Dealflow Podcast
[Ep#7] THE HOTTEST TOPICS IN CRYPTO...
In this episode, guests @0xKdot & @mehdifarooq2, dive into some of the most exciting sectors of the crypto industry.
Everything from $EIGEN and $FRIEND token launches, through to Solana memecoins and the rise of @Popcatsolana... Get ready for real alpha 👀
Timestamps :
00:00 Introduction and Overview
01:33 Friend Tech Controversies and Exclusions in Airdrops
12:11 Eigen Tokenomics & Airdrop Controversy
24:47 The Rise of Meme Coins on Solana
27:10 The Appeal of Meme Coins to Retail Investors
31:07 Identifying Successful Meme Coins
32:46 The Role of Luck and Team Connections
36:47 The io.net Controversy
44:56 CZ's Sentencing
50:26 Outro
Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@DealFlowPodcast
Spotify : https://open.spotify.com/show/6s9tYwNlVkI4hPRh3nthyu
[Disclaimer: It's important to note that the information provided here does not constitute financial advice. The views and opinions expressed herein are purely personal and do not in any way represent or reflect the official stance or viewpoints of the individuals company]
In this episode, guests @0xKdot & @mehdifarooq2, dive into some of the most exciting sectors of the crypto industry.
Everything from $EIGEN and $FRIEND token launches, through to Solana memecoins and the rise of @Popcatsolana... Get ready for real alpha 👀
Timestamps :
00:00 Introduction and Overview
01:33 Friend Tech Controversies and Exclusions in Airdrops
12:11 Eigen Tokenomics & Airdrop Controversy
24:47 The Rise of Meme Coins on Solana
27:10 The Appeal of Meme Coins to Retail Investors
31:07 Identifying Successful Meme Coins
32:46 The Role of Luck and Team Connections
36:47 The io.net Controversy
44:56 CZ's Sentencing
50:26 Outro
Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@DealFlowPodcast
Spotify : https://open.spotify.com/show/6s9tYwNlVkI4hPRh3nthyu
[Disclaimer: It's important to note that the information provided here does not constitute financial advice. The views and opinions expressed herein are purely personal and do not in any way represent or reflect the official stance or viewpoints of the individuals company]
All right, welcome to another episode of the DealFlow podcast. It's a rainy Monday morning in London, but very, very happy to be here. Today's topic a slightly interesting one. You know, typically we would get a guest on or a specific project, but the truth is that the last two weeks have been just so chock-a-block full of updates that are desperate for discussion. That that's the way we're going to go today, so hopefully we won't disappoint with some of the topics we've got. But before we dive into the interesting stuff, just a quick disclaimer. To say nothing in this podcast is in any way financial advice. We're going to talk about tokens. We're planning to talk about specific solana meme coins, so I need to make that one absolutely clear cryptocurrency is always risky, whatever the asset. Please do your own research and don't take anything we say all too seriously. Okay with me today, as ever. Our KDOT, general partner at MH Ventures and Mehdi, head of investment and partnerships at the Animoca Brands. How are you doing today, gents? Very well, thank you.
Speaker 1:It's bright and sunny in Dubai. I thought it might be.
Speaker 3:Hey, listen, mehdi was there a storm again the other day.
Speaker 2:A little bit, but it wasn't as ferocious those man-made storms. Yeah, not as ferocious.
Speaker 1:It was the weather manipulation that does it right. That is the question. No, I've heard there was like five storms at once. Given they were man made, they weren't seeding, that wasn't the cause of it. I don't know. I don't know. Still conspiracy theorist in me. Um, but without further ado, I think it would be wicked to kick off with some token related. Developments like the last.
Speaker 1:I guess two weeks really have yielded a lot of controversies in the, the new token, the tg, the arop space, a couple of names in particular. I think one that it would be good to touch on first is Frentech. So obviously Frentech really rose to prevalence at, I guess, the tail end of the crypto winter, the real sort of hard out post FTX bear market. It rose to fame with sort of the likes of Stars Arena, this kind of stuff. They call themselves SocialFi. I think in reality what it is is gambling on kols, like for better or worse. That's kind of how it was actually structured. It's not social fine in the pure sense, uh, but regardless. Crazy usership figures breaking headlines for basically two months straight. Then bitcoin starts to do interesting things. Attention shifts to um spot Bitcoin, etfs and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1:Stars Arena, frentech completely fall by the wayside, and I think the reason, at least from where I'm sitting the reason for that is that investors wanted something to speculate on in the bear market and while major tokens and meme coins weren't doing well, suddenly gambling on influencers and KOLs had real appeal.
Speaker 1:Now prices are doing fairly well, or at least were in sort of proper Q1 of 2024. The interest sort of waned, but that hasn't stopped Frentech coming out with its own token. The airdrop took place last week with claims opening, but there was an awful lot of controversy around it, not least because it was a bit of a flop in itself and the price tanked, but because A there were widespread reports about people just completely unable to claim their tokens. And while those unable to claim reports were ongoing, the single biggest friend token airdrop recipient I've forgotten what the exact name was, it was 0xCASP or something like that he dumped, or they dumped, their entire stacks while some users were still unable to claim, basically undermining that whole. We've got an airdrop we're going to dump on retail investors thing. Do we think this is fair? Do we think the friend tech team is really to blame or do we think this is basically just a symptom of how incredibly vicious and toxic airdrops can be maybe break down my overall like thoughts on on friend tech.
Speaker 3:So, firstly, I don't like I think the idea is great, um, I think it's cool. I think maybe the setup was I've always said this in the setups pretty stupid. Having a separate app or kind of bookmark app, um, is one. Two, I just don't see, uh, it having a really big or long life, uh, span on it because, like you said at the start, it was a kol play. If you're on board all k-wells at the beginning, like I, just I just don't see there ever being a way of like, oh you know, I'm not going to go there now and buy the top of someone, um, or or you know, see how that works.
