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NET Society is unraveling the latest in digital art, crypto, AI, and tech. Join us for fresh insights and bold perspectives as we tap into wild, thought-provoking conversations. By: Derek Edwards (glitch marfa / collab+currency), Chris Furlong (starholder, LAO + Flamingo DAO), and Aaaron Wright & Priyanka Desai (Tribute Labs)
00;00;16;02 - 00;00;43;10
Pri
Welcome to net society. We have a special guest today, Brady, Dale. Brady and I have been friends for. I don't even know how long now. Brady. It's been like actual years. Yeah, baby, you're in heaven. You've been in you've been talking, reporting, you know, thinking about crypto and the crypto world for it feels like since the beginning almost, published a book on SBF.
00;00;43;10 - 00;00;59;27
Pri
I think it was the first book on SBF, actually, if I'm not mistaken, have reported on from CoinDesk. Axios now have your own Substack, which has been really fun to read. But yeah, we're excited to have you on and chat today. Anything else you want to add to your bio that I didn't include?
00;01;00;05 - 00;01;12;00
Brady
No, thanks. Well, yeah. I want to add one thing to my bio. I'm pretty sure I gave you your first crypto kitty free. That's what I would add to my bio. That should be a that should be in my obituary. It's like gave free her first crypto kitty.
00;01;12;02 - 00;01;13;22
Pri
We actually I think did.
00;01;13;24 - 00;01;16;25
Brady
Yeah I'm pretty sure it was me. Yeah. So I think it.
00;01;16;25 - 00;01;17;10
Pri
Was you.
00;01;17;16 - 00;01;19;01
Brady
Proud of that. Proud of that.
00;01;19;03 - 00;01;25;10
Chris
Well, now we have to ask the awkward question for you. Do you still have this crypto kitty that was so lovingly gifted?
00;01;25;17 - 00;01;27;16
Brady
What would she do with it? No one's going to buy it.
00;01;27;19 - 00;01;33;25
Pri
Yeah, it's going to take tax losses on it. But I have that. I respect you too much, Brady.
00;01;34;00 - 00;01;47;27
Chris
Thank you, thank you. I'll see. Now we're like off on the right foot. The circle of trust is maintained. You're cherishing this crypto kitty. And, we're all in good space to talk about how wonderful a week and year it has been in crypto.
00;01;48;05 - 00;01;57;09
Pri
Yeah, wonderful is a word for it. Any thoughts on why this is happening and if it'll stop?
00;01;57;11 - 00;02;04;02
Brady
I have continued to subscribe to the Castle Island VC view.
00;02;04;05 - 00;02;05;13
Chris
That.
00;02;05;15 - 00;02;23;26
Brady
I don't know. Yeah. There. Take, this is from Matt at Castle Island. If you, if folks listen to hit their weekly round up podcast, but their take is ever since ten, 10th October 10th, when there was a big deleveraging, some really big actor got wiped out and there has been for selling by them ever since then.
00;02;23;26 - 00;02;32;00
Brady
And maybe like a few and just the bodies haven't floated to the surface yet. But like the decoupling of everything dates to that. I sort of think it's still that.
00;02;32;03 - 00;02;50;14
Pri
Just like one. Yeah. There was a huge, I think, sell off yesterday to buy one big actor. I wonder if that's related to what you're speaking of. Do I though like I don't know, if you saw this, but like Joe Weisenthal had like ten reasons why this is the worst crypto winter ever. Did you guys see that tweet?
00;02;50;17 - 00;03;17;06
Pri
I feel like he like pulled together some really like unique insights of like why this could be it's like we're not early. The drawdown is coming at a time where like we have this opaque view of the dollar and dollar dominance that basically yeah. Yeah all that debasement stuff. The crypto ETFs, it's completely mainstream. I taking a lot of the mindshare of crypto, which is actually true.
00;03;17;07 - 00;03;18;15
Pri
Honestly I, I think it's.
00;03;18;15 - 00;03;22;09
Aaron
That honestly I think it's that to be honest, I think, you.
00;03;22;09 - 00;03;23;16
Pri
Know, the whole thing.
00;03;23;16 - 00;03;46;22
Aaron
I just think crypto digital assets is still the, you know, as much as, the OGs want it to be a non correlated asset, it's still, you know, trades and it's kind of viewed by traditional folks as like more of a tech ecosystem and, and product. And if you just look at the tech landscape like for a long time, crypto is super exciting.
00;03;46;25 - 00;04;08;24
Aaron
And you know, you know, one of the top one two trends, right? It was competing at the time with like DocuSign and like all these Web2 SaaS products. And now it's competing for mindshare with AI. And I just think this year it's kind of just it's becoming so apparent that AI is probably as transformative to societies like electricity.
00;04;08;26 - 00;04;31;10
Aaron
It's also like the the meme coin stuff. I think some people really like that. If you're if you're more of like a DGM gambler, but for a lot of folks, it just was not really that interesting. Technically, wasn't that interesting socially. You know, frankly, I, I found that even like, socially undesirable. So I mean, that the bull market wasn't even that great to the extent that that that we still are in the four year cycle.
00;04;31;10 - 00;04;32;05
Aaron
So, yeah.
00;04;32;05 - 00;04;54;05
Brady
I think you're right, Aaron. I shouldn't have said that. It's all the big selloff from 1010. I think it's like that really hurt. And then other things came along and it just sort of accelerated the fact that crypto needs to go into a real transformation and rethinking of what it's doing. And that's kind of what it's happening. But yeah, I, I also agree, like clearly people think AI is a much bigger deal, and it probably is a much bigger deal than crypto.
00;04;54;05 - 00;04;58;14
Brady
That does mean crypto doesn't have a place in the future, but it's just AI is there. Yeah.
00;04;58;14 - 00;05;05;18
Pri
The big dominant. Yeah I mean I see it with like like a lot of the crypto builders and developers like a lot of them are just like have moved on.
00;05;05;23 - 00;05;19;22
Aaron
I don't think I don't think they moved on. I think it just it's kind of what Chris has been saying for the last couple of weeks, which is an area that's going to grow really fast. It's super fun to play around with, and it's like a positive sum game. And I do think crypto, you know, has made a lot of progress.
00;05;19;22 - 00;05;37;09
Aaron
I think we're just so deep in it that we don't see a lot on a day to day basis. I think the person that either ran or was like pretty senior at Nifty Gateway, he posted something yesterday which said he got completely burnt out two years ago, took a step back and got back into it, like at the end of the end of last year, like December of last year.
00;05;37;09 - 00;06;04;10
Aaron
And he was like, wow. There's been like so much progress that this space has made, you know, people just that are filing like the day by day, blow by blow, you know, machinations of it. Just don't see all that. But, you know, this is like the utility phase of crypto, right? Like it's being used as like a payments rail, which was frankly the original one of the original visions of a Bitcoin right before it became more or more viewed as like a digital, store of value or digital gold.
00;06;04;13 - 00;06;26;21
Aaron
And also, you know, I do think we're seeing kind of like the marriage of traditional finance and, and this new, you know, sector of finance, whatever that looks like, which is kind of in the first or second innings. Now that we have a new administration, and it just seems like that industry is ready to kind of give it its bear hug, which which it feels like it kind of is.
00;06;26;24 - 00;06;53;02
Chris
There's so many things that at work here, it's it's not going to be this one thing, that one thing to me, this is still many things. And from a pricing perspective, the majority of them are weighing down crypto. And so we are having like to some degree, two separate conversations here, right. One about where the industry is and its future prospects.
00;06;53;05 - 00;07;29;07
Chris
And another of, you know, it's the computer in the casino, right? Like you could probably say the computer, right. The computer future looks as bright as ever. Maybe what the computer is going to do is narrower than, you know, it's aperture at the bull market, but it's going to go deeper. And then the casino, you know, where I'm at and wondering about the casino is how many more decisions need to get thrown into the woodchipper, like, where is all this capital that continues to blow itself up on leverage and getting liquidated?
00;07;29;09 - 00;07;31;16
Chris
Why is that supply inexhaustible?
00;07;31;19 - 00;07;49;21
Aaron
I think it's only going to get more, I think, you know, just with people probably facing some degree of job displacement with this AI wave coming. Chris, like, I think that that that line of people that want to play around and try to make it, it's going to be pretty long. I don't think the vision for the computer is more narrow.
00;07;49;23 - 00;08;03;21
Aaron
I just think it's going to take time to kind of get developed, developed. So I'm bullish on the computer part that the world computer part of blockchains, always happen. I mean, that's that's why I spend time here. I don't really I'm not really here for the casino as much.
00;08;03;24 - 00;08;24;20
Brady
The way I kind of think about that, this is a thing I'm playing around with for an essay I'm going to do next week. Maybe. But I, I think it's kind of moving into the like it's a transformation phase where folks here have to deal with the fact that, like, this speculative frenzy is like, that's the thing we needed to get to as far as we've gotten, like, we thought we were climbing a mountain.
00;08;24;20 - 00;08;45;06
Brady
But the truth is, we just got to base camp. And and frontiers are not established by Boy Scouts like we needed the gens and probably even the criminals to, like, get this far to establish this world. But now it's kind of established. I mean, it's sort of recognized by, you know, global nation states. And so now it's time to like, build actual utility.
00;08;45;06 - 00;08;59;23
Brady
And I know people would say that for a long time, but I think this is actually just really the moment. And so I think they all are going to be thrown at the wood chipper. Chris. I think and that's, that's the harsh reality that everyone's facing right now and why they feel bad. Like kind of the fun, zany days are over.
00;08;59;26 - 00;09;17;12
Aaron
I don't yeah, I think I thought that was really well said. Pretty. I don't know if those those any days are over. I just think, you know, I think we're getting a new set of rules at some point. You know, I think the edges are really kind of getting debated. And there's a lot of like political posturing from a, from what at least I'm hearing.
00;09;17;15 - 00;09;32;19
Aaron
But that's going to get through, I think, you know, just because pragmatic minds tend to win, at least here in the States, you know, people see that they can make money, they feel reasonably prepared to kind of do that. And I imagine that like in all markets. Right. Like there's going to be some, you know, some speculation that happens.
