Klarna Launches A Stablecoin, Hyperliquid Perps & The Prediction Market Wars | Weekly Roundup

We went through this period of time where all of the generalist investors were awful crypto investors because they didn't understand the technology. And

now it's flipping on its head where the crypto investors need to be better generalists. They need to understand how

generalists. They need to understand how AI is changing the world. They need to understand what is happening in fintech.

And if you're not an investor that has that ability, then you're going to miss out.

>> This episode is brought to you by Zashi Wallet. You'll hear more about them

Wallet. You'll hear more about them later in today's episode. Nothing said

on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This

podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Blockworks. Our hosts, guests,

and the Blockworks team may hold positions in the companies, funds or projects discussed.

All right, happy Friday, folks. Welcome

back, Rob Santi. I missed you guys. How

uh how have the last two weeks been? The

the show's still going. I thought 50-50 shot that's you guys were going to kill this >> man. I I started writing blog posts in

>> man. I I started writing blog posts in your absence because we wanted to stir up the pod.

>> We weren't certain we were going to let you back. Actually, we were talking

you back. Actually, we were talking about it. We the the all the listeners

about it. We the the all the listeners kind of said, "Hey, listen. Like it

might be better without Yano."

>> I thought there was a high chance Rob you invited someone else on. You started

kick you kicked me out. You got Santi moving out. Rob showed up. He's running

moving out. Rob showed up. He's running

a >> he's running a hostile takeover of the Empire partly. We'll have to run

Empire partly. We'll have to run engagement math, you know, and see kind of how the last two episodes performed, >> but >> they did terribly. They did terribly.

>> Makes sense. I mean, not to say >> I don't I don't actually know that, but I I my assumption because I was not on it obviously. You know,

it obviously. You know, >> you know, it's the end of the year. We

got we got to do performance reviews here, Jason. And so like let's see, you

here, Jason. And so like let's see, you know, how we're stacking up. I also want >> decisions are being made. Rob,

>> what decisions, you know, I also want to see, you know, what happened to the pod after I started joining regularly versus before. So like what's that looked like?

before. So like what's that looked like?

>> No, nothing will ever not to we don't need to boostant's ego, you know, at all here, but there is a fun chart which is, you know, I did Empire for like a year solo. Nobody listened. And there's just

solo. Nobody listened. And there's just this like probably like a slope of like 0.1 or something on the chart and then the week Santi joined. It was up only for like two and a half years and then

and then it mellowed out. But yeah, we got to see what happened when when Rob joined you.

>> Not to mention I mean our our engagement is directly correlated with like state of the market like your tweets, right? Like the engagement just falls

right? Like the engagement just falls off a cliff. Although there have been times like in the absolute >> craziness of the headlines like Terra collapsing, FDX like we're getting a lot of engagement. I remember an episode

of engagement. I remember an episode recording with you. were like, "Dude, our chart is bumping." Like, there is >> when numbers going really if if numbers going up or numbers going down, engagement is good. It's when numbers

are flat that engagement stalls out.

>> Yeah.

>> Because you know, money market's going down, you want to know what's happening to your money. Market's going up, you want to know. Market's flat, you don't care. Um, Santi, you've been writing

care. Um, Santi, you've been writing more. What's Why are you uh what's the

more. What's Why are you uh what's the thought that goes into that?

>> Dude, this just so the market's lazy.

There's enough is enough. Like I was reading an LP letter and I was like this is so intellectually just not up to like just not right and I took it upon myself

to just kind of outpour uh so you know even recorded uh so the first one was reading an OP letter and this idea of like value capture how to value L1 systems we talked about in the

last pod. Uh writing's always been a

last pod. Uh writing's always been a useful exercise for me to collect my thoughts and just publicly stake what I feel like. And then the second blog post

feel like. And then the second blog post I wrote um was on the back of recording an episode with Raul Paul. And again

it's like everyone talks about these things network effects and value capture. It's like, all right, let's

capture. It's like, all right, let's let's put like let's actually quantify that. And I think like a lot of times

that. And I think like a lot of times the crypto industry is just incredibly lazy because you sell the dream, right?

And I don't think we're I don't think as a as an industry. I think we we've grown up a bit. Uh if the institutions are coming, like you just need to be a bit more professional in how you quantify

these things. And so anyways, I really

these things. And so anyways, I really enjoyed it. I'm I'm probably going to

enjoyed it. I'm I'm probably going to continue to do it.

