EP10: The Return of RoaringKitty & Meme Coin Mania

Roaring Kitty is back! Follow this discussion to hear about meme coins, regulation, and the ongoing war between Solana and Ethereum.

Interesting sites:
rekt.news
standwithcrypto.org
clientdiversity.org
cryptofees.info

Red Candle Club Twitter: https://twitter.com/redcandleclub 
Lawrence's Twitter: https://twitter.com/crypto_sieve
Dan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanKazenoff

Intro/Outro Music Credit: kazmaattack@gmail.com

DISCLAIMER: This is not financial, legal, or tax advice. The guests and hosts may hold some of the assets discussed on the show.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/redcandleclub
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@redcandleclub

Dan Kazenoff: @DanKazenoff
Lawrence: @crypto_sieve

DISCLAIMER: This is not financial, tax, or legal advice. Hosts and guests may hold some of the assets discussed on the show.

Transcript

Lawrence: 0:00

Like, look at Atom right now, right? Cosmos is not really doing a whole hot lot better. Cardano isn't really doing, you know, is gonna make, they're not gonna make new highs, right? But they're, they're still around, right? And I think these meme coins, like Dog with Hat, next cycle may not make new highs, but it, It'll probably still be around holding some value and there'll be a new one that'll make new highs. So like, I think that idea in memes is still, you know, I think, I think holds. All right. Happy Sunday, everyone. Welcome to the red candle club. Just a quick disclaimer. This is just educational and informational and entertainment advice. This is not financial advice and just please take care out there. It's a risky market. So that's all on that front. So all right. So here we are. It's Sunday, May 19th. Beautiful Sunday. Yep. How's that been going, man? It's been good. It's, I've been loving the nice weather. Like it's, I just love May, to be honest. I think May and June are like the best months to be in where we are in New York City. Like, I think, I think they're just the best months of the year before it gets like brutally hot out.

Dan: 1:14

Yeah. So it's been good starting to get outside, merge from the, the indoors a bit more and, mm-hmm.. Yeah, yeah, we the Red Candle Club crew got together last week. That was like, that was pretty good. Hanging out at the the car club place. The car

Lawrence: 1:32

club, right? Yeah, it's kind of becoming our new haunt now.

Dan: 1:35

Yeah, yeah, I wonder if there's like other people there that are like, DGNs that we need to talk with. Maybe there's like some Bitcoin millionaires there secretly?

Lawrence: 1:45

Might be, maybe the owner is, who knows. I feel like it's good for us. It's good for us to manifest, you know, Yeah. You gotta manifest the Lambos, right? We gotta, we gotta go to the car club, see the Lambos, and manifest it in reality, you know?

Dan: 1:58

That's, yeah, it's something I'm trying to do more. That, that word is yeah, it's like, it's great. I'm trying to do it more. Mm

Lawrence: 2:06

hmm.

Dan: 2:06

But yeah, we got a lot of stuff to cover. It's been a lot of craziness, as usual. And, yeah, we're gonna rip through it. See how far we get. Yup. Yeah, I think probably makes sense to just start with what's the overall landscape looking like price wise. How are things? Like how, how's the health of everything looking right now?

Lawrence: 2:32

Yeah, no, I mean, I, my view on it is actually things are up a little bit since our last episode. It's been looking a little more positive and, you know, we could go into that, you know, in a little bit with like the macro stuff and why we think that is, but just like the coins I've been looking at, like Tau is kind of the same level. I got into NMT pretty recently, so it's like another decentralized AI compute token. I saw that it. It did a nice triple bottom for the last few months. So I got into that and I'm up already. So I'm, I'm hoping that I'm right on this one finally cause I've gotten wrecked on some coins lately.

Dan: 3:11

Triple bottom is that it's a typical behavior on that. It's like it rebounds from the bottom.

Lawrence: 3:17

Well, so what I've been noticing, like my years of trading is that the number three is pretty important. So like, you know, you hear the term double top, triple top, you know, stuff like that, and then you hear about like supports and resistances, right? Like typically if. You know, you have these retests where like something will go down, it'll hit a bottom and then rebound. And then if it's still not done, you know, selling off, it'll go back down and retest that support, you know, and I won't, you know, and if it doesn't fall back down again, it rebounds again, and then if it's still not done selling off, there's a third test. And if the third test holds for the support and it doesn't fall through. It usually means that probabilities are more likely that the selling is over and that the sellers are exhausted at that point. So that's pretty much my bet is that that support is going to hold and the sellers are out and there's only buyers left now at this point. That's again, it's probabilities. I could be completely wrong and then there's a 4 3 test and it just completely falls through and then it just goes lower. Right. Get that, you know but again, trading is all about probabilities and there's no certainties. There's never a hundred percent probability that something's going to happen either way. So really you just, you're trying to bet in your favor ultimately. And that's all I'm doing.

Dan: 4:44

Right. Yeah. It's almost like the astrology of crypto land. It's like something that we, we all believe in, and there is like some truth to it, honestly. And it's like you do, there is like some math behind it in some ways. But it is also kind of like very magical land sometimes. But I, I think like a good kind of like let's you know directionally what to

Lawrence: 5:09

expect next. For sure. I mean, charting is one of those things that people think is a big meme. And I, sometimes it can be, but I ultimately feel like if it's been around this long, you know, it's, it's been, it's working for someone, it's people, it is working for people. It's just that you have to be, it's just one tool of many that you use, you know, charting is if you're trading, it's, it's kind of an art form and that charting is just one of the tools you use, you know, and then there's, there's macro indicators, there's. There's, you know, you have to look at liquidity. Like there's so many things you have to look at and trading a chart is just one of those things. So you can't solely use charting. If you do that, you're probably going to get wrecked. People who trade oil know that because oil is like mostly political, right? It's, it's all controlled by OPEC, et cetera. So like there's political things you have to look at too. Like that affects prices. So charting is not going to tell you those things. But charting does help me, you know, in the sense that I like. I like to, I believe that it's all in the chart as far as where people are betting and all the world's information is, is in there. So that's kind of what I think. It's not going to predict hacks, you know, it's not going to predict things that are totally black swans. And stuff like that. So yeah, if you're trusting charting for that, you're, you're going to end up in a bad time, but I think it's worth studying for anyone who's, who's trying to time the market, you know, like,

Dan: 6:42

yeah, I mean, I definitely am seeing things start to rebound a little bit. Maybe the prices aren't necessarily where anywhere near the peak. But they're approaching it. And I think what was interesting as well, I was doing just some, like, I was trying to compare Coinbase and like Robinhood crypto to just Dex volumes. And when I was looking at Dex volumes, I mean, so on the Coinbase and Robinhood front, if you actually go through the different reports, you do see. volumes rebounding quite aggressively. And that is reflected in the decks lines as well. So there's definitely, we're getting back to you know, we're, we're, what are we here? We're like, we're at levels

Lawrence: 7:24

since summer 2021. It looks like summer 2021 levels or

Dan: 7:29

summer 2020 then. Yeah, but yeah, on the, on the way up summer 2021. And so, yeah, I guess that's. Interesting to see is like, usually you, like, I was kind of just thinking like things are dead right now and you know, just kind of like, hold on and wait and see what's going on. But there's actually a very like aggressive rebound happening right this moment.