00;09;32;19 - 00;09;50;16
Aaron
I mean, that that's happening right now in the stock markets. Right. Like a lot of folks would argue that the I, you know, stocks or the top tech stocks are kind of unmoored from some fundamentals, doesn't feel like that different from, you know, from some of the crypto days in part. But I just think the utility slog, it's a slog, right.
00;09;50;16 - 00;10;15;06
Aaron
Like, you know, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done to get the world computer easier to use. You know, Vitalik was, was saying, that he doesn't see altcoins in the same way. And I think in part that just because it's it's so complicated. Right? I feel like he's finally kind of saying that, clipart out loud, like this cosmos vision that I think in theory, was trying to get ahead of or trying to to kind of, like, adapt.
00;10;15;07 - 00;10;22;00
Aaron
I just think it's too complicated for your everyday person. And so, you know, long live the the strong L one.
00;10;22;08 - 00;10;49;28
Chris
This is definitely like a moment in time where we're switching between two worlds. The the speculative world of crypto is ending. And the commodified world in which, you know, for token to be valued, it has to represent something that creates value, is starting to move forward. And I do think that, like the rash of people leaving the stage right now, you know, can kind of be broken up into like, hey, I'm broken.
00;10;49;28 - 00;11;15;09
Chris
And this isn't pure fatigue and this isn't good for my health. And I have to go. And then another group where they're not equipped to create value, that they're speculators, and they just realize that the environment in which they operate, like, no longer exists, and they have to move on to you know, something else, I, in which that speculative environment still is present.
00;11;15;12 - 00;11;46;07
Chris
You know, I mean, we've had a lot of people walking out of the space and understandably so. You know, if you just kind of look at the correlation between exit and vesting schedules, you know, especially around some of these larger projects, you know, that were premised upon needing, high throughput blocks, space, you know, and, and if you're someone who spent, you know, three years of their life building monad, megalithic, you know, pick your, their chain.
00;11;46;12 - 00;12;07;07
Chris
Yeah. Of choice. And then you're like, oh my God, we've got all this throughput and no one's going to use it for the foreseeable future, right? Like you made a bet. You're you're now at a moment in time where like, that bet is doesn't have a high probability of paying out and, a reasonable period of time. The rational thing to do is to walk away.
00;12;07;09 - 00;12;10;00
Chris
And we are seeing that. I did think.
00;12;10;00 - 00;12;29;19
Aaron
It was surprising to me that, Kyle from multicore stepped away, that that was surprising to me just because he's been, you know, such a big voice in the Solana ecosystem, you know, and such a big, proponent of kind of like, alternative ones or altos like, to me, it you know, one way to view that is he just tired?
00;12;29;19 - 00;12;44;20
Aaron
I mean, he's been doing this for a while. Another way to do it is he just doesn't he doesn't see that, you know, that his core, you know, chain that he's interested in. Solano has much of a future. And he just is kind of playing it out, like, you know, maybe what the tower app was saying. It's just kind of.
00;12;44;20 - 00;12;55;15
Aaron
Right. And. And he's kind of saying that it probably is going to be like, you know, one, 1 or 2 networks at the top. It's kind of interesting. Yeah. You have any thoughts on that?
00;12;55;18 - 00;12;59;28
Pri
Yeah. Right. I'm curious if you have thoughts on that departure. There's a couple big departures, but that one is like pretty.
00;12;59;28 - 00;13;22;09
Brady
I mean, the thing that I think is over blown about Kyle's departure is I mean, it's not like the guy is leaving on the bottom, right? Like there's no way he hasn't made tons. And in a certain point, one can imagine a person's just like I've done very well. It's, you know, I can do other thing I can do other things the rest of his life and be fine.
00;13;22;09 - 00;13;45;17
Brady
Like, it's not like he's, you know, he's not been wiped out. So I guess I just don't know that I necessarily think that that's like a real bearish signal. But yeah, I think Aaron's point about like maybe he's realized, I mean, if Kyle's whole thing all along has been that Bitcoin and Ethereum aren't that great, you know, like that's been his thesis and he's made a lot of money off of it for a while because those have been strong narratives.
00;13;45;19 - 00;14;04;26
Brady
But like this I wrote about Multi Coin when it first launched. This wasn't the first time I ever paid attention to them. Like Kyle's whole velocity of token thing was influential on me when I started CoinDesk. But like the first time I really took Kyle seriously is when he made a super strong argument for why the world needs EOS, right?
00;14;05;03 - 00;14;24;17
Brady
And like, just kind of go out from there, you know? I mean, he's a great investor and he's made a lot of good bets. But he has been fundamentally all along against the two most valuable things in this whole space. And that's Bitcoin and Ethereum. And you know, so at a certain point that you're going to start you're going to have to like reckon with the fact that you're not right about that.
00;14;24;19 - 00;14;45;25
Aaron
Yeah, completely. And he is you know he is a great investor. But what I'm sure he can do lots of things. Very talented person. Obviously successful at what he's done up to this point. I don't know. I just like to me that that was my, my takeaway. Like, I'm assuming he's pretty opportunistic and he just maybe just doesn't see the same opportunities that around the ecosystems.
00;14;45;25 - 00;14;54;11
Aaron
He's, you know, put a lot of effort, in supporting that or there's going to be a big push back on them coins and he wants to get out before that happens.
00;14;54;18 - 00;15;14;02
Pri
Yeah. That's interesting. It also, does it just be like that because we are shifting into like a more mature space? It's just not as compelling or interesting. I don't know if this is real, but I saw someone like screenshot, like a deleted tweet that he had about leaving crypto. I don't know if you guys saw that, but it was basically just like I spent the the theme of it was like, hey, spend this much time here.
00;15;14;09 - 00;15;27;00
Pri
It's just not what I thought it was not like. It was kind of like a downer tweet about crypto. And apparently it got deleted. I also don't know if that was a real because I haven't seen it circulated beyond this one tweet, but I saw it.
00;15;27;00 - 00;15;37;01
Brady
I can't remember exactly what it said. As I recall though, I kind of thought it was like maybe in a discord or something, but also deleted, but like, you know, buried even further in the world.
00;15;37;04 - 00;15;37;23
Pri
Yeah, yeah.
00;15;37;24 - 00;15;53;29
Aaron
It's just I saw it. It didn't make sense to me though, because even even with the caveats. Right. Like I remember when it first came out and, pretty like that was definitely some project. I don't know if it deserved the capital that kind of flew to it. But, you know, they were kind of pushing on this, like beginning of this multi-chain world.
00;15;54;06 - 00;16;18;23
Aaron
But I think like the core, like buckets of things that people wanted blockchains to do. They've largely, you know, built those out. Right. So, you know, when you have like a payment system like stablecoins or fully selling that to people are always interested in these new financial primitives like DeFi. Definitely. We're in that early innings of that. You know, people were thinking about how to use it for creative works, right?
00;16;18;23 - 00;16;45;25
Aaron
We saw that with NFTs, and they're still, like humming along, although, you know, not at, the same volume that they were before. You know, you have like the tokenized real world assets. And that's been growing pretty mightily. You know, the the user experience has gotten better still has like a ways to go. So, I mean, the only thing that I think, you know, hasn't fully, manifested yet is kind of like the, the gaming, the gaming ecosystems.
00;16;45;26 - 00;17;03;23
Aaron
I mean, we had some early examples, but they don't seem like they're maturing, at least at the speed I thought that they would and some of the social bets. But, you know, even there, you see, you know, Vitalik and others and just I know from, just by networking, a lot of folks are still like, quietly pretty bullish on on that topic too.
00;17;03;25 - 00;17;16;13
Aaron
And there are still are builders in the space. So I don't think anything's really like fundamentally changed. The only thing that probably grew faster than I thought it would would have been meme coins, and I don't I still have questions as to whether or not there's, you know, any feature.
00;17;16;13 - 00;17;44;12
Brady
That I ask you guys a question going back to this L1 L2 thing because, you know, you guys are deeper in it in Ethereum than I. I mean, I cover Ethereum a lot, but I'm not quite as fully oriented on it. And I'm not like, you know, a builder. But the thing I find interesting about Vitalik and what I see in this recent discourse around him, is it just like I think what's interesting is it feels like Vitalik power has diminished a lot since I've been in the space.
00;17;44;12 - 00;18;01;29
Brady
Like when I came in in like 2017, he basically could be a dictator. When and if you want to do. And that's no longer true, he still has to actively engage, it seems to me, in cajoling and persuading he can't just get what he wants. But I kind of think that was his intention and this is a good and healthy thing.
00;18;01;29 - 00;18;18;07
Brady
But it's just I so I don't it's not like I think this is, I don't know. He's losing credibility. I don't think he is. I just think sort of more people have risen up and have credibility too. But it's just it's just an interesting. Do you guys agree that he he just doesn't have the power anymore than he did, but that's also like maybe good.
00;18;18;10 - 00;18;40;04
Aaron
Yeah, I think that's right. But he's just like one one voice. Like a prominent voice. Right. I think the time we saw that in Bitcoin and, and it was healthy was like when the core developers were some of the core developers, I took a position around the block size and then the rest ecosystem, which included like exchanges at the time, some, you know, prominent holders, you know, took a different position.
00;18;40;07 - 00;19;08;24
Aaron
And that's what led to all that, like forking way back in the day. So to me, like the fact that I actually don't think Vitalik ever was really a dictator, I just think he was like the most prominent voice, and he's always needed to do some persuading. But I just think that there's more players in the space now, and that's probably gonna only continue as, as, like a larger financial institutions begin to know pad assets to, to Ethereum or build, you know, substantive businesses on top of it.
00;19;08;27 - 00;19;29;20
Aaron
So I think it's a healthy sign. I also think, you know, his influence waned a little bit when he spent a lot of time in forecaster, which just I don't think everybody was paying as much attention to what he was saying. And thinking. But my understanding, you know, I'm guilty there, too. I wasn't spending much time on forecaster, but he's been kind of doing the same thing there.
00;19;29;24 - 00;19;37;26
Aaron
You know, over the past couple of years. People just were not reading reading it because it was in there. You know, they weren't there. They weren't on that social network.
00;19;37;28 - 00;20;00;14
Pri
You have heard a lot of Ethereum. People like blame that, like siloed social media network as a larger macro reason as to why Ethereum's prominence lowered because it wasn't a part of the main timeline. I don't really buy that personally, but I do like I have heard multiple people say that if you like all of the smart Ethereum people are commenting and like to.
