Crypto Roundtable with Nick Tomaino & Kyle Samani: US Elections, NFTs, and Trump | E1100

1. 0:00 – 1:44

   Intro

   1. HSHarry Stebbings0:00

      Is Trump good for crypto? (bell dings)

   2. NTNick Tomaino0:01

      That remains to be seen. A lot of people think... (bell dinging)

   3. HSHarry Stebbings0:03

      This is Nick Timiraos of One Confirmation, (bell dings) and this is Kyle Samani of Multicoin Capital. (bell dings) Now, these guys got into an argument on Twitter over this tweet. I thought it'd be great to get them together for a debate to hash it out. Does authenticity really matter?

   4. NTNick Tomaino0:18

      Yeah, I mean, that's our whole thesis, right?

   5. KSKyle Samani0:20

      Agree authenticity really matters. I think maybe where I diverge from Nick is...

   6. NTNick Tomaino0:24

      From my outsider perspective, it feels like everything working on Solana is basically a copycat of what worked on Ethereum.

   7. KSKyle Samani0:31

      Uh, your assessment is incorrect. I will walk through that systematically now.

   8. NTNick Tomaino0:36

      I'm gonna be honest, that sounded like a bunch of buzzwords to me.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings0:41

      Guys, I am so excited for this. Uh, I'm glad that we were able to make this one happen. So I want to start off with some intros and so people can get to know your voice. So, Kyle, if we start with you, bluntly, who are you, what do you do, and what are you most known for?

   10. KSKyle Samani0:55

       Hi, everyone. My name is Kyle Samani. I'm a co-founder and managing partner at an investment firm called Multicoin Capital. We are six years old. We run a hedge fund and a series of venture funds focusing on the crypto space. Um, we manage a few billion in assets, um, across those vehicles, and, uh, we are probably most well known for our Solana investment.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings1:15

       Nick, over to you, same question. What are you most known for and who are you?

   12. NTNick Tomaino1:20

       So I'm, I'm Nick Timiraos. I run, uh, One Confirmation early stage venture fund. Um, what am I most known for? Um, I'm not really sure to be honest. I mean, that's for people to judge. I've been in this space for about 10 years. I've done a few things. Really what I'd like to be most known for is just someone who cares a lot about crypto and maybe played a small role in bringing crypto to more people in the world.

2. 1:44 – 4:27

   Will Crypto Grow Past Speculation?

   1. NTNick Tomaino1:44

   2. HSHarry Stebbings1:44

      Okay. So I'm going to start off from a high level, and I'm going to specialize in asking stupid questions today and you can provide the wisdom. So if we're candid, crypto is largely about speculation today, and my first question was, will crypto grow past speculation into something more? And I want to offer that as a free for all for anyone to grab first off.

   3. KSKyle Samani2:03

      I guess I'll, I'll start here. I mean, the one-word answer to your question is yes. The more n- nuanced answer is, uh, A, the speculation can be channeled productively, and I think that's underappreciated. DePIN is, is really the kind of torchbearer, I think, on that front, where you can use pe- the collective hive mind of people doing stuff in the real world and funding that, um, uh, collectively, uh, and produce real economic output that's tangible and measurable. The other, uh, way we'll obviously go beyond speculation is, DeFi payment rails are objectively better than traditional rails. Um, and you will see economic activity move off of traditional regulated rails to DeFi rails over time. That will take a while, uh, but it will happen. Nick, I'm sure you've got lots of other thoughts to add to that.

   4. NTNick Tomaino2:51

      Uh, yeah, I mean, look, when, when most people say speculation, it, they, they kind of, uh, they say it as a negative thing, like, "Oh, crypto is all speculation. That's a bad thing," right? I actually think it's a really good thing. Like, there's a lot of people in the world that are disenfranchised by the existing economic systems, and crypto is like permissionless speculation that anyone can participate in, in kind of new financial systems. So to me, um, speculation is a very good thing for the world, and it's actually really empowering a lot of people that, um, uh, have been held back by kind of the existing power structures. Uh, that said, I think excessive speculation can clearly be bad, right? And we've seen a lot of bad things happen in the past 10 years by excessive speculation. So I think, um, we certainly need to see products emerge past just pure financial speculation, and that's really what we're focused on, um, as a fund, is i- i- is, is trying to find what those are gonna be. I think for us, the past, uh, six or seven years has been, um, you know, investing in the speculation kind of use cases. Um, and that's done well, um, obviously, but, um, you know, the next 10 years is gonna be about, like, you know, beyond speculation, is how we think about it.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings4:18

      Nick, what does excessive speculation mean, and is that the same as shilling? Just help me understand the terminology. Is excessive also just like the quantity, or is it the, the

3. 4:27 – 7:17

   Excessive Speculation vs. Shilling

   1. HSHarry Stebbings4:27

      quality of the speculation?

   2. NTNick Tomaino4:29

      Well, look, I think when everything is open... And crypto has kind of been this free-for-all. And of course there's some regulation, but it is the most kind of open, transparent industry. And when, um, you have an industry like that, you can see greed, uh, get the better of people, right? And I think we've seen a lot of kind of main characters who are, I, I would describe as just having this soulless greed for attention, for money. That, that's excessive speculation, the, the greed getting the best of them. And so, you know, I, I would say, um, you could look at the three major blowups in crypto in the past, uh, you know, two years. Um, one was obviously FTX. Um, another is, um, kind of Luna-Terra with, with, with Do Kwon and, and Three Arrows Capital. I would describe those as kind of showing, um, what can happen when speculation, uh, goes wrong. And, and there's lots of different manifestations of it, but to me those are kind of three, uh, kind of key examples.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings5:34

      Is when speculation goes wrong shilling? Sorry, for people outside of the industry, there's shilling and there's, I think there's rugging?

   4. NTNick Tomaino5:41

      No. No, no, because shilling is just, um, is, is just talk. Speculation is, is, um, you know, putting money down, um, and...... so that, that's kind of how... You know, when you're speculating on something, it implies that you're gambling, right? You're betting, um, for upside, whereas shilling is more, um... You know, there's a lot of people that are on crypto Twitter, by the way, that aren't speculating but they are shilling. I think a lot of people, um, maybe that don't have a lot of skin in the game actually are putting skin in the game on crypto Twitter by, uh, you know, being loud about it. Um, so though- y- they are two different things.

   5. KSKyle Samani6:22

      I mean, spe- speculation and shilling are, are definitely different things. Um, there are obviously, there's a lot of correlation. Uh, a- agree ex- excessive speculation is bad, but I actually wanna acknowledge one very important thing which is, you know, the famous YC statement is, "Build stuff people want," and I would actually argue th- w- probably on a absolute dollars basis, crypto has shown that the demand for speculation globally is much larger than, than people previously thought, and the manifestations and forms in which people want it are, are broader and more varied than, than, I'd say, most, most A- Americans and West Coast VC types thought.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings6:57

      Sorry, can I just understand that? Again, I, uh, specialize in asking stupid questions. The demand for speculation, so speculation is the product?

   7. KSKyle Samani7:04

      Definitely. And, and, and there, there's no question that that's certainly a, a, like, deep reality in crypto. It's not the only reality, but it is very much a, a omnipresent, you know, thing in, in the

4. 7:17 – 10:07

   Is Shilling Good?

