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NET Society is unraveling the latest in digital art, crypto, AI, and tech. Join us for fresh insights and bold perspectives as we tap into wild, thought-provoking conversations. By: Derek Edwards (glitch marfa / collab+currency), Chris Furlong (starholder, LAO + Flamingo DAO), and Aaaron Wright & Priyanka Desai (Tribute Labs)
00;00;16;05 - 00;00;27;19
Aaron
The whole gang's here and it feels like we're back. In 2006, we got Spencer Pratt lighting up LA. We got the relaunch of dig. How did we get. How'd we wind up here? Guys.
00;00;27;19 - 00;00;33;09
Derek
I can give you my LA take as I spent a lot of time thinking about Los Angeles over the course of my life.
00;00;33;10 - 00;00;57;22
Aaron
Yeah, I'd be interested in it and maybe like to t it up. What I find the most interesting about it's not the politics. It's actually he's leaning into these, like, very timely, very quick, obvious AI swap videos and it seems effective. And I wonder if that is if he's like, basically like carving out a new playbook that won't just see other folks begin to, to use.
00;00;57;28 - 00;01;16;06
Aaron
It just feels like it's kind of like even more so than what we've seen these, like, kind of first person politicians that are just kind of streaming their life or like creating really cool short form video. It just feels like he's taking it to another level, just like walking around LA and showing it's like elements, which I think is also kind of interesting too.
00;01;16;08 - 00;01;30;25
Derek
It's a really good point. Maybe I'll try and do like a 62nd recap on how we got here, but I think maybe we can just like go around the horn on what you're describing. Aaron L.A. it's my favorite city in the world. I know some of you guys in here have lived in LA for part of your lives.
00;01;30;29 - 00;01;52;17
Derek
I will say, since since, you know, over the last 15, 20 years, there's been a ton of problems. I mean, we have homelessness is like a total issue that really got aggressive after Covid. We've had a slew of poor governmental decisions around both the insurance and also just like the the kind of like the handling of how to prevent fires.
00;01;52;19 - 00;02;12;28
Derek
As a result, I think California broadly has been hit pretty hard over the last ten years around some of some of the fires that are that have been popping up. And, you know, some of the stuff is, of course, natural disasters, and there's only so much you can actually prevent around. But there is infrastructure decisions that have been missed, both on the the insurance side and also on the preventative side that have led to some of this stuff.
00;02;13;00 - 00;02;35;02
Derek
I think the Palisades Fire broadly was kind of like a come to Jesus moment because, you know, when you start messing with wealthy people's property, it's like they start to make some pretty loud noise. And so, yeah, I think, you know, LA has been kind of in this weird transitional states in like, stuck in suspension around, like, is it going to improve?
00;02;35;02 - 00;02;53;25
Derek
Is it going to not improve? Is it going to get worse for for the better part of like a decade at this point. And it's left open, this kind of like vacuum for someone to step in and kind of like radicalize, you know, a movement around trying to improve what is like one of the largest economies in the world.
00;02;53;26 - 00;03;19;25
Derek
I would say this maybe dovetails really nicely with some of the stuff that Aram is bringing up, because, like, we now have the cost to produce content at like an all time low. We have the, you know, very clear track record of someone like a Donald Trump being able to kind of catalyze a social online movement around his beliefs, which then allows somebody who's like, outside of the political engine to jump into it very quickly.
00;03;19;26 - 00;03;44;29
Derek
You've got kind of like a very low hanging fruit around everyone. I mean, everyone wants cleaner streets, everyone wants faster housing permits, everyone wants kind of like less, you know, decay and bureaucracy in the government. And so it's like a very easy sell for someone young and who has somewhat of a celebrity status to be able to kind of like, chant the obvious and do it in a way that that's effective and powerful and had his own house burned down and is using that for content.
00;03;44;29 - 00;04;20;27
Derek
And yeah, I would say maybe just to bring it full circle to the point you were making. Aaron. It's like it feels like LA has kind of set the perfect preconditions for what is very clearly happening around our political apparatus, which is anybody can run, anybody can create content, anybody can catalyze a social movement. And we're no longer require like these checks and balances to like, have somebody rise over the course of their career to like, be fit, to run for office of any kind, because you can kind of bypass those gatekeepers now with some of the new technology networks and some of the new social networks that exist.
00;04;21;02 - 00;04;25;24
Derek
And I think AI is probably fuel on that fire. And we're seeing that kind of play out in real time.
00;04;25;25 - 00;04;47;26
Aaron
Yeah. And I think, I think video may have been the missing piece. Right. And it's interesting that it's coming out of LA, you know, the cradle of Hollywood. And it's interesting that it's coming out of politics. But you know you can just run these short one two minute, you know, ads pretty much. And they just seem pretty effective in conveying a message whether you agree or disagree kind of with that message.
00;04;47;26 - 00;05;12;18
Aaron
So to me that that's like the most interesting piece and it's almost like they don't he doesn't seem to care that it like looks sloppy or it's not like high production. It's just about having like a timely response or just kind of staying in the meta. So I thought that that piece is kind of interesting and mixing it with, you know, just like the real time, you know, first person kind of perspective that I think we've seen a bunch of politicians increasingly, you know, increasingly kind of do.
00;05;12;19 - 00;05;21;24
Aaron
It's also interesting just to see the continued power of the reality star in, in American life. So I think it's a pretty fascinating story.
00;05;21;26 - 00;05;45;20
Chris
I mean, this isn't even the continued continuing power of the reality star. This is like a staple of California politics. I mean, this is Ronald Reagan and this is Arnold Schwarzenegger. You know, this this is actually an ongoing tradition in California. It's just adapted, you know, maybe to a different form of star who maybe, you know, doesn't quite have the pedigree of the prior to.
