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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;15;29 - 00;00;19;08
Aaron
So I hear everybody's a little cranky today. Why is that?
00;00;19;10 - 00;00;22;14
Chris
Are we? I am. Why don't you air some grievances?
00;00;22;17 - 00;00;23;25
Aaron
Yeah air some grievances Pri.
00;00;23;26 - 00;00;39;18
Pri
My grievances. Okay. There are many. Most of them personal right now. But I guess if I had to think about the state of the world, I mean, okay, let's talk about, like, my professional, just cultural grievances right now. Like all these, like.
00;00;39;20 - 00;00;44;21
Aaron
What are your cultural grievances like these? Sydney Sweeney stress. Was that a grievance?
00;00;44;24 - 00;01;08;11
Pri
No. She had amazing. I was like, wow. Yeah. No, I don't have a grievance at that. No. I feel like I'm a little bit tired of. Just like the Substack class, Dark Forest. It's like the same dead internet theory. Like all these, like, buzzy things. I'm just, like, over hearing about that. The other thing is watching videos, because it's just like old.
00;01;08;11 - 00;01;15;20
Pri
I'm like, we've been talking about this for like five years. And then the other thing is like watching that Saudi LP, whatever.
00;01;15;23 - 00;01;17;06
Chris
Oh yeah.
00;01;17;08 - 00;01;21;00
Pri
Like all these bakers sitting in like a weird round table while everyone just.
00;01;21;01 - 00;01;24;23
Aaron
Talking about democracy and, yeah, like autocratic society.
00;01;24;25 - 00;01;44;18
Pri
Yeah. Like I just and then talking about stablecoins and all. Like just seeing crypto in this setting. I'm just like, okay, this is so mas. And then I don't know, on top of that, everything else I'm like, wedding planning, I'm going to do embryo freezing. Just like all of the things are piling in on top of that with like work and life stuff.
00;01;44;18 - 00;01;47;05
Pri
I'm just like, I hate everything right now.
00;01;47;08 - 00;02;11;00
Chris
Oh, wow. And yeah, okay, so is thing one. Like, you need to have brain surgery performed where any awareness of Bill Ackman is somehow, like excised from your brain. And it's never like, capable of actually hearing that name, seeing his face or like recognizing a single opinion out of his mouth.
00;02;11;07 - 00;02;16;04
Pri
Why are we giving him a platform? He's not even that successful. He's like, somehow.
00;02;16;06 - 00;02;18;28
Aaron
I mean, he's pretty successful. He's not. That's fair. That's all.
00;02;18;28 - 00;02;19;28
Pri
Aaron. He he.
00;02;19;28 - 00;02;25;17
Chris
Was successful. Will he be successful again? TBD. How's that?
00;02;25;21 - 00;02;33;04
Pri
He's not in the same success category that people put him in with. Like people put him in with like Warren Buffett in the conversation?
00;02;33;05 - 00;02;39;07
Aaron
It doesn't mean that that's like a debate. That's like Michael Jordan level. Yeah, he's not like that level.
00;02;39;14 - 00;02;56;00
Pri
But he's not like his peer group. It's weird. The peer group he's in because I feel like he is like, I don't I feel really mean saying this also like I don't like hate him now I feel like I'm going to get dog for hitting him, which I don't, but I just I don't understand, like why he's in the peer group that he's in.
00;02;56;02 - 00;02;59;24
Chris
Because he's loud mouth who's good at inside feet.
00;02;59;26 - 00;03;02;13
Aaron
Yeah. He's articulate and nobody knows that.
00;03;02;18 - 00;03;04;22
Chris
No, he's me and.
00;03;04;24 - 00;03;19;04
Aaron
He likes that. That meme where it's like, a tweet from Bill Ackman and it's like a iPhone screen that's like super elongated. I mean, he's he's clearly articulate. You may not always agree with what he's articulating, but he's pretty.
00;03;19;06 - 00;03;51;23
Chris
Yeah I generally pre screen anyone who qualifies as articulate as actually having something worthy of saying like I do not value an opinion in the least and therefore how he chooses to express it is just not valid to me. He is completely a hypocrite to the entry level. He is someone who believes that money equals speech. He is on the wrong side of history so often it hurts and I would prefer that leg.
00;03;51;26 - 00;03;57;03
Chris
I actually get brain surgery and just cannot receive or recognize anything related to him.
00;03;57;07 - 00;04;19;12
Pri
You know what? I really turned on him. When? A while ago when he did that Herbalife documentary. He like funded his short position in this. Like cringe like Herbalife is really tough for working class people and abusing working class people, which may be true, but like the positioning for his like financial gain in order to like destroy the company was like super cringe to me.
00;04;19;15 - 00;04;25;14
Pri
And I know it happens all the time. That is like the role of an activist investor. But like watching that documentary, I was like, what a.
00;04;25;14 - 00;04;35;21
Chris
Loser, by the way. You know, if we if we do another five minutes of this, he's going to devote, I don't know, at least $2 million to destroying our podcast.
00;04;35;23 - 00;04;53;09
Aaron
Well, don't do that. I mean, I'll, I'll take a more measured position. I think he's not fully on the wrong side of history. I think some of the things he's glommed on to, I don't agree with all of them, but I think some of them, I think there was some valid concerns or particularly like around universities and, and kind of.
00;04;53;12 - 00;05;01;12
Chris
Just sitting there and don't go there, please. For the love of Christ, I'm going to like, start losing respect for you.
00;05;01;15 - 00;05;07;10
Aaron
Some aspects of it, Christina. Not not, the full throated, critiques that he was providing.
00;05;07;17 - 00;05;22;28
Pri
I actually I, I also listened to his like, Lex Fridman. I don't know when that was like a while back. I was he definitely made some valid points there. And I do agree he is articulate. So yeah, but we can move past a little hate such a what you guys hate right now.
00;05;23;00 - 00;05;28;27
Aaron
I'm not I'm not in a hate mood. I'm like, I'm in a, a joy mood pre.
00;05;28;29 - 00;05;31;07
Pri
All right, get out of here, Chris. Yeah.
00;05;31;09 - 00;05;34;01
Aaron
I'll say the hang up right now.
00;05;34;04 - 00;05;56;27
Chris
Okay. Hang off me like we're all on a conference line right now. I, I don't really have any real active hate. It's more like I'm busy and and like, my entire family is busy to the point where we all get a little, like, ships in the night thing going on, but also, today's Halloween today is is like the biggest holiday in my neighborhood.
00;05;57;00 - 00;06;17;28
Chris
We barely got decorations up. Like, I don't know, it just feels like we're over programed and not in our right place in the world at the moment. Like it's all good and positive stuff. It's just I feel like larger forces are pulling up my family a little too much, at the moment. And I'm not overly thrilled with that.
00;06;18;00 - 00;06;28;12
Aaron
I think that's the big issue just across the board for everybody. Yeah, yeah, it does feel like you're just kind of like adrift at sea and can't really control the currents.
00;06;28;14 - 00;06;30;11
Pri
I'm doing that right now.
00;06;30;13 - 00;06;45;24
Aaron
Yeah, but you know, I do love Halloween. It's fun to see all the kiddos get dressed up. It's like a super joyful day. It's also Bitcoin 1717 birthday today, which is it's now a teenager. How weird is.
