Weekly roundup 05/31/24 (Gemini Earn, Salame sentenced, PYUSD on Sol) (EP.531)
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Bright down by bad mortgage investments, leman, which has twenty five thousand employs.

will be liquid, real government loans. American international group A I G eighty five billion dollars stabilized Fanny. And friday night, the two mortgage giants that .

have been threatened by the housing crisis, sAiling economy in new.

easy to put, a couple trillion dollars, and all the, some people started to worried. So out of this worry, we have something called the IT coin, coin.

Welcome to on the brink com.

that walsh and the subsoil is brought .

by coin metrics. And here is the metrics minute. For today's matrix minute.

we're looking at the impact of a therefore D F. approvals. The increased odds of either have approvals this week triggered a twenty six percent surge in the therm Price, along with significant gains for peppi unswathed ondo from a fifty percent discount as a year ago, syria's Grace sale trust eth e uh.

The Price converted within one point five percent of the nav, with twenty percent of this reduction occurred over a span of five days. The east futures open interest had a record high of fifteen billion, with finance contributing the largest share, currently twenty seven percent of the total these eat supplies staked, while seventy three percent remains in smart contracts and E. S. With a large portion of eat supply locked up, a reduction in available supply could amlie y the Price impact of the etf. That's your metrix minute.

right? So we're recordings this in Austin, texas consensus.

It's always the conference weeks where on the brink becomes very tenuous ent difficult to record.

But yeah, I mean, we're recording this pretty early with .

the coin center dinner last night. I said both or work for the war, but is very good dinner.

I was a lot of fun. They do a great job with queen center dinner. I think that's my favorite event of the year.

Um they just do a great job. Airforce, really good speech. Really enjoyed at tomeo. What a speech.

Tom, I get delivered some spirit reMarks also. He was on the podcast last week, so checked that episode.

Anytime you can start a speech by saying gary gangling lor socks as your first words, you're gonna crash IT.

He bellowed that at full volume and everyone went wild. This is great .

yes just a great start to a speech and then um really a profoundly good message I think for is really good message is great to see a lot .

of podcasting listers too yeah we got some a number of comments on the show last night um forget me forgetting your name but someone came up to me and said that that he listens to a podcast to help them fall asleep because I have a monitoring .

cypros hic .

voice but he actually .

said that yeah I back end the component I thought a little bit .

back and IT tam lang barrie said that this podcast is his Green juice. I don't know if that was an anal like an analogy, or if he, mike, screen juice while listening the podcast. So he said something that .

effect is you take that as a component not really sure what that means but yeah that .

as comment yeah IT was a good dinner. Ten years of coin center, they were celebrating congrats on ten years. Pretty much been the same team for ten years. But remarkable. They are ones vy and they punched out their weight consistently .

yeah so it's really great to have that team together for ten years, i'll think in that too. Um just a very mission ed driven crowd over there.

A lot of the people in that room have also been doing crypto for a decade now, which is pretty remarkable. I mean, it's very cruel. I hats off anyone that can do cropt up for ten years yeah um .

I would take a lot more than uplifting crowd this year than IT was last year. Last year we're kind of done in the dumps. There is a magician as the is a key speaker last year, this year we got this last year is kind of like, k, you guys are a joke. And here's the magicians gonna tell some jokes about F, T, X.

yeah. Infamously, last year, there is a magician slash clown. And I think the message was, you or all closes.

Frankly.

wasn't received that well because we were all hurried a little bit too. And I was a tough time a year ago and yeah was now back.

Think we are back. Just the political your shift here in the past couple of weeks is people have really internalize that and optimistic about IT. A couple people last me last night, if i'd ever heard of sab bon twenty one and is kind of I didn't get the joke, was like, yeah the law that Carry cancellable decided to pass by himself. They're come just joking.

I listen to the body. You practically invented that one, two, one. Yeah, but it's gone now actually that's that's a good question. Is biden going to veto IT the overturn? So if he doesn't .

do anything by june third, I believe, which is monday, IT just goes away. If he vetoes IT, things are going to get really ugly for democrats in the senate races.

Does he have to sign IT? Or if he doesn't sign IT, the bill passes.

If he does not sign n IT in congresses in session, the bill passes.

Really a little bit of piece of Isaac knowledge tried the procedure of a if .

congress is not in cession, he could exercise a pocket veto. But I think that they would just put congress insertion to pass IT since I by partisan.