Speaker 3:I haven't used the app in a long while and if you look at analytics, you can see a massive downtrend of them not onboarding new users or came to a point of having like 200 people at any one point per day. Again, compare that to some of the dApps on crypto. Maybe that is quite a high number. And users saw a flurry of new users come in not new years returning users when they announced the, the token drop, and everyone returning to the app because we probably wanted to claim or sell their their keys that they had do we think it was unfair, right the way it all played out?
Speaker 1:do people actually have a reason to be angry here with everything, with all the controversy around the airdrop, or is it basically just like? I'm sorry, you're getting free tokens for doing very, very little?
Speaker 3:So I think that that take that I've heard a lot is like, oh, you're doing little to get free tokens, is kind of a really bad way to wrap it. I think that's unfair because you're telling people hey look, you do this and you get X in return, right, or you do X, you get Y in return. So if I was going to go to a shop and I was going to buy something and as a part of me buying this item, I was supposed to get a free item, and if they said to me, I'm sorry, the free item's not available, you're not allowed to get it, then I should be like okay, I'm, I'm buying this because I'm getting the free item, it complements what I'm buying. Should I be okay with the fact that I'm buying it? I'm not, I'm not getting this free item, I shouldn't. No, I should be like no, that's unfair, I should get that at a later date or when it's back in stock.
Speaker 3:I just don't think we'd accept that in any other format. So why should we accept it now, in in because we're getting free tokens and oh, we should just deal with it is one thing. I don't think that's right. I think, two, that um was there. You know any wrongdoing here? Probably not. Maybe it was an overload on the app. They probably had like so many users coming back at one time trying to claim and everyone's, you know, wanting to dump. They're seeing the price. Was it like six or eight dollars at peak? Everyone's like shit, I've got like 200 000 tokens or 50 000 tokens or even 10 000 tokens. You're like you just want to dump, right, so everyone wants to claim. Um, I think that that's my thoughts. I don't think we should be like, oh, you get free tokens shut up and just take what you've given.
Speaker 1:You know, you should, everyone should get their fair share of what they were supposed to get yeah, but I mean, but the analogy you use and I'm just playing devil's advocate like when you buy something and you get a free item, you have committed capital there. Do you know what I mean? Like you have actually, like put a state but.
Speaker 2:But in this economy even attention is capital, right, so you have your physical capital and then you have your time. But but to be fair, like firstly just to give a backdrop on friendtech, I think it was good like they they were initially the ones who kind of designed the points program before everybody came in the bonding curve was very innovative, I, I, I thought, uh, other projects leveraging that type of thinking and tokenomics, like for example, pump Pump Fun, they're doing really well, they're making a lot of money. So I think there were useful things that came out of that ecosystem. I don't think I would particularly blame them. Let's say, look, they started this points program. You can make a bit of money and sometimes tech breaks. So those people who were able to claim it first and sell it first, they were at an advantageous position. But we can't blame that on the team.
Speaker 2:Right, like things, things break down. I think the whole idea is who dumps on the retail first? And there were some few lucky ones that were able to do it. But I think for us it's like that part is broken, like retail at the end of the day becoming exit liquidity. I think that is the part that needs fixing from an industry-wide perspective rather than, um blaming it on one project, right, um, so, yeah, yeah, but I'm pretty happy. I just did like few things and I made hundred dollars. It's. I'm still putting that in friendtech token. I think it's undervalued at 200 million, 300 million, something like that, yeah, so I don't think it was unfair. Um, yeah, it's just the just the fact the industry is broken, like it's kind of like speed towards exit so maybe do you actually think that there's going to be.
Speaker 3:Now they've had this airdrop, people have farmed the token. I don't know if there's going to be any more seasons maybe I'm not I'm not familiar on that side but you actually think it's going to be a product that will be used? After what has happened since the airdrop everyone's selling their, their keys or other people's keys that you think people are going to come back and use the platform?
Speaker 2:yeah, so, yeah, yeah. So what's happening is everybody, whatever airdrops or points they had, that they're selling it. There is a lot of sell pressure that puts the valuation of this social fly platform undervalued, because there's too much sell pressure and buy pressure cannot cope up. But let's say, if you have a situation where the market, the fdv, is 150, 200 million and you look at other social five platform and you look at other chains from comp perspective, it might start becoming attractive for the buyer to slowly start start coming in. There was a point they made a lot of revenue and I think it will be a bet on the future but more towards the app, not the token.
Speaker 3:Do you think that the app itself? People are going to use it now?
Speaker 2:it depends on what new features they bring. I think they've recently introduced chatroom um, but I think they have strong competitors, for example forecaster. There are loads of apps building.
Speaker 1:This is the thing, yeah like I don't necessarily like having, because so I worked in vc for a little while and you know, throughout sort of bearish months looking very hard at thesis plays. Right, we're looking very, very closely at, among other things, social phi and what that really means and where the value proposition really is for for the end user and for the platform itself. Right, and I just wouldn't necessarily rope um friend tech or stars arena in the genuine social phi bracket. I think something like lens farcaster, that is actually a much better reflection of the advantages that web3 has to offer social media.
Speaker 1:Right in the terms of like freedom from centralized parties, censorship, resistance, you know, alternative monetization avenues, these sort of really traditional value ads, not to say they'll do well, right, like obviously they're very, very small in terms of usership at the moment. They've been around for a while and never, ever have really achieved anything close to like critical mass right, that sort of like base level usership. You need to get a social application off the ground. But I actually think that Frentech, stars Arena are kind of you could almost. They're a bit more polymarket-esque. They're betting platforms on a particular asset. That asset is just more social in nature. It's not actually a decentralized social platform in the way that like a lens or a forecaster is.
