All right, GMGMGM everyone, thank you for joining us. This point looks like we had a full chemical of shoots with the spaces here. I think we got them all fixed. Just let us know in the comments if you're having problems hearing anyone. Folks, today is Monday, August 26th. It is a hot morning here in Chicago today, folks. We are in the 90s. Final heat wave of summer. Feels like a nice analogy for this crypto and maybe NFT market which are actively heating up.
Feeling hot again, perhaps for the first time in weeks. We got some big news from Jerome Powell on Friday, perhaps driving some of this. I'm sure we will get into it on the show here this morning, folks. No for Rogue today. He is traveling to Asia for a slew of conferences. In fact, he's going to be out for a majority of the next few weeks, but you've got Mando and myself still here holding down the Fort. We're going to have some guest Co host sprinkle in here across
the next few shows as well. Mando, Jim, how you doing? Doing amazing man. What a good, good weekend. Glad you're feeling pumped again. Everything's everything's looking good. It, it really is. So, you know, you and I both do these daily market updates and I, you do everyday. I usually do everyday, but I, I will skip a weekend day here and
there. I would say this Saturday was the first time perhaps all summer where like I was, I was chomping at the bit to to get to the keyboard to write the update because we had a lot of green, a lot of green action. Yeah, green and everything, right? Green and mages, Green and all coins, green, Green and mean coins and green in NFTS. Actually, NFTS feel the best out of all of the asset classes right now. All the different slices of crypto, let's say.
We're feeling good, folks. We are feeling good. We're going to talk about that all on today's show. So what are we talking about? We'll start with Mando's market report. We'll talk to Telegram CEO getting arrested is tongue a buy now. We'll talk the Etherium Foundation selling some somewhat controversial vitalic comments on the timeline. We've got RFK dropping out of the race that's impacting Poly market. We've got memes rallying. We've got NFT rallying, fancy top cooking and more.
So we've got a lot on the docket here today. With that, we're going to keep it a tighter show. Why don't we just get right in to Mando's market report? Who is the man macro? Daddy of the land. Can you dig it? GM So can everyone hear me? Is that all right that that's not working? I know Sims was freaking was freaking out there for a little bit. I think so give us give us a thumbs up in the in the comments folks in the. OK, amazing. Yeah.
So better, better weekend. We we were kind of rallying on Friday and then after we after we went off air, it really started to pick up some pace. So there were obviously the major thing on Friday was the comments by Jerome Powell, who's the Fed chair basically indicated that we're going to start seeing rate cuts. That's that was already being priced in. But I think, I don't know, maybe we just needed that to have a little bit more bullishness happening in the market in general.
They've they've obviously been talking about a short squeeze. That sentiment was very low despite the high price. And maybe just a very small bit of positive sentiment was all we needed to have a little bit of FOMO. But we saw Bitcoin go all the way up to around 65 K. It's now settled just just shy of 64 K Solana, I think topped out around 100 and 62163. It's still around that area now 161 and E ETH got to around 2800, I think, but has since since gone back down to about 2700.
So E slightly underperforming. We saw a bunch of L ones also rip into the back of that. So kind of continuing that theme of are the L1's performing alongside Solana and a bit of like a mini, Well, I wouldn't say altcoin season, but there's definitely the width that you know, oh, OK, some of these are starting to move after being down a lot. Let's see if they can sustain, sustain that bounce. So yeah, generally just a pretty positive sentiment there.
In terms of this week, what we have, the number one thing is NVIDIA results which are in a couple of days and actually you've seen the number one sector encrypt over the last week or so has been these AI coins. All of them are up substantially. They're up about 30 to 50% kind of across the board. I think FAT is probably one of the major ones.
NIA render some of these like decentralized storage coins are all up. So people getting bullish just in the back on the back of AI becoming a more focused topic. You actually saw Binance Labs come out today and said they were going to make a lot of investments into into that space too, which I thought was relatively interesting.
So maybe maybe I, I don't think there's that much value to a lot of these right now, but maybe that is still going to be a medium term trend and people still like still like to buy into them. I think that is probably the most interesting. But it it did that merger recently sold off off the back of that since kind of recovered from that sell off. So that's probably the, the number one coin to be looking at in the, in the AI space. But yeah, that's, that's this week.