So yeah, i'm actually starting to think that this one is gone to coming to effect feel good .

about and at that point yeah that point you need to um you need to imagine there's kind of a scramble going on at these bags. You know a lot of them had built out some custody infrastructure, but they actually have the teams to push these products out. How long would you take you bony and state street to get custody product up and running?

Yeah, so that was kind of a story. They had started in anticipation of being able to do this, and then they had to follow those effort. S in president, they're turning those teams back on again now yeah.

you might want to refresh some of that software. Hopefully, IT still works.

So the other bindman thing is that they are now reaching out to key industry figures to get feedback, I guess, on their new crypto to strategy. Parents like cypher down now 嗯 so have they have favor？ Um I I told myself after I had some very bad meetings with democratic members of congress and I sword myself that day that I would never talk to a democrat where someone in the bite madmen ever got some are honestly not how to take the meeting. They haven't reached out to be clear I think they know .

not to do you remember when the bad madmen reached data and we spoke to them um about stable coins and he was I think the undertone was isn't this all a scam? And I just felt I was a waste of our time. This was years ago.

Yeah, i've had a few those and I just never went well. I had someone energy, someone stable coin socket treasury talk to certain key members of congress and yeah, I mean, I decided that I would leave the work of talking to basically our opposition, the people they want to underline the industry. Other more magnanimous people that are have more patients. It's just not something here.

I will I will talk to them if they make some changes. I would say first, I can't need to see some proof points.

I guess the question is, what would you ask would say they come to you to bullata were right, wiping the sleep clean. We're here to listen to you. The crypto industry, we're gona make wholesale changes. What would be your ask?

Uh, changes at the S. C, C. So, new leadership at the S.

C C. New leadership at the F. D. S. C. Uh, I have this crazy concept that start up should be able to get bank accounts. It's kind of conflicts with the biden administration view. Um so I think and the regulation by enforcement, drop the lawsuits against the stallard companies of the industry, pass the stable coin bill, pass the market structure bill, makes up one twenty one, go away income up publicly and say that the .

americans have the right to self custody. Yeah I mean it's true. The deal j the the case against severine particular, I think through a lot of things into disarray as well um in terms of cola studio systems. So yeah, they've work to do if they want to winter favor. I think .

election betting odds as of this morning, trump fifty three point five percent by ten thirty eight point one percent. There is a wholesale panic going on right now.

I'm actually surprised it's that close because you look at the polls in the background states the states like a minnesota, Virginia that are in play right now. So it's the polls went imply its last close, then the election ids, simply the election .

ids are also saying that Michelle obama is polling in third place right now ahead of ark. I mean.

I kind of buy IT like we'll see how there's a debate slated for what next week yeah and we'll see how biden does but i'm still not ruling out a convention surprise and a new candidate especially by on farms in the debate yeah .

it's likely right. I think that that could very well happen. alright. So with a little bit of a destroy ted week, we will go probably a little bit shorter this week.

But once we start out with some deals of the week, uh philex pogo in our portfolio here, um a stable conroy tance business. Uh really great team here. They raised fifteen point five million dollars of LED by catholic ventures participation from switch age twenty, macao library and others. Congrats to the philax pogo team.

Our fascinating business uses a whats up chat interface to facilties remittances. And of course, the back and settlement occurs on stable coins. I mean, really shows the power of the sort of natively global, highly integrated stable coin market.

And that is in a good example of business that those ideas have been around for decade and IT just didn't work initially. I think there wasn't a critical massive exchange infrastructure stable coin. TTS weren't liquid and off against fiat pairs today. IT seems to be working is a great example of how you get these inflection points when infrastructure just hits these key development milestones.

So that's what these a lot of these businesses were attempted in the early days using bitcoin. Um and I just didn't work know from a technology perspective as well as a liquidity perspective, but income stable coins .

next up with another cast island deal. This is the bitch coin staking protocol bablon found IT by David say there were seventy million in a funding round LED by with participation from a number of funds, including us.

Congress, to the bad on him, really excited about that. Next one up is coin flow. This is a web three payments company that raised two point two five million in seed funding from C M T D, C G. Jump, a draper dragon and recipes.

Then we have the colombian crypt, or currency alterative. They were raise three million in a seed round, let by coin base and multicolored.

Then a switchboard, which is an oracle developer, there is seven point five million. And seriously, funding from try break away, let us breed capital stock wire and others.