00;06;45;24 - 00;07;06;21
Chris
That? That is a little strange. And I'd actually I didn't I mean that makes sense. I never equivocated the fact that like my daughter and bitcoin were born same. No, not on the same day, but like, you know, within like the same, same vintage. Yes. At the same moment in time, which is a little wild to think of.
00;07;06;24 - 00;07;25;26
Aaron
So I really think that I think that the emerging like vintage is actually pretty good. So and I'll include Bitcoin in that as well. I think that there's just like a like everybody just so nihilistic, so negative. But there's a lot of good things that I think the youth are going to bring. So I'm, I'm an optimist there.
00;07;26;00 - 00;07;29;08
Aaron
But I tend to slant towards optimism.
00;07;29;10 - 00;07;45;28
Pri
I'm actually optimistic too. Like I think America is in a pretty good spot actually, all things considered. You know, you're putting putting aside the internal turmoil where like pretty the generation the youth is, is looking up. I would agree, it just might.
00;07;45;28 - 00;07;50;08
Chris
Just be saying that till I keep this show on a high note.
00;07;50;11 - 00;07;52;13
Aaron
Now, I mean, I mean, and yeah.
00;07;52;15 - 00;08;12;25
Pri
I also think like the, the amount of propaganda we get from China on how amazing it is technologically like like all of that. It's like they're really good at it and America is not very good at it anymore. Or they used to be back in the day, like in the age of radio. Like I feel like America is better at their propaganda, but the Chinese have just been able to, like, permeated.
00;08;12;25 - 00;08;32;12
Pri
And no one's talking about how like, not great it is as far as like the one child policy and like the wealth that's going to be transferred over to like a very few amount of people there and the housing prices and how expensive it is to buy there. But then you get no rent on that property, like it's actually not a great spot right now, but no one really seems to focus on that.
00;08;32;12 - 00;08;51;22
Pri
And so like if you actually went pound for pound, like, you know, where global power is today, I do feel like the US is in a pretty good spot technologically, economically. Like once we ship our Usdc everywhere, I don't know, I actually feel very, very good about the position that the US is in.
00;08;51;25 - 00;09;10;04
Chris
Pre do you think that is a, different fourth turning cycle type of thing where China's youth and like millennial like millennial down right has only really been in an ascendant path in terms of their quality of life.
00;09;10;06 - 00;09;10;16
Pri
Yeah.
00;09;10;23 - 00;09;43;15
Chris
Whereas I saw the term on Twitter the other day, it just killed me. Boomer luxury communism is infecting America right now, and that the sense of generational unfairness and who's online, you know, skewing younger is souring your perception of like the I mean, souring is not the right word, but, you know, I mean, like, there's just if you have like a 30 year old in China, 30 year old in America, and they're both screaming into the network like they're screaming very different things.
00;09;43;18 - 00;10;09;06
Pri
That's fair, that's fair. What's kind of interesting, actually, I was talking to someone about this, and I think it's actually a really subtle but good point is like the permeability of the Chinese and our conversation online in the US is much easier than the other way around. Like English being a global language, being able to like, participate in our open social networks and stuff and, and share whatever you want from other countries is way easier in the US and the other way around.
00;10;09;06 - 00;10;26;23
Pri
Like we have no access to their social network. We have very little, I mean, over I mean, I'm sure a lot of Americans also speak Chinese, but it's not at scale. Like it's hard for us to really understand what's going on in the news networks there, what's going on in the social networks. And actually, like, infiltrate it in the same way.
00;10;26;25 - 00;10;50;25
Pri
I'm sure there's probably like CIA, NSA, like covert, whatever infiltration of information there. But I'm just kind of picking on your point of like, are they seeing the same thing? Like, probably not, because it's very difficult for us to really infiltrate their media, both for linguistic reasons. But even just like access to their platforms. Kind of a tangent of what you were saying, but just reminded me of that point.
00;10;50;27 - 00;10;53;14
Chris
Well, we don't have a great firewall of America yet.
00;10;53;16 - 00;10;54;12
Pri
Yeah.
00;10;54;14 - 00;11;17;09
Aaron
I'd be surprised if we ever get we get there, to be honest. I mean, I think, I think people will flirt with it some some small group will advocate for it. But, I don't think we'll get there. I do think we actually probably still are pretty good at propagating. I think the challenge is there's just a big swath of folks in the states that are nihilistic and there they don't like the direction of the company that got company.
00;11;17;09 - 00;11;25;00
Aaron
Wow, what a slip. The country, for, for lack of, you know, for a variety of reasons.
00;11;25;02 - 00;11;43;11
Pri
Have you been noticing a lot of mainstream articles and Substack and other? They're starting to talk about how, like, everyone is becoming a gambler and how gambler across like, crypto, sports betting, all these other vectors is just like balloon. There's a big Times article and like more and more mainstream think pieces on this, which is interesting to me.
00;11;43;11 - 00;11;44;07
Pri
Like we've been thinking about this.
00;11;44;08 - 00;12;04;20
Aaron
I think it's a big problem. I think, you know, we see we see edges of that in in the digital asset ecosystem. I think for many it just an expression of that same, that same issue. But I don't think it's unique to crypto. And then it seems like it's a big problem whether it's Robinhood or you know, some of the daily fantasy sports and sports betting bets.
00;12;04;20 - 00;12;16;00
Aaron
It just it's pervasive at this point. And it's it's sad. Right? I think that's a really challenging issue to deal with. If you, if you have, you know, gambling addiction of some sort.
00;12;16;03 - 00;12;39;19
Chris
I know the NBA skate scandal, certainly like, you know, broke this into the mainstream is not the right term. It resurfaced it into the mainstream. And so I think it's like a salient talking point, just what what is going on right now. But I also like yeah, we live, you know, further faster and we experience things, you know, before the mainstream.
00;12;39;19 - 00;13;07;27
Chris
And so in a lot of ways this is just the world catching up. You know, even like to go to that, that A16 article that we mentioned last week. Right. Like I finally did read that and, and Dan was there like, I feel like he was the first writer I've actually seen to articulate a reasonable, maybe prophecy or like forecasting of what happens after post-modernism.
00;13;07;29 - 00;13;11;19
Chris
And that's probably why I found that article so interesting.
00;13;11;19 - 00;13;17;06
Aaron
Is that what did he say? Yeah. What was his thesis? I didn't get a chance to read it.
00;13;17;08 - 00;13;47;02
Chris
I mean, he basically said prediction is, going to be like or is the age or inhabiting now and will be like the age for the foreseeable future. Now let's realize, of course, like he's an a16z staff writer. They've bet heavily on this. Ergo, you know, they need some like starting to kind of legitimize their position. Right. And so there's an inherent bias in what's going on here at the same time.
00;13;47;04 - 00;13;54;18
Chris
Yeah. Like I mean like I said, everything we've read so far basically just freezes and says we're trapped in post-modernism and then just gives up and stops writing.
00;13;54;25 - 00;13;59;28
Aaron
And at least he's there taking a stab at what that could look like. Right?
