Well, GM, GM, everyone. We are without Farooq again today. I think he's on his way to Austin right now for the F1's. Pretty nice being Baroque. We have replaced him with OSF, who's Back and NFT Stats. Actually, just going by sand now, you're retiring the NFT part of your name, which is, I think, sad to see, but good to have. You It changes every day. Yeah, it changes every day. 3. Different. Forget your roots, man. My roots are punk ape stats.
That was my original. Name. Ohh Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. Yeah, you should go back to. That that was cool, Yeah. Anyway, that's you know each different text that. Yeah just just update it for the for the new flavour of the day. Yeah, we're going to do our normal show today so it's gonna be 5 main topics. We are sponsored as per usual by cracking NFT. They've actually got a mint live at the moment. Worth going to check that out. We're gonna have them show tomorrow.
We're gonna go through everything then. But they have been sponsoring the show for the last month. You can check them out at kraken.com/rug radio. Right. We'll get straight into things. It's been a relatively eventful 24 hours. I think Bitcoin topped out like 28.7. You've got hammered down and then seemed to bounce a little bit, but we're all a bit lower today. What did you, what have you been making of macro markets at the
moment OSF? So I think the thing to watch out for a macro at the moment, it's interest rates. Interest rates have blown all the way out to. Basically back to year to date highs which are. The same as 12 months which is the same as like multi decade highs depending on where looking on the curve but we're out to like 5.2% on two year or up to 4.9% on 10 year. I don't think there was any specific data, maybe there's something to miss, I'm not sure that caused it.
But we obviously rallied a bit on the Israel, Palestine, Palestine stuff and then we just seem to have sold off. Oils up decent amount, all up to $88 per hour as well so. That's the thing, that's the one thing that kind of concerns me about UH risk assets right now just interest rates keep keep going higher and higher and we're still probably about two weeks out from the FOMC. But I think it's a bit of a concern here and that seems to be weighing on on macro right
now. That's weighing on macro obviously oil pot again yesterday, I think it's about two or three percent today. And then there was that story out about NVIDIA. I don't know if you saw that they're gonna be blocked from their their chip sales. So they're down about 7% I think over the last two sessions,
which is quite a big deal. Like if they're not able to sell their chips to various different countries, I think that's maybe gonna hurt the like general stock market because obviously it's all been carried by pretty much just NVIDIA and a couple of others so far. So yeah, it's definitely not a great 24 hours I would say, for macro. And then in crypto, Bitcoin dominance just kept going.
It seems to have reversed slightly this morning, but there was a point yesterday where I think it was if you exclude all the stable coins, it was like 5758% and everyone just piling in on Earth. It seems like everyone's, you know, the usual commentary about, oh, it's not working, everyone should just go back to Bitcoin. It did feel like to me when I saw the time yesterday, it felt
like peak. It felt like peak bearishness on ether versus Bitcoin. I don't know about you, but it definitely felt like everyone was like throwing in the towel yesterday. Yeah, I think so. It's. It's a funny one because like every time you get a glimpse of hope, everyone gets really excited and then it just gets stripped away from you. And at first it was like, it gets stripped away from you in a week. Then it was like in a few days
and it was in a day. And now it's like intra day you just get that hope stripped away from you. And I think people were kind of throwing in the towel. But I feel like, I don't know, just like everything's feels quite cleared out. Like everyone who's my timeline is like mostly now people who I think are constructive for the next few months and I think. The last few days was an eye opener for that so. I don't know. It doesn't. It doesn't feel as capitulated
to me as it did last week. It feels like there's some some hope back in the in the game now, yeah. What do you reckon, Sam? What do you think of general macro here? I think it's weird that you know, with interest rates where they are, with all this tension and geopolitical tension that you know, equities just continue to be really strong. Like you know, VIX is below its five year median right now. It just feels like there's a lot of. I mean.
On the one hand, uncertainty. On the other hand, like you know that the economy feels hot, which tends in the past would would be a negative given that interest rates are what drive stock markets. But we continue to be resilient. So I don't know. I still a lot of money. It's stocks. But I definitely wake up nervous every day and I feel like I'm adding a little bit to my like, oil exposure. Yeah, it feels as though everyone is pushing crypto right now.
Is isn't bullish because of the NASDAQ, they're bullish because of gold. They feel like everything's about to turn to ship rather than writing this new tech wave I. Think happens. You know, I feel like we always hope that Bitcoin is going to follow a lot of the narratives that that are the reasons people are bullish on them. But then at the end of the day, Bitcoin so frequently tends to trade like a risk asset.
