up on. Like, oh, wow, we can do this. And like dead company, which we suddenly changed the narrative around, can...

can just 20 X by just saying they're going to buy some, some Solano or buy some ether, buy some big, the actual architecture of dead company transactions. And you effectively take it over the RTO. That's that for two decades, that has been the lowest of the low type of transaction in trad fi by an immeasurable percentage. Like nobody wants their hands on those kinds of deals because,

in on you know traditional wall street nobody wants to touch those there's like you know they just don't and yet in the crypto space you go from you know a dollar pre-ipo six and a half weeks ago i was offered pre-ipo shares in nakamoto right and it moves so i didn't get in if i would have i got a buck and i had the ability to to be where it is now so

Um, that just means that that's going to happen again and again and again and again until it's completely out of gas, uh, bubble or no bubble. Um, the crypto industry is fairly used to bubbles, right? Whether it's NFTs or meme coins or, or, or any version of it, um, meme coins have a, a, a certain type of half-life. And I think this particular bubble will have a half-life that may last a little bit longer than we think.

So we'll see. But there's going to be a lot of capital awash in the crypto industry, unlike the cryptocurrency

To Andrew's point, one of the main themes from stage was that the 60-40 portfolio is dead. I can't tell you how many times that was said from stage. And it's like there's now this 5% allocation that you have to have in Bitcoin exposure. And that's really what the kind of the sentiment of the TradFi guys that I was speaking to is like things have not only changed, but the flip

The switch has been flipped. People are not looking at a 60-40 portfolio as kind of the standard anymore, that you need this kind of micro cap type disproportionate return to risk exposure at some level. Yeah, I think that's very true. I think people are now noticing this can just be a sliver, but 5% of hundreds of trillions of dollars of assets seems like money. Yeah.

You mentioned heads of state. You mentioned Secret Service. I assume you've been to a few of these sort of Bitcoin conferences in the past. So how did it feel different on that sort of style? Do you now just feel as though Bitcoin is entering this realm of just...

sovereigns are going to dominate it as well? Well, my perspective is that the Whale Room itself and the Whale Stage was a conference in and of itself. I never went to the main stage, the entire conference. I was there for eight days because the Whale Room...

had all of the people that required special attention on stage. It was a much more manageable space. There was about 2,000 people there. So yes, there is going to be more and more of the

carnival rides will be created for the masses. And then there will be, I think more gatherings face to face for decision makers in the space, in the industry where, where business is getting done, legitimate business deals are being cut in those rooms. And especially now that, you know, David is such a big part of Nakamoto, you know, that's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy in the fact that, you know, Nakamoto,

Not by chance was that one of the major themes of the conference. That was one of the major themes because it's the way in which we're onboarding lots and lots of customers at this point.

Well, not to toot our own horn, but Archpublic, we basically had a conference within a conference. We had a lounge there and we had John Deaton, Jack Maulers, Vlad Tenev, Adam Back, Bo Hines, David Marcus, Caitlin Long. We had a pretty significant, you know, tapestry of people in the space. You know, Adam Back, obviously the last living soul that was mentioned in the white paper and

Caitlin long. Who's on the banking side, Vlad Tenev, who's the CEO of Robin hood, Bo Hines, who the executive running crypto stuff here in the U S you know, in the, in the current administration. And, uh,

And yeah, it was, you know, doing those Q&As in the room. Our room was full. So per Tillman's thought process there, we spent most of the time there and in the whale space because we were sponsors there. And we spent a lot of time in the main area.

But that goes to the reality of, you know, look at the different types of personalities that are involved in the space now. It's the U.S. government. It's banking. It's, you know, core cypherpunk still. It's, you know, Robin Hood being, you know, the end all be all of platforms associated with trading everything and anything at some point.

So it's turned into a unique space that's so different than four years ago. The whale space at this conference was bigger than the actual conference in 2021, and I was at that conference. It was so big. When I first walked in, I was like, this is incredible. This is the biggest that I'd ever seen. So

Again, it goes to the average age in the whale space. Instead of being 42, it was probably 53. So it's interesting to watch the industry grow.

evolve. And you can wrap all that up. You can say whale space is bigger. The average age is older. And now we have companies going public on Wall Street, and that will continue to happen. So all of that, add it all together, it just means more capital in the space. And I think that's a good thing. Where that capital goes, we'll find out. But it's going to find a spot. Capital always does.

Well, and Ross being there and being on stage, that's been something I think the community's been waiting for for so long. There were tangible things to celebrate this year. It wasn't hype and hopium. It was like we're making meaningful strides in our mission, which is adoption and having all those TradFi guys there be.

begging for time to talk about how they can learn more about the space. It definitely makes you feel good that we're getting to that end. Yeah, I think it does feel as though this is the most mainstream. I guess it gets more mainstream every single year. Maybe not. Maybe like 2022 was a tough year, but it does feel as though this year has really become...

when you had the vice president there, it does feel as though it's on a different sort of plane of people knowing what's going on.

