Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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;00;00 - 00;00;24;16
Aaron
It seems like people like the tinfoil hat episode from last week. I was I was pleasantly surprised by the, the response there. I don't know how that would land with our audience.
00;00;24;16 - 00;00;31;14
Derek
I actually haven't I haven't had a chance to kind of, see any of the feedback yet. I saw a couple of comments. For what? What was the general feedback here?
00;00;31;16 - 00;00;35;25
Aaron
They like to see people talking.
00;00;35;28 - 00;00;43;19
Chris
Why don't we just become C people? Guys, let's give up on this podcasting thing. And, you know, just get out there and raid and read.
00;00;43;21 - 00;00;57;07
Aaron
I have thought about that a little bit, Chris. Like maybe crypto like is the C people. And there's the whole network state being stateless. It's a little there's some rough, rough parallels there. But I don't want to go too deep there. Where are you pre.
00;00;57;12 - 00;01;03;13
Pri
Oh wow. I was literally just about to say the like the end state of crypto is like the C people network state.
00;01;03;19 - 00;01;08;07
Chris
Just an anonymous blob raiding, boarding, stealing.
00;01;08;10 - 00;01;16;10
Aaron
It was wild this week to start to see some of the meme token launches. I guess like is the ICO era back? It kind of felt that way a little bit.
00;01;16;17 - 00;01;16;29
Pri
Jelly.
00;01;16;29 - 00;01;36;27
Aaron
Jelly with jelly jelly. And there was like a handful of other ones. It wasn't really something I was like participating in, but I definitely was watching it from the sidelines. Is that like where we are in the cycle, or is there something more going on? It feels like really like Trump. And the Trump token opened up that aperture for for meme coins.
00;01;36;29 - 00;01;57;25
Pri
It's funny because it's all these like, it's not even just your usual suspects. It's like these web2 founders that are like launching them. Like it was like the Venmo co-founder. And then I think Nikita Bear was thinking about it. Or there was like some tweets surfacing that he was considering launching it. Like, I'm like, is this to even raise for some sort of product?
00;01;57;25 - 00;02;08;02
Pri
Like, is it a Nike? Or is this just simply a meme coin? Like, I haven't followed it that closely because it's like still emerging, but it is really funny to me that they're like leaning on this as a fundraising tool, almost.
00;02;08;09 - 00;02;32;24
Aaron
What's funny, like at the end of the ICO token sale error, there was like a whole cadence that and like some more traditional, you know, companies or founders and more traditional tech companies that were kind of leaning into token sales as a, as a way to raise capital. I think that's in part why some folks, like regulators raise their hackles or even some more established venture capital funds, but maybe that's coming back.
00;02;32;26 - 00;02;47;13
Aaron
I've been kind of scratching my head like, why? Why they're interested or kind of excited in it. Is it just like distribution? Is it for capital, or is it just because they've been wanting to do this for a while, or they just want to be part of the meta? Like, I can't kind of figure out the motivations behind some of them.
00;02;47;15 - 00;02;48;23
Aaron
Or maybe I'm overthinking it.
00;02;48;25 - 00;03;13;20
Chris
Yeah, I think you're overthinking it. I mean, it's money. It doesn't require a lot of effort. I'll just pause right there. I don't know if you're a washed up operator from ten years ago. The dignified thing is to do, a tech, podcast at the intersection of technology and culture. Like, you know, I don't see this right here, but the former kids these days, no dignity.
00;03;13;23 - 00;03;19;24
Aaron
So you think it just it it just it could be potentially just, just a profit opportunity.
00;03;19;26 - 00;03;24;01
Chris
I just chalk everything up to the profit opportunities these days.
00;03;24;03 - 00;03;26;19
Pri
I don't know, I just think they're having fun. I think they're just like.
00;03;26;27 - 00;03;44;24
Aaron
That's kind of what I was getting at pre. Like, I think they want to they want to. Yeah I think that's it's got like sure like that maybe an element crisp. But my, my gut tells me it's like something a little bit different. Like they want to play around with this new mechanic or it's kind of like a new view of social, like I'm not 100% sure, but I'm hoping it's not just profit motive.
00;03;45;01 - 00;03;59;27
Chris
I don't know, man. Like you spend ten years in prison or whatever, you know, Roth had you get out and the first thing you do is fuck up your liquidity on radio and and get wrecked on a lot. And then going to big world, man. You know, that's the shit out there.
00;03;59;29 - 00;04;02;19
Aaron
Did that actually really happen? I may miss that. He really did.
00;04;02;19 - 00;04;09;27
Chris
That. I saw his Doomscrolling Twitter this morning. So, you know, I don't know the veracity of it, but.
00;04;10;00 - 00;04;12;28
Aaron
Why waste your bitcoin? That's what I'd say, Tim.
00;04;13;01 - 00;04;36;00
Pri
All right everyone, welcome to Net Society. It's, myself, Chris, Derek and Aaron today. As you guys know, this podcast is all about exploring our other digital art crypto, AI, tech, and more. We're going to be bringing you deep insights, fresh perspectives, and hitting on some themes explored across various styles. Also, these are just our own opinions and not that of our employer.
00;04;36;03 - 00;04;38;10
Pri
So thanks for joining the show today, everyone.
00;04;38;10 - 00;04;45;11
Chris
So do we have any, shiny new tech conspiracies to pivot into this week, or do we have to, like, be serious people here on the pod?
00;04;45;13 - 00;04;47;14
Aaron
I think we're going to need to be serious, Chris.
00;04;47;16 - 00;04;49;06
Pri
Oh, damn. I was ready to go.
00;04;49;07 - 00;04;50;15
Aaron
No, you have one. Pray.
00;04;50;17 - 00;05;00;15
Pri
Oh, man. Deep sea. I think there's probably some deep conspiracy. I tried to do a little ad lib thing. I don't think that worked really well.
00;05;00;16 - 00;05;02;08
Aaron
But you landed it. You did a great job.
00;05;02;13 - 00;05;25;01
Pri
Yeah, but no, I mean, I don't know, I feel like there's been a lot of thoughts flying around on Deep Sea. What's happening there, whether or not they actually train on the number of GPUs that they reported, reportedly, you know, did whether or not this is like a foil for some sort of Sputnik Cold War arms race with China versus U.S tech IP, proprietary information.
00;05;25;01 - 00;05;41;03
Pri
I mean, there's like a lot of different narratives that are emerging, but that's obviously been like the news that dominated the week, I would say. So I don't know if I have like a full read on on what's happening there. I do the one thing I do find out about the deep sea thing that makes me like pause is the timing of it all.