So you know. Certainly, you know, hope springs eternal for that though like I would definitely like crypto does feel like an interesting asset right now. It kind of as as you and I were talking about like if we get to a world where limited supply stuff kind of just becomes the focus, like yeah, it's certainly a decent play out thing. Yeah, we. Should what you been giving up with on Etherium though? Like what?
What has changed with Etherium that suddenly has created a new narrative that's different from the past two to three years? You know what? I I don't know what it is, but I think a couple of things have happened recently which have changed is that the whole of the L2 infrastructure got built out and that wasn't really with us 12 months ago. And that has meant that over the course of the merge, we've gone from deflationary now to inflationary.
So the whole idea that ETH would be deflationary now looks like it's going to be very, very difficult for it to achieve that. You can have a lot more activity happening on L1 that we'll get into it. But even like for example, the Pokémon cards drop that was done, that would have been 1-12 months ago, 18 months ago and now this is on L2. Like it doesn't affect gas. So all the activity is being driven to these L twos and that just means that ETH is no longer inflation, is no longer a
deflationary. And the second thing is it's purely just an ETF thing. Like I was looking before at what's caused the big rallies this year in crypto. You could really be banging your head against a wall because it's really been like very small pockets, like two or three days of really big rips. And then we just slowly go down for like two or three months. So we rip and then we go slowly
go down for two or three months. And each one of those rips was essentially scored by the ETS, like it was news about the ETS or that we're going to get close to that. And I feel like that's that's just got the dominant narrative at the moment that that somehow that's going to lead to some massive inflow. And the ETH futures ETF I think is only had 17 million of AUM at the moment. Like it really disappointed in terms of institutional demand.
So people are somehow thinking that the Bitcoin one is gonna be is where all the demand comes in. So I think it's an easy thing just to bash at the moment rather than it actually being bad. I think the way the ether is created is perfect. I'm big Maxi when it comes to its long term potential, but I do think that, yeah, in the short term people just gonna keep on going at it. I think the the ETF stuff is probably. Being the biggest driver of
Bitcoin price action this year. Um, maybe a couple of other things as well. But I think post Bitcoin you will see spot ETF applications as well and they're already are some that exist. So I just think the narratives that are pushing Bitcoin right now and there are some that are unique to Bitcoin, like. The bank stuff that happened this year and maybe this idea of like flight to quality of people trying to off ramp sucking like war zones and stuff like that,
but. I think the bigger reason as to why Bitcoin. Is rallying translate to ETH and potentially other parts of crypto as well eventually? I just think this is not this now feels like more like a the start of a traditional cycle where Bitcoin rise 1st and then things follow suit. Because the the money coming into Bitcoin seems like it's outside of crypto right now. Yeah. I think I think as I said yesterday the the next 90 days I think they're going owns it and
then we can see after that. But it does feel like on the timeline yesterday everyone was in the same trade. Everyone was in the same trade if right and you've actually seen eh open interest rise over this period. People are shorting at this stage to like versus their Bitcoin longs and I can just see one day without really goes against what the market thinks. It just felt so consensus on the
timeline. Bitcoin was about to go to like 6070% dominance and you know as we know that the most expected stuff that happens. The other stuff on my time yesterday was pretty rific. We kind of go into the second bit of this but for Rd got annoyed at this last week but I don't know was it the death of citizens journalism you think last night the last 24 hours have been have been pretty
horrific. And I would say that right now my Twitter experience is not one which I'm enjoying and it's not just from the lack of like the style of content. I think it's the sorry like what's actually going on in the world. I think it's the style of content being written, like it's the debating and it's the lack of back in fact checking and just need to be first. Like we had a small taste of this.
What happened with Telegraph overnight and then we've had kind of another taste of it the last 24 hours. But how do you fix this? Is this is just the way that Twitter is going to go? There was some, yeah. I mean, Elon still focused on bots, but like this. This feels like now that everyone's being paid, everyone's being paid to be as quick and as sensationalist as possible. I think it's really hurting Twitter, if I'm honest. Frustrating, isn't it?