   1. KSKyle Samani7:17

      industry.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings7:18

      Okay. And so we have speculation there being positive and then shilling. Is shilling a good thing or a bad thing? 'Cause it's still participation, it's still people caring.

   3. KSKyle Samani7:27

      I think shilling is f- is fine. It's, it's like, look, eh, you have a right to, to, you know, say good things about the stuff you own, like, you know, have fun, go for it. Um, you don't wanna be disingenuous, you don't, obviously you don't wanna say things that are false. There are obviously ways to be distasteful, there are obviously ways to go overboard. Um, but in general, like, uh, put your money where your mouth is is a good statement. And, like, you want people, if they own something and they genuinely believe it's good for whatever reason, like, they, they should talk about it.

   4. NTNick Tomaino7:54

      Shilling is human nature, right? Like, um, shilling is not new to crypto. Uh, whatever tribe humans were in, they shill for that, right? So the, the, the main tribes people in the world care about, I would say, right now, are, um, countries and religions, right? And, um, shilling in countries and religions leads to actual, like, physical war and death, right? I mean, loo- look at the world right now. There's two wars going on, um, one is about, um, you know, a territorial dispute, uh, amongst countries in the physical world, the other is about religion. I think a good thing about, like, the tribal nature of crypto is that, um, the worst that happens is you get flame wars on Twitter, right? So I actually think cr- like crypto shilling, crypto tribes, eh, can, can reduce the, um, the amount of violence in the world in the long term and will.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings8:52

      How does it reduce the amount of violence in the world, Nick? I'm all for positive space-

   6. NTNick Tomaino8:55

      Because people are, people have economic skin in the game that their new tribe is based on economic incentive, um, and shared values, not physical location or who your god is. Uh, l- how many people, you know, are, are, uh, part of a country and their country decides if they go to war and they don't have economic in- eh, eh, eh- incentives that are aligned with their government? I think more and more people are just gonna be, feel more attached to their crypto tribe than their, like, country tribe or their, um, you know, their religious tribe. And I think that's potentially a good thing. Um, that said, like, you know, I think excessive shilling is bad and especially, you know, like in bull markets when everyone is, um, you know, looking at the space, I think if you're, like, a leader, uh, in the space, I, I think shilling is, uh, y- you know, is, is pretty, um, toxic and there's a, a big, you know, crypto Twitter influencer culture of these people that are, you know, shilling loudly, dumping on retail, and that gives, uh, a bad experience to new people and actually

5. 10:07 – 18:05

   Solana vs. Ethereum

   1. NTNick Tomaino10:07

      sets the space back a little bit.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings10:08

      Can I ask, why does Solana get a lot of stick or criticism when Ethereum or Cosmos maybe doesn't? Again, I'm a naive outsider but I see that. Why is that?

   3. KSKyle Samani10:19

      Look, Ethereum got a lot of hate from the Bitcoiners back e- in, in the day. That, that's largely gone away. There, there still, like, little bits of it but, but substantially reduced now relative to, say, 2017, because the Bitcoiners realized, look, Ethereum does something different, like, it does this DeFi thing, um, and c- clearly DeFi is... Like, if you believe in Bitcoin then you should want DeFi to exist. Solana is a credible threat to Ethereum and people, they don't like it when they think that their, you know, their investments they hold have, face a credible threat.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings10:49

      Carl, how do... Sorry, Nick, how do you feel when you hear that?

   5. NTNick Tomaino10:52

      I agree with part of that. I mean, the main reason, look, is like, as we- we've talked about, like, humans are tribal and, um, most people once they become part of a tribe, once they make a lot of money from the tribe or have success or whatever, they become part of that tribe. And so Solana is a new tribe, um, that ha- has done well, um, f- you know, financially. I think for me it's a little more nuanced, like, especially relative to, like, Ethereum and Cosmos. Eh, Solana, um, is not really a- anything new, um, from a social perspective and is not really enabling anything new, and that's tr- that's true today, that's not necessarily gonna be, continue to be true. But I think it gets a little more attention relative to where it is actually in ter- in terms of contributing to the overall success of crypto. That's what I, I would say. Like, Ethereum, uh-... versus Bitcoin, Ethereum was a new, uh, developer platform that developers could build, uh, decentralized applications. And then we saw a whole bunch of stuff emerge. Um, Cosmos has a very unique kind of social vision, which is sovereign chains, right? This idea that every chain, every application could have its own chain and developers could have, uh, full control over their, their application rather than, uh, existing on kind of a monolithic chain. Right? So, that's another kind of new social, um, innovation. And in terms of Solana, um, it's just a cheaper, faster Ethereum, at least so far. And, uh, n- and that's how it's been marketed. And if you look at what exists on Solana right now, actually I'd be very curious to hear Kyle's take on this, but f- from my perspective, it's virtually everything on, th- that's working on Solana, and it's working in a big way right now, but it, it's copies of what, what existed on, uh, Ethereum. It's DeFi, um, you know, it's the centralized exchanges, it's, it's, it's centralized lending, it's NFTs, it's NFT marketplace and PFPs and, and crypto art. So, there hasn't been yet, at least, anything kind of uniquely enabled by Solana that's pushing this space forward. And to me, that's why particularly there's, I think, c- crypto purists, is what I'd call myself, not someone that's part of any particular tribe, that are a little turned off, uh, or have been a little turned off by Solana historically.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings13:20

      Kyle, hit me.

   7. KSKyle Samani13:21

      Oh, well, first I'll comment on, on the ideology tribalism thing, and then I'll touch on the, um, use case unlock thing. Agreed that the, the kinda core ideologies are different, um, as Nick alluded to. I, I think the other thing that, that's, that is pretty different, and this gets less attention but I, I think is actually probably more important, is, like, commercial orientation of the ecosystem. Ethereum is, uh, very focused on public goods funding, very focused on kind of general well- welfare, uh, and Solana is, like, very directly capitalist in kind of the more traditional sense of the word. Uh, and you see this just in looking at, like, how the Solana la- uh, Labs and Foundation work versus the Ethereum Foundation. The Ethereum Foundation is very hands-off, very Switzerland, very, "Hey, the ecosystem's gonna do what it's gonna do. We set a, a broad roadmap and, and that's it." And you look at Solana Labs and Foundation, and they built Metaplex and spun it out, they built the S- the Solana Saga Phone, they built Solana Pay, they're upgrading the system with Token22 to enable a bunch of cool new features. Like, they are, they are being pretty aggressive in driving specific product features into the platform. And, and I ... and basically for all of those things I just named, the Ethereum Foundation has done none of them in-house and has explicitly said, "Hey, community, go have fun. Go figure it out." S- so there is a much stronger commercial orientation. And I think the kinds of people who are drawn to Ethereum, part of, part of the, the draw is the, uh, kind of exp- I don't want to say rejection of capitalism. I think that's too strong. But certainly, uh, I'd say distance from kind of traditional capitalism, and there's a, a real draw to a lot of folks in Ethereum around that. Um, and, and because Solana is, I think, more overtly capitalist, that's a turnoff to a lot of people.