Lawrence: 7:54

Yeah, yeah. It really seems like October 2023 was where everything, things turned. In a big way for the crypto market. It just seems like the trend really shifted fall last year.

Dan: 8:08

Yeah, it's quite, quite interesting. So

Lawrence: 8:11

yeah,

Dan: 8:12

we'll be monitoring that.

Lawrence: 8:14

Yeah. But it seems like things are just kind of consolidating right now. And people are, it's, it's still pretty calm, right? I mean, prices are, you know, Bitcoin jumped up a little bit. It's leveling off here now and you know, it's, it's kind of sideways a little bit still. So,

Dan: 8:32

yeah. And yeah, I don't know if you want to cover some of the meme news this week. So we, in the Tradfy world, we've had the return of Roaring Kitty and I need to watch. I'm, I'm still like, like I was around for all of that activity. I wasn't like on the ground floor of it though. Like I wasn't like in wall street bets honoring everything. I didn't see GameStop like mooning and everything. And then I know that he, he kind of disappeared for a little while, but he's back

Lawrence: 9:03

probably spending all his money that he made for a couple of years, you know, just kind of. I imagine he made like almost 50 million in that trade. So he yeah. So yeah, I think this is a pretty big deal just in general of the sentiment. You know, people, people do see him as like a leader in meme and meme stock frenzies. And I think, I think meme coins are going to follow as well. I think, especially now that those same participants are going to, you know, You know, they're probably the same participants that are playing meme coins as well. So I

Dan: 9:40

think he hinted something or was there some video he posted? Did he post a video of the Walter White and like Skyler arguing about like, like what he's doing, but it was like memes when she's like, what

Lawrence: 9:54

are you? Oh, I saw that. Yeah, that was funny. Yeah, he was, he was very active on Twitter this past week. I mean, he was posting video after video. I don't know if he like hired someone to do it. He probably did, but it was. But he was, he went from like nothing for years to all of a sudden one week, just like posting every day, multiple times. So,

Dan: 10:16

so he, he was the OG, like he came up with the short squeeze strategy and like he was going to post it. Yeah.

Lawrence: 10:23

So I could go, I could tell the story really quick. So I was following this. So this was back in 2020. So he, he jumped on, he jumped on wall street bets on Reddit around probably like spring of 2020, like right around the, when the, when the world was just like fucked, right. And like everyone, everything was shut down, right. People were, they printed tons of money and he came into wall street bets and posted this, this tweet. Very long position on, on GameStop. Right. And he would do this every single day. He would post his positions on GameStop and his options, expirations, and you know, what is, and it's what, you know, how much money he had and he was just getting flamed every day. Like people were calling him a retard, like an idiot, like you're going to lose all your money. You know, good, you know, you're just, people just railing on him. Right. And then, you know, six months went by and the stock was moving up and he was starting to make a lot of money on these options, but he still wasn't selling. So people, I think, you know, wall street bets started to change their opinion of him and people started getting in on this trade with him and then he made more money and he would still post his positions every single day on wall street bets. So around early 2021, that's when the SOC really started taking off and like a lot of shorts got wiped out. And that's when it was really starting to go up and he was making millions every day. And, you know, WallStreetBets kind of like looked up to him as a god at that point. Because for a year he was on this trade and just posting every single day and just taking so much shit for it. And now he's like the god there. So, you know, when he, when he, whatever he says commands a lot of people now, a lot of people's attention and opinions. And that's where this is. That's where this is all coming from is from wall street bets and following that GameStop trade for a year. And just the reputation he has on that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so there was one comment on the Reddit post, cause I saw this on Sunday when I got back and the first comment was least on all guy, which I thought was hilarious because. That is how people see him on Reddit now. Like anything he posts, like people are going to buy it, you know, he has more influence than like Ansem or any of these crypto Twitter guys. He's yeah, he's got a lot of pull, so it's funny,

Dan: 12:46

but let's hope he trudges along into crypto. I think if he's can, I mean, I feel like it's kind of like, it's kind of lame to be buying GameStop now, in my opinion, because it's like, it's still, you're still stuck on the trad five rails. And it's still like, you know, they, they're able to halt and manipulate relatively easily there. I mean, not that they can't do that in crypto too, but I feel like you're kind of playing in the world of traditional finance with the GM stuff. And you know, I guess they did some damage there, but

Lawrence: 13:29

yeah. Well, I also think he's got a lot of eyes on him too now. So. He's probably just gonna post like stupid videos and stuff and just stay active on Twitter And that'll probably be enough to keep people investing in meme coins But I don't think that he's gonna come out with like positions or anything Just cuz he he's gonna be invited back to the Senate again if he does that So yeah, so I just think I think he's not he's just gonna keep playing this game of like posting on Twitter and Riling everybody up, you know, it's probably the best thing for him, right? But interesting nonetheless We had a we had an article from Kobe that dropped today actually this morning. I haven't read it yet But it seems to be kind of like a discussion about like, you know I'll mark a cap and high low float high FTV tokens that we've been seeing lately in the market So you know, go ahead. And if you guys don't know about Colby, he's also like a very influential player in crypto. He's really, he's like another godlike trader, people follow him. So if you're on Substack and you, you know, you like to read, which a lot of people in crypto don't like to read, but whatever, just throw it into a GPT or whatever, and it'll summarize it. But it, it, it seems like a good read and I think it's worth just like sitting down and reading it.

Dan: 14:46

Yeah. Yeah. I've been seeing some discussion here. A little bit on the feeds recently regarding the landscape is probably going to be changing or, you know, that's unsustainable to like keep ripping out new L1s and then having, yeah, a huge portion of the tokens contained privately and then like sex launches versus dex launches. So I think, yeah, I will need to read this full article. It's like, it's pretty beefy, but definitely.

Lawrence: 15:21

Yeah. I think it's just a discussion of like how much money there is chasing this stuff now and then just how the market's like reacting to that, like how it's changing essentially. But I mean, it's, it's, it's good discussion because I've been noticing that too. And it, I don't know how, I don't know how it works and what it means really. So to have someone that is smarter, explain it, I think it's helpful for all of us.

Dan: 15:42

A lot of good charts in here.

Lawrence: 15:44

Yeah. Yeah, we love charts. Yeah.