00;05;45;21 - 00;06;16;16
Chris
But, you know, there's a lot of parallels between when Gray Davis was governor and got recalled and got recalled by Mr. Total Recall on Schwarzenegger. And you know the situation as well, like, there is a certain institutional complacency, you know, that is really prevalent in California in which, you know, you're kind of dealing with like a state that's very hard to do business with, you know, and has like an entrenched, you know, Democratic majority.
00;06;16;16 - 00;06;44;25
Chris
And then you're pushing that down to the city level. And, you know, they start getting, I don't know, maybe so disconnected or like so interested in preserving their own organizational power that, you know, it leaves them open to this sort of, you know, Maverick, hey, I'm a dude and I get gripes and other people can relate to me, and I'm going to do it in a more timely way than, you know, you're you're going to go about your business.
00;06;44;29 - 00;07;27;28
Chris
Los Angeles is also, I don't know, I just feel like as a city, it's a really strange place because it's I never really got the feeling of like a Los Angeles wide solidarity, you know, like LA to me. Hey, it's just so big and it has so many different neighborhoods that, like the vitality of the place, is often dependent on, you know, a few a few locations or a few industries or a few scenes and that like, you know, you can go into the valley and just feel like you're in 1965, and especially when things are slow and a lot of storefronts are shuttered, like it can be a really sort of jarring place because
00;07;27;28 - 00;07;49;17
Chris
it doesn't have, you know, that same level of, I don't know, like immiscible uniformity. Right. Like, let's just take, like the furthest possible extreme, like Paris, like wherever you are in Paris, you know, you're in Paris when you're in Los Angeles. It really like, is just kind of a mooring. And unless you know the place well, it's hard to know exactly where you are.
00;07;49;25 - 00;08;14;03
Derek
Yeah. I'm going to say one point on this, which is, and I think you have to I think if you don't know LA and you come here expecting one thing, it's really difficult to leave pleased because like ultimately it is like ten different cities baked into one. And it's the it's the knowing of LA and like the different pockets and these different places that makes it a really special place and understanding how to get around and when to get around.
00;08;14;03 - 00;08;35;22
Derek
And there are these tricks of the trade that you only pick up by living here for a long time, and it is maybe one of the hardest places to visit in the world. So unless you're just going to park yourself in Malibu or just spend your time on the beach. So yeah. Anyway, it's a very it's it's hard to love for short amounts of time, but easy to love once you're here for a while.
00;08;35;23 - 00;08;47;20
Aaron
Do we think we just. We see more of this, though. Is this like the. There was also like a new model that Google came out with today. I think it's called Omni. So it just looks like the video stuff is finally hitting.
00;08;47;21 - 00;08;48;19
Pri
That's feel like it's getting.
00;08;48;20 - 00;09;01;26
Aaron
Like an inflection point. I wonder if like I expected it to come out of, I don't know, like some influencer, not like a political influencer, but I wonder if this is kind of what continues to push that entirely to the mainstream.
00;09;01;29 - 00;09;27;09
Pri
I mean, the political ad means I mean, Trump apparently, allegedly someone on Twitter saying this, like internally, he's like obsessed with watching AI videos of himself, which is not surprising, honestly, but what the whole Spencer Pratt phenomenon has had me thinking about is actually just like, and I'm actually writing something about this. So it's kind of timely that we're doing this because I'm literally in the middle of putting together an essay.
00;09;27;09 - 00;09;54;26
Pri
But I was thinking the AI slot videos really. Also, the other big political ad that kicked off was like the Mamdani Ken Griffin apartment one, which is more like a scene, you know, scene. Cut to Griffin no AI, but is on the streets of New York pointing at something. And so you have like the right kind of leaning more into the, like, absurdist AI generated kind of core entertainment.
00;09;54;26 - 00;10;15;11
Pri
It almost feels a little bit more like LA making new movies, whereas New York making scenes. And so I was like, kind of thinking of it from the lens of like L.A. versus New York with their approach to political ads. And it also is a right and left thing where it's like the right seems to be using more of the AI stuff to generate like memetics.
00;10;15;13 - 00;10;19;25
Pri
And there's a couple of reasons for that I could go into which I'm thinking about as well.
00;10;19;25 - 00;10;21;14
Aaron
But why do you think?
00;10;21;16 - 00;10;46;09
Pri
Well, I guess just a, a lot of like that, like for Chan culture and stuff, like it's very memetic like the right has always been better at meme. So the notion that they would use AI to create these, like absurdist, kind of compelling memes is not surprising that they would immediately graft on to that, because there's like a lot of historical precedent for like the right online, like using just being good at memetic culture.
00;10;46;15 - 00;11;22;13
Pri
And I mean, we can go into that separately, but like, that's like part of the reason why I think that AI, the AI stuff is more has been used more for like the, the right politicians. But what I'm curious about this, when I'm like kind of trying to understand is like how much the AI stuff will be used in political advertising, or if it kind of just gets bifurcated where like the AI film, movie ad political ad will be more of a right coded thing versus like using these more like on the street scenes and UGC kind of influencer content that feels, frankly, a little bit dated to me, becomes more of a left thing
00;11;22;13 - 00;11;45;10
Pri
because the left tends to is leaning more into AI anyway. Like, I wonder if a progressive candidate did like an absurdist AI video if that would be well received and not, maybe it would be. But there's a lot of thoughts here. I'm kind of juggling a ton of different thoughts together here, but this has been something I've been thinking about as we're talking about the Spencer Pratt thing, because it was like AI videos, basically.
00;11;45;12 - 00;12;03;17
Pri
I mean, yes. And the debate like, catapulted him. I was paying attention to Spencer Pratt probably a couple of weeks ago because the AI videos, like I think it's like working like it took a nobody reality star who was kind of a villain on the Hills into like actual contender, which is really powerful.