You just see. You either see a lot of fake news, or you see a lot of content that are clearly designed to. Create engagement Um. And especially with this whole like ability to create photos and videos from AI and deep fake and all that kind of stuff, you just don't even really know what's real out there anymore. And it's not like stuff. Citizen journalism that's posted
on Twitter is not regulated. Or people posting it maybe don't have a reputation to uphold compared to if it's like BBC News or the New York Post or whatever it is that's like. Um, posting something. So yeah, it's a bit like, I think it's a bit scary really. Like I try not to look at any of it, but. It's generally not to trust. Yeah, that's what I feel. I just feel a bit scary. Like, this isn't just your classic, you know, cultural wars. Like when you're in the middle
of, like actual wars. This can really have ramifications, I think. And I think we're very close to maybe some of that sort of stuff happening. So just be careful out there on the time we have to go into it too much. But I think there is a lot of misinformation on every single side of this at this point. So just take a breather whenever you see something online and just and just take some time to work out what's true and not or like just give it time for it to become more clear.
Because I think at the moment, you know, you will, you will read something and it will literally just tear your heart apart reading it. And then an hour later you realised that that wasn't true or or that was different or, you know, it was actually. I see it all the time. And this happened, this happened with Bitcoin, this happened with financial markets, has now happened with people's lives. And I think that's just something to be aware of all the
timeline. Is I mean you got you got the change in incentive structure right like with people getting paid to tweet like it can get addictive and you start to figure out what are the formulas that actually work for getting people to read your stuff, follow your stuff, comment on
your stuff. And I think it's a little at some level that incentive structure has always been there because in the past engagement farming is not new to monetization of Twitter like this was their long before Elon engagement farming like none of that is new, but I think at least before the Gold Star was just trying to build your followers and get more. Powers and stuff that was inflammatory, like sometimes it engagement firm, but it didn't
always work. Whereas right now I think people are just more focused on getting more views on their tweets and getting more comments because that's what ultimately gets them paid. So I do think like there I think at least the Twitter structure and I've seen it in NFT's. I remember there was a big narrative around how frank delegates like about somewhere around D gods.
When degats tanked from like 7 to 3/8, there was this narrative that they just did it for the royalties, which is like the dumbest thing you could ever say because you know, 2 days of royalties. Is never good for your long term inflow of capital for a company that has hired people. Like, it's ridiculous. But also the numbers that were being cited were completely wrong. Like people were literally just getting the numbers wrong. And I would go in and comment on this, make your data is
terrible. And they give me the shrug emoji, you know, it's like there isn't that like integrity where you're like, oh fuck, I gotta, I gotta go delete that tweet because I don't want to be the source of bad information. Like these guys are like that's kind of the game I'm in, you know. And I don't know. Again, I don't think this is necessarily new. I think this has been around for three or four or five.
Years, but I do feel like you're you're at the margin, you're seeing just kind of a change in incentive structure. Yeah, I think the incentive, I mean the incentives aren't even that big. Like it's not like everyone, I mean they were big at the start. I think everyone's seen a slight decrease in their amounts. But yeah, just don't know. That's what I feel like the timeline is right now. I think it's very, very tough. It's a tough dopamine choice to hit. It's a tough dopamine space.
Like, I mean I think I got like $50 last week and I went and spent like about like a 12 pack and a bottle of wine for an event I was going to and like there goes two weeks of work, you know? So I kind of stopped giving a shit about about like those Twitter inflows, but like in that, you know, for for people who are out there playing that game, though, I think it's real. Yeah, yeah, maybe. I think some people will get a few 1000 bucks, you know, it's
not nothing for sure. The big thing in NFT, well was this was this Yuga Labs CEO came out, Daniel Legre put out a big, big tweet thread about the future of Yuga Labs. I feel like this is not the first time I've seen things like this from the Unilabs team recently. Like they've definitely feel internally like they've lost their way. So there's a lot of this sort of commentary like we need to take it back. They obviously went through restructuring.
The long and short of that I felt like was they are really going to focus on other side. There was some talk about more focus on the IRL events and like tease that the fact that they will do an actual clubhouse at some stage, which I think is I've been saying for a long time, I think is really, really
important. But they also recognise that, you know, they haven't really done anything with me bits, and that some of the other bits that business have been have been under invested and just really cared about. I thought it was honest. I thought it was it was a, it was a fair reflection of what's been going on. But I I don't know, Did you come away from it feeling bullish that they'd be able to change it? I didn't know if the like the remedy was maybe what I would
have gone for. I don't know. I think it's, I think the thing that I think is positive about it is that the CEO, Dan and we had him on the show. I think he's acknowledged the situation that they're in. I think it's acknowledged how difficult it is to appease an NFT community that's very like. You know, demanding or angry or whatever it is and I think he's acknowledged that's a very tough environment. So you know sometimes for people to turn things around or improve or.