How was, speaking of ArchPublic, how's it been? How's the Bitcoin product been doing? I know, obviously, we actually spoke about it maybe a couple of weeks ago. And we were saying, you know, probably underperformed on this way up. But now we're back in the chop. It must have gotten some good, I reckon. It's been doing exceptionally well. We've had nothing but praise from the customers. Anytime there's chop, there's exits.

that are taking place and you're exiting about half your position in most cases. So those are the opportunities where the cash yield

byproduct of volatility can really play to your advantage. So nothing but glowing praise from the customer base. It can be applied in so many different ways. You get exactly what you want out of it. If you want to accumulate right now with very little selling, then you can choose to do that. And obviously you have, you know, the ability to, to,

determine what the upside from this price point is. If you're a Larry Fink guys that think, you know, you're seven X from here, you probably want to be more bull, bull bias than sell bias or, or bear bias. And so everybody gets exactly what they want. And that's the main thing. It's a very user driven, customizable piece of software. And, um,

The main development that's really taking off is the corporate treasury side of it. We've had just dozens and dozens of companies reach out since the conference that have said, we need help. We need tools that can manage this.

Number one, accumulating a large stack of Bitcoin in a very short period of time so that we can promote it and join essentially that group. But then we want to dedicate X percentage of gross or net profits to accumulating more Bitcoin. How can we deploy that strategy with automated tools? So it's what we have been saying since we've been giving this product away for free to the retail users is,

This is institutional tools in the hands of retail traders. It really is now coming to fruition full circle because the institutions are coming out saying we need these tools. So it's been quite the ride. We're exceptionally excited. 750 people at the conference have signed up for the service. So we're continuing to serve them and onboard them and

continue to build the happy customer base, which is kind of self-fulfilling prophecy for referrals and so forth. That's awesome to hear. I was going to say, did you get any sovereign nations coming in? But it feels like the Bitcoin treasuries would be the obvious one. It feels like everyone's desperate to announce that they're about to do some sort of Bitcoin treasury and that it will help their stock.

Well, if you're a publicly traded company right now that is talking about doing it, you're the bell of the ball. You've got all the brightest minds in the space begging you, pleased to do this, sort of like GameStop.

But what about for the plumbing company that's sitting on $4 million in cash that wants to deploy 10% of that? There's a huge market, hundreds of millions of companies that exist out there that this could help them. And I would argue it helps them even more. If you're NVIDIA, you have a pretty good return in reinvested dollars into your

your business model. If you're a plumbing company and you have very tight margins and high competition in an area, Bitcoin being on your balance sheet, even to the tune of 10% could be the difference maker in terms of your expansion opportunities and the ability to borrow money for those expansion opportunities. So we're seeing the bottom line is, is that debt capital is looking for businesses with Bitcoin included in the model. That's the kind of the undertone. Yeah.

Exciting, isn't it? Definitely exciting time. The narrative is almost changing to like, oh, these guys are being like when Tesla first did it. Oh, this is kind of experimental. It's now like, oh, man, if you're not doing this or if you're not at least not investigating doing this, then you're kind of behind. Well, there are lending institutions that have figured out that Bitcoin is a very, very unique asset that is...

you know, it's very, very helpful in their lending model, right? Because it's, you know, if need be, if the lending deal goes bad and they have to take ownership of that asset, it's instantly, you can liquidate it instantly. You can't do that with a commercial real estate building.

or a home or a piece of land in Montana. You can't liquidate it instantly. Or if you're smart enough, you're like, listen, this four-year cycle thing is pretty cool with Bitcoin. Maybe we just hold on to this asset that we just grabbed. So if you're a lending institution and you're able to see it that way, you're kind of falling all over yourselves to be able to put together deals

that look like this. It just simply makes sense with Bitcoin as the base layer of the deal itself. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Well, it was awesome to have you guys back on. Obviously, go check out Archpublic. They just absolutely crushed it at Bitcoin Vegas, but you can go out and test out their problem. Not their problems, their tools for you for free. Like they said, it's...

institutional grade products that you can do as a retail trader. And then they have a range of different options after that with how much, how many other tools you want to use. Great to have you guys on as always. And always great to hear from OG Bitcoiners like yourself too. Absolutely. Good to see you guys. Appreciate it guys. Thank you. We'll see you guys next time.

Next week, usual time, 11.30am Eastern Standard Time and 4.30pm British Summer Time. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

So here we are, Token 2049. It really is one of the most energetic, incredible events. Speakers from all around the world and visitors from every country you can ever imagine, all trying to learn something together, something new, this exciting world of crypto and technology. It's where you go and make friends, lifelong friends. And what's so nice is to see people with big smiles on their faces, happy to be here and happy to be here.

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