00;20;00;18 - 00;20;21;04
Aaron
I think it's a fair I think it's fair. You know, like it's an attention economy, right. And I think, you know, it's a token production economy. Doesn't matter if it's AI or crypto. And so like AI is producing a ton more tokens that people aren't right now. And like in the last cycle, you know, theorem wasn't producing as many tokens as, let's say, Solana, and there wasn't as much attention on it.
00;20;21;06 - 00;20;36;16
Aaron
I think in the long run, that's a good thing for ETH. Like it was able to kind of build distribution to these deltas, but and kind of get rid of like the spam that I think meme coins and some of these other tokens kind of are. But I think that I think that's fair. That resonates with me far.
00;20;36;16 - 00;21;23;26
Chris
Caster is kind of emblematic of a larger commons problem the crypto has, which is every team person, you know, every actor within the space is, from a game theory perspective, incentivized, right, to try to create a token of value which can only achieve value by pulling value away from, you know, some, some larger token. This you know, obviously we're talking about a social layer here, but we used to have like a decent amount of developer discourse on in CT and that, that certainly did, you know, start fading away sometimes like you know if you remove those little, you know, day to day conversations or, you know, like if you are someone who isn't a
00;21;23;26 - 00;21;50;27
Chris
core developer and doesn't actively monitor this, but then, you know, can pick it up through osmosis, you know, just because it's in, it's in the air when that's no longer in the air. What that really means is the only time it makes it to CT is when into larger source of contention. And so, you know, you do sort of get maybe blindsided isn't quite the right word, but, you know, like you're you're not aware of something until it's a flash point.
00;21;50;29 - 00;22;02;28
Chris
And, you know, I, I definitely can see that as a contributing factor. But it's like one of a million things. And at the end of the day, I bring it back to like, it's a common problem.
00;22;03;01 - 00;22;25;25
Aaron
Yeah, I think the Commons problem cuts both ways, Chris, because I think the Commons pieces of Ethereum is also why it has like a reasonably good shot at being like a substrate were. Yeah, agents. And I think some of that like more technical conversation is coming back to, to the ecosystem. I think that yeah. Just for, you know, like listen to some of the major podcasts, like the geeking out on the technical aspects.
00;22;25;25 - 00;22;56;17
Aaron
Again, one way to think about like the, the kind of B-level developers in Web3 is that they're probably going to hop on all the AI coding faster than any other coherent group. Like they like technology, they want to do fun, fun things with it. And actually the AI tools are pretty good for them, and they're pretty creative is like a group, you know, there's lots of things to criticize, like the the Web3 developer about, but they are like a pretty creative groups and they push things to like the extremes, like super fast.
00;22;56;17 - 00;23;15;11
Aaron
So I wouldn't be surprised this we see like a ton of really cool experiments related to their genetic stuff. I think 95% of it will be junk, but some of it will be really innovative and, and probably super impactful. So I think that, I think we're getting that technical conversation back.
00;23;15;13 - 00;23;16;27
Chris
Ever the optimist.
00;23;16;29 - 00;23;28;07
Aaron
It's just like one of the, you know, the TV ification of like, Twitter is just also killed it, right? Like it's not really like a place for communities to talk to one another anymore, just like a a broadcast network now.
00;23;28;10 - 00;23;50;25
Pri
Yeah, just showing product. I will say, I agree with you. Crypto people tend to be very creative and on the edge. So even if like they're not actively, you know, have a lot of transactions on chain or they're not like developing apps on chain, whatever they are interested in is worth following anyway. So I mean, like I found like a lot of these like viral vibe coated apps and stuff I like.
00;23;50;25 - 00;24;14;11
Pri
We'll go to the Twitter page. It's like usually someone who's like worked in crypto or something. And I'm always like, it's like not surprising. So I'm like, okay, that makes sense. But many of the people who like Titanfall deep into their coding apps or longevity and health or all these other things they like, had an interest in the crypto realm, even like Brian Armstrong's like talking about like, longevity.
00;24;14;12 - 00;24;26;08
Pri
Fred Archer, has like, that neurotic app. Like, it's not surprising that a lot of these people are like, exploring elsewhere in the cutting edge. Do you want to talk crypto regs and like, you know what's happening there?
00;24;26;08 - 00;24;51;10
Aaron
I mean, I think what we saw was that there is a bill. There's things like there's a lot of interest in it. There's pretty much just a fight between traditional finance and crypto about passing on yield when it comes to stablecoins. Back to customers. There was a meeting, I think not last Friday in the white House, where they were trying to kind of bridge this and reports that meeting to said it was like pretty intense.
00;24;51;12 - 00;25;07;24
Aaron
I think at some point, like Jamie Dimon was saying like mean things to Brian Armstrong. So at some level it's kind of like great. Like Brian's like, you know, kind of holding the line in like, of course, traditional finance is not in a competition. They're really creative, you know, insulating their moats through regulation. At the same time.
00;25;07;24 - 00;25;15;23
Aaron
Like, you know, I do agree that, like, we've got to get something through. I think that there is a deadline set for it to kind of get it done by April ish.
00;25;16;00 - 00;25;32;12
Brady
Okay. So Aaron, if that happens, I have a I have a galaxy brain taking all this, which you're welcome to eviscerate. And maybe you will, but this is this is this has been what I've been, this has been the drum I've been beating on this on on my newsletter. Like, obviously, you know, a good new law would be great.
00;25;32;12 - 00;25;55;05
Brady
That's like enshrine. It's tough to roll back, you know, fear of the Gary Gensler too. Whatever, whatever. But I, I mean, I, I don't think clarity is passing. I mean, I've said that other times and things have passed. Not this year. But if it does, I'd be better. But I don't think it's going to. But I also just don't think it matters, because it's just so clear that the SEC and the CFTC are aligned.
00;25;55;05 - 00;26;15;16
Brady
They had this great meeting last week where they talked about this Chad Johnson accord from the 80s, where, you know, there was a problem around futures, and there was this big turf battle and that heads resolved it. And there's no turf battle between the SEC and the CFTC now. I mean, Mike Sigel like worked for Paul Atkins like they are very much aligned.
00;26;15;18 - 00;26;34;18
Brady
You know, I kind of think the reason why the prior CFTC chair got the boot was just because they realized it was better to have someone who thought, like Paul Atkins leading the CFTC lead the CFTC, you know, I don't know, but that's my guess. And they're going to write a bunch of great rules that are going to make it clear that you can issue tokens.
00;26;34;20 - 00;26;52;24
Brady
Some of them are securities. And there's rules for that. Some of them aren't. And there's rules for that. And you can trade them. And that is the lion's share of what the industry needs to move forward. And it's going to happen within a year. And I understand it's not as good as a law because, you know, it's more roll back a able.
00;26;52;24 - 00;27;15;02
Brady
But I also have a hard time believing the next administration that comes along would have an easy time rolling that back. And it takes at least a year and a half to do it, even if they try really hard to do it. So I think regulation is coming with or without clarity and, and that people are under indexing how how powerful like Paul Atkins will to do this is.
00;27;15;04 - 00;27;42;29
Aaron
Are we see we're seeing regulatory Cosway. Because I think that that's largely the case. Like, I even held this position really before the previous, you know, election, which is I didn't think it really mattered who, was elected, when it came to crypto. You know, I, I take a very pragmatic approach, which is like, if people see an opportunity to make a tremendous amount of money, like the rules will come in into focus one way or another.
00;27;43;01 - 00;27;59;09
Aaron
Whether it's through a bill, whether it's the regulations, like it kind of doesn't matter. I think the core pieces of that bill, everybody's in alignment with it, really like fighting over the edges. And they're important edges and they're important fights. But I think the core of it will kind of move forward. I think that's kind of what you're what you're saying.
00;27;59;11 - 00;28;19;28
Aaron
I think the worry from the industry and I think it's fair is that like a lot is a bit more firm and much harder to roll back, than a regulation. And just because of the kind of like slash and burn approach that the previous administration took, I think that that that would give a lot of folks a little bit more certainty, kind of moving forward, your regs are there.
00;28;19;28 - 00;28;41;06
Aaron
They're good to lean on. But there's always like interpretation. It's not like as firm. And I do think like folks that have a lot of capital want that certainty, which is fair, you know. So but I largely agree with that take I do think a lot of this stuck. Is it just like I think they're just like kind of showing that they're fighting the good fight before they make ultimate concessions on both sides.
00;28;41;06 - 00;29;04;10
Brady
The thing that I think would be kind of funny if clarity didn't pass. And I under your, you know, your point about why people want more clarity. Certainty is good. But if it didn't pass, this is the funny thing is we'd get much of what we want anyway through a regulatory process. And then because genius has already passed and it will become the law of the land one way or another next January, you know, that's it's in the it's in the law.
00;29;04;11 - 00;29;23;00
Brady
Like, even if no one does anything, it becomes a lot of land in January, then crypto Pete, the big banks, the big banks will lose. I mean I don't think that's yielding is like that important ultimately. But it's just it would be funny to me if this tiny, scrappy industry be the most powerful industry in the country because that fight is lost if if they don't get it changed and clarity.
00;29;23;03 - 00;29;43;00
Aaron
Yeah, it's a good point. To. Yeah, I mean, I think I think we did we did kind of beat them though. I mean, like there was big concessions that were made to me. I think the fight's really on. Like what is the shape of the Erc20 market like, how broad is that going to go? And then obviously the, the national security and like the compliance related issues.
00;29;43;00 - 00;30;00;12
Aaron
And then I think, I think the wild cards are really like, what about meme coins, right? And like the self-enrichment that is, you know, Trump, Trump do it. The trump coin, I think, and roll liberty. Like I think that that's making it more of like a political hot potato right now, which I which is unfortunate.
00;30;00;14 - 00;30;06;06
Pri
Yeah. It's going to be a huge issue if he loses like the midterms. I feel like in the House.
00;30;06;08 - 00;30;23;11
Aaron
I think that was going to be is going to be an issue one way or another. So like I don't know like the the bill needs to be a blocker for that. So I think we saw yesterday. Right. Like the market was going down in the Democratic parties Twitter handle was like like a part in it, which is like a bit bizarre.