   8. NTNick Tomaino14:57

      Um, when you say overtly capitalist, I think maybe that's a euphemism. Uh, some people would say that's a euphemism for more centralized, right? Um-

   9. KSKyle Samani15:06

      No. I don't think it's about centralization. I think, I think it's about ... I mean, it's like, you know, Anatoly's like, "My only thing is I want cheaper fees," like, and, and, "Go make the sy- system faster and go build apps." You know? Like, I mean, just go look at, like, Vitalik's last three public discussions in Keynotes and look at Solana and Anatoly's. Like, you know, these people live in totally different worlds. I'm not saying that's good or bad, I just ... you have to just recognize, like, where, where, what is occupying the brain space of these people. And the questions these people are thinking about are totally different.

   10. NTNick Tomaino15:32

       So, you were describing th- th- the difference between the Ethereum Foundation and I don't know, what, what's the equivalent for Solana? Or is there a-

   11. KSKyle Samani15:39

       Solana Foundation.

   12. NTNick Tomaino15:41

       Vitalik has been very hands-off. Vitalik is the bene- ventilator dictator of Ethereum, but as you said, the, the, the Ethereum Foundation hasn't been done much. And a lot of people have been frustrated by that historically, right? Versus a more centralized approach to, uh, marketing, you know, different products in the ecosystem, things like that. Th- that's my perspective. Would you disagree with that?

   13. KSKyle Samani16:04

       No. I mean, look, clearly the Solana Foundation does more stuff than the Ethereum Foundation. That's not a question. And, like, just look at the employee count. I mean, there's a pretty large delta. So, so that is objectively true. You can say that that makes the system more centralized. Uh, th- that I, I kinda take a little bit of issue with. Just 'cause the central org does more stuff, I don't think that makes the ecosystem as a whole more decentralized- more centralized. 'Cause, like, what matters is the number of people in the ecosystem doing stuff, not how much stuff is, you know, the 100 people who work at, at the Foundation doing. You just need ... if there's 50,000 people doing stuff, who cares if there's 100 people at the Foundation doing stuff? Like, you just wanna get from 50,000 to 250,000. (laughs) Like, that's what matters.

   14. NTNick Tomaino16:41

       Again, and th- I'm speaking from the perspective of, like, a more cry- crypto purist and to, to address Kerry's question of, like, kind of Solana versus Ethereum and, and Cosmos, like, Solana, um, it feels like from the headlines I see and stuff like that, it's like they're ... Solana's working on doing a partnership with Visa and doing marketing around that and, and, and shit like that. And that's not something that any centralized organization that created the Cosmos ecosystem, um, is doing. That's not ... I mean, you could argue, you know, ConsenSys was kind of doing that, um, uh, a couple years ago with JPMorgan, but that's not really happening anymore with Ethereum, right? So, it does feel ... I'm not talking about the centralization of the system, and I do think that centralization tends to be kind of overused by the, the more purists. But I am saying when you're talking about the difference in kind of the organizational structure and the d- and ethos, there is more centralization in structure in, in Solana, it feels to me.

   15. KSKyle Samani17:39

       Oh, yeah. That's not a question. If you try and call the Eth- if you're Visa and you try and call the Ethereum Foundation and say, "Hey, man, I have some technical questions," no one will answer the phone. And if you're Visa and you call the Solana Foundation, someone will answer the phone. Right? Like ... (laughs) so, yes. Th- that's very much the case. Um, and I, I believe it's net good that someone will answer the phone. You, you can debate whether that's good or bad or not. I, I believe it's good.... um, but, like, certainly that, there, there's a real ethos difference there in, like, what should,

6. 18:05 – 24:43

   Unique Use Cases on Solana

   1. KSKyle Samani18:05

      uh, the organizing foundation do.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings18:07

      Can I ask you, Kyle, does it piss you off, the critique you get? If I'm honest. (laughs)

   3. KSKyle Samani18:11

      (laughs)

   4. HSHarry Stebbings18:11

      Like, you know, I put out-

   5. KSKyle Samani18:12

      Oh, I love it.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings18:12

      You love it? 'Cause I put out the graphic, and my DMs were just like, "Ask him about Solana. Ask him about Solana." I'm like, "Fucking hell." Like...

   7. KSKyle Samani18:20

      Oh, I, I love it. I mean, I, I wake up every day, I check Twitter usually within roughly seven seconds of being conscious. U- generally speaking, someone has yelled at me while I was sleeping. I fucking love it. It's great. (laughs) It energizes me.

   8. NTNick Tomaino18:34

      But, but Kyle, you, you didn't answer my, uh, one of my earlier questions, which, which was about the kind of new products that are being in- uniquely enabled by Solana, right? And, and the fact that right now, again, from my, uh, I'm not deep in Solana like you are, but from my kind of Solana outsider perspective, it feels like everything, um, working on Solana is basically a copycat of what, what worked on Ethereum. Do you agree, disagree, or what?

   9. KSKyle Samani19:03

      Y- your assessment is incorrect. I will, uh, walk through that systematically now. The most important thing that... I'll, I'll use three major buckets. One is, uh, cLOps versus AMMs. Um, the most famous exchange on Uniswap, on, on Ethereum is called Uniswap. Um, Uniswap pioneered what's known as an automated market maker. They've since kind of updated the system a few times to actually look closer to a central limit order book, uh, al- although it's not quite the central limit order book. You know, Solana, from day one, n- and its always explicit goal from day one was to build decentralized NASDAQ. The very first pitch deck for Solana, like, the tagline said, like, "NASDAQ at, blockchain at NASDAQ speed," or, "NASDAQ on blockchain," or something to that effect. So the, the north star from day one was a limit order book on chain. And I believe if you are a DE- if you are a, um, a, a finance purist, you understand that you need to have a central limit order books. Th- that is absolutely paramount. Um, and I think that is a first order unlock for, uh, price discovery and capital market efficiency. Um, and I do believe the most important use case for crypto is money, uh, and asset movement. And therefore, you, the system needs to be optimized to support a central limit order book on chain. Second, uh, NFTs. Obviously, NFTs were pioneered by Ethereum, um, no questions asked. And OpenSea was, was the, the kind of defining exchange that, that pioneered a lot of that stuff. If we are gonna get, you know, digital collectibles to be owned by 50 million, 250 million, 500 million people, then you're gonna need to be able to do NFTs at scale. Um, and this is an area where Solana's done really cool work. They, they rolled out a thing six, eight months ago called Compressed NFTs, and this has enabled the creation and issuance of NFTs at scale. The company that's doing the, the most aggressive work with this today is called Drip. And they're creating roughly a m- a million NFTs a week, m- maybe more. If you go look at the Metaplex stats, I believe there, there's something like f- 10 million NFTs, I think, being created per month on Solana right now. Now, those are all very low value. Uh, and I'm not saying that they're, they're useful or not. I, I don't have a view on that. But if, if you think that, you know, we're gonna have digital collectibles at scale, you're gonna need to get to compressed NFTs. And the work that the Solana Foundation did specifically to enable that I, I think was a real unlock. And now there's teams trying to pioneer, hey, what if we have one million NFT collections? What if we have 20 million NFT collections? Like, what can we do with that that we couldn't do before? And then the third major bucket of things I would highlight that's very distinct on Solana is, is really DePIN broadly. Uh, and we, we were kind of fortunate to help, uh, kind of be the, the pioneering investors there with Helium. Uh, DePIN, uh, for those who are not familiar, stands for Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks. And the basic idea in these, these DePIN networks is a bunch of people in the world all do some, something and that, them all doing that something creates a, a functional, usable network that has economic value, uh, collectively. And then, um, the people who do that work are, uh, rewarded in token, not in dollars, but in tokens. And then obviously the token trades on a public market. And so any speculator can come and speculate on the value of the token, and the speculators are i- uh, in effect funding, um, the people who are building out the network. And so the, the first team that really pioneered this was Helium. Uh, we, we were fortunate to, to lead the Helium investment round as they launched their token and, and did all the crypto stuff. And today now Helium is trying to build out, you know, a nationwide 5G network to compete with AT&T and Verizon. We can talk about that separately. But, but the, all of that DePIN stuff and that, that, most importantly that novel form of capital formation has very much been pioneered and, and today is, is, uh, working on Solana.