Next up we have the A I infrastructure project ion at there is ten million in a seat round from bite trade, maraniss tus, mental evm and brian Johnson.

Brian Johnson is that i'm trying to look forever again.

Yeah I mean, there's a few brian Johnson son, but the langevin one is one. I don't know if that's the same one.

but he is to be different .

bright to common IT, I think.

And then we have parallel, which is a permissionless abstraction service for level guarantee hardwork ordination, uh, that just rolls off the tongue. Uh, raised four million dollars from protocol labs for sight ventures and others.

Next up we have. And then there, R W, A stable could ensures the issue. There is four million in a seat round from mechanism capital, circle ventures, frax finance and others and lastly .

we have no ops um which is a node infrastructure company that raised five million dollars from L N D bit scale double peak. And finally those are the deals of the week.

On the news front, IT was a lighter week. The political bullets has settled down. As we await the fit of these bills, we see what happens with sab one to one campaign rumble zon trumps now accepting crypto. I think we are coin base commerce, so no major changes on the political front this week.

What do you make of the a thorium etf developments here? Doesn't seem like these swans are going to come in at time soon. Any prediction on when they're actually starts a trade?

Yeah, that's a good question. And also, I still have a bet with Justin drake for taxing cube about this. So, uh, I don't know, does joy I win the bed? If the of still alive today, I think I might still win the bed.

I think you owe him a toxin cube. Are you going to get IT graved?

Yeah, I mean, I suppose they have to, but take us technically. I won the bat right.

Well, now they're got to prove. I mean, the sixteen before I ve got a proof, but they haven't been formally trading. Yeah.

alright. Here's my other bone to pick with prediction Marks. So as we all know, I was mentis ed this week, in fact, one fight today.

And look, i'm actually much more sympathetic to David than others are. So know he broke his reb with about a week to go, and we could line up a replacement. And a lot of people offered to fight me, but the names offered were of two headed oris.

One, people are actually trained fighters that would murder me, keep mind, only three months of training. And then people that had absolutely no experience and decided they didn't want to fight. After thinking about IT for a day or so.

So there is no unsuitable which IT makes sense. The whole fight was arranged between mean, David, because we were the same size and experience. So that's why was a good match.

Here's what I want talk about pro am disappointed. I saw a lot of people working t shirts of my face on IT, which was very hard warming Cosmos. I read in tim, he was wearing A T .

shirt of .

my face on IT. Wow, wow. I'm very, my heart is glazed by the level of support, truly.

And i'll probably be back and i'll fight at some point. So Polly market, there is a big Polly market and I was a favourite. There was about ninety thousand years liquidity on the party market.

The market resolved in a weird way. So yeah the the draw entry in the fight, which was treating IT, I think eight cents on the dollar paid out. So if you had a draw bet you got paid out at more than tonics. If you bet on me, you lost yeah because .

that doesn't seem the there.

I think people should just got their money back.

A lot of people were encouraging you to just walk into the ring and just accept a Victory so that they could resolve to a neuro win.

Yeah, I I want to see, feel bad about that. I don't control Polly market, but I feel bad that the people have backed me on their lost. Even though many are saying i'm the moral Victor here, many are saying .

that I do feel bad. I think you can expect David to go and t with a broken up.

I, yeah, there are many conspiracies about the rib. To be clear, I believe that he broke the rib. And I know for a fact you can't fight with a broken rib.

There's no way you can do IT now wouldn't be safe at all. So we, I have been offered a new fight. So it's quite possible that hofman versus Carter, that story is not over IT may well still happen. Have you guys got about taking .

up something else like maybe you guys could train up in chest or something like that and just have a big chest match? Just seems like that would be more you are guys is speed yeah.

I mean, I don't think you y're one of us is cut out for the flight game to be hours for the ill. It's I mean, I don't think anyone that's not a professional should fight. Frankly, I IT should not be. The preview of them is certainly not A M A maston le fight. We told .

that maybe with like twenty and globs or something yeah .

so that's basically my view is if you are an amateur and you have less than a years training, you should not under any circumstances that without headgear and with four on some of my gloves because the small gloves mean there's much higher odds of a knock out basically.