00;14;00;02 - 00;14;33;01
Chris
Yeah. And you're saying like to signal is our active societal contribution now is to point at things to express interest. It's in your reading of it, right. Like you can read that, many different ways. Like you can read that as, oh my God, our agency has been stripped to the point where all we can do is now point to other things and we're reduced to like, you know, spectating as encouragement to, you know, further fuel, these sort of like systems, machines, apparatuses of the capital.
00;14;33;01 - 00;14;57;08
Chris
And that's, that's a real bummer at the same time, like, you know, we are meaning making machines and to constantly, you know, just read things in which people throw their hands up and just give out. Right? Is a little dispiriting. Like it, even if someone is pointing to a future that you know may not be great, at least it's pointing to a future so that you can help to contextualize it a little better.
00;14;57;10 - 00;15;11;23
Chris
And so I think that's what I enjoyed most about the article, is the simple fact that someone took a plausible stab at saying, like what? You know, this decade in the coming decades are actually going to be about.
00;15;11;26 - 00;15;17;29
Aaron
Removing from, for code a land to Nick land. Is that is that the headline, Chris?
00;15;18;02 - 00;15;22;25
Chris
Nick lands then, popping up a bunch lately and you know that.
00;15;22;27 - 00;15;37;09
Aaron
That dude's been spot on. Yeah, I think he's been. Well, I think he is, because he he I'm sure like all thinkers and philosophers, they don't get everything right. But I think he's got some pieces directionally correct.
00;15;37;12 - 00;16;00;27
Chris
I feel like very I don't know, like Techno Capital is in control right now like that. That's the vibe I'm getting is like very clearly, you know, sort of the things like Adam Curtis likes to talk about or, you know, make documentaries about, you know, like this system of market like is forcing everyone else's hand like it's firm.
00;16;00;27 - 00;16;03;08
Chris
I feel it's very firmly in control at the moment.
00;16;03;15 - 00;16;35;19
Pri
Yeah. I don't know if that's going to change. Like, I think there's like two things even this week that I saw that even reinforce that idea. One was just I mean, Nvidia hitting that like $5 trillion market cap. And then, you know, you think about Max seven how much it popped up. The S&P just the growth of the S&P in the last several years since really like ChatGPT came out like so much of our public market is propped up by this like tech, this tech acceleration ism and dominance.
00;16;35;22 - 00;17;00;20
Pri
And then obviously we've talked about this before, but just how one is funneling the other and this like web of funding across like basically those 7 to 10 companies. It's it feels like that techno capitalism is is only compounding. The other thing is also I so I it's an interesting graph about like New York finance rules just like traditional finance and not necessarily fintech or anything tech related.
00;17;00;20 - 00;17;21;10
Pri
And that's actually in decline in New York City, for the first time ever like that, you know, traditional finance. I don't know if that's like an AI thing, but, there's actually less jobs now than ever. And the reason I bring that up is a contrast to techno capitalism is because typically, you know, the financial industrial complex has really been dominant.
00;17;21;10 - 00;17;46;24
Pri
And it feel, I don't know if like the Trump presidency or just AI and just tech acceleration is, like some blend of crypto and new tech, but it feels like this tech capitalism is here to stay in, like finance and other industries that typically held significant power politically, culturally is is just not happening. It's waning. Yeah. I mean I think they still obviously, you know, they're they're incumbents and they have a lot of power.
00;17;46;24 - 00;17;52;11
Pri
But I feel like that's definitely, it's shifting and it feels like it's shifting even more.
00;17;52;13 - 00;18;16;03
Aaron
Yeah. You know, I don't think if, if, let's just assume that that thesis is right, that the antidote to our current state is more prediction than it would suggest, right, that it would probably be predominated by market forces, too. Right. Like prediction markets, few Turkey, lots of concepts that have floated around the the crypto landscape for a while.
00;18;16;06 - 00;18;37;20
Aaron
I guess the counter balance to that would be prediction, but it's a more like planned economy type approach. I just think that the latter just has such a bad track record. And markets, while imperfect, have a better track record. Lots of issues in markets, but probably between the two, like a centrally planned economy and a market based one.
00;18;37;22 - 00;18;43;12
Aaron
You probably take the, the market based one. So it sounds like, few turkeys on the, on the table then.
00;18;43;14 - 00;19;08;13
Chris
Oh, God. All right. So, hey, like those two poles, like, you don't really want to be inhabiting either of them. You want to be somewhere in, like, a comfortable middle range, right? And in which you can slide one way or the other, and hopefully you slide a little further on the bargain side. The scary thing about planned economies is how right for capture they are and how big the incentive is to capture them.
00;19;08;16 - 00;19;30;15
Chris
And we live in a world where, like the optimal position is to like capture things that hold, you know, like enforcement power. And that's, you know, anyone really good in business these days, like, that's their go to move is like, what thing can I arbitrage you manipulate to my benefit that was set up for some other purpose. Right.
00;19;30;18 - 00;19;52;15
Chris
And so that's like the bad side of planned economies. Plus like they never really work. And so that's like the terrible part of them. And then this, you know, like Sudha Aki or like this techno capitalism and control market driven thing. The optimal posture for that at the moment is to be anti-human. And that that's terrible as well.
00;19;52;15 - 00;20;16;16
Chris
Like, you know, we were talking about this earlier this week where I said, like, you know, if you're a company today, like the selection pressures on you are so great that you have to be anti-human or you get eaten alive. And that's a terrible position to be in. Once upon a time, there's this like, famous Henry Ford quote, which was, why do you pay your employees so much?
00;20;16;19 - 00;20;31;19
Chris
And his response was, I want them to be able to buy my product. Like, you know, if people who work at Ford can't buy a model T, like, who the hell is going to buy a model T if you took if Henry Ford took that position today, he'd be laughed out of his boardroom.
00;20;31;19 - 00;20;40;23
Aaron
Yeah, completely. Yeah. You kind of want to be like the Pete Buttigieg of, future Chris. Is that what we need to somebody that can comfortably sit in the middle.
00;20;40;25 - 00;21;06;08
Chris
In their pizza bomb? Sorry. Like I don't hold their feet in very high regard. Like all right, well, the TSA do during his, you know, like, how well was air traffic control, how well did the freight run and how happy were the freight workers like he's sort of achieved an ability to solve neither, you know, like he made both problems worse, like the labor and the human part of it and the actual performance of the system.
00;21;06;10 - 00;21;08;01
Chris
So, no, I'm not a Murphy guy.
00;21;08;03 - 00;21;14;04
Aaron
So any of that, human centric, few turkey for the future, something like that.
00;21;14;06 - 00;21;39;16
Pri
Do you think, like, was kind of. Not massively. I mean, I guess, I don't know, I've just been seeing tweets of, like, all of these people basically laying off, like, all these companies laying off people. Do you think that's like this subtle, anti-human, an emergence of an anti human trend where people, like people are still thinking employment as like a barometer for the state of the economy, when in reality they're kind of un tethering.
00;21;39;16 - 00;21;47;21
Pri
And this is like the UN tethering that we're seeing. Like you know, high unemployment actually doesn't necessarily mean like a bad economy.