00;05;41;05 - 00;06;12;10
Pri
Like deep has been around for a while. It kind of was this hedge fund spin out or something to help the hedge fund that gets spun out of it, and then he releases, one and the documentation it takes. Maybe it just takes a little bit of time for the market to fully understand what's going on with Deep Sea, but I remember even mentioning it on last week's show and we were talking about it, you know, over the week of one, and people are talking about how it's a lot cheaper and what have you, but it didn't really, like hit the markets until it didn't feel like it was really picking up Sunday evening.
00;06;12;10 - 00;06;26;10
Pri
And then Monday, obviously, you know, Nvidia and the rest of the markets, tech stocks in general, just like took a beating. The timing felt very, very like narrative Twitter driven. And I just didn't really fully grasp that.
00;06;26;13 - 00;06;31;25
Aaron
Yeah. It also felt like a slight overreaction to me. I'm curious Derek, what what's kind of your take on all this?
00;06;31;27 - 00;06;51;22
Derek
Yeah, I actually wrote about DPC in my paper over Christmas when they released V3. And I mean, R1 is an extension of that in many ways. And, I'll also just say, you know, if I was going to like, unbundle the core criticisms or like at least why this is such a big deal. I think the first one is like the banner price tag for training R1.
00;06;51;28 - 00;07;19;29
Derek
I think, a lot of smart AI researchers are taking that number at face value, that 5 or $6 million to to actually train, train R1, mostly because like a lot of the math and, and a lot of the, the kind of the explanation of how that, that was calculated, or how that dollar value could arise, can kind of be teased out looking backwards, like figure out exactly, you know, reproduced and backtracked in ways that showed like that number is probably fairly accurate.
00;07;20;02 - 00;07;49;22
Derek
I think the the banner, the banner number of 5 or $6 million, though, however, doesn't include the fact that they've spent, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars building these clusters in the past or training, doing a lot of like the distillation or training work that they've done to kind of allow R1 to exist. R1 price tag is really just like that final number of like training R1 that confusion, I think in like the messaging, or at least how it was reported, I think has led to a lot of of the reaction that you guys are flagging.
00;07;49;22 - 00;08;26;03
Derek
It's like Nvidia dumps 20%. I think people are like, well, new compute paradigm, you know, like these, these models can be built for far less, I would say, like there's some truth there. But I will also say like there's there's no way we don't move into a world where compute is just more valuable. And like, there's all sorts of ways to throw compute at optimization patterns across inference and test time inference and, and training and pre-training and and, you know, RL and a lot of the methodologies that are now starting to be explored, like these things all rely on, you know, Das amounts and larger and larger amounts of, of syndicated
00;08;26;03 - 00;08;59;07
Derek
compute. And so I would say that's the first thing. It's just like confusion around like what's what's true or not true around that, that number. I think the really like the underbelly like the bigger issue here is like there's some geo political concerns, I think, that are arising. You know, they came a day after two days after Stargate was announced, which is like, you know, the big US initiative with, with OpenAI and, and others, to basically build these massive giant data centers here in the US to scale out to AGI and, to start kind of like owning that stack here.
00;08;59;10 - 00;09;21;11
Derek
And all of a sudden, you know, this quant fund with this, you know, banner number starts threatening some of that a bit. So, you know, we have, like us, export controls that are being threatened here. We have kind of like the, you know, Cold War, like, you know, narratives starting to develop around China and the US around kind of this, this race to kind of arm yourself, national security, you know, concerns that people are coming up with.
00;09;22;12 - 00;09;50;02
Derek
And so, anyway, I think there's just a lot of noise right now. I think it's taking time to kind of work through what's real and what's not real. But I think broadly, I continue to be very bullish on the idea that there are all sorts of optimizations that are going to happen in the creation and the scaling towards AGI that, rely less on, just like, the training process and more on things like reinforcement learning and, and, and inference time testing and things like this.
00;09;50;05 - 00;10;11;17
Derek
And I think those are dimensions that are can be better handled or better equipped by decentralized architectures and open source AI and aggregating latent compute around the world to kind of do some of these jobs on a, on a battlefield that's a little bit more level. There's a lot there. And I think people are, you know, there for good reason, like concerned about what some of these outcomes may be.
00;10;11;17 - 00;10;28;19
Derek
But I, I will also say that I'm optimistic that we're moving forward in, stronger way now that some of these innovations are out there in the open and being hacked on and iterated on. And people can kind of, you know, take the work that was done by our one and build on top of it, which ultimately to me is a is a good thing.
00;10;28;22 - 00;10;44;07
Aaron
I mean, I, I played around quite a bit with our one. It doesn't feel as good as M1 Pro, despite the headlines to me. Like it gets confused a bit more. The quality, at least on the coding side. I actually think V3 is almost better than it. At least if you're using like, some of the AI coding technology.
00;10;44;07 - 00;11;06;09
Aaron
But I think you nailed it, Derek. It's kind of like leveling the battlefield. That's a really nice way to describe it. But the battle continues. I still don't fully grok like what penalties they can actually apply to these entities. I mean, obviously, if somebody was involved in and violating those rules that could that would be deeply problematic. And I'm sure that there's some hooks into that.
00;11;06;09 - 00;11;17;06
Aaron
But I just don't know, practically like what that does just feels like we're going to get really cheap, low cost reasoning engines, either from the US folks or or otherwise, which which I guess is pretty exciting.
00;11;17;13 - 00;11;48;18
Chris
Yeah, not a lot of sympathy for the people are making copies of our copies whining. You know, it's like Sam, you scraped the entire internet, like you distilled human knowledge, and now you're complaining that someone plugged into your fire hose and performed the same trick. Well, you know, tough luck. I mean, you know, this kind of gets around to, like, the whole post IP sort of world, you know, that, maybe, you know, some of the NFT and crypto stuff first, first sort of introduced or, you know, even just to speed everything moves out.
00;11;48;18 - 00;12;13;06
Chris
But I did think the the freak out and it was a bit of an overreaction, you know, like, I just don't feel like people have a strong enough relationship with time and lateral thinking and like, I don't know, maybe I've just had like some more personal experience and others, but like, Huawei did the same shit with telecom. You know, 15 years ago Japan did the same shit with like semiconductors, you know, 60 years ago.
00;12;13;10 - 00;12;16;12
Aaron
Like you, I said it to the Brits right way back in the day.
00;12;16;14 - 00;12;43;09
Chris
Cars. Yeah. I mean, you know, like government property rights, like, I mean worst theses to just copies and that's, that's one of our great strengths. And so I'm sorry that you're busy, you know, lining up financing rounds and trying to break ground while other people are, you know, twiddling around doing other things just because something is important to you and you have stakes and it doesn't mean, you know, the rest of the world goes on pause.
00;12;43;12 - 00;12;44;04
Pri
That's a fair take.