   10. NTNick Tomaino22:16

       I'm gonna be honest, that, that sounded like a bunch of buzzwords to me. Like, DePIN especially. Like I, I wanna talk about DePIN 'cause to me, when you hear buzzwords without a lot of usage, you should run from that. Like DePIN... Is Bitcoin DePIN? I mean, i- i- i-

   11. KSKyle Samani22:33

       No. Because, because running ASICs that run hashes is not producing economically useful work. You're, you're just burning electricity. That's all you're doing.

   12. NTNick Tomaino22:41

       But you're provid- uh, clearly Bitcoin is a useful service, right, that runs on physical infrastructure. So that, that seems like an odd-

   13. KSKyle Samani22:48

       Bitcoin is a strictly financial construct. Bi- bitcoin has no economic value. It has, it has, it has no, it's not produc- Excuse me. Bitcoin has no productive value because it doesn't do anything. It's an asset. There are some interesting properties of that asset, but-

   14. NTNick Tomaino23:00

       It provides-

   15. KSKyle Samani23:01

       ... it is not a productive asset.

   16. NTNick Tomaino23:02

       It provides a reliable, uh, ledger that anyone in the world can use to transfer money.

   17. KSKyle Samani23:09

       It cannot provide yield. Um, Walmart provides yield. Amazon provides yield. Do treasuries provide yield? Tho- those are productive assets. Helium provides a service you can get your cell phone through. Like, tho- those are economically useful services.

   18. NTNick Tomaino23:21

       So you're making, you're, you're defining DePIN, uh, with a nuance of what you deem as, like, useful service? I, I don't really understand.

   19. KSKyle Samani23:29

       Yeah. Look, securing a ledger is, like, circular. Like, if the ledger's valuable because you secured the ledger, like, it's, it's by definition circular. Whereas provide cell phone service to people is, like, definitively not circular. I have hotspot in my window. It provi- produ- produces radio wave. Guy walks r- by nearby, gets to use that to access internet. That, that is not circular. Like, I am providing a service and that guy is p- you know, purchasing that service.

   20. NTNick Tomaino23:49

       Do, do you own any Bitcoin?Well, so you listed three Solana use cases, and there may be interesting, um, new things that they're, they're adding, but those three haven't, they're not actually bringing in new people in a big way yet. Would you agree with that?

   21. KSKyle Samani24:07

       I, I absolutely reject that premise. I mean, Hivemapper has mapped over 10% of the world's roads in one year, and Hivemapper is now, uh, they have signed multiple customers who are buying this mapping data. Uh, they have not publicly disclosed who those customers are. But like, Hivemapper has built a mapping network that has grown 10 times faster than Google Maps has, and it is roughly 30X cheaper than Google Maps, uh, for people who wanna buy the data. And like, that's gonna change mapping in a big way. Helium has built a cellphone service that's $20 a month nationwide, and people are signing up and doing that. I mean, like, those are real,

7. 24:43 – 26:13

   Are Talents Leaving Crypto?

   1. KSKyle Samani24:43

      those are real things.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings24:44

      Can I ask you guys, when we think about, bluntly, the progression of a space, a lot of it's predicated on talent, and I remember when, you know, uh, crypto was in its most, uh, positive furor. Everyone was saying, "All the best talent is moving into crypto. All the best talent is moving into crypto." Universities to everyone saying, "All the best talent's moving into AI." Have they left crypto? Have we just given birth to a load of AI researchers who've come from nowhere? Like, talent migration between Solana, Ethereum, AI, like, can you just help me understand? Have we seen a removal of talent from the crypto space? How do you guys feel about that?

   3. KSKyle Samani25:19

      The tourists have left.

   4. NTNick Tomaino25:20

      Yeah. I mean, our, our approach, we, we haven't been, we've never been super interested in the, the Google, Facebook, Amazon, kind of Silicon Valley engineer. Um, they, they always come during bull markets and then leave during bear markets. How we view talent is like, w- w- we'd rather give money to, you know, a founder that doesn't maybe look good on paper, doesn't have credentials, but has been studying crypto deeply, um, since, uh, 2013 when they bought their first Bitcoin, or something like that. Uh, like when I started the fund and we were in San Francisco, like I, I was meeting every, um, you know, good engineer on paper and stuff like that, and spending time looking at these types of opportunities. But our, our focus has just been always on kind of what we, you know, understand and believe will build the best product, and that's the less traditional Silicon Valley founder. That's not to say there's not value also in the, in the more traditional Silicon

8. 26:13 – 26:55

   Crypto Purists & Maximalists

   1. NTNick Tomaino26:13

      Valley founders. That's just our focus.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings26:14

      Can I ask you, Kyle, Nick earlier said he's a crypto purist. Are you a crypto purist, and how do you feel about that term?

   3. KSKyle Samani26:22

      I understand what Nick is saying. Uh, I generally agree. I think Nick is roughly a crypto purist. I believe I am not a crypto purist. I think it is a useful designation to understand if you are a participant in the space. But like, I, I don't think it's, it's good or bad, just a recognition of the lens through which people think about the world.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings26:39

      What are you, then?

   5. KSKyle Samani26:40

      I'm like, a crypto maximalist, in that like, I want crypto to be everywhere. And I, I think it's very important for sovereignty and freedom, and I wanna be everywhere and I want to be a- aggressive in terms of marketing and building product and commercial orientation

9. 26:55 – 33:10

   Does Authenticity Matter?

   1. KSKyle Samani26:55

      to get crypto everywhere.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings26:57

      Can I ask you, we spoke about kind of Solana and, you know, Nick said earlier about kind of utility value of Solana and maybe just copying a lot of other projects. Eventually when you look at a lot of crypto firm investment strategies, they seem to invest in just a lot of copycat projects more generally with tokens, and then maybe pumping up the mon (laughs) retail. First, like, is that fair? And does authenticity really matter? Can you help me understand that?