You know, pull some magic out the air. You have to just have an understanding or acknowledgement of the situation that you're in. And I think he gets it. And I think they get it as well like I do. I do genuinely believe that. I think they understand.
Some of the mistakes they've made or where they've gone wrong and where they can improve, so can they actually, you know, be successful in turning it around and doing well out of it, You know, well that will remain to be seen because it's a it's a much different they're trying to achieve now compared to when they just started out, but I think so far. They have made the right steps and I I actually like him.
I like he's he's a proper CEO and I know there's lots of like criticism or animosity to people who are coming into this space who are not native to the space. But I also think he hasn't come in saying like oh I'm like really smart. I know this this and this. I have all this experience so
I'm right. I think it's coming in saying like ohh shit I need to like understand the space and listen to you guys and maybe I can overlay that with my expertise and and try and get some success here so like. It's difficult to come away from that thing. Ohh, I'm really bullish. I'm really bearish, but I think it's, you know, moderate, modestly constructive. That I think they have an awareness of the situation and I think that's a starting point for for improvement in my opinion. Yeah.
What do you think, Sam? Man I have a lot of thoughts. I I think on the one hand there's kind of like this core problem right. Like which is that the way that Apes got to where they are was through kind of you know it's there guys like Pharaoh going on clubhouse and like making ape sounds into a clubhouse room and then you know then Gordon Goner dropping Fucket mutant Saturday and like the Founders going into the Discord and everyone like holy shit.
Like there was this whole vibe that got apes to where they are and then you know, gets you get to, you, got to 144, whatever. To a peak is also waiting for eight point waiting for other deed. You you know you did a $4 billion valuation fundraise and then you bring in a team that's trying to turn that into a real business.
The problem, the problem is like what got you here was something just so different and now you have this these huge shoes to fill and you're trying to shoehorn it with something that may or may not work. And I think, I just think that's a monumental task for for someone to come into what I thought was really interesting about this tweet.
About the tweet was like the whole thing had such as Co feeling like it was very kind of like Cos and then at the then like then the second tweet was such a was such a degen tweet it was like PS also clubhouse it was like I'm going to give you a I mean that reminded me of like fucking mutant Saturday. It's like just like build this anticipation, give you something that like is not explained that has mystery that's like so kind of like the gas that fuels NFT's.
And it I just thought was so funny how you had those two tweets side by side. The third thing I say about me, but I was kind of bummed about the music comment just cause Danny Green is like a very good friend of mine. I went to college with him and you know we we go back 20 years and he got let go like 3 days ago. So I was a little bit bomb that like a couple days after Danny got let go, there was a comment that's like this has been the
failure or something like that. Because you know, I know, I know Danny's putting his heart and soul into it. And to have someone like come build up, you know, what was a larva Labs AirDrop and just you know, 20,000 NFT's in this market and something big is very hard. So I was a little disappointed by that.
But that's just like a personal thing and probably like Unrelated and me, just like kind of bringing my more players into it. I think they said, you know that that me bits had just been like they haven't flourished it, but I thought the comments around crypto punks was maybe even more interesting. Like you said, the relationship between function and you go when I joined was, I have to say, strained. What we continually heard was that you didn't care, but at the same time there's a strong
desire to be left alone. Like, what do you think happens with that brand going forward? Like, do you think that stays with Yuga Labs? I can imagine that then they're even selling that down the line. Like it does feel like a slightly poisoned chalice of an IP for them to have, because it feels as though it's still not. They're not quite accepted by the punks and I saw some well known punks even discussing that yesterday, as well as with the medias like so Jito I think came
out and said. Made some, you know, not disparaging, but like basically saying, you know. It doesn't know how the feature of me, but it's just gonna go. It's always felt like a weird combination at some level and they don't get paid for crypto. I mean they they at least have you know presume I mean royalties don't exist anymore but on crypto punks it's always 0%. They just own a few hundred of them which is their full
exposure. I mean it it always kind of felt like a weird combination at some level when they bought him but they bought him at such a different time, that strained relationship he was talking about.
Like I've seen that from the start like right when they bought him you had a bunch of like OG crypto punks who were saying like yeah like you know and Noah when Noah joined the first representative for you to talk about crypto punks he, I remember we were at a breakfast for crypto punks and Gordon was there and guard was there and he got on a on a on a table and said we're not going to do anything with crypto books.