Speaker 3:That's my take anyway I think, like on that as well, as I think that frentech lives and dies on kols that we've already mentioned. So kols have already found why they're coming back to even chat to the people that hold their tokens. I don't think that happens. I think literally just dies from. I think it is. Yeah, I don't think there's going to be.
Speaker 1:I mean. Solana lives and dies by KOLs as well, but it's slightly different.
Speaker 3:What? Because of Anson, anson, but we'll get to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah, so I look.
Speaker 3:For a period of time. You know, from the launch, then afterwards, you know, six months after that, like they just pretty much died between two to 600 users per day and weren't onboarding that many new users on Front Tech. And then you know there were probably constant sell pressure on keys throughout that period and not many people buying new keys after that hype. So you know, and then with the token launch you just saw a lot of influx of sales as well. So I just don't see token price cool. You know I've seen it undervalued. Yes that you know they could be trading on there and stuff like that. I just don't see people using Frentech as a platform or a social media platform.
Speaker 1:Fair play, fair play, fair play. So that leads us on actually to our next sort of airdrop controversy topic, which is eigen. So the context there, I think this is probably one that doesn't need as much introduction. But obviously eigen has been, I suppose, leading probably the single biggest airdrop points program in existence, to the extent that it is not just within their ecosystem, it extended to other defi platforms puffer, renzo, pendle, these kind of stuff that were also accruing airdrop points. So they have, you know, done an airdrop, um, an airdrop point system across the entire restaking vertical, not just their project. So then, last week, or was it the end of the week before, very recently, right, they introduced their tokenomic details. It was like a 20 page white paper, whatever, and there were probably about four or five different issues that the community took issue with. So that's in comparison to strk, right, the starknet airdrop, which had a lot of controversy, that was really just focused on one or two things, which was this crazy, crazy cliff that, um, starknet's team and investors were going to get in, and I think it was april, it was meant to happen, push back, sorted, basically no sort of you know, agro or anything around it. Now, eigen, meanwhile, first of all, they've done the biggest airdrop ever and they've only allocated 15 of token supply to it. That is not alone too bad five percent of this first season but crucially, that first season cut out all of its ecosystem projects. So pendle, renzo. There's literally just one paragraph that said if you, if you stay deep through, you know a number of these protocols or the associated d5 platforms, maybe take a look at season two and you might get something right. That's going to be a small allocation. We know that.
Speaker 1:Another issue was the crazy allocation to team and investors, right? So if you look at 15 for community airdrops, right, yeah, 45 overall for community generally, then you had I think it was 25.5 to the team itself, to eigen's, you know, notably lean team, and then I think 29.5 to its early investors, right so a load of vcs that we're all very familiar with on that list. So that was another issue. Then you had the besting for that collectively 55 allocation across team and investors. That was only one year lock, followed by two years linear. So basically, it's suicide for a retail investor to buy that token for probably about a three-year period, or at least that's the sentiment around it. So these were the kind of issues but, basically, it wasn't just yeah, go on.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So majority of the countries out there, like uk, uk, us, pakistan, like 80 of the countries out there in the world, you cannot claim the airdrop. So, um, talking about permissionless global network, I think this is where they kind of fail. Uh, maybe they did it for regulatory purpose, but it doesn't work like that in crypto, in my opinion no 100.
Speaker 1:So I think you know, in that particular instance and you know we we spoke about, you know how the friend text community basically just got free tokens, you shouldn't complain I mean, we didn't say that was definitely the case, but we at least spoke about it eigen they had basically they had 16, 15 to 16 billion in tvl purely because of that point system, like purely because of that point system. They were early to it, they established it quickly. That's how they locked all those funds. So you know, if you assume that let's even just say 50 percent of of the eth locked in in that tvl was for airdrop points, you have, you know, seven to eight billion dollars worth of opportunity cost.
Speaker 2:I also feel I also feel everything was hurried, like you kind of feel like there are no actively validated services on top which, basically, like your staked eat or your restaked eat gets slashed. So I felt like a lot of things were hurried. Maybe they just wanted to take advantage of the market we we currently are in. I just felt like a lot of things were hurried, even the white paper out of nowhere, doing a bear market when, when markets were kind of exhausted with multiple points program, I think they just like dropped all of this. So I felt like the timing was very, very bad, where people were like kind of frustrated like the whole crypto twitter was in kind of like state of frustration when they kind of dropped all of this information and I felt like the protocol still doesn't have actively validated services that are leveraging the stake keith. So I felt like the whole saga, apart from the airdrop, I felt like the timing was absolutely horrendous in terms of the yeah, the the timing of it as well. Um, well.
Speaker 1:So some real strong analysts and this was over maybe the last four to six weeks some some genuine defy analysts, slash builders, were saying, basically, eigen layer tvl is too big, the actively validated services they can't keep up. It's not all needed for security. Eigenlayer t, eigenlayer yield is about to drop off a cliff and I wonder whether just sort of like the early stages of those kind of reports and that kind of analysis pushed them to sort of release stuff quicker than they intended to and potentially into more market headwinds than they had intended to as well. So I kind of understand that. I do kind of understand that and obviously with any airdrop um blast was the really really obvious one you are going to shed tvl over the first few days, doesn't matter what you do. It could be 10, could be 20.
Speaker 1:We saw with blast that it was like I mean, what was? It was like 80 or something disgusting like that. But it's going to happen. You're going to have to take an l on that, you're going to have to take a hit at some point. What I really really disagree with was the way that they designed the, the mechanisms themselves, like not so much like when when they launched, and stuff like that, but actually just the way it was designed. And you're sat there thinking, how did they push this through? The inevitable series of meetings that they had to to agree this stuff? And the reason that it got pushed through, in my mind, is because all the team members were getting nice.