00;12;44;11 - 00;13;03;18
Aaron
Yeah, I think that's a good take to Chris. Yeah, I was going to just I was going to make one point here. I'm kind of curious your guy's thoughts or everybody hear his thoughts on it. It just feels like this shows and it may be overstated, just a risk around, you know, investing in AI focused companies. And like we're the moat may actually be related to it.
00;13;03;18 - 00;13;22;17
Aaron
I mean, we've seen kind of glimmers of this in the past, right, where you saw some of the earlier AI projects and like OpenAI comes in with, you know, something like Dall-E or and saw, or it was more fine tuned AI projects that it looks like some of these more powerful engines just kind of mute their benefits.
00;13;22;24 - 00;13;32;07
Aaron
It's kind of like these red wedding type events from Game of Thrones. So I wonder if that actually makes crypto and crypto investing look more attractive when.
00;13;32;08 - 00;13;33;17
Chris
You go on the there. Aaron.
00;13;33;23 - 00;13;53;21
Aaron
Yeah, kind of like I'm I just feel like it's still like a bit of a maze to see, like where the modes are on these projects. Like I definitely feel it around kind of like vertically integrated like agents and not like, I mean, when agents like some of the more like established agent technology that's being built, but just on the infrared feels like it's going to be hyper commoditized.
00;13;53;21 - 00;14;10;15
Aaron
I think that's kind of what you were saying, Derek. It's just like the battlefield gets leveled. It's kind of outside of these companies control. It's really hard to know when that's going to happen. It just increases kind of some of the risk related to the venture investing around AI companies and projects. I don't think anybody's like fully figured that out.
00;14;10;18 - 00;14;21;13
Aaron
And then you've got like crypto, which has some benefits, right? In terms of potential liquidity. Looks like that's going to ease up. It's it feels like there's like thicker moats around crypto as compared to,
00;14;21;16 - 00;14;41;01
Pri
So I've been thinking a lot about this too, because it's like, how does one even allocate to a space that from a relatively like no name part of China can create such a stir globally? I do feel like there's going to be a tremendous amount of innovation on, like the cost chip, on the just foundational levels of of AI across the board.
00;14;41;04 - 00;15;00;28
Pri
Like I think there's going to be a tremendous motivation. And the other thing I want to point about, just deep seek is like if I if using the technology becomes a lot cheaper and more accessible, I would think that like all tides rise boats and that actually make the demand for AI over time increased because the cost has decreased.
00;15;01;00 - 00;15;28;08
Pri
So to some extent it actually is. Ideally, the outcome is it makes AI usage more ubiquitous because there's not like this, you know, cost center in place. And so maybe long term that's actually good for Nvidia and all these other companies at the infrastructure level. That said, I do feel like, yes, there's a lot of innovation on the foundational, but then on the middleware, like those companies that are leveraging, I wouldn't they be able to create better modes because AI is becoming more ubiquitous.
00;15;28;08 - 00;15;57;17
Pri
So maybe it's like the the what I'm trying to say is like maybe at the foundational level, it's very difficult to invest in. But, in that middle AI level of this kind of consumer, other tech companies that are building on top of it, that might be a better area to invest, because if they can create like just classic network effects around whatever they're doing, like something like sumo or, or what have you, I would think that that would be a there's actually a first mover advantage to, to those companies as opposed to maybe the foundational level.
00;15;57;19 - 00;16;13;19
Aaron
Oh, well, I think I mean, I'm curious, Derek, or your take here, but like to me, I think you're right. If they are able to build like a network effect related to it, which means that they need to kind of vertically integrate other stuff around it, if it's just going to be like, hey, here's my music generation model.
00;16;13;22 - 00;16;33;05
Aaron
Like I think even this week we saw like a pretty good audio, and music generation open source model come out that felt like it was, I don't know, 6 to 9 months behind, but, you know, it's done. I just don't know like how pseudo kind of builds that mode around it or Chris, if you guys are giving that any thought or I know Derek even looking into this.
00;16;33;09 - 00;16;35;28
Derek
Chris you want to go first and I'll, I'll piggyback.
00;16;36;01 - 00;17;04;15
Chris
Sure. I mean you're the one who does this for a living. I'm just a dude who I but I like to express it. I'll go first, I guess, so that, you know, Derek and of course, correct me. I'm a simple man when it comes to this stuff. You know, I work in consumer tech my whole life, and I, I tend to just think about end users, transaction subscriptions, you know, people getting value, people paying money for it.
00;17;04;18 - 00;17;31;01
Chris
And if you don't have those things, I hope the feeds can carry you in the proper way. I realize that's like an overly simplified take. At the same time, I, I just feel like we're living in such a hyperbolic world where people's reality distortion fields are so screwed up that sometimes it's just comforting for me to stay out of the side of the world and wave at all and just say, chips are going to fall where the chips are going to fall.
00;17;31;01 - 00;17;49;05
Chris
If you actually want to control your destiny, provide a damn good product people want to pay money for, and then you don't have to worry about, you know, sort of these larger forces so that that's like sort of where I retreat to when it's hard to read the tea leaves. It is like there's some tried and true things and, and that's one of them.
00;17;49;05 - 00;18;03;00
Chris
And everyone else who wants to be out on the frontier and, you know, play these sort of games before you can actually materialize that base. That's a different skill set. And there are plenty of winners in that world, but there are a lot, a lot of ways to lose it.
00;18;03;03 - 00;18;26;13
Aaron
Yeah. So your sense is like, wait till you're starting to see kind of those protectable business models and, and then double down on a large swath of them. You know, I was just thinking of like cloud. Like I use cloud all the time, especially for like some programing tasks. And, you know, this week I started feeling myself for the first time using, really like V3, the deep seek model, just because it was just as good and a little bit faster.
00;18;26;15 - 00;18;45;13
Aaron
And so, you know, the cloud did a great job, right. Like they they were pioneers in the space coming from or anthropic, you know, coming from Google. You know they delivered a service that I actually really loved. Great. So then out of the blue like a hedge fund just knocks them knocks their utility out. And I think it's that kind of question that makes it kind of tricky.
00;18;45;15 - 00;19;03;00
Chris
Yeah. But like they have it knock them out. Right. Like when you start having mature businesses, you live in product cycles. And they're going to be times where like you're not at the front of the pack and then but you're working in the back. And then when you ship next you jump back up. So don't worry, Claude, don't write Claude off yet.
00;19;03;00 - 00;19;06;20
Chris
But sorry, Derek. Well, why don't the professional take over here?
00;19;06;20 - 00;19;39;10
Derek
Honestly, I the I think my, my largest comment is that just like we don't know, right. This is we are in uncharted territory in terms of like these types of products and services that I think we're all one of the reasons why I spend so much time just like seeing how some of the foundational model builders and, and, and AI researchers are and and folks who are, you know, more, infrastructure level and thinking about how to scale CapEx and the reason why I spend so much time, just like trying to learn from these folks is because, like, they're all saying slightly different things.