00;30;23;14 - 00;30;24;21
Aaron
From my vantage point.
00;30;24;23 - 00;30;30;03
Pri
One question I have is why don't why do you think the Clarity Act will pass?
00;30;30;03 - 00;30;50;20
Brady
So many reasons. I mean, the Democrats well, I mean, the the big thing is like Lummis is retiring. So one of the biggest players you have for moving it through the Senate has just thrown all of her political capital into the garbage. I mean, right, people need it. Don't people don't need to work with Cynthia Cynthia Loomis in the same way.
00;30;50;21 - 00;31;12;29
Brady
Now, the Democrats just keep blocking on like, really fundamental issues. And and I think a certain category of them see like it losing is like a political move going, you know, it's like it's going to be useful for them in the midterms. I just I just don't see the I just don't see the math there for it. The momentum on this thing has run way too long.
00;31;12;29 - 00;31;24;11
Brady
It should have happened last year. And and yeah, Trump screwed everything up with all his profiteering. So you know they were able to get stablecoins done because that's a thing that everybody wanted and needed. But clarity is just way more complicated.
00;31;24;13 - 00;31;46;27
Aaron
And it's more complicated because it's touching securities system. Right. That we have and like I think traditional finance they like that system. They they're they understand how it works. It's it's incredibly profitable for them. They don't want that to change. You know, an early 20s are hard to wrap your head around, hard to understand, like where the long, long term value is related to them.
00;31;47;00 - 00;31;49;12
Pri
Hard for the bank to catch on should it pass.
00;31;49;12 - 00;32;10;29
Aaron
Yeah. And it's also like they're different. They're just like a different beast. Like to me it's like, you know, a little bit like media. So you've got the TV and cable executives who are happy the way that they distribute media. And out came YouTube, right. And you need a law kind of in place to kind of wrap your heads around, all the issues that, you know, more democratized media production creates it.
00;32;10;29 - 00;32;28;19
Aaron
There are hard problems there. And so their default position is like, why change anything? It, like works really well. And it's a fair point, right? Like, even if you're thinking about, like, why is one reason why the US may win the AI race, it's because we've got really kickass capital markets, right? Like whether it's Space-x or OpenAI or anthropic, it's they need capital.
00;32;28;19 - 00;32;47;16
Aaron
They're going to be able to get that from the US markets, like no other country or region really has that. And so it's a huge competitive advantage. That's pretty persuasive. And then there's the other bits, which I think are, in the long run solvable with just like data analytics and other technology. But it's all the compliance pieces that are in place.
00;32;47;19 - 00;33;09;16
Aaron
So, you know, I would think if I was in a more traditional banking posture that I'd use this to kind of update that compliance regime. So it's a little bit more modernized and a little bit more, easy to administer. But those are valid concerns too, right? That we know that crypto has Wild West, aspects, that where the capital comes from is still open questions.
00;33;09;16 - 00;33;28;27
Aaron
And the data analytics tools are good, but they're not great and were as good potentially as like some of the existing like AML, KYC related regimes that are in place. So hard stuff this is these are this is a tough build I think that's why it's taken so long to break it. So like I know it's like taking a long time but like this is a tough one.
00;33;29;00 - 00;33;36;10
Aaron
Probably even tougher than some of the copyright issues that people are faced with or face. You know, during that, the early innings of the internet.
00;33;36;13 - 00;33;55;25
Pri
I'm wondering if, like the pricing around the market has any impact on on the bill? Because I think people thought it was going to pass. Maybe that created a little bit more euphoria in the markets. And then like now, you know, to Brady's point, maybe people are less confident. I think there's much more to that than, you know, there's still.
00;33;55;28 - 00;33;59;26
Aaron
Lots of ways to cut this play. Or maybe they are confident.
00;33;59;28 - 00;34;16;03
Brady
And the other thing I left out on the on the friction for clarity is just because we have gotten into the election year. Now, there's just a point at which the House is just going to check out super hard. And so if the Senate doesn't get the bill over to them by whatever that date is, just nothing's going to move.
00;34;16;05 - 00;34;23;26
Brady
At a certain point, election season kicks in and they're just not going to deal with anything. And then it will be a new Congress. So that's the other big friction for clarity right now.
00;34;23;29 - 00;34;27;12
Pri
That's true. Yeah. There's like a time for a time box.
00;34;27;12 - 00;34;47;15
Aaron
Yeah. But I think you're right Brady. That like it doesn't on this matter. Because if they don't get clarity through it Akins and the CFTC will move into rulemaking posture and probably get, you know, 8,090% of it through at least the meat of it. And everybody agrees with so and maybe that's why people are fighting so, so hard right now for around those edges.
00;34;47;15 - 00;34;55;12
Aaron
Right. Because they and because some of this stuff kind of touches things that maybe a SEC and CFTC can't really handle or address.
00;34;55;15 - 00;34;56;13
Pri
Agreed.
00;34;56;15 - 00;35;24;20
Aaron
But I, I think one way or another, it still routes back to utility. So, you know, I think it's fun to watch people play around with their agents stuff. I know Chris your sell little I'm I'm on that but I don't know like the more I think about it, the more it just seems like completely logical to me that really the the end use case for a system like Ethereum or maybe some other network is really to secure value transfer between all systems, including easy generic ones.
00;35;24;20 - 00;35;44;29
Aaron
It just seems like it's in the best position for that. Like I saw like Sean McGuire. Sequoia, I know he rubs people the wrong way because of his political views, but as a investor, he's epic, right? Now, yesterday, while there was, like, blood rolling in the streets, he even bull posted about how much he loves crypto, which I don't remember him ever saying, like publicly.
00;35;45;01 - 00;35;47;29
Pri
Yeah, like, I don't know, use a I saw that too. And I was like, that's red.
00;35;47;29 - 00;35;48;08
Chris
Oh yeah.
00;35;48;08 - 00;36;04;09
Brady
He loves he's all about crypto. Yeah, yeah. He he I did interview with him at Axios years ago and he was all about like, yeah, he was like, I started off, you know, when I got out of college, I went and did a bunch of development work all over the world, and it was just obvious that people could not transact the way they needed to.
00;36;04;09 - 00;36;10;12
Brady
And that's why development sucked. And so, you know, I want to free money up. Yeah, he's he's always been a big crypto guy.
00;36;10;15 - 00;36;24;00
Chris
The framing here that there are two sides of the same coin is the quibble I'm going to chew on here because that's absolutely delusional, right. Like a crypto does not fit on the same sized coin as I and Chris.
00;36;24;00 - 00;36;27;17
Aaron
I love your takes. It's delusional. You're just rage baiting us.
00;36;27;20 - 00;36;53;05
Chris
Well, no, it's like, just think of the scales of these things. Think of the velocity of these things. They're not peanut butter and jelly, you know, like they don't. Sure. Can they work together? Yes. Are they equals? No, not in the least. And like, I don't know man. Crypto. You know, I said this on last week's pod of the pod after that crypto you know just keeps it trying to attach itself to narratives.
00;36;53;05 - 00;37;08;13
Chris
And it does do I think. Yes. Like there'll be a lot of processing over, you know, a genetic processing of transactions over crypto rails. Sure. Does that. You know, ultimately like create value for crypto itself. Yeah.
00;37;08;13 - 00;37;30;26
Aaron
KVD I'm going to take the camera on this like. All right. Let me let me push you on this a little bit. All right. We got robots. Not not like robots. Like fully like, you know like almost like, Futurama like robots. They're independent actors. How the heck are they going to pay for stuff so completely embodied and completely can act on their own accord?
00;37;30;28 - 00;37;43;12
Aaron
Like, how are they going to pay for stuff, but they're gonna have a wallet and like, pull it out with their, like, mechanical, like hands and pay things in dollars or they're going to get issued credit cards. Okay. Like, how is that going to work and how are you going to get.
00;37;43;12 - 00;37;50;12
Chris
It's not going to work. It's going to work. Any possible, any number of ways. How on earth did your phone learn to make payments at Starbucks?
00;37;50;14 - 00;38;09;21
Aaron
Yeah, because Apple kind of, controls that. Right. But are we going to have, like, robots lined up at the DMV line, like snapping a picture of their their faces and getting, like, licenses, so that they can get credit cards? Like it, it I just don't think that that's that's basically like, I think you're going to need, like, a neutral protocol for that.
00;38;09;21 - 00;38;24;27
Aaron
I don't know if you need like 15 other like blockchain protocols for it, but I think a blockchain itself is is a really good substrate to do that registration entity that that like payment piece. And I think the same thing that you're gonna have non embodied agents. Right. Like we're starting to see the first glimmers of them.
00;38;25;04 - 00;38;36;23
Aaron
They're definitely like a little cosplay but they're coming right. And like things are moving so quick. They could be here by the end of the year. Like how are they going to pay for themselves. You know, if you need I'm not disputing that.
00;38;36;25 - 00;38;50;23
Chris
I'm not disputing that aspect of it, Aaron. Like that. That's maybe the nuance that isn't quite clear here. Will agents use crypto reals to perform some subset of transactions? More than likely. Right. Like highly probable.
00;38;50;28 - 00;38;53;10
Aaron
We're making progress. We're making progress. All right.
00;38;53;17 - 00;39;20;05
Chris
Where are you? You need to, like, realize, like, my background's in telecom. I lived through a switch from scarcity to abundance. Right? Like I worked in the space as we went from, you know, an industry dominated by phone calls in which, like, SMS was a metered thing and data didn't exist, or data was so primitive, right, that it wasn't really functionally useful.
00;39;20;07 - 00;39;46;10
Chris
By the time I left that today's data was ubiquitous, SMS was so damn cheap that it was just offset between carriers. You know, like there's a whole practice called billing kit in which no one even bothered charging each other, and they just said, yeah, you sent me 500 million messages and I sent you a billion messages. And, you know, all in all, that's like, largely equal the time and bother billing each other because it's too big a hassle.
00;39;46;12 - 00;40;12;19
Chris
Right? Like that is the future we're stepping into. And there's plenty of ways to make money in that future. But how you make money in that future changes dramatically, like the size of the scale, you know, upends the whole the whole way people do business. And when I think of like crypto's perspective around AI and agenda use, they're not factoring that into the equation yet.