Speaker 2:I think the percentage wise, like I. I think percentage wise, 50 I 15, I don't think it's that bad. But in terms of the context of things where you have 15, billion yeah, the 15 billion tv a lot. There was like too much expectation from them. I feel like the percentage was it's not a bad number, like if somebody tells you I feel like the percentage wise it's not a bad number, like if somebody tells you 15% is not a bad number but, 55% going to internal investors.
Speaker 1:So I think, in terms of investors.
Speaker 2:The reason why EigenLayer has so much hype is because they have A16Z, they have multi-coin, they have polychain and these investors obviously would want to make money. So I don't disagree on the investor. Part T maybe had way more tokens than they will have liked, but especially if you're building something brand new in the vertical, I think you have to cut them slack. But for me, the the thing that just didn't sit well was they were trying to limit people in terms of geography and also the details were missing, like season two, season three, let's say the lrts that are being built.
Speaker 2:How? How would those airdrop be distributed? So so I think those parts were you can like object. You can also object that like 55 of token, especially in a proof of stake system, kind of makes the token centralized. But you can also kind of feel for the team that, look, they have the best cap table out there. They're innovating.
Speaker 1:They might need the gap, but they're going to dump it anyway, so it's not a concentration issue yeah, but it's a security issue.
Speaker 2:Right, like with proof of stake. You want that decentralization because, let's say, if let's say, even if you look at the utility of the token, you're basically staking eigen token to basically, uh, what they call intersubjective faults, right, intersubjective faults, which are like things that Ethereum cannot verify. Right, like smaller things that are off-chain, that Ethereum cannot verify. For that you need eigen token. But let's say, if the eigen token is centralized, then basically there are attack vectors and Sybil stuff, that that that can come out of it. Um, so I kind of like digested point of view of both the party. I felt like, yeah, it's just one of those situations where timing got wrong, in my opinion definitely.
Speaker 1:I mean, I didn't even think about the security issues, though this is on the on the on the point system.
Speaker 3:If it's too good to be true, then it's too good to be true, right, like? And I think that's the problem with like eigen being that they got too big and everyone else was trying to get a piece of the pie and I just didn't see it. There was going to ever going to be a good outcome for people to be ever happy with it, whereas, like, if you look at in comparison to, let's say, jupiter, or even looking at wormhole, you never knew. You never knew there was going to be an airdrop, but you just used the platform and you were lucky. Oh my god, look, I've got an airdrop. It's worth thousands of dollars. And that's how you don't disappoint, because there's no expectations, um, and it's a win-win right.
Speaker 1:Too much expectation, way too much expectation. I mean, that is true, like you just mentioned, they had like 16 billion in tbl.
Speaker 3:How does anyone like, if they're you know one, they're not going to allocate a big amount of tokens. If they do, then it's just a dump fest, which means on launch they, you know the price discovery doesn't look great for for the chart. I think that's one thing.
Speaker 1:So I yeah, like I didn't participate in the airdrop but they took, however, many billion dollars of retail capital and used it to raise big institutional rounds.
Speaker 2:They didn't do it like that.
Speaker 1:No, no that's totally so. Am I getting the timeline wrong?
Speaker 2:here. Yeah, you're getting that part wrong. I think that the vision they had there was a lot of hype and even before the TVL started coming in, if you you look at Eigenlehr seed round, none of the TVL was there and Eigenlehr was getting hot at seed as well as private A rounds. So I think they didn't use the retail money to kind of hype it up. It was just the fact that all the crypto circle were talking about Eigenlehr. It got hyped up in the primary market and people starting putting money.
Speaker 3:It did help with.
Speaker 1:Second maybe though yeah they did announce a 100 million dollar series b in february when the tvr was very much there but that one I don't believe it would have been as hard.
Speaker 2:Tvl was already 7 billion then uh, it was only so.
Speaker 1:I thought it was more than 7 billion at tvl. Uh, in february was it? Was it lower than? Was it lower than that? I thought it was already like 7 billion at TVL in February. Was it lower than that? I thought it was already like much, much higher.
Speaker 2:Now the TVL was already 7 billion, but I can tell you even before the TVL was going, there was a lot of investor attention Like Paradigm wanted to invest, a16z wanted to invest, I wanted to invest, Everybody wanted to invest in iGlear because the vertical had a map I mean we were covering it like way, even way back before then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to be fair, we're still like a wholly discussed even in otc markets.
Speaker 2:What were? What was happening was there was no seller, all all buyers.
Speaker 2:There was no selling bids, there were mostly right now you're, you're, now you're seeing sell bids as well at like nine ten. I just felt like the ambition of the project was too big. There was like very, very high expectation and I think it's one of those outcome is very difficult to like satisfy everyone. I did feel that tokenomics was something novel. I think they just kind of like started a crypto code system with their intersubjectivity token work model. I thought was interesting. So so yeah, I yeah. It's just one of those funny situations like you can't, you can't say it's a good thing or a bad thing, it's just yeah. As I scam mentioned, the expectations were too high.
Speaker 3:What does it matter, though? Anyway, no one can claim everyone's banned right so that just didn't ride with me, because everyone is banned.
Speaker 1:Who's left? Yeah, if you, it feels like you that was. That was the one that really got you is the geography exclusion, because that is something.
Speaker 2:It's that that's in your control, right, like you can take that risk, yeah, uh, while some of the other things okay 15 to this, 25 to investor like there's some logistics around practicalities that you can't adjust those. But geography-wise I felt like the whole ethos of crypto is it's permissionless and everybody can participate. What was the fault of some person in Pakistan who just staked three ETH? So I felt like that just didn't sit right with me and, to be fair, even people in uk and and, and I think only latin american and and some people in middle east, they are the ones who will be beneficiaries of this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so they just looked at, they just looked at google analytics and were like, okay, who, who's where the traffic coming from? Let's ban all of those. They must be the depositors. And they literally said that's it. Exclude these guys, exclude these guys. But what? Did anyone know what happens to those tokens that don't get claimed? Do they go back to the foundation? Did they get burnt? What happens?