00;19;39;16 - 00;20;00;22
Derek
And I think any anyone who's like spending time with, with folks, smart folks at every layer of the stack will come, will quickly come to the realization that, like, we just don't really know. Or at least there isn't consensus yet in terms of how this stuff will work, how value will be produced. And and, you know, importantly for today's infrastructure, build like what the infrastructure stack will look like to support that.
00;20;00;29 - 00;20;24;01
Derek
I think that's the first thing I'll say. And the second thing I'll say is, you know, we have a lot of experience with this question in crypto. It's like, you know, I mean, even, five years ago I was writing papers about like, what is the moat in crypto where everything is open source and these protocols can be forked and SushiSwap can, you know, do a TV paired with a uni fork to basically suck in TVL within like 24 hours?
00;20;24;03 - 00;20;49;18
Derek
Like, how do you build a defensible protocol in a world where just like everything is so transparent and people are constantly building and taking and stealing and iterating and refining and, and like, very cutthroat, open source way, which this I in many ways feels like that. It feels like we're converging to this, this point now with non crypto tech stocks where the optimal I mean, all of this stuff is leaking.
00;20;49;18 - 00;21;09;28
Derek
All of the innovations are leaking from the big labs. All of this stuff is getting open source to kind of like cut down leads and innovation can that can be a little bit more widely diffused so that, like, people can attack the problem from different vantage points and create foundational building blocks for others to build on and get us to, you know, a faster flywheel to AGI.
00;21;10;00 - 00;21;42;19
Derek
I feel like I'm running back a lot of these crypto conversations, I guess my, my, my thinking on that is in crypto, it's it's at least to date. There are, you know, there are somewhat of moats around. Like I think if I was going to distill down like, why is Uniswap still like a very popular AMM, it's it's less about the the underlying technology, but it's more about the, the brand that they've built that they are secure the the create secure products that they are someone who is constantly innovating.
00;21;42;19 - 00;22;10;26
Derek
I just saw V4 went live today or today or yesterday. I just I just saw the announcement, on, on Twitter that they are someone who's constantly innovating that is constantly thinking about breaking new ground, that it's constantly, you know, buying a social crypto app to bolt on to their core product offering. And it's less about the moat around a defensible product and more around a defensible brand that speaks for safety and innovation and speed and all the things that people want to trust when they're engaging in crypto.
00;22;10;28 - 00;22;31;14
Derek
You know, like it? It to me, it feels like, if you think about it from that perspective, then there there will be, you know, persistent brands in the AI space that continue to be able to raise more money than others to throw at compute, to innovate faster, to create products on a, on a shorter, product timeline that people will gravitate towards.
00;22;31;14 - 00;22;55;12
Derek
And I think, you know, OpenAI has done an amazing job at doing that. I think Claude has done it to, a degree. I think deep seek with the I don't know if you guys saw this, but like, when R1 was launched, they released this really flashy consumer package around the app that just rocketed that product to number one in the App Store, which none of these other models have been able to do compared to OpenAI.
00;22;55;17 - 00;23;17;17
Derek
And, you know, I think there was a differentiated product experience that will get repeated by everyone else. You could see the chain of thought, thinking it was like looking at a live scan of a brain in real time that I thought was very clever. The app was very polished. There was, functionality there that didn't exist or was more performance than others, you know, like all that stuff is just going to get, you know, armed and repeated by everyone else.
00;23;17;17 - 00;23;28;10
Derek
But now Deep Seek is on the map is someone who maybe share some of those open source traits that are going to allow them to create, like a very sticky brand. And so anyway, I'm rambling at this.
00;23;28;10 - 00;23;54;17
Aaron
I thought that was great. Yeah. I mean, on that chain of thought, reasoning and showing it, I mean, that they, they pirated that from a one pro like you saw that there. I do wonder, you know, because it feels like OpenAI and I think Sam indicated this, they're going to move faster I, I real I wonder if like the different folks that are more worried about AI safety are just going to get kind of pushed a little bit to the, to the side because it feels like that's what's slowing down some of the speed stuff.
00;23;54;19 - 00;24;15;17
Aaron
When you use these models, like you see that chain of thought reasoning on on one pro and then it just sits there for like 45 seconds where I don't know what's exactly happening there, but my sense is it's going through like different checks on the back end, and you don't really get that with deep secure to the same degree where it's a lot less, I know that there is like some censorship concerns there, understandably, but I thought that that's interesting.
00;24;15;21 - 00;24;32;19
Aaron
So I guess, like one way that this could play out, Derek, I've been thinking of it. It's like the era of hyper tokenization, right? Like whether it's like AI tokens, where it's just like the crypto business model, like all the way down, even for AI tech, I still think that there's going to be like some sort of like more traditional, like moat based businesses.
00;24;32;19 - 00;24;35;29
Aaron
I just can't fully see it yet. I've been trying to chew on that for a while.
00;24;36;00 - 00;24;55;20
Pri
I think, like we actually really like to comp to that early crypto where everything was for, for acting like a lot of these models feel commoditized and there's just going to be so much content and information thrown at you. But then it really has to do with like brand and user data and trust and like, how do we, you know, relate to these brands.
00;24;55;20 - 00;25;13;29
Pri
Like there's a reason why maybe many of us will use OpenSea or Uniswap over sushi supper or something. I don't know what that is. Maybe it's just brand. It's it's just early mover advantage. Whatever. But at the end of the day, maybe it's just like brand and influence all the way down. And like the tech is obviously a piece of that.
00;25;13;29 - 00;25;36;03
Pri
But creating networks is not easy. And maybe that's just honestly where the mode is. It's just the same. It's running back web2 it's like, how did Facebook and others, you know, beat out Myspace or whatever other competitor at the time, Friendster. And a lot of that is just like network effect and like doing it. A small minor shift to the existing model, which, you know, was appealing to users.
00;25;36;10 - 00;26;08;25
Aaron
Yeah, I think that's a good point. I guess what I've been kicking around is, is there like more of like a networked AI agent model where if you look at like web2 platforms that are primarily distribution, they just go right for them, right? So what's like the next generation of YouTube? It probably is like a combination of all the video editing software where you can launch, like, you know, your work there, like remix it almost in like a GitHub type way with like the AI optimized AI tooling, like all the way down.
00;26;09;00 - 00;26;31;23
Aaron
Like I feel like there's an incentive then to kind of still use the aggregated system when you kind of like network the agents a bit more. I've been thinking about that a bit more. Speaking of OpenSea, did I hear you mention that free OpenSea did? Yeah, I saw some messages related to it. I'm like, I love OpenSea. Still use it as like my primary way to look for digital art and other NFTs and.