>> Nice. Nice. Yeah, I think it's a good I mean, how long does it take you to write one of those blog posts? Is that like sit down like what's your writing style?

Do you just sit down, hammer that out and rip it or do you have a bunch of people edit it or >> dude? No, no, share with anyone. My I

>> dude? No, no, share with anyone. My I

used to spend way more time doing it because I I I'm the type that I would start writing something and then I would quickly think about, okay, that's wrong.

So, I'll start editing while I write.

Now I'm really comfortable because I tried out like I'm going to bang out like my brain dump into a sheet and then input it into a like quite literally into chat GBT and be like organize my

collect my thoughts and it will deliver.

It's just sort of amazing how whereas it would take me one or two days to write now it takes me like a couple hours.

>> Yeah. Have you done do you do you guys use voice with chat GBT at all?

>> Yes.

>> So I Yeah.

You should. It was actually Mike who showed me this. Like Mike will just go on these walks and he'll just talk to Chad GBT for like five minutes, input a bunch of stuff and then be like clean up my thoughts and take in all the cont.

You know, we've uploaded all this stuff like PDFs and documents and all all this information. It's like combine my

information. It's like combine my thoughts that are like really kind of rough with like this information that you have, you know, in the context window and it'll spit out some amazing stuff. So, I've been doing that more.

stuff. So, I've been doing that more.

>> I probably should do that. I I have this like I don't know. This like whenever people talk into things that's like not a phone call, they're just like talking into like a voice message or whatever. I

my body like gets like tightened. I

don't know. I like really dislike it.

It's this this idea and I'm going to call it Santi here a little bit because when people send me voice notes, I like I like right away just want to delete them and not listen to them. Like they

have put so much extra work on me for sending me a voice note for their own sales.

>> No, but that's why you can do 2x speed on Telegram. What's annoying is voice

on Telegram. What's annoying is voice memos on text cuz you can't feeds. It's

horrible and then it disappears.

>> It feels it almost feels like um you know there's this debate on Twitter a while back like you know who sends the calendarly and like that depends on like like who has like the higher position.

>> The leverage. Yeah.

>> The leverage person who sends the voice note is telling you they think their time is more valuable than you.

>> And so what happens? Santi sends me voice notes.

>> I would say it's a it's a cultural thing too. Like in Latin America, you people

too. Like in Latin America, you people use a lot of voice notes. Um

um I go back and forth, but I will say I had a candidate just apply now for a chief of staff role. The guy just sent me, we give him a very unstructured case. He sends me an onboarding manual

case. He sends me an onboarding manual where he like custom trained he's called the Santi brain. He said these are all the everything that exists in the public domain about inversion and put it in a model and created a training guide which

is like pretty accurate. I'm like, god damn, this could be like >> our chief of staff did that. She created

like a yano voice or something. She took

all everything I've ever written in Slack and my emails and my public Twitter and now anytime that she needs to write something for me basically. It

sounds I mean it's exactly my language.

It's spot on. Yeah. All right. There's

too much news this week to uh to not to keep talking about voice notes. So we've

got CLA launching stable coin on Tempo.

Uh we've got equity pers. We've got

prediction markets. a bunch of updates across the prediction markets landscape.

We've got Monad um launched mainet.

We've got um uh Coinbase acquired Vector/Tensor I think it was. Um we've

got this Bear Chain scoop um from X reporter uh Blockworks Jack. Uh we've

got JP Morgan I saw like 10 minutes ago just launched a Bitcoin backed bond um backed by IBIT which is pretty interesting. So where do maybe we can

interesting. So where do maybe we can start with Clara actually. So, um, Clara is a buy now pay later startup. Uh, ve

very, very successful.

>> They would not agree with you talking about them that way.

>> They would call themselves a neo bank.

Uh, Clara is a neo, right? Is that what you're getting at?

>> An AI powered neo bank. That's right.

>> An AI powered neo bank. They started as a buy now pay later. It was them verse a firm. Um,

firm. Um, >> well, they were like Europe's affirm.

So, a firm was >> Max Le ex PayPal mafia in the US competing against Clara and Sky Sebastian in Europe. Clara. Clara had

the European market. A firm had the US market. Um, and uh, actually Sebastian,

market. Um, and uh, actually Sebastian, their founder, is a interesting guy.