00;12;03;18 - 00;12;28;27
Chris
So for you, I think you opened up like a huge canvas to talk about. There's like so much going on in here, and I'm going to start with positioning and what role model occupies versus the role that Pratt occupies. Mamdani one he is now the machinery, and he's handicapped in a lot of ways because there's only certain levers he can actually get his hands on.
00;12;28;27 - 00;12;59;22
Chris
And I think he's actually been very tactically smart in his early days in office by focusing on, like, his presence in the city and all of his actions. Up until, you know, that wealth tax on on second homes has been very Mr. Fixit oriented and making life easier. Right. Like in a lot of ways, he's actually doing a bunch of the stuff that Pratt is campaigning on, at least in his early days in office.
00;12;59;22 - 00;13;23;05
Chris
And so we're constantly seeing Danny on a city bike, walking home, London, talking to guys, you know, in bodega is telling them, like, you know what? I think at a cost you 5000 bucks to fix your sign. Like that piece on the secondary homes was like the first time he actually stepped outside that bubble. So that's like one part of this going on.
00;13;23;05 - 00;13;55;08
Chris
And then I think the other thing is, once you start getting into the political spectrum, right, like the Democrat Democratic Socialists, the DSA, like their attacks or like their their focus. Right? A lot of it is on how ineffectual the Democratic Party is itself and that like, they're basically a uni party, right, with the ruling Republican majority and, you know, distinguishing themselves through the lens of like, these guys have lost touch with reality.
00;13;55;09 - 00;14;22;13
Chris
It's hurting everyday people. Therefore, we have to be very like brass tacks, like, yes, we have these huge, you know, big ideas around, you know, like the communal embrace of the collective and, you know, redistribution of wealth taxes, right, and all this shit. But where they actually really like, connect and are landing on is more around the fact that, like, the Democratic Party doesn't do shit for anybody, they're completely useless in an effect.
00;14;22;15 - 00;14;42;28
Chris
And I think a lot of like the surprise around when Danny Wright is not that he wanted to put like a 60% tax on every single one in New York. It's that like, you know what, I can just get shit done. And whereas I think if you're a sensor Pratt. Right, all you have to do is go, Jesus Christ, this whole thing is so freaking absurd.
00;14;42;29 - 00;15;08;04
Chris
We just torched a whole neighborhood. Like two homes have actually gone through the permitting process to, you know, to actually start rebuilding that if your insurance payment, assuming you actually got to the point where you got an insurance payment, is going to leave you, you know, it's only going to cover maybe 60% of your replacement costs, because the cost of rebuilding in this environment is so, so egregious, right.
00;15;08;05 - 00;15;26;23
Chris
Like Pratt has like this as an outsider, a different like lens of attack and the huge surface area that like the whole institution and the whole way we're going about doing things like just doesn't apply to reality anymore and therefore, like AI is a great medium for.
00;15;26;24 - 00;15;59;14
Pri
That's interesting. So in a way, like it's like what they're actually messaging the medium, the medium is more about the message than the medium itself. Like I think I was maybe over indexing on like the medium, like, okay, like the left is more like in person trying to, to do these like videos versus like, you know, Spencer Pratt's communicating through medium of we'll call it like AI slob videos more because of the message they're trying to propagate versus the the type of person that they are.
00;15;59;17 - 00;16;01;04
Pri
Is that kind of what you're saying?
00;16;01;10 - 00;16;19;16
Chris
To some extent? I also think it's just as simple as horses for courses like what works best and what plays the strength of each of these people. And like, no one knew who the hell was. I mean, you know, he he was, you know, the assemblyman or a state senator or whatever for like Astoria, which is next, you know, next door to me.
00;16;19;17 - 00;16;35;19
Chris
Like, I can walk to a story in 15 minutes. You know, I had no freaking clue who he was. And he had to build his whole thing by going door to door and standing on street corners and getting ignored. Whereas, like, you know, we we basically oh, we're back in 2006 and Spencer Pratt, the top of the wire.
00;16;35;20 - 00;16;55;13
Chris
Right. Like he had this, you know, pre-built celebrity that just wasn't doing anything. And you know, he was able to activate it. And then, you know, he didn't have to do that hard work. Nor can you really do that hard work in LA. Right. It's very different terrain too. So yeah, I think some of this might just be like, sure, ideological.
00;16;55;13 - 00;17;09;13
Chris
Some of this might be like very situational, right? But yes, like, can you imagine a DSA candidate trying to run AI slot videos? No, because their base would just reject that as fully and authentic. Whereas like this is a.
00;17;09;17 - 00;17;38;07
Aaron
Wonder if that puts them at a structural disadvantage in the long run, because I think that like timeliness, that timeliness, I think is one of the major drivers here. And so not being able and yeah, you can like hop up like open your phone, record something reasonably slick, but and there's a nice folksy to it, but I think there's like a sharpness to what you're seeing out of the Platte campaign that I think is probably going to be a long term benefit of just leaning into the technology.
00;17;38;12 - 00;17;57;27
Chris
Sure. But you can also be timely and real. I mean, Ryan Reynolds does it better than anybody, right? So it's not like that, that approach, you know, maybe it is harder, but like it's not like you can't do that in this day and age. But yes, like you're speaking to different groups of people who have like a different receptivity.
00;17;57;28 - 00;18;01;13
Chris
Is that even a word to messaging in the packaging matters?
00;18;01;14 - 00;18;02;29
Aaron
Yeah. It's going to be interesting to kind of.
00;18;03;00 - 00;18;18;07
Pri
I was going to do some research to see which got like more impressions and which kind of had a larger effect. And I need to look back at like the article. But I think, I think that that Mamdani video, the Kenny Griffin one, we all know which one we're talking about here. I think that got about 50 million views.