00;21;47;24 - 00;22;08;24
Aaron
But it's not. Right. The like the stock market is continuing to do well. It's good for the bottom lines of these organizations. But I think it's your to your point, Chris. Right. There is like an element of of like anti-human as part of it. Right. Like what is Amazon saying. They're saying that they're going to replace those workers with robots.
00;22;08;27 - 00;22;10;27
Aaron
I mean that's pretty anti-human.
00;22;10;29 - 00;22;33;06
Chris
Yeah. Well now Amazon had to walk that back and say they're doing it because the culture is bad, that there's too many layers between management and people who actually get things done, which, you know, in Amazon PRC is basically says we've got like a shit ton of dead weight, who, you know, like are not EV positive and we need to clear them out.
00;22;33;11 - 00;23;03;09
Chris
And I guess that's a softer tone from Amazon. But we all know at the end of the day. Yeah. Like they just want robots in, you know, operating these switches. I think the problem right is if you use the stock market as a barometer or you use, wealth creation and productivity as your barometers, right. Like you're dealing with one of the most complex systems in the world, like the global economy and systems have like oscillations and lag times in them.
00;23;03;12 - 00;23;34;02
Chris
And so all of these sort of positive signs are really about asset value, inflation and the ability of the elite to accumulate assets at an outpaced rate. Right. Like our entire economy rests on labor and services. At a certain point, if, you know, like a significant portion of our population can no longer afford to engage in services because their labor stocks, like this whole thing eventually does start to break down.
00;23;34;02 - 00;23;41;10
Chris
It's just the timing of when these things happen, right? Because they're so complicated, they take a while to play out.
00;23;41;13 - 00;23;46;07
Pri
Yeah. I mean, in five years, like the labor economy is just gonna look so different.
00;23;46;14 - 00;24;06;09
Aaron
Yeah. And I think the the question I have there is that's clearly happening. I think people feel it. That probably leads to some of the the tweets and the like. Late earnings anxiety that that's that's kind of laced with those tweets. I think the question is is that is that temporary or is that, you know, does that have some degree of permanence?
00;24;06;09 - 00;24;33;25
Aaron
And I think I still optimistically believe it's more temporary, like the economy's kind of changing but maybe not. Right. And if it's not, then I don't know if you guys heard about this book called XO capitalism. It's two authors, this guy Marek, Paul Pockets and Roberto Alonso. Trillo. But they that's basically what they're arguing. They're saying that, you know, that capitalism is getting, like, untethered from, labor.
00;24;33;27 - 00;24;51;04
Aaron
And it, it enables you to basically or enables economies to grow without the need for kind of humans as a piece of it, which is, which is pretty interesting, an interesting concept. So, maybe that's maybe we are kind of entering into, like, this exo capitalistic system.
00;24;51;06 - 00;24;56;12
Pri
Maybe that's the real, post-modernism or post postmodernism.
00;24;56;15 - 00;24;57;14
Chris
The. Yeah.
00;24;57;16 - 00;24;58;23
Aaron
It could be.
00;24;58;25 - 00;25;20;27
Chris
No. Not Arendt. Is that the book? Like take a stab at what happens as this plays out on a long enough timeframe because in my head I only see two end points. One is we just have fewer and fewer people. We engage in this Darwinian struggle for survival, and 100 years from now, there's a lot less humans on Earth because they're not needed for labor.
00;25;20;27 - 00;25;36;26
Chris
Right? Like same way London was crawling with horses and horse shit, and then the car came around. I mean, you know, that problem was solved in 20 years, you know? So that's that's one possible outcome. The other is, you know, like, do UBI and like, no one works and everyone gets a check outcome.
00;25;37;02 - 00;26;00;10
Aaron
I don't I, I didn't get all the way through it. And so I'm not 100% sure. But I think the core thesis is right that capitalism is less dependent or at the more extreme sense, like no longer dependent on human labor. And so that the natural endpoint of that would be economies that have no, no limits. Right. Like actually labor is in part limiting economic growth or capitalist growth.
00;26;00;12 - 00;26;29;24
Aaron
As we kind of abstract that away, you're going to get to this, state where you can have economies without any limits, right, where there's more value that's being created, than, than humans can provide and probably a ton more. And so I think that that that just changes things. Right? Maybe if it is so abundant, then it is more of like an abundant framework and stuff like, you know, you know, UBI or or some sort of approach like that makes more sense or maybe not.
00;26;29;24 - 00;26;50;16
Aaron
I don't, I don't really know. But, you know, I think it's basically taking I think why it's interesting why people are kind of kicking it around. It's kind of explaining a bit about what may be coming. Right. And like, in many ways, like they argue and I think it's, it's true that, capitalism has become kind of representative.
00;26;50;18 - 00;27;14;07
Aaron
It's just like meaning is a little bit more decentralized. It's no no longer anchored in a single, source of truth or structure. In many ways, a capitalism is become cultural. It's operating through like science, media and consumption rather than like, rooted in actual industrial production. You kind of see that with like, massive multiples or, there was aspects of that in meme coins.
00;27;14;09 - 00;27;49;07
Aaron
We're just seeing, you know, reality increasingly feel like a simulation and more power shifting to networks. And so we kind of have this system where representation is kind of overtaken, how we actually live or what is actual, real, real and air quotes on the ground. And capitalism is much more, you know, memetic, cultural and informational. And so I think what they're arguing is that this system is now beginning to become much more productive through automation, and a whole bunch of other factors.
00;27;49;09 - 00;27;54;25
Chris
Okay. Sure. Like and that's great. And that's a whole book's worth of content right there.
00;27;54;27 - 00;27;55;24
Aaron
It completely.
00;27;55;26 - 00;28;17;22
Chris
The question is to what purpose? Right. Like, okay, great. The economy can be super abundant. And if it doesn't flow back, if it doesn't actually serve the people who create these economies, to what end and to what purpose, right? Like no one ever really like stops and goes, well, what's the point? If I was actually capable of laying everyone on Earth off?
00;28;17;22 - 00;28;37;23
Chris
Like, you know, what's what's the what's the outcome here? Because I don't I just don't think anyone ever thinks in like, you know, that that scope. Maybe it's too big, maybe it's too scary, maybe, like, look, writing a book like exo capitalism is hard enough as it is. And that's not the author's responsibility, I don't know.
00;28;37;25 - 00;28;57;26
Aaron
Yeah, I think that, I think that's a lot to chew on. So I don't know if they got there, but I think that's a great question, Chris. I don't I don't know, maybe it's maybe it's things that are more futuristic, right. Like, multi-planetary exploration or or more expansion. I don't know, but I feel like these are the types of questions we're beginning to have to grapple with.
00;28;58;02 - 00;29;11;01
Aaron
I found it like, pretty like a pretty persuasive in the sense that I do think it's kind of beginning to explain, you know, kind of what happens. But I don't I don't know if they've answered the question of what it means for us as mere humans.
00;29;11;03 - 00;29;38;12
Chris
So I'm reading this book right now that is, it's wild in, in a lot of different ways. It's excellent. It's called Secondhand Time by, Svetlana Alexievich. And it's an oral history of the transition from the Soviet Union to Russia. Like she just goes out and sits down and, like, interviews a bunch of people and, like, has them tell their stories and, you know, their experiences and their reflections on, like, was it worth it?