00;26;31;26 - 00;26;40;13
Pri
I'm just like dying at like the tweets that are like, this is going to be a wealth generation event that's going to change the market. And I'm like, okay, like what?
00;26;40;15 - 00;27;03;26
Chris
Now there's a little delusion floating around around this thing. You know, OpenSea had hundreds of thousands of wallets using it, even if it is a massive wealth generation to, you know, event. And I doubt it, it's going to get spread really far and wide compared to, you know, some other airdrops in the past. And so it feels like these and I feel weird using this term.
00;27;03;26 - 00;27;32;02
Chris
But legacy brands dropping a token tend to roll out, a 2 billion to 4 billion FTV and then it gets chopped and chopped and chopped at. And so look, I'd love everyone to get a massive stimulus and I'd love it, you know, to kick off all T's and all that fun silly stuff. I just think this, this doesn't have like the profiles of a hyper liquid and even if the token does go well, it has to go wide.
00;27;32;09 - 00;27;36;15
Chris
And so good luck to folks out there. But I ain't holding my breath.
00;27;36;17 - 00;27;48;03
Pri
Yeah, your tweets are cracking me up like I can't wait for my $900 to come in so I can buy some scarce digital objects with that. Or something like get alerts for me.
00;27;48;12 - 00;27;57;10
Chris
Yeah, this is the modern age. Pre. The time of mythical airdrops is behind us. It's back in the the days of legends.
00;27;57;13 - 00;28;14;28
Pri
I feel like I've been saying some stuff about just like the mechanics too. Like a little bit of it feels like, I mean, at least the tweets I haven't dug in yet, but a little bit of like, a blur style mechanic here for like listing and and buying NFT like just the reward mechanisms felt a little bit similar.
00;28;15;01 - 00;28;21;06
Pri
Again, I haven't like gone too deep on that, but that's kind of what people were pontificating on Twitter about.
00;28;21;09 - 00;28;35;24
Aaron
I guess my worry is that when OpenSea just looks like blur, I'm assuming post like all the blur, farming, etc. like it's never really been the same. I don't even think I've been on blurs marketplace and Quarters. Are you guys going there at all?
00;28;35;26 - 00;28;37;07
Pri
I check it out here and there.
00;28;37;10 - 00;28;50;03
Chris
No, I mean, I only ever use blur if I wanted to nuke something into orbit. Other than that, you know, blur had no place for me. I mean, it was a trading terminal, you know, you could barely see anything.
00;28;50;05 - 00;28;53;14
Aaron
Yeah, that was my my issue with it, too, Chris.
00;28;53;16 - 00;29;27;28
Derek
Well, are you guys optimistic on so I. I still use OpenSea. I do for discovery. I do like the, discovery terminal quite a bit. And the UX, pattern has always been kind of like my preferred pattern for, like, looking at wallets and seeing what the collection, some of the collection metrics are and, and kind of like getting a quick look at, at an NFT, I guess, like, is there anything or like any job to be done outside of, like pure trading, or discovery that you feel like is, an an opportunity for OpenSea as they move into kind of like this, the next version of the product.
00;29;27;28 - 00;29;33;03
Derek
Is there anything missing that you guys wish existed or. I'm curious if there's,
00;29;33;06 - 00;29;38;07
Aaron
Wouldn't you think, like, the create the creation and, like, launch part would be there to.
00;29;38;10 - 00;29;42;07
Derek
Like, people should be able to launch NFTs or launch collections on OpenSea.
00;29;42;09 - 00;29;59;15
Aaron
Yeah, you would think so. Right. Like, you can definitely pick some up. Right. But like, you would think that some people need help putting it together or they do have some work, but they don't know how to set traits. Or maybe assign some that work to a smart contract if it's not, you know, generative or storage somewhere. Right?
00;29;59;15 - 00;30;17;23
Aaron
Like all those little bits and pieces, I do think there's probably like X number of creators that would be happy to do that. And then I still think, like the trade, our question for NFT is, is like, can somebody come up with like a clever way to enforce royalties in like a more permanent way? Because I think that is like part of the missing piece of the puzzle there.
00;30;17;25 - 00;30;18;13
Pri
Yeah.
00;30;18;15 - 00;30;28;15
Aaron
And I'm, I'm actually increasingly surprised that there's not like a project or some developers that are chewing on that problem because it's a really important and big one.
00;30;28;22 - 00;30;30;12
Pri
I mean, you go kind of chewed on it.
00;30;30;15 - 00;30;38;08
Aaron
Yeah. They did it all through like a social consensus or like through an L2. But I feel like there's got to be some solution to that. Like somebody's got to figure out something clever there.
00;30;38;10 - 00;31;04;19
Chris
No, I mean you could did go hard at it. You know, they they moved their collection on the to magic even went with like certain certain mechanisms out there where if you were punish, you were basically punished for not respecting royalties. All these efforts die because there is a lot of speculative action within this market. And it at times frequently forms the bulk of the volume.
00;31;04;19 - 00;31;28;10
Chris
And so I feel like we've seen enough attempts at, you know, doing the right thing here. And the market just doesn't reward them. Art blocks I think art blogs took a big run at this, you know, with science. Like I think the issue is that there's just not enough volume out there to reward the right behavior, which is, you know, sad.
00;31;28;10 - 00;31;30;14
Chris
But it's the world we live in.
00;31;30;17 - 00;31;49;14
Aaron
Yeah, true. And I think if they went down into the actual blockchain based system, I think it would make a difference. Chris, because I think fundamentally it's still like content is king. And if you have really good creators that are choosing to use NFTs, they feel like that's a way for them to earn any potential upside and what they're they're creating like for the long run.
00;31;49;14 - 00;32;08;08
Aaron
I just think that's just such a sweet flywheel and kind of the rest of the market would take care of itself after that. And I do think that that kind of took the the wind out of that, some of the sales on the creator side. And so maybe Chris, I mean, Derek, to go back to your question, like I do think the industry needs to focus more on creators, like making it like expanding that type of funnel.
00;32;08;10 - 00;32;15;09
Aaron
It feels like there's a lot for the buy side of the market, but not the, you know, not the the creator side.
00;32;15;11 - 00;32;42;10
Derek
Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I remember I knew in 2022, OpenSea launched like creator contracts and I can't remember they had like a name for it. I can't even remember what it was. But I remember that people could definitely launch collections from, from, from like the OpenSea UI and there was like a OpenSea creator contract that that was just like made things that simple for them to kind of like set traits and upload images and, kind of abstract it around, abstract away.