   3. KSKyle Samani27:19

      Authenticity absolutely matters. If you have permissionless... Uh, let's, let's zoom out for a second here. Um, before America, people w- were like, "What do you mean freedom of speech? What do you mean democracy and people voting? That's crazy. That's gonna produce... Uh, people are, are stupid and that's gonna be bad, and, and like, the people can't govern themselves." And like, that was the prevailing thing that not only el- elites in Europe and other places believed. It's also, I think, a thing that most people who lived in other places also believed, because the- people could not fathom the notion of collective freedom for everybody. And we have, have now representative democracy and, you know, First Amendment and all those things. Turns out, those are, those are not good. I look at f- the financial systems. You know, money and finance are explicitly a form of speech, as is recognized in the United States. Today, the financial system is explicitly regulated and limited and censored in many, many ways. And when y- that's the world you've grown up in and lived in, it's very hard for you to appreciate what is the counterfactual world in which, um, those things are uncensored and open and free. And, uh, it's very easy to, to not appreciate the value of that. It's also very easy to then look at the, the very first instances of people expressing that freedom, and doing so in negative ways, and saying, "Ah, therefore freedom bad." And that's, that's what you see happening today. Uh, kind of perfectly embodied by Elizabeth Warren. And you know, the more people have exposure to understanding what open permissionless censorship-resistant finance means, the more they will appreciate that like, look, there will always be some bad actors, like whatever, but the system is a net improvement over the legacy system.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings28:41

      Nick, how do you feel?

   5. NTNick Tomaino28:42

      Yeah, I mean, that, that's our whole thesis, right, is that authenticity does matter. And I think in a space that's open source where anything can be easily copied and marketed well, it can appear in the short term that authenticity doesn't matter at all. And I have this conversation with founders all the time because, um, you know, sometimes the, uh, or, you know, the founder that creates the original, you know, authentic music NFT marketplace, for example, you know, has a little early traction and then someone copies it and maybe, you know, does marketing better, and that can be frustrating. So i- this is definitely, like, a real issue that I think, you know, a lot of founders and just, and investors think about in the space, is, like, it can feel like just the loudest, you know, is winning and being original, sticking to your true self doesn't matter at all. I believe in the l- in the long term, and you have to take a long term perspective, that actually it does matter a lot. And if you are the authentic and you persist through and do something meaningful and don't worry as much about, like, attention and marketing in the short term, that's actually where the biggest rewards come, and that's been true to, to my own journey as well. Like, I've tried to stay authentic and true to myself and I think I've particularly noticed that when people have success, they tend to focus more on attention and money than their true selves. And if you get far away from your true self, again, you, I think you can appear to be very successful, but you're really not happy at all. So being authentic is something that I think about and talk about a lot, and, and, um, I do think e- even outside of, uh, of crypto, right? Like, I had a discussion with some family members that love... We... Harry, we talked about Taylor Swift last time.

   6. KSKyle Samani30:20

      Mm-hmm.

   7. NTNick Tomaino30:20

      Is Taylor Swift authentic? And people love her, right? And her biggest f- fans, you know, my, my wife's, uh, you know, family, they all love her and they're just like, "Oh, she's so authentic." But to me, she's kind of the definition of someone that has this, like, soulless greed for attention and money and-

   8. KSKyle Samani30:36

      (laughs)

   9. NTNick Tomaino30:36

      ... is not authentic at all. It's something that's hard to know, right? Because I don't... It's kind of a judgment call. But, um, I don't know.

   10. KSKyle Samani30:43

       Well, what made you say that? (laughs) Just like... (laughs) Sorry, I didn't plan on going here, and then I'm gonna take it-

   11. NTNick Tomaino30:46

       (laughs)

   12. KSKyle Samani30:46

       ... in a different direction. But, like, what... (laughs)

   13. NTNick Tomaino30:48

       Well, no, I, I actually think this, like, this question is gonna be increasingly important to... Actually, authentic was like the Webster's Dictionary, uh, word of 2023, and especially with, you know, AI, it's gonna be harder and harder to tell if something's authentic or not, if someone's a, a genuine human or not, so I think authenticity and kind of an assessment of the vibe of authenticity is gonna be increasingly important. But yeah, I don't know, that was a tangent.

   14. KSKyle Samani31:13

       Can I ask, speaking of, um, that loudest voice, uh, Kyle, you said you didn't mind some of the Twitter, you know, mentions. The other element that just came up in the DMs a lot was, um, SBF and FTX, and I had so many people say, "Should you have seen it?" And what signals would have shown to you that it was a fraud that you missed? So just one other comment on authenticity, then we can get, get to Sam. Agree authenticity really matters. Um, I think maybe where I diverge from Nick is does marketing and, and does loud marketing mean you are inauthentic? And that does not have to be the case. There are... Now, people who are inauthentic oftentimes will aggressively market. That is clearly true. But there are also many people who are good actors who are authentic and loud. Most obviously, it would be Coinbase. I mean, Coinbase runs Super Bowl ads, and they have a nationwide sponsor, uh, s- sponsorship with the NBA, et cetera. Authenticity absolutely matters, but you can market well and be authentic.

   15. NTNick Tomaino32:06

       I agree, but the nuance there too is, like, to me, being authentic means, like, being true to yourself and doing, you know, what... Sticking to what's unique about you and not being, um, too concerned with what other people think, right? And if you loo- if, even if you think about Super Bowl ad marketing, it's like, the way Coinbase did it I, I thought was something that was true to themselves, it wa- and true to the brand, and it wasn't, you know, like, getting the biggest celebrities and just putting them in, in the ad and doing something that would get the most attention. It was being true to, you know, what makes Coinbase unique, versus something like FTX, which I thought, you know, we all know all the celebrities involved and, and stuff like that. It was ve- very... And I remem- I actually tweeted this out during the, the Superb- those two Super Bowl ads, is like, that FTX Super Bowl ad felt very in- inauthentic to me. It was Larry David and Tom Brady or something, and it was just... It was clearly very concerned with what other people think and just trying to get the mo- the maximum attention in the simplest way. And, and for people that optimize for marketing, that's

10. 33:10 – 37:21

    SBF and FTX

    1. NTNick Tomaino33:10

       often what they try to do, right?

    2. KSKyle Samani33:12

       Yeah, I mean, uh, FTX was inauthentic. Co- I, I think Coinbase has generally marketed itself in a way that is authentic to its brand. Uh, we're not here to debate Coinbase's authenticity (laughs) o- other than to recognize, I think they've generally been a, a, a good acting authentic player. Talk about Sam. Should we have seen it coming? Could we have detected it? I mean, the original reason we passed on the FTT seed round in March, April 2019 was because we were like, "Hey, man, st- no separation of church and state. You can't run Alameda and FTX. People are not gonna trade here." And we were like, "Okay, pass," and then we passed, and then nine months later, we were like, "Shit, our, our assessment was wrong. Like, people are trading here." (laughs) And, like, we called up all the trading firms, we're like, "Yo, man, are you trading here?" And they're like, "Yeah, it's great." We were like, "Okay, well," like, our assessment, we, we revisited our priors and we were like, "Okay," and, you know, that, that's when we first bought our FTT tokens, was, uh, December 2019 at that time. You know, fast forward two years later, like, could we have seen it coming? I mean, look, there... We know now, there were four people who knew. Sam, Caroline, Nishad, and Gary. Uh, no one else knew. When you keep the circle small, easy, like, you can keep information hidden, and explicitly, in this case, the information was, "Go make arbitrary changes in the database and the code base, and don't tell anyone else about them." Like, that is as hard to detect as possible, right? I mean, I, I don't know how you catch that stuff a- ahead of time. Like, shit, he was a bad guy, bad soul, like, bad faith actor, no questions asked. I wish we could have seen it, but w- we, we did not. I know, Nick, you, I think you, you saw something, so props to you for seeing something. We obviously missed it.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings34:38

       What did you see, Nick?