We also have PC inflation, which is on Friday, I think. And we have a, a read of USGDP too. So not, not huge pieces of news either of those. I think now that we know the Fed is going to be cutting rates, PC inflation probably won't be a big deal. I think everyone will be focused on NVIDIA and the moves on the back of that. NVIDIA has in general absolutely smashed results for the last two years. Every single result results. It just it has an even better
set come through. So it obviously bounced very, very strongly out of pretty much all of macro since that sell off we had about a month ago or three weeks ago. And it's kind of back near all time highs and NASDAQ is still kind of slightly off all time highs, but the S and PS getting close towards it. So that'll be the next main thing to see if we see like a kick on there in all of these magnificent 7 stocks. I think people will be focused on that quite a lot. And then and then it's really
just been the left field stuff. So I think a lot of the meme coin trading is still on Solana, but there's definitely been huge amount has been moving towards Tron still. I know you're obviously being tracked for those Tron coins, Tyler and has been moving to BMBI think BNB decks volume to continue to slightly outperform Solana at the moment.
So let's see, it feels like some of the more degenerate stuff is kind of moving slightly multi chain and it'll be interesting to see if that develops in terms of more broader crypto news. The only thing that I thought was interesting today was Vitalik. I know you saw this that he he kind of came out and basically said that he thought D buys defines a bunch of bullshit, which I thought was pretty hilarious given that's quite a big thing for ETH.
But I think that's caused quite a lot of like discussion on the timeline. And I guess the other main thing is people talking about the Telegram CEO obviously getting arrested and what this means for crypto. I think Polly market making bets on when he's going to get out of prison is 25% chance he gets out this month looks like on polymarket. So it could be in there for a long stint. It looks like Telegram hasn't really or the ton coin even sorry hasn't really recovered.
I I think doing that was a little at risk given its market gap is is pretty massive. It's still sitting there at a what sort of like 28 billion FTV. So if there is a more substantial issue with Telegram that one, that one does look a little precarious. Yeah, I was curious for your thoughts on that. There's a few topics to to dive into, but maybe we start with the the Telegram 1. So folks, the the news if if you missed this, I'd be surprised if you missed it.
It was the IT was all over the timeline number one story. So Telegram CEO Pavel Durab, who was arrested in France here this over the weekend, apparently on charges tied to conduct of users on Telegram charges linked to terrorism, sale of drugs, stolen goods, fraud, money laundering and more. I think the big open question, the outcry on the timeline is how much should he be, you know, associated with charged with crimes users conduct on his platform? I think that's been the, the big debate.
We, we've seen folks saying that free speech is under attack. There's also the conspiracy theories of, of, of why he would be flying to France because there's, it seems like it was well known that he was kind of a person, not a grout in France. So like what? So why did he go there? Now there's the reports of this of the, of his crypto teacher he was travelling with. I don't know if folks saw this, an attractive young female who was documenting, you know, their
entire trip. So have you been following any of the conspiracy theories? Yeah. So I, I was under the impression that he had French citizenship. I'm just just looking into that now. So yeah, it does look like he was granted French citizenship in 2021 through so Le Monde has said through an exception. I'm just reading through Le Monde. So he, he was a French citizen from 2021. He is Russian. There was some talk about the
fact it's interesting, right? So he, he left this guy's story is he basically created a like a Facebook clone in Russia when he was young, probably about 14 years ago and then left Russia after they wanted basically get customer data in a very similar sort of way. He wouldn't give it up. And then he was basically forced to buy the Kremlin.
He then left raised a bunch of money went to the UAE as she tried to do a Telegram ICO coin back in the day was recommended by the SEC had to give all that money back. Telegram obviously grew substantially even during this period. They then did the Tong coin more recently, which is kind of done by an independent foundation.
And then this has happened. There was some talk that he had gone to some of the, the ex Russian or Soviet states, like he's been to, he went to Azerbaijan and and Kazakhstan recently and there was some talk that maybe he'd met Putin there
and that maybe set this off. There's it's, it's interesting to me that like there were Russian, the Russian officials are basically coming out and saying you shouldn't be having this guy locked up. And I, I didn't realise he was still close to Russia. I thought he was like almost an enemy of the state in Russia. And I think that's that kind of says a lot in my opinion that maybe.