So if you are going to do a charity fight, you should do IT with sixteen ounce globs that should be boxing and um yeah so that tire should be, Frankly, that kind of my lesson that i've learned throughout this whole process. I know that game matters should fight. Critical nerds should certainly not fight. Leave to the professionals. You know.

it's definitely all anyone's talking about done here. It's that and it's, hey, what you think Carry gangster or or next job is going to be to think M, I, T, is gna rehire him. It's hofman. Versus Carter and against our speculation.

there is a great deal of disappointment in Austin taxes over the lack of the fight. I'm still going. I'll be there.

Joe rogan gna be there now. currently. I was very excited when I found out, yeah, that was my chance to impress joe.

I mean, I might still going to meet. I was gna propose that he finally brings a cypher person on the show. I has even done a crypto show.

I don't think so. I mean, that would be nice to get someone on the show attack about what's going on just in the political landscape.

right? Yeah, I feel like I think focus is the main character right now. There I say so you'd be great .

on the show I yeah .

I think why I would do good job um I my days of trying to appear on the big podcast behind me, i'm retired from that aspect so you went on like I would give in a sollum yeah twenty and twenty on five years ago I .

think wow, those five years ago .

yeah there was a very different time.

right? Well, let's open into some news here. Uh, this was an interesting one. So there was a company called a similar scientific which develops an arterial blood flow product. IT has but a they had about a hundred million dollar market cap.

They came out on tuesday and said that they've bought forty million dollars worth of bitcoin and that they've adopted bitcoin as their new primary treasury asset. So taking a page out of the microstrip gy playbook, of course, the stock went crazy. The market cap is basically like doubled on this news. Um I is this a trend?

why? okay. But explain this to me. Why would the stark double if you bark backup in? I mean, shouldn't IT then just start to trade more in line with bitcoin? I know you've added volatility to the stark, but you haven't fundamentally changed anything.

It's kind of like turning IT into a main stock in some capacity. And maybe there's a view that these days are just onna take out dead by backhoe like microstrip has. I I mean, the result, I guess there is .

a playboy yeah I mean, with microstrip gy worked because they were buying bitcoin at a good time to buy the coin. I mean, they started buying bitcoin when I was trading at something like four thousand thousand hours .

right in twenty there in a pretty good level.

Yeah so I guess there is some there um there is a paper that needs to be written here about how companies can improve their fundamentals by engaging in melik activity, which I guess, lois, a cosy capital maybe is good in my charity explanation there.

Well, so that was an interesting the start of the week and then, you know, this was another one I feel like we talk about this month oxe thing every two, two, three months here. So the month koch's estate moved one hundred and forty thousand big one um and people kind of start to panic. Guess this happened on sunday night or monday night and IT seems like they did not actually pay out.

This final pay out is apparently happening by october thirty first twenty twenty four. Um market went down almost immediately. Think the view is, hey, these things are getting get sold. But like we've said on this podcast, ast in the past, if you wanted to sell your mom dox claim, you've had many, many years to do IT. Uh, and so I I just think a lot of the holders of these claims right now a long term oriented, there's a lot of S P V capital in this thing and a lot of these S P V S are structured with income distributions where the underlying investors in the S P V just want the bet coin. So I think this is kind of a non event.

It's an interesting thought experiment because, okay, so this traces back to twenty fourteen and the peak Price of bitcoin at that point was eleven hundred dollars, I think, right? And these people are getting fifteen cents on the dollar back in big coin terms, right? Something close to that, yes, but bitcoin is now trading at sixty, whatever, sixty eight thousand hours. So in feat terms, they actually did great, right? Even though there do you think that a lot of these forced ten year bitcoin holders, even though the quantity bitcoin went down, they actually outperformed what they would have otherwise done by being forest solders, a background for the duration .

serious saying that they would assad IT.

Yeah, there are some number of folks that would have just sold in excited and instead, thanks to milk and japan's very long bk crutty process that actually had a Better outcome even though they lost eighty five cents on the dollar of the big coin.

I'm sure there is a bunch of holders like that, but there's also folks that probably would have just, you know, held onto the big one forever. So I don't think anyone is really thills, but they were locked up here. But again, you weren't really locked up.

There is an active claims marketplace here. Fortress was actively buying these things since in the early time. So you really could have gone out of this if you wanted to.

So speaking of the states, a germany earn was able to return two point one billion of the joash ts in kind. And this was actually great outcome for creditors earn. Creditors got everything back in the gash terms. So they got the benefit, the appreciation from whatever I said was they had in earned. Yes.

really good outcome here. So you have to tip your hat to the german team for making this happen. So it's basically a full recover here. German, I actually put in some money themselves to make to make good on IT. So this is probably the best outcome have seen in one of these bankrupts.