    4. NTNick Tomaino34:39

       I mean, to be honest, it, it was a vibe check. Like, the vibes just felt off from the beginning, and it goes to what we were just talking about, authenticity. Sam and, and FTX and the whole thing, just from the very beginning, felt very inauthentic. It's the signaling, um, you know. Like, I, I remember, you know, you put together that, the, um, Bahamas conference, right? Where we had Bill Clinton, and Tom Brady and Gisele, and, you know, the whole thing. I did a tweet thread right after that about counter-signals, right? I think there's... I think this concept of counter-signals, and when someone signals something, the opposite is often true, right? And so, you know, the, the most common term that's used kind of politically is, like, virtue signaling, right, which I think is a, is an example of a counter-signal. And, you know, someone... The, the person that, um, you know, signals that they're virtuous, that they, you know, give away a lot of money or something, they're focusing on perception when the reality is probably very different than, than what perception is. Um, and then in the case of Sam, it's like he's kind of signaling that he is, uh, legitimate through celebrities and through government, and, and shit like that. And it would... Like, the, the, the signal was legit, but if you understand counter-signals, you know that the opposite is likely true. So, of course, we never knew that, um, it was the, the massive scam that, you know, that it turned out to be. But, I don't know, it was obvious to me that, that something was off, that, that, you know, the vibes were off, um, and, you know, it... The counter, this counter-signals concept is what helped us do it. It wasn't just us, by the way. If you look, another thing that, you know, that helped was a lot of people on Twitter, right? There's a lot of anons and crypto people that, um, that, that saw this coming. I think we were, um, like, not, not just me. I mean, Richard... I, I think this isn't, not very well known, but Richard on, on, um, my team, my partner, um, tweeted out on October 13th that, um, Sam was working behind closed doors on a bipartisan bill that would have been very good for FTX, but bad for, for DeFi, right? Um, and that tweet went viral. Obviously, there are a lot of other stuff happened after, and that tends to be what people focus on. The CoinDesk article by Ian Allison, you know, CZ, of course. But, um, October fourth, 13th, Richard tweeted that. That was actually the first tweet that went viral where people on crypto Twitter, I think, recognized that Sam wasn't this good guy for crypto, and, you know, a whole bunch of shit obviously followed. And then a month later, the whole thing was gone. So, it was, it was pretty wild. And again, we didn't, we didn't see it playing out that drastically,

11. 37:21 – 38:29

    Difference Between SBF and CZ

    1. NTNick Tomaino37:21

       but, uh, the vibes were certainly off from the beginning.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings37:23

       Can I ask, on CZ at a Binance, I feel like he's almost been completely unloved by the media. It's like SBF got all the attention, and I... Yes, he's got a little bit, but nowhere near in any weight. And I know it's very different situations and so, but media tend to cluster crypto in one bucket, whatever it is in buckets. Uh, can you just help me understand? What happens there? Is it different? Is it the same? How do we expect that to play out?

    3. NTNick Tomaino37:48

       I think it's definitely different. I mean, Sam, uh, fucked over customers, right? He was, you know, a fraudulent actor and screwed over, uh, millions of customers. CZ never did anything bad to customers, as far as I'm aware. His issue is with, you know, s- state actors, governments. And so, um, I think, to me, that, that, that's why, you know, CZ... Actually, I think most people in, in crypto still like CZ, and Sam was, you know, a complete fraud. Um, so there, there's a big difference there.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings38:23

       What, what happens? He goes to prison for a couple of years? Like, the rule book doesn't get thrown at him, does it, in the same way as SBF?

12. 38:29 – 41:46

    SEC Targeting Coinbase and Kraken

    1. HSHarry Stebbings38:29

    2. KSKyle Samani38:29

       I believe consensus is he will be less than 18 months.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings38:32

       Okay. So, we take that. If we move to more positive, uh, scenes, which is we mentioned Coinbase. Uh, I do want to discuss Kraken. My, my question to you is, like, bluntly, it feels like the SEC's quite unfairly targeted the good actors being Coinbase and Kraken. Do you agree with that? And what would you do if you, you were Brian at Coinbase or, or, you know, CEO of, you know, Kraken?

    4. NTNick Tomaino38:53

       Sure, I, I-

    5. KSKyle Samani38:54

       I mean, if I was Brian at Coinbase, I think he has roughly played it correctly, which was... Did his best for many years to play nice, go ask for permission, show up, you know, do the dance, talk to the regulators, be as above board and transparent as possible. Did that for, I don't know, three, four, five, six years, something like that. Effectively, at the end of it, the SEC was like, "JK, we don't care. We're gonna sue you now." And as a result, he's now publicly turned more, you know... And talking to him and Paul, it is obviously a bit of a coordinated strategy on their part of, uh, being more rebellious and, like, that was absolutely the right way to play it.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings39:24

       Nick, what do you think?

    7. NTNick Tomaino39:25

       Yeah, look. I mean, crony capitalism is real, right? I don't think the public recognizes how insane it is that the second-largest donor to Joe Biden was, uh, Sam Bankman-Fried. Biden appoints Gary Gensler as the chairman of the SEC, and then, uh, Biden has meetings with Sam Bankman-Fried, where... It, it's not confirmed, but i- i- you know, the rumor is that they were talking about a no-action letter, right? So, Biden allows one of the biggest frauds of all, uh, time, you know, Biden administration with Gary Gensler as the chair, you know, he misses the biggest fraud, one of the biggest frauds of all time. And then, um, now he's going after, you know, two companies in Coinbase and Kraken that have been clearly good actors, um, in the space for 10-plus years. So, it's, it's really insane. I have never been super poli- political, but the, the more you kind of peel the onion, you see that, um, you know, when pe- when people talk about, like, the deep state, the administrative state, whatever it is, what it is is unelected bureaucrats who are acting in their own self-interest and against the interest of the people, and that's clearly what's happening with the SEC right now. And the good thing is, you know, I... Five years ago, I wouldn't have guessed that there would actually be, like, congressmen, you know, and senators that are calling this out as well, and calling for, uh, for Gensler to step down. It, it-

    8. HSHarry Stebbings40:50

       Do you think Gensler will step down?

    9. NTNick Tomaino40:51

       He actually just issued a statement, uh, this morning. Coi- Coinbase. The SEC is going after Coinbase saying that it's an unregistered securities exchange, and then Coinbase is actually suing...... uh, the SEC saying that it didn't do its duty basically in, in creating, um, you know, clear laws around crypto. And, um, and now Gensler responded and said, "Yes, they are." So, uh, you know, I think I have no idea if he'll step down or not. I know a lot of people... There's a lot of great people at the SEC, right? Like, we've worked with the SEC. I'm sure, um, Kyle and Multicoin have as well, and we've had a really good experience with the SEC. So there are good people at the SEC that get crypto and are thoughtful about crypto and are not just, you know, sweeping everyone in crypto with the same bad guy brush. But, um, something... Again, the vibes are off with, uh, with Gensler and hopefully, uh, he's

13. 41:46 – 45:20

    How Will US Elections Impact Crypto?