But like, why is Russia defending this guy and saying that France, this is a political arrest of this sky Pavel Durov? Like I think that's relatively interesting. And they're having to publicly deny that Putin's met him and all this sort of stuff. Now, I think how the privacy works there is the the key to the encryption is actually him and his brother. So, yeah, that's why, at least that's what I, I, I was under the impression of because obviously it's end to end, end to end encryption.
So I don't know what happens in that scenario. Telegram has come out and said publicly, you know, we were, we were following all the rules. It's very, very clear that a lot of illicit and illegal activity was being spoken on Telegram. But at the same time, that's, that's been kind of a question in tech in general, like should the actors or users of the tech be the ones that are charged or the people that are the creators slash managers of the tech? There's been questions about
that, right? The way through with crypto, right. We, we spoke about how the Tornado dev tornado devs are currently facing prosecution for similar sort of reasons. Back in the day. You could say, you know, the the Ross Albrecht case is is maybe has echoes of of a similar sort of set of morals around what who should be at fault here. But there was also saying that, you know, this is just a shot across the bow, you know, like they were coming off the X as well.
They've been publicly EU officials have been publicly reprimanding, reprimanding Elon recently. And there's obviously very tight controls about what can can be said online and restrictions about that. And I'm sure Telegram breach breaches a bunch of those. But it's just that's a more deeper question about society in
general. I think about, you know, we've spoken about how even the even the Twitter app has become it's become a bit more fringe, a lot more risky content, which if you said in public might even get you arrested, is said on X with kind of little to no reprimand. And whatever there is, it's kind of shouted down or like or made to be seen as as ridiculous. But I don't know. I don't know where I like where
all that stands. You could argue that these things can be used to incite hate, but at the same time, do you want that much government control? Do is it free speech seems to be one of these central cause of Western civilization that everyone kind of pushes for. But at the same time, I feel as though a lot of people have other very strong values about protection and I like or anti terrorism or anti, you know, anti trafficking, all this sort
of stuff they can have. You can't have very strong rules on, I think on free speech and then also similarly have equally strong rules on some of the other things because I think it's they just don't work together in my opinion. It's a tricky subject. It's a a long debate in in crypto, I think, one that's been going on for for years. I see both sides. I I feel like I land somewhat in I I'm a fan of freedom of speech. Of course, I also am generally a fan of just like common sense
law and application of law. So in the example where like let's say like Wizard of Soho makes a meme call that goes S in rugs and someone gets really pissed off at him and posts his address and tells people to go burn his house down. And then someone actually does it. I don't know. I feel like someone should be held accountable for that. And I think there's just it's, there's Gray areas, It's not very black and white.
And then there's a lot of questions of how far do you extrapolate, you know, the the actors tied to these things. So we'll, we'll certainly see there's a little bit more to this issue as well now with, you know, your comments on his ties to Russia, Russia rooting for him to to get out. We'll, I imagine we're going to get more information this week. But. We'll, we'll find out. You, you, you kind of open this well, one of my leading
questions is is ton of buyers. So kind of pulling this back to to the markets itself. Tongue point down 18% on the week. You know, we see the steep drop off as soon as the news broke. It's still at 14 billet market cap. I don't think this guy's getting out of prison, let me put it that way. He's, he's being charged for 20 years in France for a range of very serious legal issues. Even if he gets out, he'll be under house arrest somewhere in France. This guy isn't going back to the UAE.
So I would say that this is perhaps if it was just a classic CEO, you know, CEO of a normal company, but he owns 100% as far as I'm aware of Telegram and he is one of the two people. Basically, he will hold the keys to the encryption. Now, I, I don't know where his brother resides, but I assume it's in the UAE too. But you know, if, what if your brother's in jail and they're saying basically we're going to rock him up for 20 years unless you, you start playing ball.
I don't know where that situation goes. I feel like this should be, it should be lower than this. That's my guess. I was, I was surprised that it was only down 20%. Like when, when I compare it to like the SEC doing there, I, I forget how much XRP dropped the, the day like the SEC launched its investigation into XRP. But to me this feels more serious than that. And TON has been built in a way where it's meant to be
independent. So obviously it's an independent blockchain, but it's using Telegram. Telegram is it's rails for, for everything. And if Telegram starts getting blocked in the EU and I don't know which other countries, but if it starts becoming a, you know, a political app that can be can be blocked in certain regions, like we sort of like what we were talking about TikTok and that sort of stuff. That seems like quite a big deal. I would agree I saw the chatter
of this ton to buy this weekend. I'd say no, it it it's not. And I mean it's still like if you look at the chart, I mean, if it just it looks like summer chop. If you don't know the. That's what I think. I'd say it should be lower. I would buy it but it should be lower in my opinion. I think what there's also so ton has its own meme coin ecosystem, which I forget about. I don't I don't really look at it all that much. But you still got the knot coin holding it 975,000,000.