00;18;18;08 - 00;18;42;07
Pri
The Spencer Pratt one, I think in 72 hours. So it's more quick hits. I think it got, you know, something like millions of views in like a seven, you know, 60 to 70. Our time frame, the effect of it at the time because I mean obviously pissed off a bunch of billionaires with petitions in New York City, but like those AI slot videos kind of like gave Spencer Pratt huge amount in the.
00;18;42;08 - 00;19;00;11
Pri
I mean, the debate did too, but like he kind of went up and he's been, you know, moving up in Poly Market over the last couple of weeks, I think partially as a result of these videos that like have gotten him insane attention. So like a nobody into somebody and then was just like obviously created huge news ways.
00;19;00;11 - 00;19;17;21
Pri
So there were like different effects. But I'm just trying to think like, which is most effective, honestly. And maybe the answer is just both and it's circumstantial and it depends on like the audience and whatever. But I do think like some combination of that is probably going to be the future of political media, to say the least.
00;19;17;24 - 00;19;28;08
Chris
Let's get our LA resident back in here and talk about the prat hat. Derek, where does the Pratt hat sit in the repertoire of LA lids?
00;19;28;10 - 00;19;33;15
Speaker 5
The Pratt hat, you mean. What do you mean by the Pratt hat?
00;19;33;17 - 00;19;36;23
Aaron
It's got the Dodger he leans into like the Dodgers. Oh.
00;19;36;29 - 00;19;41;14
Speaker 5
Oh, oh, I see what you're saying. I mean, would I.
00;19;41;17 - 00;19;46;18
Derek
Like, are you talking about, like, his own Pratt hat? Like that crappy like, LA logo that he uses?
00;19;46;19 - 00;19;48;26
Chris
Yeah, yeah. The fat.
00;19;48;27 - 00;19;52;01
Derek
I would. You could not catch me dad wearing that thing.
00;19;52;02 - 00;19;56;01
Chris
And by the way, like, huge tactical mistake. Why the hell is it in giant colors?
00;19;56;02 - 00;20;14;06
Derek
I don't know, I don't know. The whole thing is a little wacky to me. Call me a pure Steve, but, like, if you're gonna rock in LA hat and it's just two letters, it needs to be the serif Los Angeles logo. Anything less than that is just cheesy to me. That's just my my $0.02. But yeah, I mean, this whole discussion is fascinating, honestly.
00;20;14;08 - 00;20;34;22
Derek
And like, I do think that this is kind of the the lightning rod for the idea, Aaron, to just like circle back to your point. It is it does feel like this. The ingredients that are making this possible or just LA feels like the first battleground, but it feels like we're about to see this in the midterms or about to see this at state level elections and national elections.
00;20;34;22 - 00;20;45;28
Derek
It just feels like the surface area of of how people are going to message political campaigns is is about to kind of be kind of like very different over the next ten years, in the previous ten years.
00;20;45;29 - 00;21;08;17
Aaron
Yeah. And I think you're getting you're like seeing them play off each other, which I think is interesting too. To me, it's just more signal that like the media landscapes evolving again, I felt like for a while it changed, right? We moved from like tweets to like reels. And then it probably for the since Covid, it's kind of stayed in that same slop feed and it feels like it's going to shift again.
00;21;08;19 - 00;21;14;24
Aaron
I don't know to what, but I don't know when you see kind of like the evolution of playbooks, something's going on.
00;21;14;26 - 00;21;42;04
Chris
I kind of feel like we're in a setup for for some serious reform movement that, you know, we're we're just like getting independent people out there having success that is going to build towards like a real, you know, real challengers to the two party system. I mean, we we get reform movements. I don't know, every 100 years or so, I feel like maybe we're due for the rise of one of those.
00;21;42;06 - 00;22;02;29
Aaron
Yeah, I could see that. I mean, it feels like to Derek's point at the beginning, right? Like you can just go direct and that probably will have some, some impact. I guess we saw like a glimpse of that. Chris, whether you agree with the politics or not in the UK, right, where they did have a new party kind of emerge from their normal consensus, or at least the consensus for the past, I don't know, 50 plus years.
00;22;02;29 - 00;22;47;27
Chris
I literally called reform. Yeah. I mean, I think there are parallels between Great Britain and California, right? Like especially around, I don't know, maybe like institutional encroachment and the feeling of you've created a dysfunctional nanny state that is just getting out of hand and we need to push back against it. I think the UK has a much different dimension going on as well, just, you know, simply around like immigration and like, you know, it opens itself up to like a whole bunch of other layers that, you know, maybe California has, isn't exposed to in California is really just about like, we can't do what we want to do anymore.
00;22;47;29 - 00;22;59;20
Chris
What the hell is going on here? I don't really want to jump into the deep end of that pool, but I definitely think like the UK is kind of speedrunning we're going to be seeing here.
00;22;59;22 - 00;23;26;20
Aaron
Feels right. I mean, wouldn't be the first. Right? So super interesting. Do you guys also catch those just to pivot a little bit. Those announced massive crypto rounds with Ark and Canton. I thought it was I thought they were kind of interesting one, I thought it was interesting that a public company and circle is purportedly raising more capital from from venture and to like, I just still don't understand anything about canton.
00;23;26;20 - 00;23;29;04
Aaron
And you know, why there's so much interest in that?
00;23;29;05 - 00;23;32;21
Pri
That was confusing to me. I saw that online and I'm like, why?
00;23;32;23 - 00;23;34;15
Aaron
Yeah, that's I'm trying to figure out.
00;23;34;16 - 00;23;51;00
Chris
Well, the circle thing, like I just saw a little bit of it today, but it's a token sale, which I thought was a little interesting and then the size of it. How are they going about doing that ahead of clarity? Question mark. Sorry, I don't have anything else there.