00;32;42;10 - 00;33;21;20
Derek
Some of like the complexity of launching a collection. If you're just like an artist who doesn't know solidity and doesn't really know how to implement a contract for it for a new collection, it's definitely interesting, I like it. I will say, because I think it actually meets a pain point that you're describing. I don't know why, but I had like this inherent bias against that somewhat because like when you when you create something that can be used by so many different, so many different types of creators, you kind of have to like, operate the protocol from like the lowest common denominator and make these decisions around file storage or size or, or even just,
00;33;21;21 - 00;33;56;18
Derek
you know, redundancies that are like a, that are acceptable for every creator. And I guess when I'm collecting work that I want to be durable, I want there to be opinions on some of these things that match my collecting style and not are just like the simplest or the cheapest way for new artists to onboard. Which is why I've always gravitated towards solutions like transient, which is just like full customization on everything and trying to, trying their best to kind of like, abstract away that process for, non-technical creatives, at least in, like, their lab product.
00;33;56;20 - 00;34;33;16
Derek
And so like maybe I think I agree with you, like if, if all of the collectors are continuing to spend time on OpenSea and the goal is to kind of like figure out how to bring more, I don't know, market depth into the ecosystem then focusing on creators makes sense. I just think the approach will have to me, we'll have to look a little different than what they've done historically, and more like what Transient Labs does, if that makes sense, where it's just like much more granular customization to allow for folks to own their own contracts, for example, like I want to collect from somebody's personal contract, not necessarily like the OpenSea storefront contract is
00;34;33;16 - 00;34;35;25
Derek
just like a, one crude example.
00;34;35;27 - 00;34;36;16
Pri
Yeah.
00;34;36;18 - 00;34;55;06
Aaron
It's kind of like how YouTube went to like, you know, they really leaned in on the creators in, like, their second phase. I feel like open sees in a similar place, right? Like they were a marketplace for attention and they captured it right over time. They have like, unique creators that I think used to, you know, use YouTube as like their primary distribution channel.
00;34;55;06 - 00;35;14;29
Aaron
And I think that that's kind of what solidified that a bit and just kind of like kept on driving traffic back, back to, to them. I feel like I feel like that that could be smart. And I know that they played around with it, but not to the degree, you see with some of these more specialized companies and projects like Transient Labs, that they do a great job and really aid the creator.
00;35;15;06 - 00;35;20;19
Aaron
Amazingly well. And I know that there's a whole host of them, so I think they all deserve a ton of respect. It's not easy stuff.
00;35;20;21 - 00;35;35;17
Pri
It's almost like an agency model, which is like tough. I would think, for OpenSea to do the silly talk about, again, it's it's stupid. But I was thinking about like Apollo and like Blackrock and all these people talking about like tokenizing stocks and like how that could be like the next.
00;35;35;20 - 00;35;38;10
Chris
We're going to come RWA guys. That's where we're going.
00;35;38;12 - 00;36;01;29
Aaron
I don't want to be an RWA guy, Chris, but I, I think the time is coming right? Like, I think that I've always believed that there's like kind of a rough, although imperfect kind of analogy to how the web rolled out related to crypto. It feels like we're we're at that point in crypto's development where we're going to start to see some, like, more mainstream traditional adoption.
00;36;02;01 - 00;36;26;00
Aaron
It's kind of like an, you know, the early 2000s, like after the.com crash, when we started to see like the early glimmers of like online banking and a whole host of these other things that we all now take for granted. Like that was a big jump for a lot of those companies at the time because of security reasons, because of, you know, brand related to the internet reasons, like many similar conversations.
00;36;26;00 - 00;36;47;05
Aaron
And I feel like that's kicking up again. And this stuff is useful for settlement of anything, right? It could be media, it could be a generalized token, it could be a joke, a meme. But it also is just like traditional instruments that hold value. And so I know it's not the most exciting thing. I don't think you're ever going to be an RWA person, but I do think it's notable.
00;36;47;10 - 00;37;05;12
Aaron
I just think it's like another sign that this industry is growing up like it's useful. It actually has utility. It's not all just like casino tech, which is what I think I have, at least as of now, is like a fair critique. And or other trading tech, like there is going to be real utility and usefulness to it.
00;37;05;15 - 00;37;30;02
Aaron
So I'd love to see that. Like, I'd love to see like a blockchain that's like settling, you know, real property transactions or making it easier for folks to gain access to, great, you know, companies, regardless of where they are on the planet or opening up liquidity on traditional funds. If they can, permit, you know, like tokenized funds, like, I think that's another big trainer question, and problem that crypto can solve.
00;37;30;04 - 00;37;35;06
Aaron
You ready to put on the Patagonia vest, Chris, and join me on this journey in real world?
00;37;35;06 - 00;37;44;06
Chris
We should go shopping for quarters of fleeces. I want wicking, I want, like, high wicking. I don't know what. What does one look for in a quarter?
00;37;44;07 - 00;37;47;14
Aaron
ZIP fleece just for softness.
00;37;47;16 - 00;37;48;13
Chris
But yeah.
00;37;48;16 - 00;37;51;10
Aaron
And obviously logo, you got to put the logo on.
00;37;51;12 - 00;37;54;10
Chris
Let's get our on the logo right on there.
00;37;54;13 - 00;37;55;24
Pri
On the logo.
00;37;57;11 - 00;38;02;23
Chris
A menswear guy. I'm that's how deep my, my, my new personality is going to become.
00;38;02;26 - 00;38;24;24
Pri
It is kind of interesting that it kind of all came to a head like this week though. Like you have like Larry Fink, Apollo, like a bunch of people talking about how they want to see more tokenized stocks and bonds and credit. And I think, I mean, I can't talk every cycle. It's like, well, the traditional everyone like there's a group, a cohort of people in crypto that are like trades coming in, but like this happens every cycle and that you never really see real adoption.
00;38;25;01 - 00;38;49;08
Pri
The the big kind of difference this cycle as opposed to the prior ones, is like there actually could be some real like legal legislative changes that could actually make it easy for banks to engage with the technology. I feel like historically, like, I mean, say the lawyers at these banks and the bankers, they're not going to engage in technology or this type of currency or store value unless they have the ability to do so on a compliance side.
00;38;49;08 - 00;38;55;13
Pri
And so it seems like the window that is opening. But even Powell like is saying like, yeah, you know banks can.
00;38;55;15 - 00;39;23;19
Aaron
But I think it's the other way around. I, I think the regulation follows and I just think there's enough business models now whether it was Tether's business model and or circles and, or, you know, seeing all the success that Coinbase has had in US markets or kind of other related improvements when it comes to stablecoins or just the volume that's going through and the low cost that some of these transactions are going through, I think I think there's just an understanding that this is an area where they can make money.
00;39;23;22 - 00;39;48;14
Aaron
The ETFs. Right. So I think the regulation is going to follow that because the utility is kind of there. And even like last year like Renaissance Tech this like famed hedge fund that I think is like the most profitable investment vehicle or at least one of them of all time. You know, their leader, CEO was on a podcast that I happened to listen to, and this was like top of his punch list was like tokenizing assets to get faster settlement.