    1. NTNick Tomaino41:46

       out at some point. Um, but I don't know when that'll be.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings41:48

       I, I, I totally get it and I love the crony capitalism element there. We mentioned, you know, Kraken and Coinbase. I think a big question is also bluntly, you mentioned that Biden and, you know, the links to SBF and the funding. In terms of presidential elections, how do they impact the US and kind of crypto markets in the US do you think? And how impactful do you think the election is? I'd just love to hear your thoughts on that.

    3. KSKyle Samani42:12

       Uh, very, very important. I mean, uh, Chair Clayton, who was the chairman of the SEC prior to Chair Gensler, wa- it was just generally more, I'd say, like libertarian free markets than Chair Gensler. Chair Gensler clearly has wanted to do more stuff and, you know, not only with crypto but with ESG and with a- regulating AI and all the capital market structure with PFA and Robin Hood. I mean, he's been very aggressive, um, on many fronts. Uh, whereas Chair Clayton was- you know, was more, hey, like, let, let the market do what it will. And so, you know, if a Republican is elected, it's safe to assume that the new chair of the SEC that the president will appoint, uh, is much more likely to be closer to Chair Clayton in ethos than Chair Gensler.

    4. NTNick Tomaino42:50

       Yeah, it, it doesn't have to be, um, a Republican necessarily, although that, you know, that's likely, right? I think there's, um, there's five candidates right now that, um, would be good for crypto, right? There's Trump, DeSantis, Vivek, um, in the Republican Party. There's Dean Phillips in the Democratic Party and there's RFK as an independent. So I think all five of those, um... And it's not just crypto, like it- it's the administrative state, right? They, they, they... To varying degrees, all five of those candidates, I think recognize a problem in the country is this, um, unelected class of bureaucrats that are acting in their own self-interest and have, you know, in, in one way or another talked about, you know, reducing the power of the administrative state. So I think that would... Any of those would be great for crypto. Of course, uh, like, you know, Dean Phillips and Democrat and, um, RFK, um, you know, has a better shot but still low. So that, that's kind of how, how I rate it. I do think though that like... And, and our approach really we're not spending a ton of time thinking about this. It's like even in the past, you know, four years under Biden, how much has the Biden administration really hurt crypto? I'm not sure. Like stuff... It's not hurting the innovation. New, new startups are just happening. It is hurting kind of the perception and kind of new people, you know, coming in to some degree, but at the innovation level, which I think is the most important thing, it's maybe in the US slowing it down a little bit. But overall I don't think it's hurting it that much. And I think even in a scenario where there's like a antagonistic administration to crypto, um, crypto is still going to move forward, there's still going to be new, um, applications built and maybe the US plays less of a role, which as an American that would obviously be bad, but that's kind of how I think about it.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings44:48

       Will Trump win?

    6. KSKyle Samani44:50

       My assumption is he will be in jail before the election. So I, I don't know if you can-

    7. NTNick Tomaino44:55

       You can. He... I think, I think he'll be running and winning from a jail cell as well. The, the entertaining... The most entertaining outcome is, um, is the most likely, right? Um-

    8. HSHarry Stebbings45:04

       How does that happen? I thought you can't... If you're in jail you can't run.

    9. NTNick Tomaino45:08

       No, you can.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings45:10

        Your, your nation never fails to stagger me. (laughs)

    11. NTNick Tomaino45:13

        (laughs)

    12. HSHarry Stebbings45:14

        Like really. I, I love the way this... You know, leaders of the free world. That is fucking terrifying.

14. 45:20 – 46:21

    Is Trump Good for Crypto?

    1. HSHarry Stebbings45:20

       Um, okay, good.

    2. NTNick Tomaino45:23

       (laughs)

    3. HSHarry Stebbings45:23

       I'm glad we covered that. Um, is Trump good for crypto?

    4. NTNick Tomaino45:27

       That remains to be seen. A lot of people think no. Um, you know, he tweeted in 2018, uh, cryptocurrencies are bad, um, something like that, uh, one of his, you know, standard mean tweets. My feeling is that, um, back then he wasn't really paying attention to it. He, he had some authoritarians that were working for him, Steve Mnuchin, um, and Gary Cohn that kind of crafted that, that belief. Um, and I think now if you look at... I mean, this week, I don't know, Harry, if you saw, I'm sure Kyle did, um, he dropped an NFT collection, the, the Trump mugshots collection of NFTs.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings46:03

       No. No.

    6. NTNick Tomaino46:03

       He's selling NFTs on Polygon. Just... If you, if you think about Trump, you know, we know, we know he loves memes, we know he loves attention. I, I, I personally think, you know, he's going to be leaning into crypto in a big way in 2024. That's my prediction. But we'll see.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings46:19

       The mugshot edition worth

15. 46:21 – 46:47

    IPO Predictions for Crypto Companies

    1. HSHarry Stebbings46:21

       almost $10,000. There you go. Oof. When will IPO windows open for like the stellar crypto companies? We've got Circle, we've got Kraken, there's a couple of other candidates. When do you think IPO windows will open there?

    2. KSKyle Samani46:34

       Uh, I... Rumors are suggesting that Circle will IPO in 2024. Uh, I'm not sure what the basis of those rumors are not, but that's been circulating in the press fairly recently. That's really all I know.

    3. NTNick Tomaino46:45

       I have no idea. I don't have

16. 46:47 – 48:02

    Will NFTs Make a Comeback?

    1. NTNick Tomaino46:47

       a view on that.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings46:48

       Okay, final one for you guys. Uh, and this was again, another one that came up. NFTs, when do they come back? Do they come back? Will OpenSea ever be worth 13 billion again, Nick? Help me understand this.

    3. NTNick Tomaino47:00

       Uh, yeah, I mean, I, I think NFTs are gonna come back in a big way. Uh, I'm, uh, I've said and I, I, I think still, um, you know, NFTs have a good chance to be, um, you know, bigger than cryptocurrencies in terms of, uh, of mainstream adoption. And, and the reason is because people... I think more people in the world care about culture than they do about finance. And so, um, NFTs kind of brig- bridge culture and finance in a really unique way, and they're just a better business model for creators, right? So I don't have a view, uh, you know, strong view when. I think in the next three to five years. I don't... I'm not saying they're gonna bounce back right away. But, um, but yeah, I think, I think NFTs will be back, uh, bigger than ever and, um, will OpenSea be worth that, um, again? Um, I don't know. Um, you know, maybe. I, I don't have a super strong view of that. I think it will be worth a lot. Like any exchange, I think they just... uh, it, it, the success is bet i- i- is a bet o- on the growth of the asset class.

17. 48:02 – 49:06

    Identifying Vaporware in the Crypto Ecosystem

    1. NTNick Tomaino48:02

       And so, that's kinda how I see it.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings48:04

       Guys, what do you think is, like, vaporware today that many other people think is valuable? Like, many people think NFTs are like, um, you know, I'm forgetting but it was the... Was it the petal or the tulip, um, you know, economy that was created in Europe in the 1700s and saying, uh, kind of vaporware bullshit, whatever, whether it's right or wrong. What do you think is, like, vaporware that everyone else believes is valuable in the crypto ecosystem?