Dan: 15:47

Yeah.

Lawrence: 15:48

That's cool. Yep. Let's see. So some airdrops drift, the drift airdrop happened, so but I, if anyone's been using Drift on Solana, that was, that was one that I've been following, but I haven't really been following any others. I don't know if there's any other, like big airdrops that have happened. That's the only one I know. Can

Dan: 16:04

we talk about them A couple episodes ago?

Lawrence: 16:06

I think I did a couple, a few months back. I talked about drift briefly, but I wasn't really, I'm not a heavy user of drift. I just made a couple of trades on there, but if anyone out there is like a heavy drift trader, just know that you probably have tokens waiting for you. Cool.

Dan: 16:22

Okay. So that just dropped like half the press this week. Yeah.

Lawrence: 16:25

This week. And then it's active until August 23rd. So you have the summer to go get it. It's actually a pretty short claim period, you know, relative to some other ones. Like I think Jito left theirs open for like a year and a half or something.

Dan: 16:40

That's cool. Yeah, no, we definitely did talk about this. So

Lawrence: 16:44

that's cool. You want to do the maker down one really quick. So this one, yeah, this was kind of big. I thought I, I, I just learned about it this morning, but they're, so they're replacing the dye token with two different tokens. Which is going to be, one's going to be backed by real assets. So like, if you think kind of like a USDC type deal where they're going to have like actual money behind the token, and then the other one seems like it's going to be more algorithmic. So they're essentially splitting up, die. It seems like they, you know, they realize like die doesn't really have much of a focus right now, which is kind of like, it's trying to do both and it's not really doing a good job of that. And they're, they're going to make two separate tokens. So yeah, interesting move.

Dan: 17:27

Very nice. Yeah, I know this is like a very kind of, I mean, it's one of the most resilient protocols in crypto. It's been around many years. I don't actually know when they first started. It was 2017 or

Lawrence: 17:38

yeah, they were early. They were like, probably they were, they came around the scene when like tether and USDC came around. So they were, They were one of the first players. So yeah, they're, they're seen as a leader, you know, in the stable coin world.

Dan: 17:53

Yeah. I mean, usually things just kind of go belly up and they, they don't have staying power, especially multiple cycles, but this is one of those protocols that for sure has been holding up. So yeah, very innovating here. I have to do a deeper dive on like on this

Lawrence: 18:14

new initiative that they're doing here. I don't hold DAI myself, but if you hold DAI, it's worth looking into this and seeing what will happen because I think that there's like, if you hold DAI, it's going to get, it's going to get migrated into like one of their newer tokens. So you just want to be aware of what's going on there and keep track of them, you know, so you know what your money is.

Dan: 18:36

Right. Cool. Solana surpasses Ethereum by revenue. So, let's see what, see what's going on here. I know there's a lot of cherry picking of certain statistics and people get in a huff over this on Twitter regarding, you know, like, okay, if you cherry pick a few values, you can, you can say that you've beaten another chain in a certain metric. So, But let's see what they say here. So Solana's total economic value transaction fees combined with MEV revenue surpassed that of Ethereum for the first time. So the chart shows Solana hosting nearly two and a quarter million dollars in 24 hour revenue, beating out Ethereum by 1. 98. Let's see here. Yeah, I mean, that's like, I think that's pretty significant for sure.

Lawrence: 19:34

Yeah, there's, there's been a lot of changes to Solana, you know, and I think people need to just, you know, You know, just to give people a little bit of a view here. So Solana was, you know, people knew it was going down. They were getting a lot of hatred for that. So they implemented a fee market to prevent against this. And that's where this is coming from is ultimately that when the chains under heavy usage, people pay higher fees, right? It's still lower overall than other chains, but. It's getting more expensive to transact on Solana now. Could, you know, I I've paid, you know, close to a dollar sometimes to do things on Solana, which is high for Solana relative to past. And it is actually kind of on par with Ethereum L2s now. So there is a, there is a good competition happening between the two chains, which ultimately is, you know, good for us, I think. But yeah, that's where this is coming from is ultimately Solana is growing in usage and they had to do fees. And this is, you know, this is very much a headline. Like they just looked at the 24 hour fee. Right. And then like they made a headline based on that, but like, you know, you extrapolate this out to like, what's it like in three months or six months. And, you know, I don't know what those numbers would look like for each chain. But Ansem does have a point where, you know, Ethereum is five times more expensive, five times more market cap than Solana and, you know, the, the fees are pretty much equal now. So bullish soul is what, you know.

Dan: 20:57

Yeah, I mean, I think what I will see a lot trying to find this website, it's like, uh, cryptofees. info. Yes. Okay. So this will kind of go through one day protocol fees. I don't see Solana on here. I don't know why they don't

Lawrence: 21:16

include Solana. Interesting.

Dan: 21:19

Yeah, they have various interesting. Okay. Yeah. I guess this is mostly Ethereum. But

Lawrence: 21:24

Ethereum makes 2 billion a day in fees. That's crazy.

Dan: 21:27

2 million. Yeah. It's it is wild.

Lawrence: 21:30

Oh, 2 million.

Dan: 21:30

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's I guess. Yeah. It's like, so that's, I guess, to reimburse all the validators that are operating. And Solana obviously has less validators. So there's basically a, I mean, if you think about the entities that are actually comprising all the Ethereum validators, it really, it narrows it down into maybe a dozen different entities. So that's, that's interesting. But

Lawrence: 22:00

this is an interesting site. What's this site Dan that you're using? Cryptofees. info. Okay. I'll put that in the show notes. It's a, that's a,

Dan: 22:09

Yeah, and they have like various other protocols as well, where they like compare issuance between different things. And L2 fees, that info, that kind of, yeah, estimate costs. I'm not sure, like, if this has been updated recently, but yeah, I think Ethereum is sort of becoming, it's what, what it is like also comprised of these, it's external components, the EVM. So you do have like Ethereum itself, which to be honest is basically unusable for the average person, but they are like, okay, go use our L2s. And there's many different L2s and they all are, to be honest, like quite centralized in many different ways. And, you know, you need a bridge around to these different L2s. They don't communicate to each other perfectly. They are cheaper to use. They're not super cheap, but they are a lot cheaper than Ethereum to use. But I think that's. Maybe, maybe in statistics and we're looking at charts going forward, when people are comparing like Solana to Ethereum, if you compared Solana to the EVM, that might be like a more balanced kind of like community centric metric to talk about, because then it's like, you're comparing to like where the average people are and they're on the L2s and people are, you know, don't need to go to an L2 if they're on Solana at the moment. Right. And, you know, so I guess it's and I've heard other things as well, just deploying meme coins is like an easier process on Solana than it would be on some of these, like, Ethereum Layer 2s. But yeah, in any case, that was one of the concerns that people in the Ethereum camp were saying that Solana couldn't do is like incentivize its validators efficiently. But clearly they're getting a lot of usage and now the usage is translating into fees. So that's a positive development. And I think competition is good. So

Lawrence: 24:11

for sure. Yep, for sure. I will say though, to Ethereum's credit that the fees are becoming more reasonable. I was transacting today. Just like doing, you know, moving some money around. And I only paid like a dollar to 2 to do things on Ethereum. And, you know, it is a Sunday, which is less activity overall in chain, but that is a drastic change from just a few months ago, where I felt like these fees would have been like 15 bucks to do. And now it's only a dollar, 2. So it is getting better on a theory. It's getting much better.