You know we're not in the famous line was we're not going to give you lunch boxes and everyone's kind of like you know and some people love that. People love that because they like. And I was kind of like I wouldn't mind getting some point if you if you got a little bit extra around but I'd totally be down with that. But you know they're always kind of was that conflict within of like some people were like well maybe you can you know, I don't
know. Like I still haven't figured out what like do something means even in the NFT space and certainly not for something like punks. It's it's just kind of a weird word that we throw around. And I, you know and I don't even know what like the best examples of people doing something with the PFP project have been in the past. But I agree with you though I wouldn't be surprised if if this is. I mean, I certainly don't think this is like a permanent
relationship. Although Natalie Stone, but they brought in has been really active and I think she's doing all she can do. She's like get content out there like make more people aware of the crypto punk story, like talk about crypto punks owners talk about the history like that's the best thing punks have like just and I do think that you go like they're hiring one or two people to do that. They're saying this is our contribution, it's not going
over the top and I don't know. I think that's I I kind of take my hat off to it. I don't think it's been it's. I think it's hard to frame it as negative, although some people do. Yeah, I think they put it to what what what They are blocked team have basically done with squiggles. They've just got to try and make it feel like as much as possible, put it in as many places as possible, but at the same time they're not making any
money from it clearly. And they seemingly are going to piss off their community whenever they try to do anything so. It is a is a peculiar one that like I can see that maybe not same with you forever, but I don't know who would buy it because you don't ever buy it if you had some form of commercial need for it, right? I feel like you could bought it so that they would be seen as #1 and that kind of now cements them. But other than that, I don't really advise Parks would you
buy when they bought them. It was also like, first of all there was this huge punk versus thing going on at the time and were worth more than punks. And like, one of the big narratives was like, well, now punks will never be worth more than apes because you go will always make sure that apes are #1. Like, that was one of the big narratives going on back then. Like, also Matt and John from Larva Labs, like, just didn't want to run a big company.
Like, I think they were uncomfortable with how many. I talked to Matt about this once. He's like, I like, couldn't sleep at night. I had too many punks on my Ledger. Like it just it just like, I couldn't like it. Just it was not what I was meant to do. So for him to get rid of, like, you know, people were going after them for V1 punks. People had gone after them about IP nonstop. People were selling and slamming
the door on the way out. And John, just like this is just like our project like this is not what we bargained for. So but yeah, it was such a different time back then. You know apes were worth like 7080 E Punk Floors like 50 E the you know everything. Things have changed so much since then. They do own 4 or 500 of them like that. That was like that's the really only kind of financial exposure is the fact that like Yuga got all of Matt and John's punks other than 10.
So they do have that financial exposure. Yeah, that's true. They do own them. I wonder what happens if they just sell them. How would they ever monetize them if? I'm not really sure. I think with that thing you just gotta get on like a plan. Like people always talk about how this project, this idea of owning your own NFTS doesn't work because people fudge you when you sell. I think like you just say, hey guys, on the 15th of every month we're going to list one at the floor.
Like that's not us funding. This is just, that's the only way we can afford to pay Natalie to work here. Like I I feel like that there are ways you could just throw this system like you know the the market can digest a few every month like you don't have to. It doesn't have to be this this huge thing if that's the business model that like you're stuck. Yeah, I mean. Good thing we don't own loads of rec guys then, huh? Hey, we have Are you guys doing the. I prefer your approach.
We have a museum coming. We have a a right guy gallery. Coming. Well, the Hell's Who else? Who the Hell's gonna accept a rec guy museum? Which city? We put in that in. We're just going to moments like, hey, we've got over the last five years we've acquired 5332 rec guys, here you go. Maybe they bought him. I think he'd get somebody friendly inside, maybe donate a few to get a little taste, and then look up a wing, a great guy wing, when he goes to 10,000.
Right. The other thing that's going on in the crypto NFT space is what's going on in Reddit. So, Reddit spin. Making a few different forays into crypto they. Its manatees, the avatars, which they continue to sell pretty well. They also had these community points tokens, which I think ran all the way up to about $50 million market cap. One of them, the most famous ones were moon and brick. Um, they you would get them. It was basically seen as part ownership of your. Subreddit.
Video channel and it was kind of in the wake of all the Wall Street bets stuff. So each different subreddit had its own token and obviously the most famous for these moon and brick ones. They said yesterday that they are shutting this down. They said they were going to get rid of all the community points. They were. They were on arbitrium. They could be redeemed for all these different things. But they basically said due to regulatory uncertainty, they're going to have to shut them down.