00;29;38;12 - 00;30;03;24
Chris
Or, you know, what do you take from this? And the, the big thing like I keep thinking about is both like how financially illiterate every single person you know, who was like, born under Joseph Stalin is like, they have like they all talk about. We had no clue what the hell money was like. We got 90 rubles a month.
00;30;03;24 - 00;30;26;05
Chris
And if you were a boss, you got 120 rubles a month. And we spent it all in magazines, because all we can do is sit around in our kitchen and read like crazy and debate these ideas. But then we realize all the ideas were we were debating. Debating. We actually had no clue about any of them. We were completely in the dark about the actual apparatus of power in our own country.
00;30;26;07 - 00;30;57;04
Chris
Like it? It really made, like Soviet society sound like this really crazy mix of, like, super heady ideas about literature, about art, about political philosophy, and then completely infantilized about how the actual apparatus of power worked in their country. And then when they integrated, like into, you know, capitalism, they, they forget about it. They were all just like, what the hell is this?
00;30;57;04 - 00;31;15;03
Chris
I don't get it at all. And how on earth am I supposed to, like, fit in in this? It's this absolutely wild book. Like, it kind of comes off like the Soviet Union was basically a cargo cult. And once they got exposed to the actual thing, they, like, had no clue what to do with it.
00;31;15;06 - 00;31;16;24
Aaron
That feels right.
00;31;16;26 - 00;31;32;16
Chris
That seems to bring it up, because I'm reading this and in some ways, my God, this kind of sounds like half the people in crypto, half of like our country right now, like it almost feels like we're heading into this just in a much different way.
00;31;32;18 - 00;31;42;02
Pri
Where you think that, like many of the people in the world today are not financially. I feel like people are more financially literate now than they've ever been in the history of like the US.
00;31;42;09 - 00;32;18;11
Chris
Now, I think they're hyper financially literate and what that means is they understand like mechanism design, market gotchas, like they understand the mechanics of these things on a deep, intimate level, and then they're applying them to like absolute vaporware and fluff and transient things. And so like it's to me it's a really weird mismatch of like insane complexity in the packaging and packaging and integration and like your interaction with the financial system.
00;32;18;13 - 00;32;44;22
Chris
But then like the core thing you're actually interacting with is. So yeah, like the little simulacra core and fluffy, like, you know, you're not like engaging in like really complicated like leasing and bond issue and structures so you can buy a power substation from General Electric, you know, your gambling, your upcoming bills in and out. You know what I mean?
00;32;44;22 - 00;32;47;20
Chris
Like that that that's kind of like the weird part of it.
00;32;47;24 - 00;32;53;28
Pri
Yeah. It's like there's like financial literacy, but it's like manifested in, like, gambling and just speculative experiment.
00;32;54;00 - 00;33;22;24
Aaron
Or maybe you invert it. And really, the allure of gambling for many has expanded, financial literacy. And maybe crypto's like a playground to so people can understand more people can understand market forces. Right. I guess before before crypto, you didn't have that opportunity, right? You had to literally be a trader on Wall Street or were some somehow connected to there to Wall Street, like in the physical sense, like in New York, to understand a lot how a lot of these systems worked.
00;33;23;02 - 00;33;38;13
Aaron
And it's process of kind of democratizing access to finance and the production of, financial primitives. Maybe that's, this is the beginning of that education system before we get into this, human centered view, Turkey crisp.
00;33;38;16 - 00;34;04;26
Chris
Okay, let me try to tie these two things together. One of the things, like I'm getting out of this, this book, right, is basically we have this level of indoctrination, dogma, theory, like ways of living and, like, interacting in public that were so complicated, rigid and, like, all encompassing. And they only worked within the confines of our society.
00;34;05;02 - 00;34;48;28
Chris
And when, like communism writ large, like, you know, or Bolshevism and the Soviet Union couldn't keep up with the outside world and had to collapse, all of that was completely useless to us, because no one else in the world was buying what we were selling. Right? And in crypto, we kind of have the same problem right now, especially in the alt markets where like we have the most complicated mechanism designed and financial incentives and structures and token vests and like all of these things surrounding protocols, products that no one else in the world has any interest in at the moment, and there's no demand for it.
00;34;48;28 - 00;35;10;22
Chris
And so once you're finally confronted with the problem that, like, we have internally carried this thing as far as we possibly can and no one else gives a damn about it, like that, like I do feel like crypto, at least in the last generation of crypto, projects or like confronting that same exact problem.
00;35;10;24 - 00;35;39;21
Aaron
I somewhat agree with that, Chris. I think the the I do, I think people do care. I think the challenge is, is that in the, the Erc20 market, right. Which is like the trenches, there's just been so much PvP and, you know, value, you know, like value added of flywheels that have been created, which I think existed in some of that earlier, earlier iterations that it's it's just it's just kind of run at it a little bit or temporarily run out of runway.
00;35;39;24 - 00;36;02;25
Aaron
And I think, I think we saw like a lot of projects that were really just trying to play that game, like who can who can win kind of the PvP battle instead of what we saw in early eath. Right? Which was public goods and creating, you know, productive flywheels, like what we saw in in Silicon Valley. But doing it in a more abstracted way.
00;36;02;25 - 00;36;21;02
Aaron
I just don't think we we have that same, setup right now. And the market kind of has to reset a bit before that comes back in. And then I think the demand is just not retail demand, which is where the trenches kind of thrive. Instead, it's institutional demand. And what they want is, you know, tokenized securities.
00;36;21;02 - 00;36;42;26
Aaron
Right. So on the one hand, you see your C20 token prices hitting, lows that were not seen since the collapse of FDX. But at the same time, you're seeing, you know, a doubling of the number of tokenized securities. So just the demand is just different than what the trenches are good at. Right? Or want. That's kind of my read.
00;36;42;28 - 00;37;03;01
Chris
Okay. You're still feeding into the this book I'm reading, right. Because in this book we we get perestroika, we get an opening of records, and she's speaking to people who they were sent away to the camps, or more commonly, their parents were sent away. And they now, like, get into the archives and want to look at what happened.
00;37;03;04 - 00;37;23;05
Chris
And the stories that are popping up is, oh, well, I shared this communal apartment and I had a, I had a, 25 square meter room because I had a child and my neighbor had, you know, the other person in there had a ten, ten square meter apartment. And I, you know, I get sent away to the camps.
00;37;23;10 - 00;37;47;25
Chris
I come back 17 years later, and I thank this woman for raising my child. And then I go into the archives, and she was the one who ratted me out. Right. Like that PvP. When you're in a closed society where there's, like, no room for growth and the only outlet is to play against each other, like, that's a very common aspect of like the stories I'm seeing in this book and, you know, like to some degree to that that describes our market.
00;37;47;25 - 00;38;01;26
Chris
And at the end of the day, right when Russian when the Soviet Union collapses, what is it that the rest of the world wants? They don't want their political theory. They don't want their economic structure. They want their natural gas.
00;38;01;29 - 00;38;03;10
Aaron
Yeah. They're. Well.
00;38;03;13 - 00;38;07;04
Chris
Yes. And so like what you're describing like ain't all that different.