I've been listening to him on podcast for the last couple months. Pretty

interesting. Um, he's he's always been pretty anti-crypto. Actually, this is

pretty anti-crypto. Actually, this is why I thought this this announcement was so interesting is he's not some like tech guy who just has loved Bitcoin for a decade. He's been pretty anti- uh

a decade. He's been pretty anti- uh crypto. Even as as uh recent as about a

crypto. Even as as uh recent as about a year ago, he was saying some like kind of anti-crypto stuff. Um but anyways, Clara just announced Clara USD, which is their first stable coin. Um the here here's the announcement. We're the first

bank to launch on Tempo, the payments blockchain by Stripe and Paradigm. With

stablecoin transactions already at 27 trillion a year, we're bringing faster, cheaper crossber payments to our 114 million customers. Crypto is finally

million customers. Crypto is finally ready for scale. This is just the beginning. Excited to build with Tempo

beginning. Excited to build with Tempo and Bridge. Um so Claro's a I think they

and Bridge. Um so Claro's a I think they they IPOed about maybe a couple months ago. They're they're they're an 11

ago. They're they're they're an 11 billion dollar company, 114 million customers. I'll I'll read Sebastian's

customers. I'll I'll read Sebastian's who's the founder, his personal tweet, too. And then Rob, I really want to hear

too. And then Rob, I really want to hear your thoughts on this. He said, "I said it then, February 2025, and I'll say it again. We were wrong on crypto and on

again. We were wrong on crypto and on Bitcoin. Must rethink your priors. Being

Bitcoin. Must rethink your priors. Being

last, I thought no one would care, but the reception was massive. So many have reached out. Nice to see. First thing

reached out. Nice to see. First thing

out there, more to come." Um, also, if people don't know, we're a fully licensed bake in Europe. So, Rob, give me your um give me your two cents on this.

So, it's interesting because um so to your point like Sebastian's been pretty anti-crypto. I wouldn't say as anti as

anti-crypto. I wouldn't say as anti as like others like Jack uh Jack Zang at at Airwalls and some others, but you know, he I think famously put out a tweet, you know, right around when bridge was

acquired that was basically I guess I need to pay attention to stable coins now and like can somebody help me learn like what this is? uh and you know everybody who was trying to sell to him

you know tweeted at him and um clearly he he's getting up to speed. I I was interested in how he talked about this being about crossber payments because

crossber payments is not a clin business today, right? So the vast majority of

today, right? So the vast majority of their revenue comes from what they call merchant rebates. They have about

merchant rebates. They have about 800,000 merchants on their platform. Uh

over 110 million consumers on their platform. Most of what is being done

platform. Most of what is being done here is is to your point BNPL for small dollar amounts. So, uh, where a firm

dollar amounts. So, uh, where a firm really focuses on like, oh, that you, you know, finance your StubHub or your your Pelaton or whatever, they've been really focused on like, let's, you know,

finance your, you know, Nike, your you bought some shoes, right? Or they have Nike and Adidas and they have Tim Hortons and they have like, you know, all of these things, right? So, it's

finance your Chipotle through CLA, right?

>> That's actually their business today.

And I've always thought about it as and I and I believe you know the market has thought about it as a business that is really market it's really more of a marketplace and it's really more

merchant first and that is the key to that flywheel that they have going. So

when he says okay well we want to be and he's been saying this that we want to be a neo bank we want to have a full service payment stack um and then to say come out and say hey this is going to be about crossber payments which of course

is one of the main use cases of stable coins today that shows you that he sees a way to use stable coins to expand his business expand his addressable market but when I first saw it and I still think to this day maybe the more

interesting thing to me because there's a lot of people doing crossber payments in stable coins clearly he's got a captive user base that he thinks he can all these other these you know these 110 million consumers he thinks he can sell

crossber payments or remittance to and maybe the merchants themselves but I've really seen it as a really interesting play on how do we actually get stable coins in the merchant hands because one of the biggest things that you know

everybody always says about domestic use cases has been well why would they take a stable coin is the infrastructure there for them to take a stable coin like there's probably not going to be a domestic use case because it's not

better but let's put us in a world where you have this wallet this neo bankank in your and and you have merchants who are actually willing to take rebates to get access to CLA's customers. That is how

the revenue model works today. Why would

you not also be able to push on them a stable coin that settles instantly, maybe opens up your aperture to just not people locally, domestically, but also international uh settlement real time.

Also allows you to maybe earn some interest if you keep the stable coin in your merchant account. Right? them doing

this alongside Stripe. This is the type of unlock where I see okay potentially now we see incentive for merchants to take stable coins now and this is how we get stable coins in the merchant hands.