Both of these tokens, I'll bring them up, but they think they dropped about 90% overnight. And this wasn't just some tiny token like these were. These were decently priced. Yeah. So um. This moon token. Was down 80, well, yeah, 82%. Ohh. Fuck. Have you got a market cap that peaked, that peaked in August at $54 million? And now it's all the way down to $3,000,000. So big, big moves.
The other one was called Brick, and I forget which subreddits these refer to, but I think one of them is the Wall Street Bets subreddit, and one of them is another one. Yeah, that one's down to. 47 1/2% and that one peaked at God. Both peaked at around 50 million. Wow. What do you think? Like this this is? I mean, we're trying to get the whole Reddit community on board with crypto. This is kind of wild, I think. Um. And obviously caused a lot of pain.
So yeah, what you guys take on this? What my initial reaction is what will happen to the NFT's they have as well? Will that? Will they just stand still and just the tokens are worried about or? I think they were worried about the tokens being deemed security security because they were given in response for doing things and you could redeem them for.
Or different parks, essentially on Reddit, the actual avatars themselves haven't really moved because they're seen as just avatar trading or owning avatars. But this kind of points to the SEC getting involved, saving everyone's bags, and then this sort of stuff happens. Now arguably you could say that Reddit shouldn't have been selling tokens like maybe like this in the 1st place, but.
I don't know, like you see all this other all these other tokens out there, but like football clubs and then you see stuff like this and it feels not too dissimilar. Um, this is kind of a wild, a wild move. I think there's a little, like, I think every token is taking, especially in the US is taking some regulatory risk. And I think that there's a little bit of a FAFO mindset to it. Like let's just, you know, fuck around and find out, let's see what happens, right.
And it gets risky when you deal with big real corporations though you like. And I think that's like it works like when you're something like Blur, you know, you're starting up, you're like, let's push it, let's go. This is our core business. This drives the entire thing.
Like let's, you know, let's make people check a box that says they're not the US. But when you're coming like Reddit, which probably has some lawyers who just got out of a law firm and like, you know, and are probably more in risk aversion mode, that risk becomes bigger and a much bigger business is on the line. I have no idea.
I mean this like, you know, I worked at Uber for eight years and I continue to think the biggest competitive advantage Uber had was our willingness to break the law. And like that was the only way we were able to disrupt an industry that had been the same for 60 years. But if you don't have lawyers who are willing to do that, you can't do it. And. And I feel like I could see that there was always this tension
between legal and the business. And I could see where in a place like Reddit they're like, is this worth when this is such a subset of our business, is this worth it for the for the big ending? And I have no idea. They mentioned regulatory kind of in their quotes though. So that's kind of what made me, made me ask about that. I mean, I mean this was a thing when it asked than $1,000,000
market cap. I mean these things, these things are trading, it's only really picked up let's say in February of this year and it was about $1,000,000 market cap for a long, long time. It was only during August that it just went absolutely fucking wild. So they may have just been interested 50X. So they met during that whole meme coin season. So they may have just decided they didn't want to have the headache. It was OK when it was worth barely anything. But now?
It just left like a big, a big risk for them. I think that's what we can imagine. Because I agree like, yeah, you need to sometimes you need to break the law to win things as a big corporation. Regulatory capture is a real thing. So I think. I I thought it was good to see all these big, big social media giants kind of moving into crypto. We've now seen Reddit kind of moved back. Instagram kind of retrace everything, right? Matter seems to be kind of going
forward still. On maybe not on Facebook, but some of their other brands. Not Instagram or Facebook really. But it feels like we're still going ahead with their metaverse plans. Twitter Twitter still seems to be pretty crypto friendly or heading that way. So it feels like we're kind of all our eggs are in Twitter basket this time. And I guess Telegram, we called Telegram social media. Is that just like a messaging app?
Telegram. I feel like it's all in at the moment on crypto, but that's it. Telegram and Twitter is all we have left. It feels like everyone else is gonna. It's gonna leave us for the time being. The final topic today was what we've been seeing with Pokémon cards. So we've spoken about this so many times, but real world assets moving on blockchain, they sold another 50 grand of Pokémon cards in I think it was a minute or something crazy like that. And they've been doing this
fairly regularly recently. Like this isn't the first time that they've done one of these sales. I think this is the biggest one they've done. Courtyard is another company they've. They actually been around for a while. I wasn't actually aware of that until I checked them out, but I think we've actually been around for over a year now. Yeah, they joined September 2021. So they joined at the end of the of the bull market and then they've moved into this tokenizing of Pokémon cards on
blockchain. This is easy to understand. I can explain this to all of my friends. Um, all they need to do is set up a crypto wallet to start trading on it. This is the sort of stuff that I think could could be the like the foothills of of getting people back on blockchain. Like it's much more difficult when he tells them to buy like monkey bit jpegs, but when it's just. You know, it's actually just trading different. Um. Different Pokémon cards. I think I I can get it.