00;38;07;06 - 00;38;30;15
Aaron
Right. The oil I mean even it's been compared to his oil in the, in the past. Right. So it's native it's its native unit is gas. Right. So maybe the analogy sold really well here, Chris. But I mean but that is what people want. I think they there still is a lot of demand for like a non sovereign, you know, asset that's a store of value whether that's Bitcoin I think eath has those properties.
00;38;30;15 - 00;38;48;08
Aaron
Although people debate that endlessly. But I think it has like money ish properties. Yeah. But I think I do think that people want like a neutral global state and there is demand for that. But there's more demand for that now from, you know, more like fintech corners then the public, like the public right now, who knows what they kind of want?
00;38;48;11 - 00;39;00;27
Aaron
It feels a little frenetic. And I think they're a little bit exhausted with what was being offered for the past, you know, 4 or 5 years from 2001 to, to now, at least when it comes to the trenches.
00;39;01;02 - 00;39;10;12
Pri
Kind of a tangent. Speaking of the trenches, but have any of you guys like, skim or read ready? Think about like the governing article that was like front page one?
00;39;10;19 - 00;39;13;01
Aaron
No. Where was it? Front page.
00;39;13;08 - 00;39;14;04
Pri
Harper's mag.
00;39;14;08 - 00;39;15;04
Aaron
No, I didn't.
00;39;15;06 - 00;39;16;03
Chris
It's like.
00;39;16;05 - 00;39;47;07
Pri
I've only I like kind of just, like have read commentary on the article, like I haven't actually read it. I, I want to I'll send it to you guys, but it kind of feels aligned a little bit with this idea of just maybe nihilism or, you know, misunderstanding of what things are. But the whole thing is like it's exploring the governing subculture, and it goes deep and like discord servers of people who basically want to, like, reach a gun state, which is like a zone of ego, death and bliss that's like meditative for people.
00;39;47;07 - 00;40;06;15
Pri
But the whole like over arching the yeah, they like literally like we'll have streams of each other, like supporting men, supporting other men to masturbate multiple times a day, like hours a day. And they'll, like, watch porn together and masturbate together to make sure, like they all.
00;40;06;17 - 00;40;16;20
Aaron
This is this is what's on the other, other side of capitalism. So we're actually, figuring it out, tying it together with governing.
00;40;16;22 - 00;40;26;28
Chris
Okay, so I had to drop the research, and my chat is freaking out. I came back in the middle of this while. Okay, keep going, but carry on.
00;40;27;01 - 00;41;02;12
Pri
Yeah. The Tldr is like, okay, there's these communities online. They're like Gen Z subculture. They have their own. It's kind of religious in that, like there's obviously their own vocabulary and like rituals. And then they have like these like gunner caves that are just like pornography, dark pits where they just like masturbate and yeah, they'll kind of like they'll basically like there's also like the viral story about this guy who got, who kind of got in trouble for going, I don't know, but I need to read the whole thing.
00;41;02;12 - 00;41;23;08
Pri
But it's like basically commentary on modern men, Gen Z, kind of maybe this desperation for social connectivity, but around like a pornography addiction slash getting into this zone of bliss and like higher being through this.
00;41;23;10 - 00;41;26;08
Aaron
Or hat's off Harper's for running that article.
00;41;26;10 - 00;41;33;16
Chris
What why I'm sure Mike judge was seeing this go around and being like, I made a movie about this 20 years ago, guys.
00;41;33;19 - 00;41;34;20
Aaron
It's kind of like, once.
00;41;34;20 - 00;41;57;12
Chris
Again, Idiocracy is right. I will not get into like Camu. And this being a form of philosophical suicide because I think that's a little too dark, a path to go down. But, if you want to carry this a little further that there's been thinking around this whole thing, usually it deals with the allure of authoritarianism and just blindly listening to someone else.
00;41;57;12 - 00;42;02;05
Chris
I guess in this case, it's, like. Yeah, just checking out for boobs.
00;42;02;07 - 00;42;16;05
Pri
Yeah, but it's also like this weird thing where they like, it's like, you know, trying to get out of your own social isolation by finding this community, which is fascinating to me. It's like they're kind of coalescing around. Yeah, gunning and there.
00;42;16;11 - 00;42;19;14
Aaron
I think there's better pastimes. I'm not going to lie. Yeah.
00;42;19;16 - 00;42;29;06
Pri
It's it's weird, dude. But like, it's it's been kind of going viral, like it's like, definitely an interesting piece. Yeah. It's weird. It's kind of depressing.
00;42;29;08 - 00;42;42;11
Chris
Well, that seems to be a recurring theme on today's podcast. Once again, Derek is busy traveling, and here we are, like, wallowing in the, the confusion of existing in 2025 without any LA sunshine.
00;42;42;13 - 00;42;43;01
Pri
And,
00;42;43;04 - 00;43;01;25
Aaron
Yeah, the sunshine is good. I do think, though, on the Erc20 market. And Chris, I know you were you were early to kind of describe this. I do think that there was a ton of overproduction of tokens to like nonproductive tokens. And because of that overproduction, it's just going to take time for that market to kind of reset.
00;43;01;25 - 00;43;17;11
Aaron
But I think we're kind of in the middle of that process. But time heals a lot of a lot of wounds. And I think, I think here we'll kind of see the same thing. But I do think it's kind of like causing, you know, some folks that were deep in those trenches, a lot of angst at this point.
00;43;17;13 - 00;43;30;01
Aaron
But maybe this is like the last shoe to drop. I guess your argument would be that there's to use your, your Russia analogy. There's more shoes to drop there, but I don't know if that's true. Yeah.
00;43;30;04 - 00;43;55;27
Chris
I stopped predicting shoes to drop because they continue dropping. And this is this is just too big and complicated. The thing to really understand when we're here on the other side, if you're looking for positives, right. Like I think everyone now understands the UN attractiveness, the packaging of this asset class. Right. And the thinking that, you know, took hold in 2020 to 2022.
00;43;56;00 - 00;44;16;17
Chris
And we're just very clearly seeing. Right. Like the nice thing about, well, the terrible thing about bad ideas is they take forever to be proven as bad ideas, like you need like a certain amount of time and a large enough sample set that even if like you see something and you say that this doesn't read right to me, that's a bad idea.
00;44;16;17 - 00;44;41;25
Chris
Like, you know, sometimes bad ideas actually are good ideas, right? I think we now have enough, sample size to say the last class in the early 20s, the way they were structured, the size they were issued in the capital formation around them was an absolutely terrible idea. And we know this because no one wants to buy them, period.
00;44;41;27 - 00;45;01;08
Chris
Like, that's one of those things I look at in crypto where like, like buybacks are a big better right now, like a lot of bag holders and a lot of people who are active out there are very excited about buybacks and see it as a positive meta. I look at it and I'm going, like, you guys are in real fucking trouble, right?
00;45;01;08 - 00;45;24;26
Chris
Like I one of the simplest axioms in in the business world is if you're not growing, you're dying. And it's hard to argue like that one right there. It's a fundamental truth. And so I look at buybacks from a lens of retrenchment that it is saying this thing that I have issued, I know there is no larger demand.