00;39;48;16 - 00;40;09;18
Aaron
So I think they know it's there. But like the stars are just kind of aligning related to it. And again, it may not be as sexy as kind of like a meme coin or as fun as like digital media NFTs. But I do think it it is going to be like the bread and butter stuff that, opens up use cases like drives the core infrastructure innovation and kind of brings us to the masses.
00;40;09;21 - 00;40;26;08
Aaron
And it feels like it's going to start now, maybe a little bit too early. I feel like you really saw that, like that kind of enterprise, SAS, like in 2008 to 10 really start to really creep out. So maybe it's a little bit early for it, but it's not super surprising that it's coming.
00;40;26;11 - 00;40;43;29
Derek
Yeah, I'll, I really like what Aaron saying. So if I was going to bridge those two comments together, I think like the two best examples of that are I think the first is the SEC rescinding SAB 1 to 1 and which was like a barrier for banks. Like they no longer have to, record digital assets in custody as liabilities.
00;40;43;29 - 00;41;00;08
Derek
On balance sheets. So they can now offer interesting, you know, crypto custody services and start to build new products and services, that account for kind of like this new accounting or this removal of this accounting restriction. And I would say like it's stuff like that that's very useful. It seems minor, but I think it could be empowering.
00;41;00;15 - 00;41;22;21
Derek
I think the second to Aaron's point is like tether, right? Like tether. I don't know if you guys saw this, but announced a few hours ago that their their 2020 for profits was $13 billion. And I think they've got like a pair payroll of less than 50, 75 people. There's no bank on planet Earth that's looking at that and saying we don't want a piece like we we got to we got to get in there.
00;41;22;23 - 00;41;43;19
Derek
And so to Aaron's point, it's like this stuff is I mean, like they're ready, like they want to generate meaningful revenues that come as a result of this technology and this asset class. And stablecoins is one obvious way. But I also will say, like, it would be crazy to me if like, there weren't teams within every major bank and institution at this point trying to figure out how they're going to play.
00;41;43;19 - 00;41;47;18
Derek
And, there's an appetite and a demand to kind of start getting a piece of the pie here.
00;41;47;20 - 00;42;11;15
Pri
Yeah. And even just bringing it back to that jelly. Jelly and the Venmo co-founders, as you were thinking about it, it's just like capital markets feel pretty broken, like the fact that one company that, you know, quasi red winning this past Monday and it caused the entire public markets to like, have, you know, whatever trillion dollars of liquidity gets pulled out of it.
00;42;11;15 - 00;42;30;29
Pri
I mean, that doesn't feel it doesn't feel right. And so this idea that you have these companies like Venmo and others that have been raising like capital by like series G, H, I whatever I don't think Venmo public. I think it's still private, but it's just like these these kind of private company founders that are reluctant to go public.
00;42;30;29 - 00;42;43;20
Pri
Now launching tokens, it kind of makes you think a little bit that, you know, tying that into like this idea that banks are experimenting with tokenized stock. It just it all relates that this feels directionally compelling to people.
00;42;43;27 - 00;43;12;12
Aaron
Yeah. Or you could almost think it I think that's a really great point. Brian. Also, Derek, a great point there too. You could almost argue that like the or see like over the past 15 years, the private markets have grown so well and they want to open up liquidity to the private markets. But how are they going to do that if they have to do like these vertically integrated or more vertically niche oriented private market platforms, they just haven't scale that well, like all those secondary markets for private company stock, having scaled well.
00;43;12;14 - 00;43;36;19
Aaron
But in aggregate, if it's on a blockchain, I think that's big enough to like attract, you know, a base that wants to purchase, trade and or provide liquidity like around those private market assets. And I think that there's just a ton of demand for that and probably is like a net benefit for everybody. Right. So like how many private equity funds like need some degree of liquidity right now because they're in the middle of a position and some of those could be really great.
00;43;36;19 - 00;43;55;22
Aaron
Or how many actually great web2 companies like have stock. That probably is super valuable. It just can't. They're not in a position to go public. I don't know, I feel like there's there's a lot of that kind of floating around. And when you aggregate it and use a blockchain so that you can create those markets globally, like that becomes a really big market.
00;43;55;22 - 00;44;02;04
Aaron
But if you had to do it just like in the US with like a credit, investors like, I don't know if that's going to work really well. So I think that's a piece of it too.
00;44;02;07 - 00;44;24;29
Chris
That is a good point that markets aren't behaving as efficiently as they could, and it's due to a combination of a bunch of things. But like fragmentation is certainly a part of it, where public markets did have a lot of, restrictions put on them or, you know, there were a lot of changes, you know, especially after the global financial crisis.
00;44;24;29 - 00;44;45;08
Chris
And it did push things private. But, you know, private creates its own own set of challenges, you know, one of which happens to be liquidity. And so you see capital flow into places because it was free to do more business, like it was easier to get in and it was easier to operate while you're in there. But then the challenge is how do you get out?
00;44;45;10 - 00;45;19;28
Chris
That's also, you know, something that's inherent to crypto as well. It's very easy to push a coin up. It's hard to get size out of a coin. And so I do think, you know, we're seeing across the board like this to sort of like, you know, this problem around liquidity. But, you know, it's also a function of how much money there is out there, how everyone one is playing these games of we have to drive asset value up because hard money, you know, is eroding and its purchasing power.
00;45;19;28 - 00;45;40;25
Chris
And so this is a game to play. I mean, we even see this play out in housing right where housing is hitting, 30 year lows in terms of sales. Right. And a lot of that is because the costs associated around purchasing a home are out of hand. You know, it's mortgage rates are very high. House values are very high.
00;45;40;25 - 00;46;15;16
Chris
The cost of insuring houses is really, really high. And so you do get these sort of issues when you focus on inflating asset value. Right. That comes with a whole host of like other other problems are catching on to it. And so yeah, I mean maybe that is something where, you know, this recognition of we have to restructure liquidity so that we can have, you know, not only like insane flows in, but we can actually also pull stuff out, more reasonably.
00;46;15;16 - 00;46;16;04
Chris
So.
00;46;16;06 - 00;46;37;13
Aaron
Yeah, I mean, I think that that these institutions are looking at and they're probably thinking, well, we do have a capital. Right. So to the extent that this is like a, like a capital liquidity game, like the existing institutions are kind of existing distribution for that, they should be able to like have a large role in, in kind of directing what at least these platforms look like.
00;46;37;16 - 00;46;55;15
Aaron
And I think it solves real problems for them. And the costs are lower. They're lower probably now than they are in the traditional world. And I think over time they'll just get lower and lower and lower through automation, through, you know, whittling at the need to like, have, like to have layers or some of this bureaucratic complexity related to it.