Dan: 24:45

Yeah, I feel like that has to be due to just like less usage if there, if there is, so, I mean, now is a good time because things are like kind of quiet on activity front. This is like a great time to transact. And get everything, you know, get your affairs in order, essentially, because I'm sure once activity comes back, you're going to be, you're going to be blocked out.

Lawrence: 25:11

Yeah, that's a good point. Like when the chain's under stress on Solana, you might only pay like a dollar to two dollars, but on Ethereum, you're going to pay like 30 bucks, 40 bucks to just do simple things. Yeah, that's a good point.

Dan: 25:23

It's brutal, but yeah, now's a good time to get back in.

Lawrence: 25:27

I should probably do that. I have a lot of dead I need to collect over a lot of dead alts and stuff that I just need to like, just gather my dead bodies and, you know, redeploy them somewhere else.

Dan: 25:39

Yeah, I have a few walls that are just like graveyards essentially, like, it's it's quite sad. And, yeah, I think that's, many people are facing these same pain points and, it's just the cost of doing business in like a brand new technology, you know? Yep. Yeah, I think it'd be cool to chat about maybe a little more detail going back to the meme coins and some people are coming up with some theories on what this could all mean. What does the meme sector look like? mean for everyone. So I saw this post circulating around. So back in 2016 Joel Manegro, he came up with the, the fat protocols, thin apps thesis, which is basically, this is like an older article from 2016. This was like one of the first articles that I read actually before I started working professionally in crypto, just recommended that I look at this. And basically this is like. Summing up web two, you have like Facebook, Google YouTube, like various other applications that are very massive and they control all your data. And they capture most of the value, but then the protocols like a TLS and whatnot, communicating over the internet, that's like not really a very advanced infrastructure layer. The infrastructure is built in the app layer and then blockchains kind of flips that on its head. Now, do you have these. All these protocols that are thought through very carefully and like security, decentralization, scalability, and then the application layers are not quite figured out yet. And they're not, they don't collect as much value. So this person. Kel X, Y, Z is theorizing that, you know, the Alt L one thesis today is now meme points.

Lawrence: 27:40

Mm-Hmm,. Dan: So that's kind of like a one value that meme points have is going to accrue a lot of dollar value that could 50 to a hundred x from here. And I'm curious to get your take Lawrence on what is the, like, do you believe that this is true? Like, do you believe in the meme coin thesis? Yeah. So I, I, I do. And here's why. I think the L1 problem for the most part is, is getting solved. And I think that the current L1s that are the market leaders are going to continue to be the leaders. Thanks. And this, you know, they're, you're not going to get rich overnight by investing in Solana at this point or Ethereum. But I think that any new L ones like are going to struggle to compete with these, with these incumbents. Like you know, I mean, you see this even with like Sui and Aptos, like nobody talks about those, right? And I just feel like that's, that's a tougher investment. Whereas meme coins, they're way easier to understand because there's really no, no fundamental product of it, except, you know, you're, you're buying a culture, et cetera, really, with, with You're buying culture with meme coins and it's, it's very easy to grasp. And I mean, it, it really, to me, encapsulates the true essence of crypto culture, which is just gambling, right? I mean, you're, it's kind of like our generation's lottery tickets. Like no one goes to the store to buy lottery tickets anymore and scratches them off. They just go in crypto and they just buy meme coins. And I think this You know, I mean, you're seeing this with the whole roaring kitty thing too, is just people are realizing that speculating is the only way out of this system that we're in and it leads to a much bigger discussion about. Just like, you know, the just culture of our money system and how people realize that, you know, investing in the S and P, you know, you'll get rich in 30 years, 40 years. But if you really want to change your life in a short amount of time, you need to gamble it. And I think meme coins is where a lot of that's going to end up. And that's, you know, it's, it's going to be tough to find the one that makes it. That's the problem. Cause there's so many, because there's no product, there's so many of them created every day. And how do you pick the right one? That's a tough. It's tough, but I think there's merit to this, like. You know, they, they command attention a lot better, you know, a dog with hat and bonk are just, they grab people's attention and ultimately that's why they're going to keep going up.

Dan: 30:30

So, yeah, I mean, I try to think where I stand on this. I feel like memes themselves don't have enough, like staying power. Like I feel like. Vibes tend to shift like very quickly.

Lawrence: 30:45

And

Dan: 30:47

I mean, some definitely have held out. So I think that's maybe that's is what we've seen with like the alt L ones popping up, like so many popped up in the last five years and so many of them are dead now are basically zombie chains. And it's like, how are they going to like get people to use them? It's, it's like you might land a few enterprise deals here and there, but fundamentally, are you like able to survive longterm? So that, that space got very diluted and memes for sure. There's a lot of dilution there. I'm just like, not sure about the value accrual. Like I feel like it's, it's a very easy and fun way in some cases to just like, just gamble on any sort of narrative super easily. I don't think it's like something that non crypto native people are into at this point. But everyday people are like interested in memes. And like, we saw that with GME. So I definitely see how these memes can achieve massive value very quickly. I just like, don't know how they sustain long term. Like, I just don't know the business model. How are they keep, like, how are they growing? Are they licensing things? Is there like a team behind it? Is there like some sort of for profit entity that is able to like sustain the hype and like, Cause I mean, we see like fashion trends or like various clothing from designers. It's like those, those vibes that you see, like there's, there is like a corporate kind of entity behind them that's continuing to drive people into those products. And a lot of products in our world today have like cult followings. I'm just, I'm just kind of not sure how the digital tokens will.