00;40;12;19 - 00;40;29;27
Chris
They're not understanding, right. That like, certain things can effectively go to zero as a way to make money. And part of that might be tokens like if I asked you, what's the best business to be in in crypto, you're going to tell me it's the stablecoin issuer or to Dex, right?
00;40;30;03 - 00;40;30;25
Aaron
Yeah.
00;40;30;27 - 00;40;56;13
Chris
Yeah. Okay. So what happens when exchange, you know, exchange takes or like the, the things that make exchanges good business get eroded down into nothingness. Like, why? All right, why would an agent, you know, okay, Uniswap, whatever their, you know, their rate is on that. Why wouldn't they build their own exchanges? Why wouldn't they find alternate exchanges?
00;40;56;13 - 00;41;20;23
Chris
Like, there's just a lot of. I think, ramifications that people aren't quite considering here. And what I mean, like my position is, yes, agents will use these things. Will they use these things in ways that like, can benefit you as crypto rails? Yeah, sure. But will they benefit you to like degree? Maybe you're projecting outwards. No.
00;41;20;26 - 00;41;27;19
Brady
Yeah. Chris, I think you're probably right that AI is going to be more important for the world than crypto.
00;41;27;21 - 00;41;28;09
Chris
The thing that.
00;41;28;09 - 00;41;48;26
Brady
Is funny about money is the financialization of things always sort of seems to end up being bigger than the thing, you know, like, I don't know, I can't check the numbers, but I'm, I'm pretty sure like the financial world is like bigger than cars. They're like, cars are probably done more to change the world. But like the financialization of cars, I actually think makes more money, you know?
00;41;49;00 - 00;42;04;27
Brady
So it's just like it's just like, yes, AI is more important, but because crypto will be the money, that'll probably just like ripple out in this big way, that makes it as important or perhaps even larger, potentially, even though I was actually more important. You know what I mean?
00;42;04;29 - 00;42;08;05
Pri
Very guide to board coded there.
00;42;08;13 - 00;42;26;26
Chris
Yeah. No, I can understand that. Except we kind of have to debate what the fundamental property of this thing is and whether you can make money off of it. Because you say that and I go, okay. Yeah, that's a good point. Like you know, we're human beings. We live in a world that just wants to squeeze every bit of juice possible.
00;42;26;26 - 00;42;57;23
Chris
And finance is the primary method in which you do that. So yes, on that level I agree with you on a different level. I view AI is is information market information wants to be free the same way communication wants to be free, and that we're going to potentially have like a huge amount of deflationary pressure. Right. Like there was a run off in the stock market this week because everyone looked at sass and said this model is probably cooked.
00;42;57;25 - 00;43;31;01
Chris
And so like, you know, not as, optimistic, right, that the fundamentals like I'm just a big believer that scale drives everything into like really, really tiny margins and that the properties of, you know, what's coming in an AI driven world is far closer to communications. Like, to me, intelligence and communications have very similar profiles and properties.
00;43;31;03 - 00;43;55;25
Chris
And that this like, the entire world we're living in right now, this new liberal era is about like consolidating supply chains, consolidating enough of a certain part of the economy so that you can then leverage and squeeze it, increase your margins. And I just think that that posture doesn't hold and that you need to be, can have more expansive view of possibilities.
00;43;55;27 - 00;44;00;13
Brady
Yeah, that all seems fit. I mean, yeah, I see what you're saying. That's a that's a good point to. Yeah.
00;44;00;16 - 00;44;24;06
Pri
And I'm just like thinking about it in the context of labor, too, like you have, you know, AI's coming for human labor, but so much of labor is driven by payment and, paying for said labor. Labor. It's like, in a way which is kind of more important as labor becomes more compressed with AI, which is like a huge thing.
00;44;24;06 - 00;44;41;09
Pri
That means like the financial market around it is just going to get bigger because it'll be like more labor that can be done. So there'll be more. I don't know, payment and and financial activity. I don't know if where my line of reasoning is going is makes sense, but I could kind of see that a little bit too.
00;44;41;15 - 00;45;01;01
Brady
Well, yeah, I know where your reason is going is I mean, that is helpful. It's like the marginal cost of labor will be very low. Like once you've got a humanoid robot that can stack boxes, you've got, I mean, not to pay them, but because you'll want it to be infinite. You'll want want lots of those robots. And so people will have to like, finance them.
00;45;01;01 - 00;45;16;17
Brady
And then the world is going to become complicated in ways that we can't really anticipate. Lots of robots will be doing lots of things for lots of different companies. They'll have to transact. So like, yeah, the financial level of all that is going to be exponential, I expect.
00;45;16;20 - 00;45;37;13
Pri
Right. And they're the outputs just going to be higher. It's not like it's a 9 to 5 worker. It's a 24 seven. You know worker. And then you multiply that across either either software or embodied I it's just going to be huge. There's just going to be more finance like the financial activity of the world is just going to increase as a result, which obviously is going to have a huge impact on crypto.
00;45;37;15 - 00;45;40;03
Pri
Assuming that is like the financial rails of the world.
00;45;40;08 - 00;45;58;26
Brady
Minor miners, I, like I did argue with a guy on Substack this week, because someone had written a post on this driverless car Substack that was like, you know, it would be nice if there were driverless cars in rural areas because it's tough to get around. And his his example is I went on a vacation, I wanted to go to this bar and have a drink with my wife, but I feel bad about drinking and driving.
00;45;59;03 - 00;46;13;02
Brady
But there was no taxi service and so we just stayed home. We didn't do it, and it would have been cool if there was a Waymo there. And and like, wouldn't that be nice? And I live in small town America now. I feel like there's lots of people here who could use to have access to Waymo's. I hope it comes soon.
00;46;13;05 - 00;46;28;28
Brady
You know, I wish the town would buy, like, a little autonomous trolley or whatever, but of course, this, like, progressive dude weighed in and he was just like, where wouldn't it be better if we just like, if the state subsidized an actual worker? Because then we could have a car and then somebody would be actually making a salary.
00;46;28;28 - 00;46;46;05
Brady
And I was like, okay, man. But then the worker is going to work like 9 to 5. Whereas a Waymo could be providing service 24 hours a day. And it kind of works out to that to roughly the same price. So I actually think that maybe the though driverless car is better for the world in fact controversial take.
00;46;46;13 - 00;46;48;10
Brady
Anyway. Sorry, minor rant there, but.
00;46;48;13 - 00;46;49;12
Pri
No, it's fair.
00;46;49;14 - 00;47;12;22
Chris
Oh, we also saw this sort of reaction around like the Washington Post layoffs this week. I'm pretty. I'm sure you you saw like a million people lamenting the loss of their international coverage, their book review coverage. There's sports department while like, these are, you know, a fair takes on a certain level, especially if like you or someone who is starved, let's say, for book reviews.
00;47;12;22 - 00;47;36;21
Chris
Right. And that's becoming a scarcer and scarcer thing. It's also just so anachronistic that like at a certain point, I have a hard time even wanting to, like, take these people seriously because the world has moved forward. And like the fact that they can't deal with the fact that, like, we're in this turning point in which the world owes you nothing, and that's like the hard, sad truth of the fact.
00;47;36;28 - 00;48;00;23
Chris
Now, you were led to believe that you are owed things, but like that contract is over. I don't know, like, it's it's just hard for me to like there was a time where I had, like, space in my heart and I had, you know, room to, like, hear these sort of things, but, like, to me now, they're, they're counterproductive because, you know, it's just that the day has come and it's gone.
00;48;01;00 - 00;48;09;29
Chris
And the longer you, you lament or mourn for it, the less included you're going to be in whatever new world is emerging.
00;48;09;29 - 00;48;14;19
Brady
A very complex feelings about the Washington Post stuff. But I, I definitely I definitely see what you're saying. Yeah.
00;48;14;22 - 00;48;19;22
Pri
Wait, I actually was going to ask you about that, but like what are your thoughts on that. Like high level.
00;48;19;22 - 00;48;41;16
Brady
I mean, my highest level thought is, you know, I do I part of me, I'm watching to see what they do. I think the post had a culture that was out of sync with the rest of the country. A lot of the ways they were trying to get the thing that The New York Times clearly has, and they're not going to take take it.
00;48;41;16 - 00;49;12;11
Brady
So I do sort of wonder if they don't actually hire a ton of people again soon, but they are trying to do a cultural reset. It may not be the case, though. I mean, the truth is, media just doesn't have a business model. And like, I can go on a larger rant about this, but I have contended for a while that everything that bothers everyone about the media is downstream of the fact that it doesn't have a way to make money, and it just has to find a way to make money again.
00;49;12;14 - 00;49;34;04
Brady
And at a certain point, like, you know, even though Jeff Bezos could, you know, subsidize it forever, he does want to actually have functional businesses. And at the end of the day, like if it's not making money at all, like maybe that even means that the world doesn't really want that product, you know? So it's just media has some hard questions it needs to face.
00;49;34;10 - 00;49;52;22
Brady
And I guess this is just sort of the late I, you know, I never really applaud journalists losing their jobs. But at the same time, it does seem like The Washington Post was like uniquely recalcitrant. I mean, some of the giant drama as we saw out of that place, like when it decided that it wasn't going to endorse political candidates and people acted like that was the end of the world.
00;49;52;22 - 00;50;07;14
Brady
It's just like, come on, it's stupid. In this day and age for newspapers to be endorsing political candidates, that's just a practice that should end. No one cares. And like the people, you know, just. And so it's just like, I don't know. Yeah. It's just I have complex feelings, Jim.
00;50;07;14 - 00;50;14;25
Pri
They bring in like a bunch of, like, the hard core, like Murdoch zigzags to run it like a year or two ago.
00;50;14;26 - 00;50;30;00
Brady
I don't know, they definitely had an executive shakeup looking for it. But like the truly here's the thing. Like nobody nobody knows how to make money with the news now no one's doing it. The New York Times is kind of doing it, but their entire business model is, well, it's mostly games and cook. Yeah, it's mostly games and cooking.
00;50;30;00 - 00;50;41;15
Brady
And then also, you know, Orange Man bad. And when the orange man is gone, they're going to lose a lot of subscriptions. So it's just like is that really a business model. And that's really the only thing that's like actually really, really working out there.