    3. KSKyle Samani48:26

       I mean, look, there's a lot of assets in the top 10 that most people who are sophisticated retail... ma- market participants view as, you know, garbage: XRP, Cardano, uh, Li- Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, et- et cetera. I cannot explain to you how those assets are trading nine, 10 figures a day and who is buying them. It has been a mystery for a very long time, continues to be one. But, like, very clearly, the- there's nothing of s- of substance happening there.

    4. NTNick Tomaino48:49

       Well, they're good memes, right? Don't you think, um... Don't you think memes matter a lot in crypto? And if you have a meme that persists over time, then you, you have value, right?

    5. KSKyle Samani48:59

       Memes clearly matter. That's not a question. Yeah, look, memes trade at crazy prices. Uh, uh, again, empirically,

18. 49:06 – 54:54

    Quick-Fire Round

    1. KSKyle Samani49:06

       that is true. I don't love it, but obviously it's true.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings49:09

       Guys, I wanna move into a quick-fire. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. Nick, we're gonna start with you. What worries you most in crypto today? Kyle gets the nicer one, sorry, on this one.

    3. NTNick Tomaino49:19

       Um, well, I've talked a little bit about it but the, the administrative state, right? I think there... I think it is true that there is kind of a ruling class, um, in, in the US and around the world that, um, has the power. And crypto, I, I think it's still not fully appreciated how empowering, um, crypto is to people. Um, I think, you know, the, the, the ruling class is not gonna give up their power easily, and so that is concerning.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings49:49

       Kyle, what excites you most in crypto today?

    5. KSKyle Samani49:51

       Payments, stablecoin payment rails li-... US dollars are the most in-demand currency in the world. That has been true for a very long time. Stablecoins on crypto rails, uh, enable billions of people to acquire dollars and use dollars.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings50:04

       Nick, what have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

    7. NTNick Tomaino50:07

       So one of my magic moments in, in crypto, um, recently has been, um, on-chain messaging products. So I, I used to... There, there's been, um... You know, this has been kind of a meme in crypto for a while. There's been a bunch of... There were a bunch of ICOs around this back in 2017, and kind of combining crypto and messaging has always been an idea. Um, and I kind of dismissed the idea. I didn't really get it until, um, this year when, um, I used a, a messaging product within Coinbase Wallet. And the magic moment that I think is, is, is, um, is pretty interesting and kind of crypto-native is that any, uh, Ethereum address or Solana address or whatever w- you wanna call it, uh, any crypto address, can have a messaging component. And you can, um... Y- you can have a, a conversation with someone that persists across applications. So I message someone on Coinbase Wallet, um, with my address that I was logged into on Coinbase Wallet and, um, I'm also logged into, uh, Converse, which is another, um, you know, app, uh, on-chain messaging app, and the message persists across two applications. So I, I, I now think, uh, every wallet is going to have a messaging component, um, and, uh, and on-chain messaging is gonna be a big, um, you know, crypto use case eventually.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings51:28

       Tell me, Kyle, most painful lesson that you've learned that you're also pleased to have learned?

    9. KSKyle Samani51:33

       Until your thesis is invalidated, keep holding on and keep trying to make more bets in that thesis.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings51:38

        What does that mean? Like, just, like... It sh- I mean, that goes against all kind of theory of diversification. It's kind of concentration versus the extreme.

    11. KSKyle Samani51:47

        I, I, I d- definitely don't believe in diversification (laughs) . Um, I absolutely believe in concentration. But, but specifically what I'm referring to is, is Solana. I got into crypto in 2016. In 2017, I went to DevCon in Cancun, November 2017. Was like the PICO top, all eyes on Ethereum. Vitalik gives... Everyone was like, "Sharding, scaling, Plasma, some- something like we, we... What's the scaling plan?" And absolute crickets, just nothing. And I remember leaving incredibly disappointed and frustrated. And that's when I started looking for alternative scaling approaches. Well, our, we... Our first bet we made was EOS. That was absolutely wrong. Uh, there were a lot of valid technical criticisms that we ignored, um, and all of those technical criticisms turned out to be correct. Um, it was a absolutely forecastable set of errors and we, we made them, uh, and fell on our face and got a lot of eggs thrown at us for it, rightfully so. However, the core thesis was there are valid alternative scaling solutions, approaches, other than the one in theory we're staking, focus on high-performance system, integrated systems, and we bet on Solana.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings52:48

        (laughs) You all right, Nick?

    13. KSKyle Samani52:51

        What's that?

    14. HSHarry Stebbings52:51

        That was one big sigh. That was like... (imitates fart)

    15. NTNick Tomaino52:55

        (laughs) Sorry.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings52:56

        Pardon me. Bit, (laughs) bit rude (laughs) .

    17. KSKyle Samani52:58

        (laughs)

    18. HSHarry Stebbings52:59

        I'd love you guys to form a partnership after this. Um, uh, tell me, uh, next five years... This is the final one. Crypto in five years' time, where are we then? What does the regulation environment look like? What would you ideally like the landscape to look like?

    19. NTNick Tomaino53:13

        For me, um, new use cases, right? Like, I think we need beyond speculation. So th- that, that's kind of... A- and what that might be, I'm not sure. Um, I think prediction markets, I think decentralized social media, um, decentralized messaging, DAOs, uh, stablecoins. We need to get beyond just, um, you know, a shitcoin casino, which is, I think, how a lotta the outside world still perceives crypto. Now, do we need that? I still think there's a chance we get to 10 trillion in total market value without that. Because again, this... The, the idea of, you know, empowering bil- billions of people around the world with this kinda new financial system is revolutionary. But I hope, um, we get beyond that and we get kind of non-speculation use cases that are really useful for people in the world.

    20. KSKyle Samani54:04

        Kyle, what's yours? I want everyone in the world to have a private key built into their phone that i- is secure and that they can use for arbitrary financial movements, whether those are payments or investments, uh, and that they can do so across any application. And I, I have a high degree of conviction that will be true. Maybe not in five years. I, I may be too optimistic on timeline. Maybe it's 10.

    21. HSHarry Stebbings54:24

        Nick, you have this, like, wry smile-

    22. KSKyle Samani54:25

        (laughs)

    23. HSHarry Stebbings54:26

        ... across your face, Nick. And I'm like, "What are you thinking?"

    24. NTNick Tomaino54:28

        Oh, no, I'm thinking about the Solana phone, um, because that... you know, Solana phone went crazy, sold out. They're airdropping bank. Oh, you got it? Nice.

    25. KSKyle Samani54:36

        Right here. It's beautiful.

    26. HSHarry Stebbings54:38

        I mean, wow, there we go. Incredible. Guys, listen, thank you so much for doing this. This has been so much fun and, uh, I really appreciate you putting up with my, uh, basic questions.

    27. KSKyle Samani54:50

        Harry, thanks for having us on. It was a pleasure.

    28. NTNick Tomaino54:52

        Yeah, good hanging out with you guys.

Episode duration: 54:54