Lawrence: 32:46

Like, yeah, I see your point. I see the point. I think if you're investing quote unquote, you know investing in a meme token, your attention span and the time preference of that trade has to be shorter than other trades. Like, you know, you, you can picture some of the L ones. Like, do you think Ethereum and Solana are going to exist in 10 years? Possibly. Right. Do I think dog with hat is going to exist in 10 years? My likelihood of that is like very low 5%, 10%, you know, unless they, yeah, unless they create a brand of clothing or shoes or something to keep it, it's probably going to go away in a couple of years. So I think that that's a very good point as like, if you're investing in these meme coins and you make a lot of money, you probably want to sell a good amount of it and just put it in some things that are. Like actually useful. You know, but the, I think meme coins as an idea in 10 years will still exist. Like people, people are still going to be buying meme tokens in 10 years. They're just going to be different memes, but they'll, they'll be buying them still. And that's like a critical part of the culture that will stay in my opinion. Like DeFi was the big thing a few years ago. Now. These days, I feel like it's not so much a big deal. It's more of like real world assets and AI is taking over, but the next cycle, it might be something else and the next cycle it might be something else, but memes will always be a part of every cycle. There's always going to be another big meme token. I think,

Dan: 34:16

yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Maybe I feel like I was disagreeing at first, but now if I think about it in terms of like meme coins as a whole, that makes more sense to me, I don't. I think they're kind of like a bet on just what is the internet culture of the day. So you, you're kind of like, it's, it gives you a financial way to bet on the culture. So if you're like super plugged in, like what people are talking about and like, what is the, the meta or the narrative of the people you're talking with, then I could see them being like these weird short term investment vehicles where it's like, you just are spontaneously throwing some, you financial support behind a narrative. And it's like, I believe in this narrative right now. And then you can like ride the high. So they are just like these short term kinds of like up and down curves. And then, you know, we'll see. I don't, I don't know how that. necessarily makes the world better. But that's kind of like gambling in general. It's like gambling doesn't make the world better, but it is something that people want to do. So my casinos and you let them, you know,

Lawrence: 35:25

yeah, for sure. I mean, it's, I think this is his point, you know, going back to the tweet. I, I get it because Some L1s, like, you know, they don't, they don't do as well in the following cycles. Like, look at Atom right now, right? Cosmos is not really doing a whole hot lot better. Cardano isn't really doing, you know, is gonna make, they're not gonna make new highs, right? But they're, they're still around, right? And I think these meme coins, like Dog with Hat, next cycle may not make new highs, but it, It'll probably still be around holding some value and there'll be a new one that'll make new highs. So like, I think that idea in memes is still, you know, I think, I think holds. Which coin will be it who knows but I think there's merit to it.

Dan: 36:13

Yeah. Yeah That's why I think poly markets like such a cool protocol. I'm like, yeah

Lawrence: 36:19

for sure

Dan: 36:19

pure betting on Narratives or politics or like really anything and you just kind of I know they raised a lot actually recently Yeah, that's a pretty cool idea. I raised 45 million from Peter Thiel's founder, founder's fund. Yeah. So I, yeah, I mean, I think these kinds of applications are going to continue growing, but yeah,

Lawrence: 36:44

this is, this is a, this is awesome. I love this just as much as like little meme tokens, like betting on these like zero to one outcomes is, is pretty cool. Right. Like, yeah, like, like I would love to see a vote on, do I think the debate's going to happen next month between the presidents? I personally don't. So I think that that would be cool to Keith Gill sell his ex account. Yeah, that's, that's a tough one. Oof, man. Wow. That's a, that's a tough one. Yeah. I, I I'm going to vote no on that. I think he definitely kept that, but, but that's an interesting bet. Yeah.

Dan: 37:21

Yeah. Sweet. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think we'll, we'll constantly be revisiting the medium topic anyways. It's just too big of a market to ignore at the moment. So,

Lawrence: 37:31

Oh yeah.

Dan: 37:32

We have some Ethereum news that we're going to rip through real quick. Basically, there's going to be a fork in Ethereum late 2024 called Petra, and that's going to enable various like account extraction related. Technical upgrades, the validator, max Ethereum balance per validator is going to be raised to 2048 Ethereum. So the number of validators in the network is going to shrink massively. There's a few other UIPs in there that are going to be interesting. There's this Osaka star name upgrade, which is It's basically going to allow vertical trees to increase block size by 10x, supposedly, and reduce sync time and reduce node cost. So that, we will see about that. Dank Rad Feist, is that what they're calling it?

Lawrence: 38:27

This is their next upgrade?

Dan: 38:29

Yeah, it's EIP 7607. So there's this, a hard fork here. And unclear exactly when this specific one will be rolling out, but yeah, that's kind of what they're trying to do. They're trying to just add in vertical trees to, within the Ethereum roadmap to implement this new data structure. And then some centralization stuff, Lido is controlling 28. 6 percent of state Ethereum. So, anything above 33. 3 percent is a critical threshold that you do not want to exceed. And, So that's a problem that Ethereum is facing right now. And client diversity is another challenge. So Ethereum is famous for its multi client architecture. So a lot of, a lot of other blockchains do not have this. And I don't, I think Solana maybe is, Firedancer is another client that, that opened up, not sure how many other clients there are on Ethereum or Solana. But Ethereum itself, they work very hard. They have a bunch of different developer teams that are building these clients. And the goal is to like have all the validators running these different clients. So it's an execution client and there's the consensus client. So the execution layer GIF is the common one. It still has a huge majority here. And Nethermind is another client, which isn't quite reaching the level of diversity that's needed. Here's another website that I'll share the screen on this, which just kind of like overlays the client diversity problem that Ethereum's facing. But, you know, they're still, I think, light years ahead of other blockchains.

Lawrence: 40:20

And

Dan: 40:20

Yeah, for

Lawrence: 40:20

sure.

Dan: 40:22

What, what site is this? This is client diversity.org. Cool. I wonder if they have other chains in here as well? Yeah, they're

Lawrence: 40:31

definitely doing better than Solana, that's for sure.

Dan: 40:34

Yeah, I wish they had like, I'm sure there might be equivalents for other chains. I have to look for them, but yeah, most of their chains maybe have one or two clients, max and Ethereum, I think has a good head start here. Any client bug over 33 percent could mean loss of finality. So if you have, there's a critical bug found in geth, all clients and validators running geth, the execution layer, there's going to be like major problems to the chain.

Lawrence: 41:03

Yeah.

Dan: 41:04

So we'll have to see and hope that doesn't happen. And what else? So then on the security front. We've had some recent exploits. Sonny finance wrecked. news. This is a cool website. They talk about a 20 million exploit here of the compound V2 fork. Is that, am I reading that correctly? No, it's a

Lawrence: 41:34

20 million flash loan

Dan: 41:35

attack. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Finance. I see. So it's a fork of compound V2. On optimism. It's a known donation attack and 6. 5 million was saved, but yeah, that's like not cool. That's pretty significant.

Lawrence: 41:55

Yeah.