Speaker 1:I mean, I find it hard to believe that eventually they won't get claimed, depending on how big they are right. For a 500 bucket airdrop, people might not care, but if someone's got a few thousand there, I think they'll find a way. But also, yeah, like arbitrum, they had loads of unclaimed and say, loads, right, a small percentage, because the market cap was so big. It became a really meaningful and I'm pretty sure that just got absorbed by the treasury eventually. But I'm not sure. But I think there are some precedents around around what occurs with that. But we are burning time as well. So I reckon let's almost move to the complete opposite end of the vc backed airdrop type project and let's talk about meme coins. Right, because it feels like okay. So, first of all, first thing to mention is that 2021 meme coins were the domain of ethereum. That was pretty much it right. Dogecoin in and of itself, own network, fine. But then you had your ships, your pepe, and those were the rising ones. Now, uncontroversially, it's very much shifted to solana, which I think is a reflection of how vibrant that ecosystem is, because you need a high proportion of, you need a high number of retail investors within your ecosystem to have a like a flourishing meme coin ecosystem. So that's a reflection of the fact that solana has done that in a really pure sense, but it almost feels so. Last week, last couple of weeks in fact.
Speaker 1:Obviously we're a media publication, we we're constantly checking prices and I'm constantly checking at least out the top 200 on coin market cap, what's doing well, what's outperforming the market. And it feels like on half the days that I checked it was pop cap, it was. It was this one Solana meme coin, I think. When I last checked it was like 600 million market cap. So almost're very much, in fact, I think, blue chip, uh, meme coin status within that particular sector.
Speaker 1:But there's also, like some, some other interesting ones that are rising up and what really surprised me I was looking at pumpfun is the number of these solana meme coins that I hadn't heard of before looking there, that actually have 100, 200, 300 dollar market caps. So there's ones like in fact I've got a post somewhere where I put down some of um, some of what I put down, some of um, some of what I thought were some of the more interesting ones. I say interesting, they're all structured in very much the same way, um, but there were ones like popcat, obviously, michi uh, shark cat, like stuff like this mu, like these absolutely ludicrous christy name now both.
Speaker 1:There's another one that was pumping yesterday they're all floating around and I feel like you know we can talk about how it's just meme coin season and these things will just pump. But equally, it is very much the opposite of the eigen layer institutionalized airdrop where a hundred percent of the token is fed into an lp. The lp is oftentimes a hundred percent burned. Um, you know, completely no vesting whatsoever, 100% in circulation, fair launch. So I do get the appeal from the retail investor If you've been stung, or at least you feel like you've been stung, buy an airdrop that you've milked and milked and milked and tried to get maximum value out of and then you make double that the next day flipping a solana meme coin. I do get the interest. I do understand why these things do so well, so quickly. But what are your thoughts?
Speaker 2:yeah, I just feel like, starting from eigenlead, the whole uh complaint everybody has in this space is uh, look, vcs have 25 30 of the whole token supply. They come at a very low valuation and potentially retail becomes the exit liquidity and plus it's so complicated to understand this point that work token intersubjective work model. So I think meme coins are the highest, better play on global liquidity. In my opinion, where there's no objectively no way we sees have unfair advantage, it's easy to understand. It's just pure form of speculation. I think this is why you are seeing um, especially on solana.
Speaker 2:These meme coins shine because in solana there's also no incurrence of high gas costs or high, high swap fees and things like that. So, and also things like pumpfun, have made it very, very easy to just launch anything which is in this world of meme right. So I think just because of these reasons and I think that that was literally the thesis for games as well, right, like, why would games do well than defi? Because retail understands and I feel like memes are way like, it's way easier to understand those and it kind of increases the pie of who can like get into crypto. So I think that's my opinion, that's why um meme coins are shine like shining at the moment, and it's also a statement that we sees that is an interesting way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is kind of a statement in love itself, like if someone's feeling disenchanted with the more institutionalized side of the space, it's very easy to fall down the meme coin rabbit hole there's.
Speaker 3:There's a new meta right in in in uh, the memes where you go and live stream with your mom or your sister.
Speaker 1:From what I've seen lately, yeah, I saw one of these, I forgot what it was called. If it hits certain like market cap milestones, they do silly stuff on streams, but um, I did see some stuff around that. I mean like we were having a debate as to whether to cover that stuff or not and we're still on the fence about it.
Speaker 3:But yeah, carry on carry on, but more on a more on a serious note. Uh, this is my frustration, or like one of the things, but I'm not massively exposed to to memes. I have bought a few um just because I do think it's fun and I I do, I do love it, but there's like I I would say I'm very skeptical or, um, I shy away from it, because there's so like there's so many meme coins out there that get launched. It's only like a, you know a really small handful that you know make into these multiple millions of market capital valuation um, and then there's only out of that handful, there's only then another one or two that actually go mainstream, like we look at a whiff or a doge or, uh, some other ones. But I think what happens is the majority of them that, let's say, do get to the millions, 100 million, just say like popcat, I'm not saying this, this is not just using them as an example.
Speaker 3:I think that you know, once the that community is like okay, cool, look, I've made enough money, I need to pop off to another meme. What can I jump on next? It just dies down because there's never really a team behind it and the team behind it is like cool, I've made one, I've successful. I just move on to the next one, and I think that's like where the frustration is, is like it's so it's way too risky to ever hold long term. There's only good ones, like, let's say, a whiff is now. Now you're seeing in, in, in, um, in hindsight, right, okay, that's a really good hold because it's you know, it's doing really well. So I think it's really hard to capture and if you're gonna ever pick one, it's gonna.