00;23;51;00 - 00;23;55;13
Aaron
I guess. I mean, I guess it shows the confidence that that will go through.
00;23;55;14 - 00;24;30;23
Derek
Like you're curious why they're able to get away selling, doing a whatever, a token sale publicly like this before clarity's announced. Yeah, yeah. I think they join a long lineage of other companies that have done the exact same thing over the last 5 or 6 years, so I don't I don't know if it could be it could be confidence that like, we're moving into a it could be a signal that we're moving into a different paradigm around how we treat these token tokens as either part or in part, kind of like next to or at different times, part of the securities regime.
00;24;30;23 - 00;24;52;07
Derek
The truth is, is like these things do need I mean, tokens do need to be decentralized ultimately. And and maybe they feel confident in their path to have the vast majority of the network be owned by the public once that thing launches so hard, hard to know entirely what that looks like. Yeah. Pre this is this is for circle right.
00;24;52;08 - 00;24;53;11
Derek
This is the arc product.
00;24;53;12 - 00;24;57;09
Aaron
It's arc and the canton. Canton network.
00;24;57;15 - 00;25;19;22
Derek
Can you tell us a little difference since that network already exists. But at least for Arc it's like you know a lot of the a lot of times these tokens get sold are part of securities transactions. And because the network's not live yet and not trading, it's like you do have some latitude around, you know, these these things are largely part of like the securities regime before they start trading.
00;25;19;22 - 00;25;37;22
Derek
And so I guess they feel comfortable with that approach. Canton's a little different. Canton actually has a network going. And so when they, they do these deals I think structuring them can say a lot about what kind of risk they think that they're availing themselves to. But I think, broadly speaking, like it does feel like a new day.
00;25;37;22 - 00;25;53;23
Derek
I think people are willing to take on more risk and hope. Some of these messy questions around how tokens can be valuable get sorted and answered over the next couple of months, both with clarity, because I don't know how much within clarity we're going to get around some of these topics, but hopefully after clarity, is that your sense to you?
00;25;53;25 - 00;26;12;22
Aaron
Yeah, I think that feels about right. Yeah. I mean, it feels like at least for these these base networks, they it feels like that was contemplated, at least in the last version of, of clarity that I saw. So that didn't seem like the, the bigger issue, I think, you know for circle. Sure. Yeah. Like they want some more support for it.
00;26;12;22 - 00;26;35;10
Aaron
But it's interesting just to kind of see them raise capital, not from the public, you know, public markets where they permitted to raise capital, but from here and to they are a publicly traded company and they're going to have like a looks like a tradable token, which I don't know if we've had that yet. Right. Like, there's been rumors that Coinbase may do that, but that that hasn't been announced.
00;26;35;13 - 00;26;53;11
Aaron
So I don't know if that kind of foretells what we may see from Coinbase too. On that front for canton, it's just like. Like what? Like, you know, like like if we zoom out five years, like it's 2030 or is anybody going to be talking about that project? I just would be surprised. But what do I know?
00;26;53;17 - 00;27;27;18
Pri
I hope no one was talking about it before. And they got it. I was like, what? I haven't heard that word in the years. I was like very perplexed. The other one that kind of came out of nowhere, didn't like bullish choir like traditional broker dealer or something like that. Like, did you guys see that again? Like, I'm kind of behind on my my news, but like yeah I mean but the bullish public company because obviously they're they they acquired a quantity which is a top transfer Asian to bridge traditional markets with tokenization.
00;27;27;19 - 00;27;34;08
Pri
I don't know if you guys saw that one, but that one felt pretty big too. I mean, I think it was like a multi-billion acquisition or something.
00;27;34;10 - 00;27;54;16
Derek
Yeah, I think it I think it was I can't remember what the details were, but it was like one of the largest deals of this type, I think, in crypto. Yeah, it does feel like a lot of folks are all kind of converging to the same surface area, which is like more assets on blockchains, getting licenses, getting approvals, possibly launching tokens for these networks.
00;27;54;16 - 00;28;18;26
Derek
I know Kraken has the their blockchain coming up and the Coinbase has base. Robinhood has their their own circle. Ultimately, like a lot of these public companies will probably have tokens on balance sheet support. Some of yeah underwriting like the economic activity that happens on these ledgers. So I think there's a there's a yeah, there's definitely a story here.
00;28;18;28 - 00;28;24;00
Derek
I wouldn't surprise me in 6 to 12 months to see a bunch of public companies with tokens on balance sheet.
00;28;24;03 - 00;28;31;21
Chris
Putting my AFL-CIO bag holder hat on. This is extremely bullish for XRP. Ripple has been leading the way here.
00;28;31;23 - 00;28;36;07
Derek
I think you're probably right on that, actually, Chris, I think that's a good call out.
00;28;36;08 - 00;28;50;03
Chris
It's interesting how I think maybe they failed in terms of product market fit. And one Bigley in regulatory navigation and market structure.
00;28;50;06 - 00;29;00;13
Aaron
So what do you think happens here Chris. Like they're going to you think Ripple Inc goes public and then they just compete in the same the same vein or like what what do you see for them.
00;29;00;13 - 00;29;16;04
Chris
I don't know I don't pay attention to ripple. A friend of mine was working there for a while until I heard a lot of stuff second hand, you know, but like, they were doing all of this a year or two years ago, you know, as soon as they won their court case. I mean, you know, they have a massive balance sheet.
00;29;16;06 - 00;29;46;29
Chris
They had, you know, their product was kind of dead in the water, but, you know, they had this institutional heft to them. And so they went on an acquisition spree. And, you know, it was starting to work their way into like the broker dealer stack into the custody stack. Right. And so if we are, you know, really just getting into like the fintech of Wall Street and that's, you know, crypto's destiny, you know, ripple seem to be a couple steps ahead of everybody.