Dan: 41:56

Ready finance had a 500, 000 exploit on Arbitrum via a callback. So if you are using pretty finance, which is unlikely because it has such a low TVL, it's probably a newer one, a newer protocol out here, but they, Are having some problems. So that's just, I'm always scared to use new protocols. I think crypto has a very unfortunate safety problem. There aren't really like security standards yet and crypto and getting audits is like tens of thousands of dollars. So that there's a risk here, risk and reward reward, potentially getting an airdrop, but the risk is you might lose all your funds. So tread carefully there, I guess. And then there's a pump. fun exploit. I don't know if you wanted to chat a little bit about this. This happened last week.

Lawrence: 42:49

Yeah, I, I know briefly, like, very blamin about it, which is just like, it's a simple, it was essentially like a place where meme tokens were. Pump. fun, you know, you could go on there and see, like, what, what Like new memes were, and just kind of like it was like a soul, soul meme coin, Solana meme coin type of place where you could just go and see what's going on with the meme coin ecosystem there. And it seems like it was a disgruntled employee that did it. He basically went in and rugged it, which is kind of ironic because Pump. Fun was meant to prevent rugs to you from giving you data about meme coins and it itself got rugged. So yeah, it was a former employee. So it's kind of crappy, but this is why we can't have nice things.

Dan: 43:36

Wow. This is, this gets messy. Apparently the this is one of the developers, maybe basically talking about how the bosses were like really bad and yeah, I don't know what's going on here. It's,

Lawrence: 43:50

yeah, it's,

Dan: 43:53

it's kind of scary, you know, that like, I think. That's just an unfortunate thing. Yeah. To have these protocols being built by like really degen anonymous developers is not great because there's always going to be an admin key involved somewhere, and then you're going to have someone who knows the technicals behind how to like orchestrate the funds and like the signatures to that contract, and it's just a recipe for. Disaster, although I will say that even if you try to do that, it's very clear crime and we're seeing this be litigated.

Lawrence: 44:33

Yup.

Dan: 44:34

It's now a lot more commonly, so I, I just don't think you're going to get away with that anymore these days, but Yup. It's pretty much still possible. You'll have a little bit of fun for like a couple months and then and then you're done.

Lawrence: 44:49

Yeah, good, good luck I say. I, I Feel like I, I don't know. I don't, I just don't see what the, I just don't see what the end game is there. I don't think there's true anonymity in this world. I think if someone has enough money and time and they want to find you, they will. It's just a matter of time. Absolutely. So

Dan: 45:10

yeah, I suppose we can move into a little bit of macro. There's an interesting crypto sector analysis tweet I saw. But yeah, basically overall prices have been up 20 percent for years. So inflation is very much still. Alive and well and with us. And we've been talking this, talking about this for a little while. And it's, yeah, it's not great. It's like not great for our economy. It's going to be hurting us.

Lawrence: 45:42

Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's pretty crappy. I mean, that's what happens when you pump, you know, how much of our money supply was pumped into the system over the last four years. You know, cause we had to give PPP loans out and stimulus and all that. So it sucks. I, I, I think that's another reason why people chase assets and meme coins because it's, again, it's your dollar is decreasing every day. So got to do something with it.

Dan: 46:12

Yeah. And then I guess kind of adjacent to that, I mean, it's, it's like a. The macro headwind that we're certainly facing. And, you know, there's going to be indicators here and there that are pointing towards like healthy economy than expected, like jobs are still doing okay and whatnot, but I think that's a definite headwind we have to deal with. But as far as, you know, on the crypto sector analysis, someone put a. chart together trying to like aggregate all the different components and compare them against each other and Yeah, I thought it was very interesting. So the chart itself shows meme coins obviously as the strongest sector So from this quarter or at least since January you know up over 500 percent generally and it just takes a sampling of You know, Bonk, Whiff, Pepe, Doge. So there's extreme growth there. The modular Sector, which was like a big hypey thing. I would say like last summer and you know, around that era, those tokens have been performing pretty poorly down 20 percent that's Celestia. Damn, is that the Solana protocol?

Lawrence: 47:32

No, I think it's, I think it's built on TIA actually, Dimension. Wow. I don't know what it does, but they had, they had a big airdrop. So to be honest, that's not surprising that. They're down so much because it, you know, typical airdrops, they sell off a lot and then, you know, they move up. So

Dan: 47:47

that's a tough one.

Lawrence: 47:52

Actually, I actually picked up some TIA recently, so I hope it turns around, but yeah, TIA is down like 50, 60 percent from the highs. So you know, We'll see. There was a lot of hype.

Dan: 48:08

Mantle did well. I believe this is like some kind of I need to get smarter on what Mantle is here, but yeah, it's governance, governance technology. mantle network. Okay. They've been doing well. Layer ones, you know, we can kind of see here. Yes. Certain tokens getting murdered here. That sector is overall at the 27 percent though. And then I think critically Solana DeFi really outshining Ethereum DeFi. Shouldn't really be too surprising given that the meme coin sector is so heavily Entrenched in Solana at the moment. So Solana reaping all those benefits. Cosmos not doing so hot here, down 30 percent and then AI thesis, despite a lot of things correcting pretty heavily, they're still up massively. So any sort of AI token and or, or decentralized physical infrastructure. So we have our weave and. Are we've like massively outperforming Filecoin, which is interesting as well. So yeah, I thought that was a cool chart that this guy's Ceteris, Ceteris Paribus, but with a one for that and see here, anything else you want to chat through on the macro front or.

Lawrence: 49:33

So I mean, if any, no one really follows this, that the consumer price index was printed pretty surprisingly lower, a little, a little unexpectedly. So inflation soften basically. And I think that's the reason why markets picked up a little last week. Cause that was like a good, a good indicator that the rate tightening cycle is coming to an end. So, you know, it's, that's bullish overall structurally for, for risk assets. crypto, but all risk assets. So you know, it's a good sign that things could be turning around and you know, we'll, we'll see some, some softening of our, our market. But, you know, just to, just to a note, like I follow some macro news and it's, there's a lot of conflicting signals. Some are bullish, some are not so bullish. Like liquidity is, is trending lower, for example, which is not good for crypto, but then the, Inflation is going lower, which is good for crypto. So like there's a lot of, you know, a lot of people that I follow are, you know, they get, they say, we think this is the direction, but the conviction seems to be very low and that they, they don't, it's basically like, this is what we think now, but in a week or two, like everything completely changed. You know, it's, there's a lot of different signs pointing in different directions and it's, it's hard to know we're in, we're in a new market. It seems we're in a new world for Macworld. There's a lot of things happening that has never happened before. So

Dan: 50:57

just got to hang on trying to find what the number is. At least what the, what's CPI? I mean, I know they've been also juking the numbers like crazy, right? They like took out coffee or something like they remove coffee.

Lawrence: 51:09

Yeah.

Dan: 51:11

Various other data points like over the past.