What do you guys think of? It makes a lot of sense, I think. Um. Don't really. There's not really. I don't know what else to say about it. There's not really anything particular or specific to get excited about. In this contained context I think, but I guess you can expand this to other like in real life collectables et cetera. But it's also not really anything new as it. Well, Sammy says there are 53 billion Pokémon cards. Only 696 K have been graded so far, and 2.3 of those are
unchanged. There's 53 billion Pokémon cards. I was like, what the fuck? I mean, I know I have some back at my house. They are, they are terrible. They're like the elements to get. I forget how to even play the Pokémon Card game, but there were definitely some crap cards that used to have. Lost mental I think it's interesting. I'm like. I see pros and cons like. I I think like the tokenization of things like I think the best use cases are trustless use
cases. I think like that like that's you know, when things are trust like that that's kind of the innovation that blockchain brings. None of this is trustless, right? You have to count on a security team to guard the card. You have to count on the people in the back end to not be fraudulent. You have to count on the gradings to be like there are all sorts of aspects you have to count on the company not to go bankrupt that's doing the escrow
services. So I like, I don't know if blockchain in itself and the downsides to blockchain, the biggest one I see is just the amount of scams that we see in our space where people get things robbed. I think like you insert some sort of like this feels like something where almost a centralised platform that has more insurance, that has more fraud protection might be a better kind of environment than a blockchain based ecosystem.
But you know, but the good thing about blockchain is we already have so many users and you have so many people who are excited to be part of this ecosystem and you have a global user base and people who want to prove out these content, these use cases. So you just get massive user bases.
Whereas if I were to go start like a web two platform that allowed people to trade shares and loans on this stuff like where I wouldn't where I would provide the insurance and the fraud protection and stuff like that. You know you you'd have to spend millions or 10s of millions of dollars on marketing to get your user base which I I feel like that's the biggest advantage blockchain brings.
It's just a user base that's not already here but not only already here but very excited to to retweet Cyrus to prove this stuff right and suddenly you actually just have a huge marketplace whereas you know, so I don't know I see kind of pros and cons. I I feel like there's like an 80% fit with just a little bit off because there is a whole lot of trust you have to place in whoever these escrow agents are, whoever does the charity to whoever is evaluating this
stuff. And that's like human to human trust. Yeah, that's true. Like it's this is not trustless in the same way that you know. You trade a monkey JPEG and you can prove it. Prove authenticity. You can prove provenance. There is some level of trust that somebody at this escrow house has decided that yes, it's the real deal and is tracking all the different transfers correctly. So it's trust. In a closed environment, let's say, I do think there's money to be made.
They're like if you set up one of the escrow services, it feels like that could be a trend. Is that the trend here? We should all be setting up our own escrow services, open up warehouses in London and and claiming that we do all the provenance stuff. It feels like that could be the trend if people really get behind all this stuff. I watch out for that scam for sure.
Like the dude who's putting new escrow rookie baseball card lone lone it on arcades sent me 88 and I'll send you 85 tomorrow. And it's backed by a piece of cardboard. I bet that I feel like this. The scammers are the ones who always like, show us where the flaws are. So. I mean, I just came up with the idea, so maybe maybe you're going to see a scam from me
pretty soon, like. Pretty sure Gary Vee was chatting about this like he was like, I'm open up all these warehouses in New York and then I just haven't heard from Gabby in three years. So. But I do think there's a there's something to be said about physical locations which track provenance if this stuff does pick up with watches, with wine with. With Pokémon cards, all these collectibles, and there's going to be all these services that make money off the back of it.
Although I can imagine there's gonna be some hilariously massive scams when people realise that, yeah, I tried to redeem my. Whatever is Grade 9 Charizard and then end up getting the Jigglypuff. I read the book number go up. It's like the latest like Carly
Reilly had the author. It's just the latest very like cynical book about the space and one of the things one of the staff, I I don't remember the exact quote otherwise I would tweet it. But it was something that the effect of the amount of money that has been stolen from people in crypto is more than every bank robbery in the entire world. Times 100 per year, you know? It's like absolutely mind boggling the like, you know, and I, it's such a vulnerability in this space and like what?