00;29;46;29 - 00;30;12;11
Chris
Now whether or not, you know, that translates and manifest into something. All I'm saying is like they were making these moves that people are now making. And so, you know, maybe we'll see them pop up. In a related vein. What about consensus goes to Miami. Consensus goes to the strip clubs. Consensus brings in trad fi suits. What was people's feelings about consensus this year?
00;30;12;18 - 00;30;33;13
Aaron
I didn't I mean, I didn't go I, I happened to be in Miami for another kind of adjacent event. Towards the end of the week. I saw like the I guess the end of it just just passively like there was some like Sui banners that were like flying in downtown, I guess Miami Beach or one of the strips of Miami Beach.
00;30;33;17 - 00;30;52;17
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, I saw like some glimmers of that from the timeline. Not surprising. Right? Like if you look at where the interest is, it's definitely more institutional. Now. I feel like consensus always had a little bit of a institutional like veneer to it. So it feels about right to me. I mean, all like the shenanigans, like I don't I don't know.
00;30;52;18 - 00;30;54;17
Aaron
That's not going to what my big.
00;30;54;23 - 00;30;59;07
Pri
The guy painting, the guy peeing in the club and then slipping on his P.
00;30;59;09 - 00;31;00;23
Aaron
Wait, what? I didn't.
00;31;00;23 - 00;31;07;25
Chris
See, I, I had to see that video like 2 or 3 different times until I figured out what was actually happening.
00;31;07;25 - 00;31;10;20
Pri
It was an insane video. And how did you not see it?
00;31;10;27 - 00;31;13;09
Aaron
I just wasn't enough.
00;31;13;11 - 00;31;15;26
Derek
I almost feel like he should watch her right now and we should.
00;31;15;26 - 00;31;17;02
Aaron
Just know I don't want to watch it.
00;31;17;03 - 00;31;17;29
Pri
I know I.
00;31;18;00 - 00;31;20;10
Aaron
Like all right, wing me up with me up.
00;31;20;12 - 00;31;23;12
Pri
How did you avoid seeing this?
00;31;23;13 - 00;31;27;28
Aaron
I really curate my timeline, guys. Like, if I see anything I don't like, I just mute the heck.
00;31;27;29 - 00;31;30;12
Pri
Out of it. It's like, I don't know how you missed it.
00;31;30;14 - 00;31;57;18
Chris
My takeaways from consensus. The other timeline is only three things happen to consensus one. People did BD at 11 five nights in a row till 6 a.m., two while at 11 people got so trashed that they peed on the bar, fell over and landed in it. And three crypto is so broke and skis that people are taking strippers monies off the stage and pocketing it.
00;31;57;20 - 00;31;59;15
Aaron
What? I missed that too.
00;31;59;22 - 00;32;16;05
Pri
I saw that one to the video of that guy. There was someone somehow zoomed in on a guy taking pictures off, taking money off the stripper stage, being like, man, he's down bad. If he's stealing from these poor. These were like doing their job.
00;32;16;07 - 00;32;19;23
Derek
Isn't it amazing that this is the industry that we fight and bleed for?
00;32;19;25 - 00;32;40;19
Pri
I mean, kind of makes me cringe because like, this is a stuff that like goes viral and I'm like, because it kind of just basically corroborates what everyone else thinks already. And it's like, damn, I know so many normal, smart people in this industry. Like, I really wish that this wasn't what came out of that.
00;32;40;20 - 00;32;47;03
Aaron
I'm watching this video. Amazing. Who's recording this? How did they whip out their phone to capture that moment?
00;32;47;05 - 00;32;48;13
Pri
I know, I was wondering that.
00;32;48;13 - 00;33;06;13
Aaron
Too, you know, like, you know, 100% pred. I guess if we can't deliver on a on utility, we're just going to deliver on embarrassment. And means is that is that the state of things? I'd much rather read about some more useful things that we can do.
00;33;06;14 - 00;33;17;19
Chris
Well, the good news, Aaron, is when crypto gets too cringe, there's another frontier technology that's just as cringe and just as unloved that you can give your attention to AI.
00;33;17;21 - 00;33;18;22
Aaron
Is that what you're saying?
00;33;18;28 - 00;33;19;21
Chris
Yes.
00;33;19;22 - 00;33;25;05
Aaron
Oh, God, I know, I just want I mean, yeah, it's all bad.
00;33;25;08 - 00;33;53;14
Chris
Well, here, let's swing over to AI for a second and talk about stuff going on, because anthropic is doing everything at once. I guess we could talk about the structuring stuff in which they're trying to reign in all this, like second, third, fourth hand dealing and spvs around their equity, you know? So that's one thing. Another thing is their strategy of like, have good models and compute will find you.
00;33;53;15 - 00;34;12;28
Chris
Seems to be very busy at the moment. And then like you know, your man there Elon Musk is both now like a data center operator for anthropic and in court, battling it out against Dario's most hated mutual enemy. Sam. A lot's happening over there.
00;34;12;29 - 00;34;38;26
Aaron
Yeah, I mean, I was worried that they wouldn't find the compute. To be honest, I was surprised that that deal came together so quickly. And it was it felt pretty shrewd on Elon's part just because he has access compute. And the bigger question I have is just like, what does that say about grok? Like is is he, you know, not going to be pressing his hard on that and he's just going to, you know, be one of the major purveyors of compute, because that's really where their skill set is.
00;34;38;27 - 00;34;54;28
Aaron
Or does this like be is this used as a flywheel to help them fund more training of grok? Like to me those are like the biggest questions. And I guess it's good to see them, to see our tech oligarchs like, play nice with each other. I guess this is an instance where that happened.