Lawrence: 51:13

They always remove stuff and then they revise the numbers too, which is another thing that's annoying. Like they'll put the numbers out and then a few months later they'll revise them. So you have to keep track of revisions too. So like the numbers they give you now are not the numbers that are always there. They change, you know, it's like, it's honestly like it's just not a good way of tracking data. Like they, it's just very, it seems like we're still in like the eighties here with how we track data with inflation. It's always backwards looking, right? Like, you're always looking backwards to see how much changed. It's not really current. So, you don't really know you're screwed until a year later, basically.

Dan: 51:50

Yeah, exactly. It's very political in nature as well. I, I kind of taking these numbers with a grain of salt, but yeah, it's a 0. 3 percent and maybe they were expecting 0. 5. But you know, if they're, if they're juking the numbers, like I have a hard time trusting it, but that would be cool to see if there's charts out there that compare, like, with the metrics from like four years ago to today. Okay. I'd have to do more research on that. But I mean, it's

Lawrence: 52:19

just, it's just our system moves slowly. And that's one thing that we're like, we need cryptos. Cryptos moves at the speed of the internet. Right. And it's, it's internet of money. And. You know, a lot of the world's still not running on that. So, you know, you, you see these numbers get printed and you're like, well, I don't understand. Like I go to the supermarket and food is more expensive. Like everything's more expensive. These numbers are looking backwards, right? So it's like kind of confusing to see, oh, CPI is lower this month, but then you go to the supermarket and like prices are higher, right? But you don't see that until a couple months later when they print the new numbers and then it's again. Those are backward looking So like it's like you're never really getting a current picture of things You're always getting what happened already and you know about so yeah It's you know, but this is how this is but the the point is that this is how they drive policy decisions And this is what makes this is it does affect your life because that's how you know If they lower interest rates or whatever, this is the data they use so you do need to keep track of it Yeah,

Dan: 53:20

and I know we, we know people personally experiencing downtrends and decreased volume across the board in certain areas and yeah, I think people are starting to feel the hurt. I mean, they've been feeling the hurt for a very long time, and I'm definitely feeling it too. Just any sort of grocery shop or going to a restaurant. Like, it's like unbelievable. Like I can't, yeah,

Lawrence: 53:43

yeah, it sucks. Every time I go to the supermarket, I just get depressed. Like, I'm like, how does everything cost so much? I just, it seems way more expensive. Yeah, it is. It doesn't seem that way. It is. I mean, when you compare the bill, like I feel like I'm paying 50 percent more. It's not even 20%. It's way higher. So yeah, that's exactly

Dan: 54:05

right. It's quite intense and severe, but so we got, we had a lot of legal stuff happen, right? Yeah. So, I mean, I think some good news here on the legal political front, I would say, I mean, there's, there's more on the political front, I would say, but. There's a big battle going on right now in Congress, which like, I'm, I think it's pretty exciting. So SAB 121, which stands for Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 was a ruling enforced by the SEC or passed by the SEC maybe several years ago. And basically it, it forced banks to, if they wanted to, The custody custodians of crypto for their customers. They had to treat crypto holdings as liabilities, not assets, which meant that they had to hold an equivalent reserve in cash. To whatever their crypto holdings were equivalent to in a dollar equivalent. So it just is very burdensome for banks to then have to basically manage all their cash holdings with regards to like whatever crypto that they're holding. So that is a major problem. And. We recently had the House pass a, a rule, or they invoked some rule to repeal that act from the SEC. So it passed the House recently, and then it moved on to the Senate. And the Senate, the Democrats have a lead there currently. So if the Democrats were united, they could have squashed the bill, but the Democrats actually, 60 to 38, passed it. So there's yeah, and Chuck Schumer actually voted for the repeal of it. So a lot of Democrats have been breaking the ranks. And deciding to support this, this bill, which is, so it's been very bipartisan in nature and really the only holdouts now are like the Elizabeth Warren faction Gary Gensler and Biden and Biden promised to veto the bill. If the repeal bill came to his desk, so he promised that a few weeks ago, but I think there's been a lot of ramping up of political talk for support of crypto generally, and we're seeing Republicans firmly embracing crypto now as like campaign strategy, all the, the Trump NFT holders are like people that were in the top club there, they like. Flew out to Mar a Lago and, and Trump is like held an event for them. And so that is exciting to see. And now we're basically just waiting to see what Biden's going to do. But I think Biden's in a lose lose situation. If Biden decides to veto it, it shows that he's broken the ranks with his own party and is just firmly entrenched in what Warren wants for crypto right now. And if he doesn't veto it and signs it, then he's like not a man of his word. And he basically went back on what he said earlier that he would veto it. So he kind of loses some credibility there. So I, yeah, I just think it's like a very spicy time right now to like see how this resolves and also that Democrats are paying a lot more attention to crypto in the face of this upcoming election season.

Lawrence: 57:37

Yeah, yeah, I think this is, this is a head scratcher, right? Because, you know, you don't see this a lot with our government where, which is unfortunate, but it's like, you know, when they actually agree on something yeah, I mean, I think ultimately they, they, the Democrats realize that crypto is not a hill worth dying on for their election. It's just, it's, it's not like they need to be, you know, we have an ETF, people are making money. A lot of voters own crypto now and they can't just ignore it. And I see this as the Democrats just don't feel that it's, again, like it's a hill worth dying on for the election. They just, just, we, you know, it's, I don't know what the big deal is. I mean, we I think it's a very reasonable thing to vote on and to allow. I

Dan: 58:25

Yeah, we're going to get some clarity on that very soon. I think we'll know in the next week, like what happens. So we'll have a followup

Lawrence: 58:34

on this next episode. I hope Biden doesn't veto it personally. I think that he would look very out of touch by doing that. And it just, you know it would shoot him in the foot. I think, even though we'll lose some credibility with previous statements, but I think people are going to forget pretty quickly, people are going to forget that he. Went back on his word a lot quicker than if he, if he vetoes this bill, people are going to remember that a lot longer.

Dan: 59:03

I agree.