00;46;55;22 - 00;47;17;07
Aaron
Like, I just feel like that's directionally where we're going. One way to view crypto is that it really brings like liquidity to to markets that otherwise are illiquid. You could argue that that's kind of what happened with NFTs. Like IP is a really liquid market. NFT made NFT has made it more liquid. Attention is a really illiquid, hard to value market like meme coins are kind of doing that.
00;47;17;09 - 00;47;34;15
Aaron
It's not a perfect analogy, but kind of like private company opportunities, like in startups was kind of the ICO era. That's hyper liquid even for some folks. Like gaining access to dollars is difficult, right. And that's what stablecoins do. So maybe that's the meta. Crypto brings liquidity to illiquid markets.
00;47;34;18 - 00;47;35;13
Pri
I like it.
00;47;35;16 - 00;47;40;22
Chris
So should we update the old maxim information wants to be free to money wants to be free I.
00;47;40;25 - 00;47;41;28
Aaron
Yeah I love it.
00;47;42;02 - 00;47;44;12
Pri
Didn't they rebrand ICOs recently.
00;47;44;14 - 00;47;45;12
Aaron
What are they. Internet.
00;47;45;12 - 00;47;56;21
Chris
What stuff I don't know why we need to rebrand everything. You know it's like you're not discovering the world over and over again. You know, we don't live in a society that forgot what five years ago was.
00;47;56;21 - 00;48;00;11
Pri
But I think it's the internet. Internet capital markets.
00;48;00;11 - 00;48;09;24
Chris
Internet capital markets. Sure. You know what? Put that right next to like, all the head of growths out there. You know, he's just he's good marketers.
00;48;09;26 - 00;48;11;09
Aaron
I kind of like it. I'm not gonna lie.
00;48;11;10 - 00;48;12;19
Pri
I don't like it.
00;48;12;22 - 00;48;32;13
Chris
Of course you do. Because it like, it sounds fancier and more prestigious. Oh, I mean, the internet capital markets. Yeah. What does that mean? It means I get rekt when a bunch of, like, people get out a fart coin because they have no conviction. This is what happens when, like, you're sick and contagious. And I've spent the, like the last few days in your basement and you get cranky.
00;48;32;19 - 00;48;51;07
Aaron
I love it, Chris. I'm here for it. Chris. I'm gonna give it one more run at this. Please push back with all your crankiness. I do think that it is like an internet economy that's being built and like crypto monetized is that it's growing at a compounding rate. Like, why is that so bad to talk about the need for capital markets like that, just an essential part of any economy.
00;48;51;10 - 00;49;13;15
Aaron
That's what's happening in crypto, right? Like the capital markets right now are locked up in a couple major jurisdictions in major cities. They're they control the capital markets. This is opening it up. The internet economy is going to grow at a faster clip than the traditional economy, for a variety of reasons. Like we should be thinking about internet capital markets, how to structure them, how to make them fair at a market, integrity related to it.
00;49;13;15 - 00;49;17;24
Aaron
Like, like let me let me pull out my Patagonia vest again. Like I'm ready for it.
00;49;17;26 - 00;49;48;10
Chris
Ladies and gentlemen, Aaron Wright, internet capital markets guy. No, they're all very good points. And it's on a long enough timeline. And, you know, in a correctly packaged up and presented way like you just phrased it. Sure, I maybe we do need to grow in internet capital markets. That doesn't mean like we can take the piss out of it along the way, you know, in bits and pieces just to survive the the utter lunacy of everything.
00;49;48;13 - 00;50;09;16
Chris
I don't know, man. Like I kind of I think we saw, you know, some of the NFT people who stayed out of meme coins jump into the age and stuff, saying to themselves, all right, this has some basis in technology. It has a large macro trend around it. It's slightly less stupid, and I've been sidelined too long.
00;50;09;16 - 00;50;47;02
Chris
I need a little action. And I think when all the AI coins sold off around this deep sig brouhaha, some of those people, you know, we're like, oh man, what the hell am I doing? Like, this isn't me. Like, why am I over here? And, you know, I don't know, I sometimes I just get the sense that, like, if we all just, you know, held the big coins and stop trying to beat them, they be in a much, much better place, you know, that, like, eath wouldn't be, like, constantly getting chopped around 3000 bucks or, you know, internet capital markets need a little more hodling around them.
00;50;47;02 - 00;51;27;05
Chris
They need a little more conviction. They need to be like, stop spreading so damn far and wide, because I think that also be a net benefit to everyone in the space. And so I don't know, man. Like I'm just merging with time right now. I'm, I'm spreading out. I'm, I'm, I'm waiting for this to get a little easier and a little clearer to understand, but if it takes rebranding us to internet capital markets, along with, like, you know, four dozen other things to get us to that point where, yeah, you know, we can, maybe get a little more risk on with, you know, a higher degree of confidence and more sanity.
00;51;27;05 - 00;51;34;16
Chris
I'm all for it. So, look, I'm going to unzip my quarter zip. I'm going to, like, salute you for that one. Let's grow up.
00;51;34;18 - 00;51;52;19
Aaron
Yeah. No, I think you're right about that, Chris. And I just feel like particularly like the youth community, they're just going through what happened in Bitcoin during the the ICO of Ethereum. Right. Like I think that there was a period for some folks a disillusionment. That's when like a lot of Bitcoin core developers that were working for years kind of like left the space.
00;51;52;19 - 00;52;11;19
Aaron
They got a little disillusioned and kind of this notion that Bitcoin would be a payment system, which was part of its original vision, just kind of got cleaved off into something else. And I feel like that conversation is starting to happen with eath, and that's healthy. And I'll kind of come out with probably not laser eyes, but something else, and it's going to be better for that.
00;52;11;19 - 00;52;38;09
Aaron
And I'm assuming that same story will happen, like around, you know, other ecosystems like Solana, that have that have gained like some mindshare and traction as like the next newest like hottest thing kind of emerges during the next couple cycles. But I do think, like with the regulatory clarity that hopefully is coming and or just like the action and excitement, it just brings in that next wave of developers to just make this easier, better, faster.
00;52;38;09 - 00;52;46;12
Aaron
So just just Hodl. Chris. It's why the bitcoiners, the Bitcoiners came up with it. They knew they're wise in their ways.
00;52;46;14 - 00;52;55;28
Chris
Aaron. Man, the great thing about having a podcast is hot air is free. It costs nothing to shoot your mouth off, and it fills up time. And so I will hodl.
00;52;56;04 - 00;52;58;11
Aaron
All right. Should we call it guys?
00;52;58;13 - 00;53;01;26
Chris
Yeah. Good luck with this, Franco. Good.
00;53;01;28 - 00;53;09;14
Derek
Good session guys.
00;53;09;16 - 00;53;20;16
Derek
Who?