Speaker 1:You you're going to waste so much money just trying to pick one that's going to do really well, like, like a whiff I was going to say so like you're dead right, of course, in that a tiny fraction of these assets that get launched dozens, if not hundreds, a day right at this point in time in a meme coin season right, you're dead right that a tiny, tiny, like sub one percentage of them will ever get any traction or do anything above, like a few tens of thousands of dollars in in volume and market capital. The rest of it, is there any way to actually spot and identify with any degree of reliability which ones will do well like and this is a real question or is it just potluck? Is there someone pulling strings behind the scenes? Is there like a team that like jumps from one mean coin to the next? Is there any way you you can assess these?
Speaker 3:So I've been told this and I don't know how true it is and I've not ever looked into it. Or the only reason why I've bought is one because you told me about one of them, and the other one because I had it a few times.
Speaker 1:I didn't tell you to buy it, you did tell me.
Speaker 3:But the main thing is name matters. It has to be a really good name. Um to the team. There has to be like more than three people on the team, because that is like dev, community management, social media management and that's like why it's going to do really well to make the memes. Um, that's two, so name, uh name having more than three people on the team.
Speaker 1:Why don't we make one?
Speaker 3:And the third is like social interaction and having a good community and that's like the checklist to know if it's going to do well or not. I don't know how true that is because I've never really gotten looked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Do you think that there is, maybe you know, a team or teams that are responsible for more than one successful meme coin? Yeah, 100%, because so many of these teams are anonymous, right, 100%. You think that there are serial launchers that just know the recipe, they know the formula 100%.
Speaker 3:Some that just know the recipe, they know 100 percent. There's. Some of them are just well connected, like that they can. You know one who do you?
Speaker 1:need to be well connected to to get a meme coin to do well.
Speaker 3:So I think I think one is, you know, one is being able to, uh, have good memes, uh, build a great community. And then two, if they can somehow have that liquidity trading, so they know someone that um can artificially create certain volume and stuff, it's going to do good, because people look at like, oh cool, this looks great, I'm in the community, I like it, I'll just buy it. And then, um, I think that's how it mainly works why don't we launch one?
Speaker 1:the three of us?
Speaker 3:what call it mixed race magic mixed race. I do this now. I can imagine yeah, but I can imagine it being like super hard and super frustrating to even dumb luck boys that's my question.
Speaker 1:Really, is there just an element of dumb luck?
Speaker 2:I think nobody knows why they go viral like Sh an element of dumb luck? I think yeah, and nobody knows why they go yeah yeah, like shiba was definitely yeah, there are some, because safe moon was dumb luck.
Speaker 3:Yeah, baby doge was dumb luck, like elon just coming out and tweeting about baby doge and shit like that. Um was one and then that was a good tweet, though fl. Floki as well. It's all dumb luck, do you think they?
Speaker 2:would be where they are if it wasn't for Elon tweeting something stupid.
Speaker 1:Did he tweet about them?
Speaker 3:I'm pretty sure he did.
Speaker 1:I think Floki, their marketing, maybe it's only relevant after they've achieved a certain level of traction, maybe it takes a certain element of luck to get to a point. But then there is stuff that meme coin teams can do. So Floki and Ship, they are building stuff. You can talk about what it is and how effective it is.
Speaker 3:That just takes away from the meme vibes because they're building stuff now. That's no longer a meme anymore.
Speaker 1:It's no longer a meme coin.
Speaker 3:It's not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fair enough, but do you guys have any Solana meme coin picks that you really believe in, or have you guys not really been keeping on top of it?
Speaker 2:it moves so quickly, right, so um that I got for my saga phone. I'm just not selling it, yeah just is that still doing well? Yeah, there's no pieces. Yeah, so, um, initially it was 500, now it's 850, so I've just like kept it in my phone and there's like so many and so many random meme coins that I get airdropped. Some of them, yeah, some of them, are sub sub one dollar. But but yeah, I don't sell those.
Speaker 1:It's just like dumb luck whatever it takes off, who knows? No, I was gonna say I don't hold any meme coins, but that's purely because then like so that we can talk about whatever we want on bscn. But there are some that I do really like.
Speaker 3:So you're the biggest shiller of them, but you don't hold any.
Speaker 1:We don't shill, we talk about them. We're often quite negative about them. You should know this, because you read our stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh, and, by the way, I also hold CFA token because I have a CFA, so I hold those tokens. It's not going that well. I thought it was an amazing meme. No regrets, not financial advice.
Speaker 3:So there's one's one.
Speaker 1:All the CFA guys are working.
Speaker 3:I hear a lot of it's called MOG and I know that some of the big Solana not founders Solana influencers are behind. I think it's in like the 600 mil market cap, maybe, or 200 or something like that.
Speaker 1:MOG coin. Yeah, that's Ethereum. Is it Ethereum? I mean mog coin on Ethereum has a market cap of 234.
Speaker 3:Oh, maybe it is in.
Speaker 1:Ethereum. It must be. I thought it was in somewhere. Either way it's a 230 mil and at all time highs it was about 400, 430.
Speaker 3:Oh, so okay.
Speaker 1:Still, that's a beast. That's a 400 mil token that I know nothing about, which just shows how crazy that space can be.