So anytime people bring things on chain, I'm like, you realise you're opening up yourself to like the greatest that system that exists in the planet right now. It's very true. I think it's in the billions for sure. So far. I think if you're going to defile ARMA, they have a total value stolen metric and it's something like 5 trillion. Billions. Uh, stolen so far. Which is, yeah, it's a pretty wild wild stat. It's true to accept. People who?
Who claimed that we that we have this perfect system like we don't like? It's funny, I remember I was I was out with a couple of friends when that person put in and it's still unknown. Like I think it seems like more and more that cryptos that was spent 1050 Ethan. Like it increasingly feels like it increasingly feels like it was kind of money laundered money because the buyer and seller had been through tornado and stuff like that.
But before we knew that I was like there have, I have seen someone sell what was at the time a $300.00 crypto or $500 crypto punk for 5.555 E because they were European and they mistook the comma for the period and like you know and it got, you know they listed it for 5.55 and it was worth 555. Like, I that stuff does happen. I was with these friends one of like very senior business guys like well, can't they do anything about it Like like well like So what are they gonna do?
I'm like not like there is no police officer. That shit is in some other country right now and there is absolutely nothing you can do. I would like to the real world. That's just so, like, weird. I was speaking to Archive founder Ben Cowley's. Come on the Show a few times. I We used to trade. All day, right? Like hundreds of trades, thousands of trades each day you would probably make a mistake on. One in every hundred threads. Right.
And then needed to be a way that the trades actually wouldn't settle. We had this thing of delayed settlement. So it would take three days for a trade to settle. So you could still in those three days normally like? Prove that there was an error. The issue with these immutable blocked is that like there is no room for human error, there is just none, right? And I know from you would be amazed how many mistakes are made on a daily basis in trad file.
You might think it's all perfectly done. It is a shit. Show amount of errors that get done on trade or we booked that wrong or that's been inputted wrong and then it gets changed and we have they have whole systems they employ people. Look through every trade just for those errors and even then they get, they get found out to
be wrong. So the idea that we're going to move these all of trad file onto blockchain, like they're going to be shitting themselves because there's no room for errors, that sort of stuff happens or we have to have delayed settlement in some way that we have to say that the trade isn't actually put on the blockchain for three days or something like that. That's the only way I can
imagine it happening. Yeah. I mean my one of my close friends, like back in the Crypto Punk bowl, like I was, I bought a punk and he kind of was like got into it. He decided to buy one and he lost it within a week, hundreds of thousands of dollars. So that's and this is a smart guy. This guy was a very senior guy, Uber just, you know, he was a
big Bitcoin guy. But he like, saw something about something crypto punk owners got, I got, you know, you went to that website and signed away his bum. Yeah, we had someone who minted like 3000 Rep guys and was like, Oh my God, I minted them all. I got them like really cheap as well. And we were like, no, man. Sorry. He it was. Who was that guy? Yeah. Was it? Recognised? It was something else. Record was a free mint like he must. He was something like, yeah.
Because we definitely brought in a bunch of traps like people, just because we knew them when we came on. And yeah, I think, I think the about 20 to 30% of them were dead within a week. They lost everything. I have the same thing. I got the head of the museum here, the Art Museum, bought an NFT. We would always talk about 1:00 and also, you know, signed it away within 48 hours and this guy was like this.
Guys like a museum guide, an expense of me, like, I don't know, I've had enough experience. I've had three normally friends who've done this, and these are not Dum Dums like these are like it's just it's a very difficult environment. Yeah, yeah, Stay safe out there. Stay safe in many ways I think has been the theme of this show, right. We're gonna end it there. We have the rec show later today in London. We're also doing Brett radio in an hour with Crypto ISO, so I'm
going to check that out. This has been. Was it by cracking NFT? Go check out their min, go check out cracker.com rug radio for everything on them. We have them on the show tomorrow for a longer segment I think for rock and reggae. Gonna lead that all the way from Austin where they could be at the GP. All right. Thanks again and yesterday. Crypto ISO is our guest today. We've had some like we've had some OG traders, we've had some traders on recently.
Last week we had Blood Shiller who's like I think he's really good and then we got this week. So we'll be degens who are chart following. I think we're going to see a lot more Bitcoin today. All right, guys. Well, yeah, we'll see you again tomorrow. And thanks everyone for.