You've got a few other coins up here. I don't know, I'm surprised a few of those aren't down more so like let's look at knot, you know, knots down. So it's down. OK, it's down. Well, it's down in line with the meme coin market. It's not down tremendously since the news broke. So it's down like 30%, twenty, 30%. So that that's a a drop you would expect or a a levered bet. But I guess that this kind of raises a key man risk question.
So what would happen to Ethereum if Metallic got arrested for for some reason? I would say Vitalik pay arrest is is way less of a risk, if I'm honest, genuinely like if Vitalik gets arrested, like obviously I think it does he lead the E foundation or at least he's something involved in the E foundation. But he he does have a substantial amount of ETH, but I think it's like a billion or less than a billion, right, At least in his public wallet.
I don't think that would be like it doesn't own EAF in the same way that that Durov owns Telegram and the ton coin, although it's a public blockchain, you know, it clearly has a decentralized aspect to it. It's main top of funnel or kind of it's only top of funnel is using Telegram. So kind of feels like that's quite a big deal. Yeah, I agree. Way, way higher, way more severe key man risk on Telegram and the
impact on ton right now. But perhaps we we sag into some of Metallic's comments so. So Beanie said the biggest threat to Ethereum price appreciation is Metallic himself and that he talks too much. Satoshi's silence is infinitely bullish in comparison. So this is stemming from a few Metallic's comments. Over the the weekend, so we had folks call him out saying that basically he didn't know what
what Abe was. He was, he was kind of saying that normies don't think of collateralized asset loans when they think of typical loans. And then the the, the more severe comment was his attacks on yield. Yeah, here here's the big one. So the yield comes from borrowers trading fees, right? So this worries me because it feels like an Oroboros. The value of crypto tokens is that you can use them to earn yield, which is paid for by
people trading crypto tokens. And he he kind of goes on to explain his position, but this is basically a quick synopsis of how all of Ave. and Ethereum D5 work. And he's kind of saying that it worries him, which feels like something that that should raise perhaps some alarm bells. I don't know. It seems like kind of a big deal. I'm curious if if you had any thoughts or or reactions to Metallic here this. Morning. I actually, I actually agree with it. That's the thing.
I do think that that D5 for D5 farming for other D5 coins is is kind of a bit of a Ponzi, right? This is why from the start, it's always kind of felt like that you, you obviously have to believe in an underlying value in the token itself.
And often these defy tokens themselves are just, are just like governance tokens or, but I do think that if you are, if you're doing a liquidity pair of, let's say on unit swap of a stable and ETH or a stable, and I don't know, an L1, I can understand why that would be and maybe even L1 to L1. But I think when it's kind of, oh, you put it into here and you get this governance token on the back of it. And we still haven't worked out how that governance token even
makes money. Or if the, the, the way it makes money is purely from the users themselves. And there's no other outside value being put in yet. It can feel pretty Ponzi like. But I think there's been a question about D5 literally from the start. It's just interesting to see him kind of just say, yeah, it's all a bit, it's all a bit of a Ponzi.
This is, I think the protocols behind D5 are actually very interesting, like the AM, Ms. some of the centralized lending perps, all that sort of stuff, I think are genuinely interesting. And it's OK if it's just for speculation, if the use case of these points is just speculation, but it but yeah, the idea of like the yield itself and some of these things can be, can be pretty dumb. I do think as well they provide the rails for like a real world asset sort of ecosystem to be
built. And so maybe we're just playing with funny money until that kind of happens. Now that seems to be where he's going and I think he's got additional comments in this thread kind of pointing to real world assets coming on chain and perhaps more like real yield coming at that point in time in the future. But Let's Talk certainly catches some fire. Well, he's kind of, I kind of think he does speak the truth. He's not a, he's not a, you know, he's a very, very smart
man, very, very clearly. Like he does see through things. He doesn't just look at the 1000% APY and go like Oh my God like. Bull blasting all of his he's. Kind of he's kind of, yeah, he logically does go through the the motions. But I do think this year more than any other year, I've seen more controversial takes from Vitalik, right? Like what Beanie said there is
kind of true. Like at the moment, he came out basically the other day and said don't vote for Trump, which I thought was kind of funny or basically said like don't align yourself with people just because of their politics, that sort of stuff. I don't trust them. He has kind of called NF TS bullshit before he's now come out and basically called D5 bullshit.