00;34;55;05 - 00;35;22;27
Chris
Yeah, I think there's a little bit of 4D chess going on and there's a lot of making up for, you know, rush decisions that, you know, are aligning in ways that Elon's particularly good at pulling off. Right. Colossus one is a bad training environment because it works on multiple chip types and cannot like all training. Training is gated, right?
00;35;22;29 - 00;35;44;20
Chris
In terms of like work finishes here has to echo there, has to echo there. And if you have all these different chip classes working at different speeds, right, you're really only getting like I believe like, I don't know, like a 10 or 11% like utilization of that whole Colossus, one core. And so it just wasn't really working well for training, but it can work really well for inference.
00;35;44;24 - 00;36;18;11
Chris
And so that was a bit of a maybe a miscalculation that, you know, ends up working out fine as a different business line. It also really helps ahead of the space IPO, because now you've turned a cost center into a revenue center. I've been kind of thinking of like XII as like gateway computer in a lot of ways in which it's just like a hardware reseller, you know, in this case, it's like a data center reseller because, yeah, they, you know, had a hard time with their model training because they didn't staff correctly.
00;36;18;12 - 00;36;38;13
Chris
They didn't give it the attention. Like that's a very, you know, human oriented personality management business because it's such a small group of people. And there was clearly like a lot of like, you know, either they didn't get the right people in or, you know, their defections reached a critical mass in which keeping the rest of the team didn't make sense.
00;36;38;13 - 00;37;02;07
Chris
But like, that whole team got thrown overboard. And now they have this option call on cursor where they're basically they bought, you know, at a minimum $10 billion worth of like coding training data and given cursor like free runway in on Colossus two to go to work. And if that pans out then they can just buy cursor for 60 billion bucks.
00;37;02;07 - 00;37;29;24
Chris
And so you know Elon is like very heroic in like the classical sense of the word in which like he takes on great tasks or great, you know, great quests, gets himself in a lot of trouble in trying to perform these quests and then perseveres. You know what I mean? And this kind of is, is like Elon on this like crazy hero's journey involving mountains of GPUs and personalities.
00;37;29;26 - 00;37;52;23
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, and I think if the news reports are right, even the cursor team is already starting to work with the grok team. Chris, I think I read that there was like some meeting where, like the cursor engineers were being brought in to talk to the grok folks. So maybe maybe that's a piece of it too. Not just the what I imagine is very valuable programing based training data that's hard to get.
00;37;52;23 - 00;38;00;04
Aaron
But number two, maybe that team just is cooking and cooking more so than whatever Elon was able to assemble before.
00;38;00;06 - 00;38;10;13
Chris
Yeah, I mean, grok couldn't clear the waifu barrier. So maybe fresh blood in a different a different POV will, you know, get them over the hump.
00;38;10;20 - 00;38;30;11
Aaron
Yeah, completely. The other thing, just in terms of AI news, it looks like the interest in Open Claw has been diving down like pretty significantly. At least there was a tweet that was circulating that assuming it's true, but the interest in Open claw kind of peaked in mid-March. And it's it's way down from from where it was initially.
00;38;30;11 - 00;38;45;11
Aaron
So I wonder if like that that little period is, is going to get a little bit more quiet as, as we see kind of people run their course with Open claw and maybe the like adjacent products like the Hermes agent.
00;38;45;13 - 00;39;06;16
Pri
You think like the. Hermes Hermes. You think those are like, I can't tell if they hold all of these, like little AI projects are like very like feel very like crypto protocol coded to me where it's like people are super interested in, it's super crazy hype online. And then like, you know, when you sit in three months. But I can't tell if this is just like.
00;39;06;18 - 00;39;25;19
Aaron
If you kind of like DeFi. Yeah, like to me it's more like DeFi. Like, you know, like there was real innovation that's going on there. And I think that there is here, I think that people wanted it to do the world, and it can only do some narrow things at this point. And then, you know, as more and more people begin to build and use these types of tools, like an ecosystem will develop related to it.
00;39;25;19 - 00;39;45;02
Aaron
But I think for folks that were around like DeFi very early, there was like, you know, 1 to 5 really amazing projects, and then there was a lot of noise kind of outside of that. And then, you know, we kind of saw evolutions in a couple waves. So I wonder if that's what we're going to get with like the AI personal server assistant.
00;39;45;02 - 00;39;50;18
Aaron
I don't know exactly what how people want to characterize it, but it feels like it could be similar to that.
00;39;50;20 - 00;40;09;24
Chris
I, for one, am thrilled that the 100 parallel agent Max are guys are not the loudest voices in the room. You know, I do think like there's a lot of similarities in in which like, there's people who are attracted to novel things in action and want to be there, but then they don't really have anything to add to it.
00;40;09;24 - 00;40;32;02
Chris
And once they realize, like, you know, the agent itself still requires input, direction, taste, like you know that. Like you need to bring something to the table because all this is, is a tool. At the end of the day, you know, those people now have to like, find something else to, to hop on. But then there's people for whom, yes, like this unlocks something.
00;40;32;02 - 00;40;44;02
Chris
It's just always a much smaller group of people, you know? I mean, going back to defy, there was a million coffee pasta projects. There were really, you know, only a handful of, like, truly innovative protocols.
00;40;44;03 - 00;40;52;21
Aaron
Yeah. And I guess maybe in a couple of years there'll be, like some AI event where some dude pisses himself and slips at the end of the day. Is that is that what I'm hearing here?
00;40;52;21 - 00;40;57;16
Chris
As long as there's a robot taking money off a stripper stable.
00;40;57;18 - 00;41;03;22
Aaron
That'll be the scenes from 2030 is just basically that. Oh, man. What are we in for?
00;41;03;24 - 00;41;14;02
Chris
The only thing we can be sure of, Aaron, is that we will be embarrassed by it. We will regret lending our time to something that is turned. So cringe.