00;50;41;15 - 00;50;55;29
Pri
So I think Wall Street Journal has been able to maintain like a level of credibility and following, like a lot of people do. Subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. It seems like the one paper that I feel like many people still ascribe to.
00;50;56;02 - 00;51;19;26
Brady
But isn't it owned by the Dow Jones Company? Like, it's just it's a part of a larger thing, too. I think the FTX kind of too. I mean my, my big that that this is veering off, but like the, the the drum I keep beating is I would like to see platforms like X and Substack that fundamentally rely and are aligned with newsrooms existing like need.
00;51;19;26 - 00;51;36;22
Brady
Newsrooms exist because their whole business is people having opinions about the news. So if no one's generating news, like where will the opinions come from? And they both have actual business models, like, you know, X could open a newsroom and they could pay wallets. Anyone who's paying for premium Substack could open a newsroom, and it would be great for Substack.
00;51;36;22 - 00;51;54;06
Brady
Or if they paywalled it to like you don't subscribe to our newsroom. If you have 3 or 4 subscriptions, you get access to Substack news as well. That's a perk of subscribing to other writers. I just think there's a lot of ways in which newsrooms are aligned with some new business models, but some folks need to need to do it and try it.
00;51;54;13 - 00;51;55;12
Pri
Yeah, I agree.
00;51;55;14 - 00;52;24;01
Chris
Is there enough healthy margin? Is there enough like sustainable subscription models for them to want to go there? Because the model you're proposing is actually probably why I haven't cut the cord on cable yet. Right. Like, what did I do last year? I canceled all my streaming subscriptions. Why did I cancel them? Because my cable provider got those into their bundle as a point of leverage.
00;52;24;01 - 00;52;35;11
Chris
Right? And so I still have all my streaming services. I just don't have to pay out of pocket for them. I just keep paying for cable. Can the news industry actually adapt to a model like how.
00;52;35;12 - 00;52;41;07
Brady
What would the parallel be? I don't I don't quite see what the parallel. I mean, it's a good point that I don't quite see what the parallel with.
00;52;41;10 - 00;52;48;28
Chris
The parallel is. I give spectrum 250, 300 bucks a month and there's enough money in there.
00;52;48;29 - 00;52;55;23
Brady
No, I know, but analyzes, analyze and analogize it to news though. What do you how how does that work in the news world.
00;52;55;25 - 00;53;19;07
Chris
Yeah. Well that's the problem is I don't think it can work in the newsroom because there is not that aggregation point that's incentivized to go cut these sort of deals that you're you're proposing, right? Essentially like subsidizing, like streaming. It's still not a good business. Right. But like it there's enough money floating around. There's enough future stakes where like these sort of things can happen.
00;53;19;09 - 00;53;41;14
Chris
I'm saying in like the news world, perhaps it doesn't have both a future forward, you know? Hey, streaming is it? Therefore, we all need to be in the streaming game and eventually figure it out. Let's work together. I'm not sure news has that, you know, and I'm not saying, like, we don't want any news in the future.
00;53;41;14 - 00;53;50;13
Chris
That's absurd. But at the same time, like, where is the incentive for, you know, people to team up in a way that you're talking?
00;53;50;13 - 00;54;11;08
Brady
Well, so, like what I'm saying with Substack is, you know, Substack is basically a giant opinion page, but the people who were and it is pretty profitable for a lot of people who write the most popular opinions, you know, but those people who write those popular opinions base those popular opinions on actual newsgathering that reporters do. And so there is an alignment there.
00;54;11;08 - 00;54;31;23
Brady
If the more the news gathering gets hollowed out by the fact that this industry doesn't have a business model, the harder it is for Substack opinion generators to generate fresh opinions. So there's an alignment there. And it would be. And so I suspect there are a lot of people who are marginal about making their first or second subscription to Substack.
00;54;31;23 - 00;54;46;21
Brady
There's millions and millions of people who haven't done it, you know, and if you were able to say to them, like subscribing to 1 or 2 newsletters doesn't just get you those newsletters, it also gets you access to our pretty good newsroom that we spun up. That might get some more people over the line. So it's good for everyone.
00;54;46;21 - 00;55;05;03
Brady
So I guess that's the way in which it looks additive to me. But I don't know. It's a hard problem. You know, in the old days, newspapers were monopolies on regions and their real product was grocery store inserts. It wasn't actually the news. The news was just the packaging. And it's hard to see a parallel for that in the future.
00;55;05;05 - 00;55;09;23
Brady
But the world does need news. It's just the question is how to pay for it.
00;55;09;26 - 00;55;12;06
Chris
Yeah, it's a really hard question.
00;55;12;12 - 00;55;33;14
Aaron
But do you think it's more like like the news gathering influencer that, like, becomes the face, you know, like kind of what we saw with like, with that Nick Shurley. That's his name. Right? They just become known as, like, the investigative journalist. And then, they'll the big following is they, like, break stories and then build a build like that newsgathering team behind them.
00;55;33;14 - 00;55;50;05
Brady
I think we'll see more and more things like that. You know, the thing is, like, guys like that, I mean, that story had already existed out there before he did it. I mean, he got more eyes to it. So that's cool. But be the thing, like, guys like that are not great at dealing with the drumbeat of day to day news.
00;55;50;05 - 00;56;22;17
Brady
Just like following what's going on. You know, the the influencer is drawn to the great big mind blowing story. But if you want to know, just sort of like how your town is or your city is evolving over time, or you want to know about, like how the sausage gets made of this Clarity Act bill that we were talking about as it moves through the Congress and its glacial pace, it's hard to imagine influencers being the ones that do that, you know, and that that and the the ones the influencers who did do that kind of get a big following.
00;56;22;17 - 00;56;27;19
Brady
That is the pay as well. You know, that's that's the trouble to me. But if they can God bless.
00;56;27;22 - 00;56;46;25
Aaron
Yeah. That's true. Yeah. I guess it's kind of like the almost like the local news stuff that bubbles up to national news that bubbles up to like, international news, like you may get the the big stories, but you're not going to get the super important news gathering that happens at where the local or regional level is something like that.
00;56;46;27 - 00;56;49;25
Aaron
Like you won't have enough distribution to make that work.
00;56;49;28 - 00;57;05;23
Pri
It is kind of funny though, to me that like the park and the semaphores are basically taking these like Substack leaders or like, you know, people that have a lot of credibility on somebody and just like rolling it up to create a newspaper. Again, though, it's like what's old is new with these newer models, too.
00;57;05;24 - 00;57;15;26
Brady
And Substack deeply needs to do that. It needs to it needs to launch some kind of packaging sort of thing, and it also needs to launch some kind of like pay for a single story kind of thing. But whatever, one.
00;57;15;26 - 00;57;23;23
Pri
Day that's the ultimate think. Actually, that's when media starts making money is if they can do the micro payment thing well like not to make bring it back to crypto. But if you could like.
00;57;23;27 - 00;57;28;05
Chris
Why when is microtransaction ever were.
00;57;28;05 - 00;57;29;15
Aaron
Never going to happen?
00;57;29;18 - 00;57;39;13
Pri
You don't think so. Know you know like people would like like know instead of paying for a paywall, they just like pay $0.50 to read a story.
00;57;39;15 - 00;57;40;07
Chris
No.
00;57;40;09 - 00;57;50;05
Aaron
I like the concept, but it's like, you know, it's like, communism. I guess it sounds great in theory, but it's horrible. And implementation.
00;57;50;08 - 00;57;53;08
Pri
I guess if you could make it seamless, I think it would be pretty nice.
00;57;53;11 - 00;58;05;22
Aaron
But you want that so point. And then even if you did make it seem as people just don't like it, they don't like to be like nickel and dimed, like it's why, you know, things get packaged up into like month, like flat monthly payments. You like.
00;58;05;29 - 00;58;17;21
Brady
But don't you? I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm weird in this area, but I feel like I land on the Atlantic all the time, and I just, like, want to read this one story by Harlan Lewis, who I love, but I don't want to spend $89 a year.
00;58;17;25 - 00;58;35;06
Aaron
I it but to me, that's like the problem with The Atlantic. It's like they should be a little bit more generous on their free tier to keep their distributions so that they get that conversion as they hit enough people. And that's like their one of their biggest platforms of choice. Right. I think they're like a little bit.
00;58;35;09 - 00;58;45;00
Chris
Diplomatic and like it's like is clearly tried that model and has landed on the fact that, like, Harsh Gates is the most effective form of that.
00;58;45;05 - 00;58;46;07
Aaron
Works the best for them.
00;58;46;07 - 00;58;53;24
Pri
Yeah, it is even Bloomberg I think I've seriously contemplated getting Bloomberg because it's like I click on it so much and I can't read it.
00;58;53;26 - 00;59;19;06
Aaron
Yeah, I mean, they're great. I you know, I actually I'm worried about Substack. I didn't want to say this, but I, I think that increasingly like as AI continues to disseminate, you're just gonna like take whatever you're generating with some AI. It's it's insane. I think I don't know if you still read your your articles all manual or use that in part to get you like a quick first draft that you edit heavily or some combination.
00;59;19;07 - 00;59;21;06
Aaron
And if you don't feel comfortable answering it.
00;59;21;08 - 00;59;29;04
Brady
I write 100% every word myself. 100%. I will never stop. I will still my cold dead hands. I always do it that way.
00;59;29;04 - 00;59;37;28
Aaron
I love it, right? Okay, so let's say like, you know, future Brady probably will use some AI assistance in the in the future.
00;59;38;01 - 00;59;43;12
Brady
I mean, I use it for copy edit. It's amazing for copy editing and sometimes some feedback and stuff, but I still write it, you know?
00;59;43;14 - 01;00;13;03
Aaron
Yeah. Yeah, completely. But I guess like a future reporter, right? Like, you know, somebody that wants to kind of write articles, let's assume an increasing number of people will, will use AI for their assistance. I don't see why you wouldn't just, like, post that in one spot more publicly instead of, like, copying that, moving that over to, like, Substack or Beehive or whatever internal platform you're using to kind of, publish that work.
01;00;13;05 - 01;00;35;20
Aaron
I just feel like it's all going to be done in like one fell swoop, and you probably are not going to have as many interfaces to find stuff. It's going to be like like discovered for you through some sort of agent that's like reading everything that's kind of post it up. And so I worry about like platforms like Substack, because that like I, you know, somebody tweeted this out, I thought it was wise or like, I hate silos.