He only really, you only ever really see like Vitalik sent this amount to this exchange because and then they're, they offer like donations or whatever. But he's, he's so much more interested in crypto being used for social and public good. That's that's his number one thing. And unfortunately I would say 95% of the users are not doing that.
So he often does clash at times. Yeah, that, that's the disconnect, right, Is that 95% or more of users are, are are here for, for number go up even if they give lip service to other applications. And he seems to be really about the, the, the public goods. And this also came on the same weekend where the Ethereum Foundation was selling huge amounts of ETH. I think that they were, I don't know if they sold $100 million, but that is their, that, that's
the news that came out. That is their annual budget and they kind of came under fire, perhaps not being as transparent about that spending. Then you've got folks like UDI coming out and defending them saying that, hey, at least they're spending money to try to better the ecosystem versus like Sailor and MicroStrategy who are just holding Bitcoin and and not actively doing anything to help drive that crypto economy.
So a few sides of that coin, perhaps we'll we'll dive into that later this week, but we, we only have a handful of minutes left in the show. We got to talk about NTS and, and Amanda, you made a comment that that got folks going a little bit here on the timeline. So you called out some, some four prices here and their changes since Blur season three ended. D Gots up 150%, red guy up 100%, Azuki up 70%, Board apes 70%, Hudgie's up 35%, Punks up 25%, all while ETH NT volume down 35%.
Kind of obvious what happened here in retrospect, so kind of alluding to that. The blur farmer impact. Curiously, if you want to elaborate on your thoughts at all. Or you know how you've been thinking about the NFT ecosystem since? Yeah. Look, I think it's like, obviously this is slightly a reductive take like the the other things as a factor here, but it's very it was I was calling out as as it was going lower. Like AT floor prices, people are being rewarded for trading.
And you can see this like all the main blur farmers or a lot of them lost money, but they were in it because they got the blur AirDrop, right. That was definitely the case in season 2 and even in towards the end of season three, like people were farming and they were OK to lose money on the NFC trading because they were going to get an air drop, which means they were OK to sell these assets which they bought down lower and lower and lower. For them it like they will be
rewarded in the back end. So it was very, very clear that was going to be a drag. Now there are other drags obviously, but it did allow for like a more fertile ground for other assets to be like the left curve part of this space to see a lot more of the gambling side of things.
And you know, I just listed those NFTS you go through 90% of like the top ETH NFTS, they, they bottomed basically that week, that week there was another retest from the market like absolutely tanked, you know, end of July, early August where ETH, you know, went to 2000, all that stuff. And ETH NFTS really felt bad then too. But even then, they didn't breakthrough the lows that we saw as soon as the the farming ended.
And I there was a lot of talk at the time, you know, higher volume led to would lead to a better Ecus, but didn't like people just didn't understand what the volume, why the volume was there. And I think this now proves it like you're now getting to a slightly more liquid market. You are people who are buying these assets are buying them because they want to own them, not because they're farming some some separate coin down the line.
And I think you're getting to a slightly better appreciation of not just floor NFTS too, like you're starting to see some of the mid tiers and high tier stuff trade as well, which I think is getting back to the uniqueness of the asset, which is what makes it a better, a better asset. The one, the one exception here is crypto punks. But over that period, number one, they weren't farmed anywhere near as much as the the others, at least in terms of
time. And it was only the wrapped crypto punks, right, which were which is a much smaller piece of the collection, which were basically having this happen. And then you had two or three, like some of the biggest crypto point holders were like exiting over the last two months, right? Soon as ETH kind of went down, a few of them decided, right, I need to need to get out. So it's reductive, obviously as a take, but I also think it's just, it's so obvious.