Lawrence: 59:04

So,

Dan: 59:05

yeah, I mean, it's just a smart political move at this point. So we'll, we'll have to see how that plays out. As well, there is a fit act, which is making its way through. It's going to, there's going to be a four vote next week. And this is basically a very comprehensive bill. That I believe was also proposed a couple of years ago, or maybe in the last year I don't exactly know what this will cover. It's going to be voted on next week. I think it has relatively bipartisan support. I think the crypto community has been kind of lukewarm to it, where it's like going to be adding a lot of rails to various components here. And I saw a breakdown from Gabriel Shapiro on what he thinks of this. And it fits. Does end up passing. He sort of sums it up as 20 something nerds can make whatever protocols they want in their mom's basement, but go to market, they'll need to get their DAP interface on some kind of Coinbase DeFi hub, and it's licensed by the CFTC or the SEC, and then give huge vig to Coinbase, A16Z, Paradigm, or whoever else. So basically. Whatever loans or, you know, they're going to be giving interest to those other parties. So it seems to describe it as a very complex act, but in the end, it's likely that people can still have fun coding and like making whatever protocols that they want, but if they want to like really get people using it, they have to go through these licensed guardrail entities. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not sure how you feel about it or if you feel this, I haven't

Lawrence: 1:01:09

really read, read it, to be honest, I haven't read much, so I don't have. But it's all I, I do know is that Coinbase has been there a lot and Brian has been there a lot and I'm, my assumption is that there's a lot of rules in there that give Coinbase like a moat, you know, and they're, they're going to have control of the industry here. So that kind of sucks because kind of goes against what it's all about really. But that's also how our system works, unfortunately, which is you climb the ladder and then you pull it up and prevent other people from doing it. So that's, I, I don't know. I, I, I got to read more about it. Honestly, I, I shouldn't really. Say, I mean, this is just a tweet, right? I don't know this person. I don't know what this person's saying either. So it's like, I got to read it, but even though I probably won't even understand it, maybe I could just feed it to Claude or something. Maybe he can tell me, but I don't know. Yeah,

Dan: 1:02:09

that's a move. I think yeah, we'll have to do a deeper dive and I don't think it's fully permeated the crypto feeds yet. I think it probably will have big implications for the industry and it probably will like harm the true spirit of crypto in a way, but Yeah, we'll have to have more takes on it and let things suffer. Yeah. But it, it's definitely seems to be moving quickly.

Lawrence: 1:02:30

I mean, the, the glass have full view here is like our government is caring more about it finally. And it just seemed like there's, you know, there's, there is a, a place now for crypto in the government and they are really paying attention. They're not just ignoring it anymore. So I'm at least happy that they're thinking about this and they're working through it. That we, we do need more clarity, whether good or bad on, cause right now with no clarity, it's just all bad, right? We're assuming the worst, but with some clarity, at least like we have some route to do something. I mean, I'm so tired of every single app I go on. It's like, Oh, you're from the U S you can't use the app. I mean, I have that so much now and I just like, it's something is better than nothing at all. So, you know, we need something.

Dan: 1:03:20

Yeah. And I mean, It may help there's like staying with crypto this organization. I know Coinbase has been like shilling whenever you like log into the app and. Yeah. I mean, this has over 90 million of donations here.

Lawrence: 1:03:37

Wow.

Dan: 1:03:37

So it's a very significant lobby that ranks different politicians on their crypto stances. So that's cool. Hey, definitely check it out. Actually. What did they say? Did they say there's a banner at the top here? It just maybe was talking about the fit act. Which which site is this, Dan? So this is, is stand with crypto.org. Okay. And what do we have here? I'll put that in the show notes as well, just for anyone wants to follow it afterwards. and like, who, who's Procr, who's anti crypto. So I think it's cool, cool protocol to check out organization and, yeah, I mean I mean there was the MEV Exploiters, they, they got arrested last week. Are these

Lawrence: 1:04:24

the guys from MIT?

Dan: 1:04:26

I believe so, yes.

Lawrence: 1:04:28

Yeah,

Dan: 1:04:29

so this is yeah, maybe one of the stories you can wrap on kind of a confusing situation here, right? It's very in the weeds of MEV and like modifying architecture of some clients to dupe. Some other sandwich attack bots. So these people built a way to like dupe it and they fooled these other Sandwich bots and they tricked them and they basically were able to siphon 25 million dollars in funds. Damn. Unfortunately these people that like built this bot to do that Their search history was kind of like querying money laundering law, like, and wire fraud, which countries, like, don't extradite to the United States. So that kind of establishes some kind of intent there. And you know, the charges are coming from the DOJ and basically accusing them of manipulating the protocol in an illegal way. So, you know, it's kind of odd. And then there's some takes here from Alliance DAO, quote, when an MEV bot uses 25 million of stable coins to sandwich eight different transactions of illiquid coins, that is a completely honest business. However, if you bait this MEV bot, then that's a crime. So it's kind of like an ironic thing here. What's legal MEV and what's illegal MEV that gets you 20 years in jail? Stealing from thieves is still theft.

Lawrence: 1:06:09

Yeah, I mean, man, there's so much going on with this. There's a misunderstanding of, like, there's a very small amount of people who even know what MFV is. There's probably no one in our government who knows what that is. So this is going to be an interesting one for them to suss through. I mean, it's, it's like any computer crime. Like, what is that, what's, what's valid and not, right? What's an honest thing and versus not? Yeah, this is, this is a tricky one. I ultimately feel if you're stealing money, Then fuck off. You know, you deserve to get some kind of, you deserve to get something for that. Something should happen to you if you steal money. But what does that mean in this world of like, you know, it's, you, and that's, that's where the lawmakers are going to have their work cut out for them. It's like, how did What does it mean to steal from an MMV bot? What is a valid MMV transaction versus an invalid MMV? You know, it's that, there's a lot of work there. I mean, we, we deal with this. This has been a part of computer and technology forever, right? I mean, it's like when when a hacker You know, they if someone goes into your database and sees passwords in plain text and takes them out and uses them to log in and steal money, I'm sure that that was kind of similar when that first started happening in computers, you know, like, was that a crime or who should go to prison for that? The person who put the password in there, the person who stole it. Right. So like, I think that that's where the work, a lot of work has to happen here still is, is what the crime is versus not.

Dan: 1:07:38

Yeah, I agree. I think we're going to get some good definitions hopefully out of this and knowing what is, you know, they have to find a reasonable translation to the web to world because like,

Lawrence: 1:07:49

yeah,

Dan: 1:07:50

yeah. Back then when like we were first doing, you know, passwords and like online applications, it's like, yeah, well, I was just like using the technology at my disposal to like, get it right. It's like, why is that illegal? But you know, code is a law, I think is. Starting to fade away, we're going to, we're going to be seeing less and less of that. And hopefully that encourages more safety in our space. So I'm kind of like, Luke warm on this right now. It's a very technical case, I'm sure. And we're going to have more analysis on this to come. So yeah, yeah. Good stuff. All right.

Lawrence: 1:08:30

Quite a lot of stuff today. Yeah, quite beefy. Yeah. Well, it was, it was a lot happening. So it's, it seems like time, interesting time to be in the markets. Very excited about like these legal things happening. Actually. I think that it's like a big deal for us to, it's like legitimizing the industry in this, in the U S at least. Yeah. So,

Dan: 1:08:54

yeah. All

Lawrence: 1:08:56

right. Well, if you're still listening, thank you so much for sticking with us this long and have a good time out there.

Dan: 1:09:04

Everyone take care. Peace.