Yeah, IT really hurts. Off to the to the games team. I was able to talk to a few folks over their germany yesterday and they were thrown about IT. I mean, IT was a bit of an ordeal, Frankly, over over the last two years. So well, i'm.

So uh, in F T X news, former F T X digits markets coc E O ryan salem a he is sentenced to seven point five years in prison for this campaign finance violation. So, uh, salem was the person that was donating a lot of a capital to the republican side of the I O. Sam was making all these by in and by annihilate contributions.

The sentencing guideline here is up to ten years, but the prosecution asked for, I believe, five to seven years. And he actually got more than what the prosecution was recommended. I was really, really surprised at this.

I was shocked. He's also still has accessed twitter account and he's tweet plaintively. Now it's actually all very depressing, Frankly.

He's been silent for the duration and now he's back on twitter. But yeah I mean, was salem thirty percent as responsible as sammons for F G X? I would say no. But he got that beside the prison term.

Yeah, there's no accusation that he knew about. The flooded after access is all about the campaign finance making the straw and donations. So this is just, I don't know what the overall messages here.

I guess if he had CoOperated, he probably would have gotten a lot last time, but he refused to CoOperate and seems like kind of went down with the ship. But meanwhile, you have tribu go, who clearly CoOperated, who hasn't been charged with anything, who played a like a major role by all accounts in this fraud, and he's getting nothing. And then you have others that, you know, we don't even really talk about on this podcast that were definitely involved, definitely cut deals. The senior executives that were very involved in the flood and they CoOperated, they gave information and they able to somehow stable of the radar. So IT feels of IT feels a bit unfair to me.

to be honest with you. agree. And if you look at the parents from now, I mean, Barbara freed and Joseph bank men, they were involved in the campaign finance stuff.

I mean, he looks like barber free to orchestrated a lot of the strategy and there's no notion of them even being charged. Meanwhile, sAiling is staring at seven point five years behind bars. I really can't expect, you know, the math to work out in the numbers of the criminal justice system. Every case is different, of course, but this this feels strikingly unfair .

yeah yeah so there are not a lot of positive things to say about that one um to see this P.

Y U S D news this week yeah I thought I was really interesting actually so paypal was launching P Y U S on so lona and they put out a post on mirror X Y Z explaining IT um why they wanted to to go for sona and might take away from this is the N Y D F S is moistening has to approve the block chains that D F S registered stable coins circulate on. So to me the big ticket is D F S got comfortable salona and light listed at that blockage.

So I think that's actually a pretty big deal. I think a really cement savona as as a blockchain of of significance. So you know you .

think you have a regulatory clarity in this country. You have the N Y D, F S. So that is probably strongest regulator in the space at the moment in terms of their understanding space.

So they're are saying they're fine with sala. Meanwhile, the S U. C has lawsuits against coin base and others that say that sona is a security.

So go figure that you can. That that doesn't that doesn't make any sense actually, right? So I think it's going to be a short podcast the day we need to uh, get on with our day here. So hope fully this one uh, gets posted. I think the last episode was actually one we recorded a few years ago, a DNA .

never published IT. yeah. So we're going to publish this one. We learned lesson. We have to specifically carve out time at conferences to recall, even if they say, a the day after the coin center dinner were out here in the trenches for bank nation.

we're we're grounding here and it's a but it's an uplifting conference this year. So congrats to the uh to the coin dex team for putting on A A really good conference. I walk the floor yesterday. I tried to walk the floor at these conferences at once year and just get the vibe. I didn't feel like a kind of over the top pfoa vibe, but I didn't have the inclination to sell everything based on how top I felt felt very Normal.

Yeah, I haven't been in. I will be delivering reMarks on the main stage today. Well, I guess by the time you hear the podcast, the reMarks will be delivered. And that was also meant to be a panel with David halfman.

So that was the whole idea is that we were going to do our panel on, uh, bitcoin renaissances that meant to be the topic, the panel bitcoin season too. And then few short hours later, we go fight. That's not happening.

That's not happening. So we have scrap. We have secured new panellists. Um so I will be attending the conference will see how this .

and everyone that's IT for the week. Everybody have a safe and healthy weekend and we will see on monday.