It's just so obvious. And anyone who's denying it, I just think I don't know, like I, I would love to hear why, Because for me, the takes that say it isn't they, they just don't make sense to me. I'm not saying that NFTS where they were when Blur started, where they are now, like all of that was blur, not saying that at all. I'm just saying that the impact was undeniably to bring would would cause these farmers to drag prices down because they would be be making money on the other side.
So I think we're now in a much stronger environment. I do think a lot more left curve risk taking will happen in this stuff. I don't think they're like 10X sort of assets these unlike meme coins where you see these like crazy moves, but they're kind of like long term. Like I was speaking to OSF about this on Friday. Like I think you could see a 3X in a lot of these actually, or at least a 2 1/2 X. And kind of that's what a lot of people are also here to make, you know, they also have Eve.
So could could like pudgies go to 25? Could board apes go back up to like 30 miladies go to 10? Like, yeah, could azuki go to 10? I actually maybe some of the mid tiers will be a bit more difficult, I think. But I do think that that like money will flow, can can flow back into some of this space. Now people feel you speak to any NFT trader right now. I think they feel a bit more like we've kind of seen the lows. Yeah, I mean, Cyrus said as
much. I I think it's hard to argue the, the, the farming didn't impact the NTS at this point. I don't need to rehash the, the whole argument. It's, it's a shame it's not a controlled experiment. I've seen those who are trying to defend it, they're pointing to other NFTS that are pumping that weren't farmed, like, you know, Solana NFTS or ordinals, which also posted a very solid week. We had a lot of the ordinals, up 10 to 20%. Were ordinals has a hole up
during that period though? A lot of ordinals were down. I looked. When I looked at ordinals it was far more mixed. Solana NFTS, I would agree they did bounce, but Salon FTS would not at any sort of the same scale as ETH entities. As money flows into ETH NFTS, you generally see a like a rise in in Yeah and.
That that's where I was going. I think there's also a potential explanation here that when the broader, when the ETH, when the Ethereum NFT market feels healthier, it makes folks feel a little bit more confident in buying a TS and what I'll call the beta markets Bitcoin and and Solana. You know that that may not be the right term, but that's kind
of how. I think Salon, I'm sure Bitcoin, I feel ordnance has its own like ecosystem, but actually ordnance if you look at the majority of them that it was far more mixed like puppets and no monkeys and and the quantum cats were kind of mixed over that more mixed over that period. Yeah, I mean, I was looking at the seven day. If you look at the 30 days still, yeah, a lot of them are still. Right. Like it's not, it's not like that.
Right, Yeah, these numbers are are definitely different and they're they're up quite a bit more. It's exciting. It's an exciting time to to be back in the Mt market. You mentioned a potential two to three X and I think I think that's reasonable. And I feel like that that that's kind of where some of my personal targets are. The thing is like, I mean, we've talked about memes outperforming as a potential alternative. I don't know, like are I can't point to that many memes with
confidence. I think are really going to 2 1/2 to 3X. I think that's, that's a very important thing to say, you know, and that's basically what I'm getting at here is like people feel a bit more confident in the risk reward of NFTS, you know, with memes, yeah, you can might be like, oh, I'll get, I'll get like fog, which did like a what, 2X this. But you also feel like they can
fall out of bed and go to zero. And it feels like with a lot of these actually, yeah, you might get a retest, maybe board age, go back to like 12-11, something like that. But it does feel like the risk reward here is like they could down go down three ETH, but they could also now 2X. So I think the risk reward is a lot better.
Yeah, you can go on a week long vacation or a two week vacation with these leading ETF TS. It's harder to go on a two week vacation with flog and not touch it for for two weeks. That that is no offense to flog any of the mid tier memes right That you think could two to three to 5X from here. Yeah, so the the the point is made Mando, I know that you have to to go here soon. Yeah folks, I, I think we we hit on all the topics here for today.
We'll do a longer show tomorrow. We've got Jeebs coming on with us. So shout out to Jeebs excited to have him. And then we'll have Logan Hiscock coming later in the week. We'll have some other surprise guests Co host as well and perhaps dive deeper into memes and the teasers. We did a little bit lighter coverage of here this morning. But yeah, for for today's show, I think we will go ahead wrap it up here. Have a great Monday.
Everybody will be back at our same time tomorrow morning, Tuesday, for another great episode of FOMO Hour.