01;00;35;22 - 01;00;46;25
Aaron
And it just like destroys them. And I wonder if like a lot of these like web two ish aggregated publishing platforms are going to go through like another, another wave of of disruption probably.
01;00;46;25 - 01;00;49;25
Brady
So yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's horrible man.
01;00;49;25 - 01;00;51;21
Aaron
The media industry always gets it right.
01;00;51;21 - 01;01;09;16
Brady
And my take on AI has been for a while that like maybe I will be good for the news media just because everything and the only justification I have for it is every other technological development in my entire life has been bad for the media. So like just, you know, we're just do for, isn't it. It's.
01;01;09;18 - 01;01;19;18
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, you know, it's I, I love media I know you do. I know you do to everybody here I think does that. It's just tough. It's tough to kind of see what what that model looks like at the end.
01;01;19;21 - 01;01;43;03
Chris
Yeah. Hey Brady, let me ask you this. You not wanting to use AI, which of these camps do you fall in, or is it something completely different? I know a lot of writers. For them, the craft itself gives meaning, right? Like to sit down and to write a good article. You take pride in, in that as a skill.
01;01;43;03 - 01;02;05;26
Chris
The same way, you know, a woodworker, a painter, you know, any number of people who like, you know, take meaning from mastery that that's one common pushback I see against AI. Another is it's simply not as good as me. And why would I put out, you know, an inferior, type of thing? You can also see, see a third point of view, which is this is how you make a living.
01;02;05;26 - 01;02;15;21
Chris
This is what people you know want to pay you for. Why would you sacrifice that? Edge is where what what is it with you and wanting to write?
01;02;15;23 - 01;02;22;01
Brady
Where is the third one? The third one is pro AI, right? It's like, why would you sacrifice the edge? You should. You should use it. That's what you're saying.
01;02;22;04 - 01;02;30;12
Chris
No, no, I'm saying, like, you make a living writing words. Why would you give up how you make a living? Like why would you feed the engine that displaces you?
01;02;30;12 - 01;03;02;27
Brady
Oh, yeah. I guess I mostly fall in the first camp. You know, I don't actually know that I'm that great of a reporter. What I think I actually maybe am good at is digesting things and seeing them differently for people. And then what I'm doing with my Substack front page that everyone who's listening subscribe, is I'm really leaning into my voice, which is not something I've ever done on any other of my prior outlets, because the, you know, they kind of didn't let me.
01;03;02;27 - 01;03;30;13
Brady
It didn't fit. But I'm going super hard on voice because I think I've got a pretty strong one. And that I think eventually can develop some parasocial relationships with folks on, you know, maybe that's the theory. Not it sounds gross to say it out loud, but that's kind of what I'm doing. And so like, yeah. So it's just like, I guess I kind of feel like my only hope is that my voice and my viewpoint are what can sell, because that's kind of like what I've got.
01;03;30;20 - 01;03;51;23
Brady
And if I, if I, if I were more of a reporter, reporter, if I was a guy who, like white was I was known for was like getting scoops and getting the behind the stories and getting the deal. Yeah, I would probably want to save my time so I can make more phone calls with sources, because my real strength isn't the writing, it's the it's the finding, the information that I had never to be able to do that well.
01;03;51;23 - 01;04;03;07
Brady
But that's not me, you know, I'm the one who sees what's happening and explains it in a way that people haven't thought of, maybe in theory. And so that's just got to come straight from me, you know?
01;04;03;09 - 01;04;22;08
Chris
Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. And it's a really good point. It's one of those things where like if you appreciate writing, when you come across someone who has a strong voice and can string words together and combinations which maybe you've never seen before or it just sings right, like that's what what does really hit it?
01;04;22;08 - 01;04;43;05
Chris
And you know, maybe my one of my favorite books I read last year was, it was just a collection of essays from, like, John Jeremiah Sullivan and, like, his voice. It was like, Holy shit, my God. Like, how did you get so good at this? Right? And so I, I get that and like, having, you know, I write fiction is a creative practice.
01;04;43;05 - 01;05;13;02
Chris
I wrote my first two books, I only wrote half my third novel, and then I let I take over. And a big part of the reason I let I take over is because the concepts and like the schematics I wanted to get across, I wanted to make sure that they were clearly understood. And when I like to, when I write, I really like to lean into voice and to lean into voice means like you have to make certain sacrifices.
01;05;13;04 - 01;05;14;27
Chris
And so I get what you're saying.
01;05;15;03 - 01;05;18;05
Brady
I really like direct, by the way. That's all I read of yours, but I like direct.
01;05;18;05 - 01;05;29;24
Chris
Let's get. Thank you, I appreciate it. Yeah, that was really, like my big voice novel. That was like, I've never written like a novel. First person. I'm just going ham on voice. So I appreciate that.
01;05;30;02 - 01;05;31;04
Pri
Chris, you're a good writer.
01;05;31;11 - 01;05;31;29
Aaron
This is a good one.
01;05;31;29 - 01;05;57;29
Chris
Can I try three big fat fry? I will say, like I said to me, I just I prioritize ideas and I'm more of an idea guy. And so when like, AI is a form of like, I'm not going to say writing because that will get people mad, but like, you know, being able to produce articles, essays, etc. via I came out, I certainly embraced it because I wasn't prior.
01;05;58;02 - 01;06;03;09
Chris
I don't prioritize writing for certain things. I, I prioritize idea transmission.
01;06;03;12 - 01;06;19;22
Brady
AI has been so huge for writing, though I don't think I could have gone to Substack really without it because, like, just I mean, just the copy editing, you know, and like, but like, I have a bunch of novels that I've written and I plan if I ever get any time, I plan to get them up on like Kindle Direct Publishing sometime soon.
01;06;19;24 - 01;06;39;07
Brady
And they're they're messy and there's inconsistencies and there's a ton of copy editing that has to be done. And a part of the reason why I haven't done anything with them for years is because the thought of taking on that effort was just like, it's just like, oh my God, all of them would be so much work. But it actually does seem tractable now with AI to help me.
01;06;39;07 - 01;06;52;15
Brady
It's just like the things are written. They are me. Like I didn't have any help doing them, but like, yeah, I will be able to make the cleaning up of them go so much faster. It's like a it's like, oh, I should finally do something with these things, you know?
01;06;52;21 - 01;06;54;02
Pri
Oh my God, Brady please do.
01;06;54;07 - 01;07;09;25
Aaron
Yeah you should Brady. Have for me you know because I also I was a, in academia I had to write a fair amount for me. I just like getting that first draft. I don't know. My writing styles has always been very edit editing heavy, so I'd rather, like, work with, like, a lump of clay and just get it down.
01;07;09;25 - 01;07;29;27
Aaron
So I like that piece. I do think that there's still clunkiness in the writing, although I do. I am kind of curious if over time, that clunkiness you're, you're able to kind of like, ingest enough of your work or it can like at least pare back something that's like a little bit closer to how you would write it off the bat.
01;07;29;29 - 01;07;51;27
Chris
Aaron. You could do that last year. Like you can you can keep lambs in your voice. It's a lot of work, and you have to give it enough of your sample and you got to always keep an eye on it. But like that was doable even last year. Like people don't know. Yeah. When my hand stopped in this book and when the AI took over, but I had I had to do it a certain way, right.
01;07;51;27 - 01;08;02;04
Chris
Like I had to write a very neutral, kind of watered down style for this book. Like, I couldn't I couldn't get away with that, you know, like I couldn't have had it right the second half of right.
01;08;02;05 - 01;08;23;08
Brady
Oh, man. I going back to kind of what Aaron was saying about the one portal for news, a thing that I am sort of psyched about someone doing eventually with AI, I think could be cool is if, like, one of the things that sucks about reading the news right now is like, if you're reading it, if you're following a big story, like, say, like the war in Iraq when that was going on, right?
01;08;23;11 - 01;08;39;05
Brady
It's like annoying to read because if you're really following it closely, every story you read is going to recap a bunch of crap that you already know, you know, and that's that's really annoying. Yes. And it would be awesome if you had an AI portal that like, knows all the stuff you've read. And so when the new updates come out, it just shows you the new stuff.
01;08;39;08 - 01;08;55;22
Brady
And if you're like, I forgot what the deal with Fallujah is, just tell me, what's that again? You know, it could do it like, I mean, I think it could I could make reading the news a lot more efficient and like, and actually help people, like, follow it better eventually. So I, I like that as a theory going forward.
01;08;55;24 - 01;09;22;24
Aaron
Yeah. I think, I think I've been thinking quite a bit about it. I think it's almost like, like our social media feed with like a memory. Right. So it knows what you consumed. And there's like chat just kind of like embedded right there. And I've actually found myself just because I find Twitter's like such a cesspool, I oftentimes will like use grok just to like filter like stuff that came out almost like trying to like my, pigeon way of trying to get, like, back to, like, a newspaper of some sort.
01;09;22;27 - 01;09;44;17
Aaron
Like, I just want to know the top headlines and then dive in right from there instead of having to, like, go through 50, you know, like Elon political tweets to get to get that news. So, I don't know, I feel like you're going to just you're going to have like a feed where you can like, you know, watch videos from different services, read stuff like you just click it, it like opens in line.
01;09;44;19 - 01;10;00;03
Aaron
And then it's all kind of getting indexed, like in your web browser to like some memory. So it knows it. And then you should be able pretty to do that. Yeah, I think that's kind of the the end point of it at that point, once, once that feed of new feed ification happens, like you don't need a Substack anymore.
01;10;00;05 - 01;10;08;12
Aaron
Like you just will post it somewhere. I don't know exactly where that is, but if I go get posted, registered somewhere and then you'll be able to access it, I think that that's kind of the endpoint.
01;10;08;19 - 01;10;10;16
Pri
Or maybe Substack makes it.
01;10;10;18 - 01;10;20;15
Aaron
Yeah, but there's no reason to like save that data to Substack, right? Like you should be able to just save it somewhere, have a pointer to it. It's almost a little bit like file when you have a pointer to it. And then it gets like delivered back to you.
01;10;20;17 - 01;10;22;16
Pri
Are you saying blockchain that fixes.