00;45;24;26 - 00;45;46;21
Chris
I know that the group of people I am serving is limited in nature and therefore, like my role at this project right now, is to hold onto these people and feed them as much as I can in the lean times. Like that's me is not a bullish signal at all. That's like really like bad juju.
00;45;46;23 - 00;46;04;22
Aaron
But I think, I mean, if you look at the new projects over the past year, year and a half, I mean, I think that's been at least my internal view. A lot of them weren't appealing off the bat. Right? They were really just appealing to the folks in the trenches to give them something to play with. They haven't delivered fully on their their promise.
00;46;04;22 - 00;46;26;15
Aaron
But I would think some of them I mean, it's kind of happened with after the ICO token sale hour or two, right. Like a lot of folks released tokens, they they probably regretted that they did that or they had to do some restructuring. But then that work happens and maybe, maybe the buybacks give some of those good projects like a little bit of runway, to to kind of do that.
00;46;26;15 - 00;46;33;09
Aaron
And then they come out a little bit stronger on the other end. So not a I'm not 100% willing to kind of give up on that yet. Chris.
00;46;33;11 - 00;46;38;27
Chris
Yeah, sure. That's there. That's fine. You know, glass is half filled. Glass is half empty.
00;46;39;00 - 00;46;42;05
Aaron
I'll take I'm taking the half, half filled one today.
00;46;42;08 - 00;47;09;22
Chris
But yeah, it just to me, the activity in this space right now is not around positive signals. And maybe we're getting to a point in time, but, like, you know, we're we're discussing the the what's now clear is day that alter did right. We a year ago. We're talking about the bottoming out of the NFT market and it finally turning a corner.
00;47;09;22 - 00;47;29;20
Chris
And you know I think we probably discussed like the Darwinian race, a lot of these platforms and galleries had to get into for survival, where you know, only a couple of them were going to make it out. And at the moment it was like it's inverse and fellowship. I think that same exact thing is happening in crypto, social right now.
00;47;29;22 - 00;48;02;11
Chris
You know, XR, forecaster days. Yeah. Especially like star Castor announcing their pivot like they're about to enter this Darwinian struggle for survival in which cryptos, the idea of social has been thrown out the window like that's gone. And now it is like, really? It's gambling to like this, like d gen gooner, shooter crowd. You know, the speculative like our job is to point and signal and so like, that's just yet another retrenchment gaming, right.
00;48;02;13 - 00;48;20;21
Chris
Like, other than this Amazon other side news. Like, I don't think gaming's a positive piece of news. For years. And so it happens and it's happening on so many different fronts. And at the end of the day, the only thing we really have is that Larry Fink wants to settle securities on a ledger.
00;48;20;23 - 00;48;38;08
Aaron
Yeah, completely. And that's where the demand is. Right? Like that. That's where the market's kind of moving. I just think that that's a bit perpendicular from where a lot of folks are in the trenches. So you know that over. We're not going to see now the overproduction of ERC 20 tokens. And so yeah there's there's less new projects.
00;48;38;08 - 00;48;54;13
Aaron
There's less stuff coming into the market. So I think the market then will digest that. At the same time, though, I wouldn't be surprised if a year from now we're talking about how there's a bounce back or at least some of them have. I mean, I think some of the protocols are projects, particularly the DeFi ones. They are useful.
00;48;54;13 - 00;49;11;16
Aaron
People continue to use them. I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised if there's just this is kind of like that consolidation before we get regulatory clarity and then they bounce back pretty hard. But it is super hard to tell. I think it's good that we're not getting like this. ERC 20 oversupply.
00;49;11;18 - 00;49;17;20
Chris
I just think we are getting it. It's just that like these things were set in motion years ago and they have to play out.
00;49;17;23 - 00;49;43;23
Aaron
Yeah, I think we got it. I'd say like there was an oversupply, but that error is now over. Right. There's less capital being allocated towards the ERC 20 market. There's less new projects that are releasing tokens. But the ones that people do like, you know, are still attracting a fair amount of capital, right? There's this massive mega eath, token sale that that's that's completed or nearly completed.
00;49;43;26 - 00;49;55;25
Aaron
I didn't follow everything there blow by blow, but it had a lot of interest. Whether that's smart or not, like I'm not going to weigh in on. I don't know enough about the project, but there is still some demand there. Chris.
00;49;55;27 - 00;50;33;16
Chris
To me, that's a function, a need to speculate and that there's still too much money on the sidelines. I don't think anyone in the year 2025 could make an argument that block space is valuable, right? But Mega is proposition. Is it fast? Lock space is valuable. And so if you're buying Mega, if you're buying into this thing right now, you're making a bet that, you know, five years from now, whatever your time horizon is, that block space and especially block space with low latency and high throughput is valuable.
00;50;33;18 - 00;50;41;10
Chris
And if you don't believe that, well, then you clearly have like an abundance of idle capital and a gambling problem.
00;50;41;10 - 00;50;47;08
Aaron
Yeah, I mean, I, I definitely don't think it's going to be valuable in the near-term. Right. That's a real long term bet.
00;50;47;10 - 00;51;12;07
Pri
Naive question. And maybe more just emphasizes my like, lack of familiar familiarity with like, just public markets. But how is that so dissimilar to like share buyback or like a shirt like I don't look at share buybacks as a particular, you know, negative signal, as a broader company or market. Like, I don't I don't view it as, not I'm not trying to like necessarily job comparisons.
00;51;12;09 - 00;51;12;19
Pri
Stop.
00;51;12;24 - 00;51;37;18
Chris
The first of all, share buybacks, by and large, happen as a use of capital generated by the enterprise. We made money. We have a surplus amount of money sitting around. We don't have a large capital expenditure. We don't have a need for it. And therefore what we're going to do is buyback and retire our own shares and boost the value of our enterprise.
00;51;37;21 - 00;51;56;24
Chris
Crypto doesn't have that other than, hyper liquid. And we do have to mention high clear because otherwise we get crucified for like setting all altar dead, right. You know, like hyper liquid however, is a perp decks it is a gambling tool, at the end of the day. And therefore, it's one of the few things that can survive.
00;51;56;24 - 00;52;23;02
Chris
And it didn't take outside money, so it was completely free to design it's token issuance and value accrual mechanism. Like if we had more hyper liquid and if we had more revenue generating demand for protocol use, then coin back buybacks would be would be bullish. But we don't. And so what we have is taking trading fees on speculation to shrink supply.
00;52;23;04 - 00;52;43;29
Chris
That's that's the primary use of like token buyback mechanisms today, which is far different than Dell computers saying we did such a good job selling computers to people. And we're already so efficient in making computers that all this extra money, we're just going to give it back to you in the form of retiring stock. Like those are very different things to me.
00;52;44;02 - 00;52;52;12
Pri
Yeah. Okay. Fair. I guess I was a new question, but I just kind of wanted to like, compare it to what exists. But yeah, you're right.
00;52;52;15 - 00;53;20;19
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, I think another way to, phrase it, Chris, is, you know, we're just seeing financial engineering for financial engineering purposes, not for utility purposes. Right. And that can only go so far and isn't like a, a signal of, like a healthy ecosystem. But it's not right with a couple outliers like you mentioned before with hype and and others because that is, you know, providing that kind of trader class that predominates the trenches with tools that they want, right, in an efficient way.