Speaker 2:So IONET was getting really, really hot. It was one of the GPUs marketplace plays out there in Web3. And they also started a points program and basically what happened was that the network started getting spoofed because people were trying to farm those airdrop, and they were trying to farm those airdrop by pushing out GPUs which were fake. So basically, let's say you have A100, not A100, let's say you have some shitty GPU and you kind of classified as H100 or A100 or a higher performance GPU and because of that, basically the network got civil attacked. Then what happened was infamous pharma bro Martin Shkreli basically went out there and was trying to find a GPU to kind of use and he just couldn't find any usable GPU in in ionet profile. Basically he went on a rant that this, this is not working, they don't have any GPUs live, there are x, y and z problem and and it was, I think the post happened at a kind of like opportune time.
Speaker 2:He also made a video. He, yeah, he just like blasted them for all of the things. He also showed comparisons of centralized gpu networks out there, like lambda, where, where the cost is lower, the service is reliable and and basically that led to his life mission of of kind of destroying ionet, so I think that was the whole whole saga. Uh, it kind of felt like there is no honor among thieves kind of a situation here.
Speaker 1:He was actually sentenced to seven years for a police report.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think only in. Web3. A scammer can point out scam on moral grounds.
Speaker 1:I mean he would say it takes one to know one. I guess is the idea he's better at identifying these. He's like a criminal turned good cop.
Speaker 3:So this is like this was the best team.
Speaker 2:Please go on, Cam.
Speaker 3:I honestly think that. Okay, so I do believe that they have GPUs. There's actually some I forgot what you call them, but they're big pharma places where they're like a Bitcoin farming place, right Miners. They've had them hook up to to ionet, so they do actually have it.
Speaker 3:I don't know what happened and why it wouldn't work whatever. I didn't look into it that much. But the cyborg stuff maybe the team did know, um about it happening, but they didn't want to action it because their numbers look good and I guess it did mislead people. But I do think it was more of a harmless play that actually ended up backfiring because of what he's done. Um, it is unfortunate. You know small disclaimer uh, we are investors in in irnet. I do think they're starting to pick up their shit now and sort this out. I didn't think they saw this happening and someone like you know, martin, come out literally making the whole timeline a shit show. I honestly think as well that they thought his first tweet, or his first couple of tweets, that let it die down and chill and people will forget about it. Crypto is such a short attention span that everything just spins out for 24 hours and bye, bye um, but unfortunately he didn't stop, like he was just going for it. There's some other stuff that he actually put out as well.
Speaker 3:Talking about the founder I, I just don't think that was true. One of the things he was saying that this guy was a a money launderer for terrorist groups and and xyz. I don't think that is any way tangible at all. If that was true, I don't think the the middle east would let that go lightly and he'd be out and doing, uh, doing whatever. I think there was a small post about it or he was trying to translate it for whatever. I don't don't think that's true. So I think the team now the way they need to kind of fix things, is like what they're doing is now being transparent about what's going on. Uh, just to fix their shit.
Speaker 2:And they started proof of work thing. Sorry, cam, I'm interrupting. So with the GPUs they've started this proof of work thing. So if you have a GPU you have to run some sort of algorithm to prove that your GPU is functional. So that kind of reduces the Sybil attack. But overall this is again one of the problems with Deepin. Like how do you verify that the hardware you have is the hardware you have? So there's a lot of Sybil issues. But I think the whole IONET saga will also kind of like bring this to limelight, which is one of the bigger issues with Deepin. But I think, yeah, as Cam said, the team is working on it and the proof of work algorithm was, I think, interesting and novel.
Speaker 3:Yeah and uh, kind of to finish off, is you know there was I had a really anticipated launch. They were supposed to launch, I think, the end of april, so near the bitcoin halving um again. Of course, that was delayed because of what happened. Do I think that they have kind of effed that up to a certain extent? I don't. I think if they can really keep the community going and fix all this shit and get everyone hyped again, then I think they'll be fine.
Speaker 3:I think my overall thoughts are kind of white little lies that were there. They thought they were harmless, kind of bit them in the butt and now they're trying to pay, catch up and fix it. I do. I am hopeful that they will be able to recover.
Speaker 3:I do think they have a, a good product and I do think that people will use it in crypto once you know things are more decentralized, um of this sort, uh, and I think people do want to use it because there's so much shit like ai, stuff being built in crypto that we've seen and we've spoken about before, so there's a lot of use cases for it. I think, just with anything in crypto, like it's hard to get traction. It's hard for people to actually use a product when most of retail just care about making money, and I think that's like where people think, oh, they're making a product, there's going to be thousands of users. That's like not going to happen. Um, and this point system, unfortunately, is the reason behind a lot of this fuck ups like eigen layer being one, ionet probably being another and anything else that goes on.
Speaker 1:People are just going to try their best ways to to farm it and fake farm it in a way but I mean, if you like, ionet in and of itself like forget the controversies is positioned at the intersection of probably three of the hottest sectors maybe excluding restaking in the space at the moment, which is ai, solana and deep in, and for them to really fall off the bandwagon and things to go really and by by things going tits off, I mean effectively just becoming irrelevant you'd need to look at like at least two out of those two out of those three verticals basically just becoming obsolete.
Speaker 1:So if the solana ecosystem falls out from under itself, if you know crypto, ai ends up being a massive bubble. I think potentially that could be an issue, but they're so well positioned at the moment and have community sort of like growth points in so many different ecosystems on so many different avenues that I think it would be tough for them to just disappear at this point and for this to kill it yeah, I think that's one and but like it was massively brand damaging for them, I think that was the biggest thing, like he was massively brand damaging who are their competitors?
Speaker 1:who are their competitors really?
Speaker 3:they haven't really got any competitors that I'm aware of, but I just don't. I think it's just brand damaging. They're going to be remembered for, are they? Yeah, jensen is one kind of Render is one as well. I think it's just brand damaging, right Like they're going to be remembered for.
Speaker 2:Are they? Yeah, jensen is one Kind of Render, is one as well, jensen.