00;41;14;07 - 00;41;23;10
Pri
Do you think I feel like the AI stuff doesn't have as much of a cringe veneer as crypto? If I had to, like if I had to resign it as line by line.
00;41;23;11 - 00;41;33;17
Aaron
I hope not. But I don't know. I mean, eventually there'll be a pullback here, right? And I think you'll see all the the exuberance like, you know, glosses over all the problems until it doesn't. Right.
00;41;33;18 - 00;41;34;02
Pri
Sure.
00;41;34;04 - 00;42;11;18
Derek
I'll give you guys my my quick take on the Asian stuff. I actually think listen it's really difficult. So when when Open Cloud launched, it basically had I mean, it had command over the entire market because the market didn't exist yet. It was the only game in town. And what we have found is there's a lot of I think it gave people this the, the core insight that like, hey, instead of single shotting inference requests via the cloud and kind of like using the human, you know, mind as like the gating function to building something, we could actually start spinning up these agents.
00;42;11;18 - 00;42;28;24
Derek
And as long as we harness them correctly and automated them in the right way, we could spin up five and ten and 15 and 20, and it created a new model for by which, like people could make things. And I think my, my general take on this is looking at like the interest or like the Google trend reports on open claw.
00;42;28;28 - 00;42;52;18
Derek
To me it's it was always inevitably going to be down only because like they pioneered a category by which they were the only name. And now we're finding like people are building their own harnesses. People are using News Research's Hermes Asia, which is the fastest growing agent in the world. I mean, it's like open rider mentioned over the weekend that they just, in sheer tokens, have already over passed open claw.
00;42;52;18 - 00;43;15;08
Derek
But then you've got like tiny claw and paperclip and zero claw and pico and nano and, and also the proprietary stuff that people are creating. The data that I'm looking at is like this concept of agent orchestration via the harness is like it's basically just up only. But I, I do agree, largely like these things are going to get tweaked and rebate and there will be new products that version up.
00;43;15;09 - 00;43;34;15
Derek
You know, the core behavior. I think my general thought though is like I'm pretty bearish on open claw. I think that was a vibe coded first pass. And to me, I, I don't know if my takeaway here is like open cloud losing market share being correlated with like the lack of interest in using agent harnesses.
00;43;34;17 - 00;44;09;25
Aaron
I feel like I hear that and maybe it's first mover. I mean, I think Peter was a pretty experienced developer. Someone was telling me this past week that, you know, he was from previous software projects like independent, already independently wealthy. I don't know if that's true or not. So I do think that he was a talented person. It feels like some of it's also like diffusion from new tools, from just clod itself or anthropic itself, that you can just do using cloud code or some adjacent things that are available via code work.
00;44;09;26 - 00;44;14;06
Aaron
And I wonder if that's just going to like take a little bit of air out of that balloon. Derek.
00;44;14;07 - 00;44;37;15
Derek
Yeah, I have my theory about this. I do think it has for sure. I think most people were using for people love the best intelligence. And right now the best intelligence is coming out of OpenAI. Codex 5.5 is coming out of anthropic models. And so, like the vast majority of Adjuntas, harness stuff for people who want to whatever be on the bleeding edge can be usurped by people who just want to use the harnesses coming out of those closed ecosystems.
00;44;37;16 - 00;45;05;22
Derek
My general view on this is like your harness is probably the thing that needs, or at least there will be massive benefits to kind of like a third party agnostic harness. I, I think the telemetry that you're able to get the whatever the value that you want to keep private to me, the and the fact that you don't necessarily as models become commoditized or there are fine tuned models you want to use, or smaller models and or local models when you want to run inference requests that are cheaper.
00;45;05;22 - 00;45;24;14
Derek
Just using an open AI harness to use OpenAI products feels like not where we're going. It feels like we're entering a world where, like modularity and choice is going to play more and more of a role, especially as like we're seeing these things start to at least the delta between, like the open source models and the performance of the bleeding edge models start to close.
00;45;24;15 - 00;45;43;00
Derek
I think before it was, you know, 18 months and then it was 12 months away, and then it was eight months, and now we're like three months away. I mean, this last deep seek for model was like pretty freaking good. And so I do think the harness is something that I'm looking at and thinking, this thing needs to be not a closed ecosystem.
00;45;43;00 - 00;45;55;27
Derek
You want to use the harness on multiple models. You want to use it on open source models. You want to use it on fine tuned models, on proprietary models. And I just find it hard to believe that, like, everyone is going to want to use cloud models when they grow up.
00;45;55;28 - 00;46;17;16
Aaron
Or I mean, we agree with that. I mean, that's what in part when we designed kind of the our research agent in it in chat. It was with that in mind I still the open versus closed. I think that's going to I bet it follows a similar path. Like I think most people for this to hit scale, they don't want to tinker, they don't want to have to maintain it.
00;46;17;17 - 00;46;33;09
Aaron
They don't want to have to become like, you know, the equivalent of like a Linux engineer to or Linux user to, to, you know, go, you know, go on with their day. My, my sense is you'll probably get like a pretty powerful, like closed version of this too. So yeah, which I do.
00;46;33;14 - 00;46;35;27
Speaker 6
I do think that that's the, that's the bet that these.
00;46;35;27 - 00;46;43;16
Derek
Guys are making right now. Like I've played around with the with the anthropic and the OpenAI ones and they're good. They're really strong. And I think they're going to only get better.
00;46;43;17 - 00;46;50;24
Aaron
Yeah. Completely. Well we lost one of our four. So maybe pretty. You want to you want to intro us.
00;46;50;28 - 00;47;07;10
Pri
I'm happy to welcome to necessarily today it's me Aaron Derek and Chris talking all things crypto, AI, tech, culture and more. Just as a quick reminder, these thoughts and opinions are not of our employer and this is not financial advice.