00;53;20;22 - 00;53;41;29
Aaron
So that's why people are are super excited about that. That's not really my world. So I don't know how how good or bad that is. But I do think it's healthy to get the Erc20 market kind of restructured. And I think we're just in the middle of it. People just don't like like that. But, I think, I know you were calling that a year ago, right?
00;53;42;02 - 00;54;02;23
Aaron
So, yeah, it seems like we're we're kind of in the middle of that process. It's it's never fun to see, but probably healthy long term. You know, then you look at total tokenized public stocks. Right. It's a it's at 683 million. Right. If we look a year ago or even then in June, it was like 300 million June July.
00;54;02;23 - 00;54;23;28
Aaron
So it's kind of doubled pretty quickly. So I think we're all we're going to see just demand coming from those areas where there is like a real benefit to, to the technology. Right. Just in terms of accessibility and interoperability and all those other bits. And then at the same, you know, it's kind of like a tale of two cities that we have in crypto.
00;54;23;28 - 00;54;50;08
Aaron
The trenches are, you know, oversupplied. You know, kind of overextended, engaging in financial engineering to extend lifeline. And then at the same time, you're seeing institutional demand for the base commodity, like stuff that people want Bitcoin, if you're also seeing demand, you know, from public markets for these companies. Right. You're seeing well, we saw like circle's IPO and a number of other IPOs that went pretty well for an industry.
00;54;50;10 - 00;54;54;03
Aaron
Learn that consensus may be going public too. So yeah.
00;54;54;05 - 00;54;54;19
Pri
This is kind of.
00;54;54;19 - 00;54;56;18
Aaron
Like it's it's just a bifurcated market.
00;54;56;19 - 00;55;22;08
Chris
It's also it's also inter like your optimism is in service to techno capitalism. Your optimism is not in service to your everyday punter and crypto your guy in the trenches because what you're what you're basically saying is the trenches are going to get washed out and that the validation of what we believe in is going to benefit, capital.
00;55;22;10 - 00;55;40;26
Aaron
Yeah. I frame it a little bit different, I think I think it we knew it was already washed out. Right. It just took some time for that, that story to play out. And it's, you know, if that's a 12 chapter book, maybe we're in chapter eight. Right. And they'll probably be a little bit more there. But on the other end of it, I think there's lessons that are learned.
00;55;40;29 - 00;56;01;03
Aaron
And you see people even noting that on X or Twitter. Right. They're noting that maybe airdrops weren't the best way to do it. Right. Or, you know, maybe there was some benefits to the way people structured token sales as opposed to just raising capital, building something, doing an airdrop, and then applying some either complex token economics or buyback related to it.
00;56;01;06 - 00;56;39;27
Aaron
So I think it will kind of reform into something that's probably a bit more healthy. And to me, like, the reason I'm excited about just having more, digital assets or digital tokens in the, in the market is because that that is the future, right? The future is tokens everywhere, whether that's AI tokens, whether it's crypto tokens that just the direction that we're going, and kind of bringing on chain all these legacy institutions, businesses and capital, it will be a net benefit for the big trend that I see, which is just an internet economy that is untethered from the legacy, you know, national border constrained economies that we kind of live in
00;56;39;27 - 00;56;43;04
Aaron
today. So I'm in defense of exo capitalism, I guess.
00;56;43;04 - 00;57;00;05
Pri
Chris, I think one thing I would just note to, to the point that Chris makes, I add something to what I say in response to your interview is I do think the trenches are in the last on its last breath. Like I actually think it may be pretty close to over, like when I'm thinking about the next like big Erc20 run.
00;57;00;05 - 00;57;28;09
Pri
Where do I see that coming from? I see it coming from like Coinbase's acquisition of echo, or in the projects there, or even just JP Morgan doing their own tokenization platform, which they're going to release like mid 2026. Like I do not see it coming from like the more permissionless network side of things. Does that mean that I don't think like things coming from the permissionless network will be super successful, like another hype or something?
00;57;28;14 - 00;57;36;21
Pri
I still think that will exist, but I just don't think it's going to be a large swath of the market. I think it's going to be very, very small and like basically over.
00;57;36;23 - 00;57;58;00
Aaron
Yeah, I don't think I'm, I semi agree, I don't think it's over. I think it just it's going to go through this restructuring process. It will get reset. And then because of this other demand that's that's forming right. It will continue to grow the space. And then at some point I will flip back to retail, which is where the, you know, which is who predominates the trenches.
00;57;58;03 - 00;58;16;18
Aaron
But then at the same time, you know, those institutions are going to be actors. They're and they're sophisticated. So who knows? You know, maybe they're, maybe they're clearing out the brush before they come into. We kind of saw that with stablecoins or even before, like the Bitcoin ETFs, there was a lot of price movement before the institutional players came in.
00;58;16;20 - 00;58;20;07
Chris
Well, here we are the last day of October.
00;58;20;09 - 00;58;20;23
Aaron
In the euro.
00;58;20;24 - 00;58;31;17
Chris
Coins. Yeah it's Friday, probably the 31st Halloween. And the coin is where it is. It where is where it is. And
00;58;31;20 - 00;58;35;03
Pri
Just sideways for the last two years.
00;58;35;05 - 00;58;38;15
Chris
I mean, it's well, really to some degree.
00;58;38;17 - 00;58;41;11
Pri
Just slow. I'm a millennial need.
00;58;41;16 - 00;58;50;13
Aaron
Yeah. You don't want to. You don't want this grind up. You want, I think it is going to be a grind up personally. Yeah. That's my my view, but we'll see.
00;58;50;15 - 00;58;56;01
Pri
Agreed. Well, here we are. Happy Halloween guys. I hope you guys are doing something fun. Anyone dressing up?
00;58;56;03 - 00;59;09;07
Aaron
I mean, it's a huge like. Like Chris said in my neighborhood, it's a big event. So everybody will be out on the streets and having a nice time. It's, a nice moment of joy as we, kind of move deeper into fall.
00;59;09;15 - 00;59;10;07
Pri
Yeah.
00;59;10;09 - 00;59;17;25
Chris
Yeah. I'm, I'm dressing up as a dad who's filling two coolers worth of, candy and handing them out in my driveway.
00;59;17;27 - 00;59;19;28
Pri
Nice costume.
00;59;20;00 - 00;59;23;24
Chris
Every year, me and, 2500 pieces of candy.
00;59;23;26 - 00;59;30;25
Aaron
Let's go. Well, you know, maybe we should, internet society and, you know, do it and get to the streets.
00;59;30;27 - 00;59;55;02
Pri
Let's do it. Happy Halloween. It's not society today we're missing there, but it's Erin, Chris and I talking all things tech, crypto, philosophy and more. Yeah. Welcome, all. And just as a reminder, these thoughts and opinions are our own and not of our employer. And none of this is financial advice of course. So yeah. Thanks. Let's get it going to jail.
00;59;55;05 - 01;00;02;18
Pri
Cheers for y'all.
01;00;02;21 - 01;00;08;27
Pri
Who?