01;10;22;18 - 01;10;36;15
Aaron
I'm not saying blockchains fix that. I'm saying like maybe a, you know, decentralized, file storage system with the pointer could be could be useful in the future. And that was like the concept, but yeah. Yeah, maybe, maybe I'm going to turn into, fork. Wendell.
01;10;36;15 - 01;10;56;03
Brady
Another cool thing on writing like Chris for like, I, you know, I know you write about some pretty technical stuff and like, even in your fiction, and one of the things it's a struggle for fiction writers and they want to write about a weird topic is like, how much explanation do I throw in here? You know, and like, you can imagine, like writing novels where you just put in the maximum amount of explanation.
01;10;56;08 - 01;11;09;17
Brady
But then there's a way in which, like your Kindle or whatever, just sort of like learns how much you need and just like, cuts out the explanation to the level that you need it, you know, which that could also be a cool kind of dynamic writing that might be sort of nice.
01;11;09;19 - 01;11;31;29
Chris
Yeah, that would be fantastic. That's it's a constant struggle. You know, like all three of my novels have really been, like, product ideas that were too big. Two of my three was more, inner and inner experience, translating like being a founder into, like, more gonzo space and just processing a lot of my, my founder experience.
01;11;31;29 - 01;12;02;12
Chris
So my other two novels were like products that were just too big to Future forward. And the only way I could kind of get that product vision out was to do it in this kind of fictionalized format. And that's a constant, constant struggle. Because if you don't give enough detail, then people are lost. If you do give enough detail, you're pacing struggles and like finding that right balance is really like the hardest struggle.
01;12;02;15 - 01;12;26;16
Chris
You know, once you start getting into, like, second draft, third drafts and like, just balancing all of that out. And so to have that or, you know, like, in a way, I remember the last time I tried to read Ulysses and possibly the last time I ever tried to read Ulysses, I actually started the book, then found a companion, online that just had the whole damn book.
01;12;26;16 - 01;13;02;06
Chris
And then, you know, on either side, just, footnoted, annotated, explained every single reference to the point where, like, I could only read it online because, you know, it was just so, like inside baseball Dublin and like Jose and, you know, non-sequiturs and jokes and, you know, clever wordplay that, it was impossible. And so, yes, like that, that is one potential thing where if you can like, find this harmonious balance, right of like dialing down, dialing up and, you know, that would be fantastic.
01;13;02;06 - 01;13;21;29
Chris
I mean, that's probably also why I'll never beat another libertarian author in my lifetime is because they have absolutely no respect for the reader's time. And it's just like, all right, you might have a great idea in here, but you're going to like, fill it with a couple hundred pages of diatribes and rant and be like, you know, you just are not treating like you're not respecting my time.
01;13;21;29 - 01;13;43;26
Chris
Therefore, like, I can't give it to you. I mean, there's a lot of authors that way in which, you know, do I have to read this book or do I just need to know the central ideas of this book? You know, especially in like, areas like philosophy or history or, you know, like just certain nonfiction categories where, yeah, it's just a matter of like, you know what?
01;13;43;28 - 01;13;46;29
Chris
I actually only need the 15 minute version of this.
01;13;47;02 - 01;13;59;12
Aaron
Course you should build. Or already maybe you should build build some ages set to give you guys what you want. Fire up, cloud code. Brady. Maybe maybe you could build it. You can be in the next subset.
01;13;59;14 - 01;14;14;25
Brady
I do think it would be neat to experiment with, like, publishing with a, you know, like, Tyler Cohen did his greatest of all time book, his goat book about the greatest economist of all time, and he set up an AI where you can, like, talk to the AI about his book. And I thought that was neat. I wouldn't mind trying something like that at some point.
01;14;14;25 - 01;14;19;21
Brady
If I have a spare, I would take that. Yeah. Be cool.
01;14;19;23 - 01;14;46;17
Pri
I mean, the thing about you, Brady and like, I was yeah, I think we were talking about this, but if you have an online presence like you at least have like your opinions and thoughts out there, you have this huge data set of everything you've ever written, like you could have, like a Brady bot even suggests you can like, train on everything you've ever written and like suggest things to write based on that or even like, you know, pull things based on your prior interest that could be interesting to you.
01;14;46;18 - 01;15;15;04
Pri
Like even that's cool. You have so much available about yourself that's public, whether it be your social media or things you've written that that would like, you actually have the grounds to do it. Which is, yeah, I was actually thinking the other day, like, if you are, if you are pretty like have an active online presence and not a lot of information on yourself online, you're probably better poised for like, the AI future than people who have zero online presence because there's just like no data set, predictive data set out there.
01;15;15;06 - 01;15;18;05
Pri
So, Brady, you could clone yourself.
01;15;18;08 - 01;15;20;26
Brady
In the Brady bot. I get in fights all the time.
01;15;20;28 - 01;15;23;24
Pri
The Brady Bunch, that could be your agent.
01;15;24;01 - 01;15;28;07
Brady
The Brady Bunch. That's scary. But yeah, I know I'm happy to play. I'd be happy to play it around at some point.
01;15;28;14 - 01;15;44;29
Chris
I mean, if you don't set up a Brady bot today, how is like trademarked I Matthew McCartney he bot gonna find Brady bot 40 years from now and be like all right, all right man, found this dude Brady. Dale really knows what he's talking about, bro does know.
01;15;45;01 - 01;15;57;00
Pri
So I know we're almost out of time. Do you want to just end on one note, I guess? Brady, one question I wanted to close on is like, what is a story that no one is covering that they should be right now? It's interesting to you.
01;15;57;03 - 01;16;00;16
Aaron
This is like our previous hot see question.
01;16;00;19 - 01;16;02;24
Brady
Yeah. That is that is it.
01;16;02;26 - 01;16;05;10
Pri
It can be crypto or something else. It can be whatever. I don't.
01;16;05;10 - 01;16;05;24
Brady
Know.
01;16;06;02 - 01;16;07;00
Chris
How.
01;16;07;00 - 01;16;35;17
Brady
Good of a thought this is on that, but the thing that I think this will interest you anyway, Preet, I was thinking about this last night. I was thinking about how we're in this transformative moment of crypto. And crypto needs to really, reevaluate what it's making to the world and that it sort of better justify itself and lean into the things are good and I and I and I, a story I want to do in the next few weeks, sort of thinking about how this whole space has changed is like one of the ways you communicate that you're different.
01;16;35;17 - 01;16;50;20
Brady
And I think that crypto has been can be game, that you're different or that you've changed or whatever. It's like the esthetics and so and I and I was thinking I was like, you know, the esthetics of the things crypto startups put out, I feel like have really shifted in a way that I haven't thought about too much.
01;16;50;20 - 01;17;10;18
Brady
But I bet there's people out there who have been thinking about that, like, how do you present a new start up to the world? You know, when I came in, things were like sort of like pretty zany and like going back to the 80s and stuff like that. And there's the, you know, the Ethereum's whole like, unicorn magic ness stuff which still persists, but like, I feel like a lot of things are coming out and trying to look a lot more like banks anymore.
01;17;10;24 - 01;17;30;11
Brady
And I don't know, I feel like there's a story of like what? Via esthetics of crypto over time, tell us. And probably there's a story to come about those esthetics shifting again. And I'd like to figure out a good way to tell that story that's compelling. I just don't know that I'm smart enough to discern it correctly. But that's the thing I was thinking about this week.
01;17;30;14 - 01;17;33;17
Pri
Oh, I love that. I love that as a story. Yeah, that's a great point, actually.
01;17;33;20 - 01;17;35;10
Aaron
You're definitely smart enough, Brady.
01;17;35;12 - 01;17;36;04
Pri
Yeah.
01;17;36;06 - 01;17;39;02
Brady
Well we'll see. Hopefully I land it.
01;17;39;04 - 01;17;44;04
Aaron
It's move from unicorns to, RWA man. That's the the archetype.
01;17;44;06 - 01;17;50;21
Pri
If you like go way, way back. It was like like the early Bitcoin esthetics. It was just like, so simplistic.
01;17;50;21 - 01;17;54;23
Aaron
There was an early Bitcoin. There was no esthetics. It was just like.
01;17;54;24 - 01;18;01;23
Pri
It was just like be with the orange, like the dollar sign orange thing probably.
01;18;01;25 - 01;18;25;10
Aaron
I don't know. That's a good question I agree. Yeah yeah. That had that had to be pretty early. I don't remember the exact timeframe. I mean I definitely remember was there around 2013 ish. So yeah it had to be before that. Yeah. I don't know the origin story of the Bitcoin day was it. I think for a while it was like on the, the main page of the like the Bitcoin Foundation website.
01;18;25;13 - 01;18;27;00
Aaron
But again I don't know if that that's where it started.
01;18;27;00 - 01;18;30;10
Pri
I wonder if what came from there. Yeah. I think yeah, maybe.
01;18;30;16 - 01;18;36;03
Aaron
God, yeah. That's an underreported story. Who developed that branding I know.
01;18;36;06 - 01;19;05;06
Pri
Well, I mean, going from there and then all the way like because during the like last boom, you know, whatever, 21, 20 to 23, like NFT, like a lot of those esthetics, like the pixelation and cryptopunks like bad sort of entering the fashion world like you have the little way, pixelated clothing you're seeing, like pixelated makeup, like, I feel like a lot of the I mean, that's not necessarily crypto, but crypto through NFTs, but a lot of the pixelation esthetic back into the fold.
01;19;05;09 - 01;19;16;28
Pri
And that started affecting fashion a little bit more. So I mean, I think cryptos that actually end up trickling out. But yeah, that'd be a really interesting story. All right. Well, on that note, should I introduce the podcast?
01;19;17;00 - 01;19;17;20
Aaron
Let's do it.
01;19;17;20 - 01;19;24;22
Chris
Let's do yes. For all your intro fans out there, people who are like, oh my God, they're going 90 minutes. I just want to hear the intro.
01;19;24;24 - 01;19;54;23
Pri
I know, and thanks for the extra time, Brady. But, hey everyone, it's me, Chris, Aaron, and special guest Brady today talking all things crypto culture, art, AI and more. Just a quick reminder these thoughts and opinions are own and not of our employer. And this is not financial advice. Let's go.
01;19;54;25 - 01;19;55;08
Pri
To.