Speaker 3:But Render is more of a complement to them, right? It's not geared to AI.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's a similar category and also, if you look at it, ionet was integrating Render's GPU within the network. So you can say Akash is one, jensen is one. There's so many GPU marketplaces targeting ML now it's getting saturated. But there are a few competitors out there Ether, ethernotes, ether is another which is kind of going after a similar space.
Speaker 1:Fair do. So there is some competition and it could be potentially a tough few months for IO Fair dues. So there is some competition and it could be potentially a tough few months for IONET. But if they're able to put like that experience, they were the closest to go to market, I think them and Ether closest to go to market.
Speaker 1:So obviously one of the biggest stories if not the biggest story, but maybe didn't get so much attention because it's not token related but one of the biggest stories to come out of the last couple of weeks was CZ's sentencing finally arrived. So this is in the wake of the $4.3 billion settlement with the US Department of Justice, happened back in November, involved him pleading guilty to, I think, at least two or three charges, so that sentencing came. It happened and he's looking at four months and think part of the reason that, um, there's so much attention on it is because, you know, for some people you rope in big exchange founders together. So fbs and cz, they both come under flack from the us government. They're both looking at prison sentences. Surely they're comparable and obviously cz was looking at what was the total sentence in the end combined, four months, it was like 2025. Either way, it was a big old sentence oh, sorry about cc, it was four months.
Speaker 3:Yeah, are you talking about?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, yeah so sbf, yeah, but either way, I think part of the reason that it was kind of hush hush is a because the sentence was very small, but also because it was a win for binance, it was a win for the doj and it was a win for cc himself, right like if someone said johnny, you're going to go to prison for four months, but afterwards you're going to have billions and say again, and win for crypto as well, because, right, there could have been a lot of fun it's true, it's true.
Speaker 1:And binance, you know worldwide, is still responsible for more than half the volume. I think again like they had a dip post post doj case and all the rest of it. But you know, so everybody has kind of come out of that. You up, chins up. At the very least. The DOJ made away with the biggest settlement in corporate history.
Speaker 1:Cz still has basically all of his assets and is only looking at a four-month prison sentence before he can go back to Dubai with his family and live like an absolute king indefinitely. Isn't he like the highest net worth individual to serve jail time or something in the US? There's some statistic around this. But regardless, and it's a win for Binance because now they're basically uninterrupted services and I would be very, very surprised if anything bad came out around Binance and Binance US, because there is a third party mediator overseeing their operations, as appointed by US government. So anything that's not come out now that mediator and therefore the us government has missed for like six months now. So I think you know they have really the worst is over for binance. The worst is definitely over for cz and we're kind of looking at a big success case for all parties involved is my positive outlook on events.
Speaker 3:I don't know whether you guys feel different I think that you know we all see it as a massive win, um, you know, for crypto, which you know is mainly us and helps in our businesses and the, our investments and everything else. So you have massive win again, massive win for binance, the company. Um, in a way, they come out of this, I should say, lightly, even though they paid a massive, massive fine. My only thing is that I think we're all to like oh yeah, look really like sentencing da, da, da. You know we're like woohoo, you know we, we won, or cz1, but I think we all forget, like all of us sat in this on this podcast now, would we want to be going to prison for four months, regardless of whatever it was? We don't.
Speaker 1:We don't want to sit in a prison cell if someone told me that I was gonna have billions fairly liquid afterwards, yes, I would take a four month. I mean, forget prison, right, like forget the optics going to prison. If someone said you're going to be stuck in this building for four months but you're going to be a billionaire and never have to work again and be one of the richest men on earth afterwards, yeah, I would take it for four months, would you?
Speaker 3:not no, because you're saying that in a way of okay, I'm now not a billionaire, but by the time I come out I will be a billionaire. Now put yourself in cz's shoes and being who he was. You know he, he's running one of the um biggest exchanges in crypto. He's worth billions himself. Um, he's come off this. You know, probably running x amount of how many people like thousands of people under him. Um, super successful. And then now you're telling him he's got good prison for four months. So put yourself in his shoes. Is that something that is a win for him? Yes, it is, because his company gets saved. And, yes, he does come out still a billionaire, but still like, get saved. And, yes, he does come out still a billionaire, but still like. I just see that as part of a bit like we're all, yeah, wiki, we won, but in a way, maybe for him in his, his own mindset, he didn't I mean I could definitely.
Speaker 1:I mean I think you're right in that. Like so, I'm not a billionaire, and if someone offered me four months behind bars to then become a billionaire, that would seem like a win. But also from cz's point of view, he has been doing naughty things, or maybe that maybe that's the wrong way to say it. He has not been doing things that he should have been doing, like implementing like aml policies and ky, efficient kyc and stuff like that. So if his alternative is like hey, mate cz, mr incredible wealthy man, binance founder, you either go to prison for four months and lose, or you don't go and you lose absolutely everything and you're probably not able to really leave the middle east for the rest of your life, I feel like so, yeah, maybe it is a case of like lesser of a few evils, but I still think he's probably going to be sat there not not feeling too bad for himself.
Speaker 1:I mean, I could be wrong, I'd not best mates with cz or anything like that. But, medhi, what are your thoughts on the saga?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just feel like a meme coin with the ticker four will go viral. I just have no comments. I feel like this is one of those debates where, yeah, it's just you don't see a comment, you see opportunity. I just don't have a strong opinion either way, like yeah, I think it's good for the industry. Yeah, let's move on.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, go for it. In which case, guys, thanks so much for everyone that's watched the episode and joined us, and thank you to our fantastic guests, cam and Mehdi. Just a final note, a final disclaimer, to say nothing in this podcast was in any way intended to constitute financial advice. We mentioned all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3:It was way, um, you know, intended to constitute financial advice. We mentioned all kinds of stuff. It was opinions full of subjectivity. That's it. Thank you so much for being a great host.