And so I actually think that is the really the much more interesting part of this story which is like maybe the second order effect than it is call it you know the crossber payment story.

That said and I I tweeted this yesterday uh a bit lazily but a lot of people engaged with it. I think this is like, you know, one of 50 or a hundred of these types of announcements that we're

going to have at FinTech and at banks over the next year and a half. Everybody

is going to start doing this is clearly a better rail for them to capture more of the economics and that is the incentive here. It's about how much

incentive here. It's about how much economics they can capture. And so, um, this is, you know, not the first, but it's, you know, an early part of an early inning of what brought a lot of this.

>> Also, I'll say quick, I agree with all that. Sebastian saying that they're last

that. Sebastian saying that they're last I think is not going to go down as last.

And by the way, first mover advantages in crypto are widely overstated. Widely

overstated.

>> I actually Sant want to bring this up.

There's a friend who I was talking to who's uh thinking about getting into crypto. He's not never never been into

crypto. He's not never never been into crypto and he and stable coins are actually the thing that kind of got him and he's like but I feel like I'm so late. And actually Mike and I when we

late. And actually Mike and I when we were getting into crypto in 2017 um we launched Blockworks in December of 2017.

We're like, you know, the problem with this business is we're so late. We're

just we're just too late to this industry. There's already there's

industry. There's already there's already all these people who have launched like, you know, we're kind of at the top this 2017 market like and we thought we were super late. And I would just say with like these these are 20

year bull markets for these, you know, whether it's AI or crypto or robotics or there are 20 30 year bull markets ahead of us. So, yeah, you're definitely not

of us. So, yeah, you're definitely not late.

So, um, one of the things was, uh, it sounded like the first thing that they're going to be doing is using CLAUSD initially with internal treasury operations, building this like very

native global neo bank. Um, Rob, can you or or Santi because I know you've been looking into this as well. Can one of you guys explain like how much you really I see this as a thing on Twitter all the time. Oh, they're using stable

coins for internal treasury ops. How

much you really make? Is it you're saving money because you don't have to pay the banks? Is it that you're making money because of the increased yield?

Like what what do the economics actually look like there?

>> Um yeah, happy to go again. I mean,

listen, so for somebody like a Cla, right? Um and I don't know exactly how

right? Um and I don't know exactly how much if if they actually talk about what their balance per customer is. I can

look it up. Um but a lot of people keep capital on CLA, right? Or on an EO bank.

And for you know CLA today obviously they have a um a banking license so they can theoretically you know take that balance and they can do something with

it that is yield generating right so the difference for okay well I'll do you know call it cross uh like treasury management from a yield generation perspective shouldn't actually be that different. So I I find the yield

different. So I I find the yield generation story a lot more interesting when it's a call it a neo bank that is just basically just a middleman right um who doesn't already have the ability to

call it they have to go and you know uh maybe buy treasuries through another you know counterparty and they have to um you know they get you know cut on fees there and a stable coin allows them to take kind of all of that interest potentially. So that's a it's a little

potentially. So that's a it's a little bit different I think for like a non-banking entity and I just looked it up. I think they have about 14 billion

up. I think they have about 14 billion of deposits as of their last filing. So

um >> and they essentially operate like a bank because they do have this depositor side and they have this lending side, right?

Because they are a BNPL. So for them it's it's it's I don't think that is as interesting but that is a story for other types of uh fintexs. Now there's

on the treasury management perspective we're seeing this across a bunch of different companies and I've used examples like Coca-Cola and others I think for them uh it's even more obvious which is that they have merchants across

the world and in different localities they have customers across the world in different localities they have entities they have bank accounts they have people cross border the swift like using swift or using the correspondent banking

system is slow it's capital inefficient it takes away um I mean there's there's fees And there's middlemen in the middle, right? And now they can do, you

middle, right? And now they can do, you know, atomic settlement, moving capital between all of these different places of which some of them they might not want to actually keep capital in because they are higher risk. They are there's more counterparty risk than their banking

partner there. Uh there are maybe

partner there. Uh there are maybe merchants there that they don't want to take the as much counterparty risk with uh etc. So um there is just a it's really a capital uplift piece and a you

know fees on that, but it's a very obvious one that we're seeing like the biggest companies in the world talk about. This episode is brought to you by

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Santi maybe uh tied into your articles that or the your pieces that you've been writing. One of the interesting things

writing. One of the interesting things for me is this is this is signal I would say that fintech is now uh that we're removing ideology from a lot of this stuff, right? It's it's um you start to

stuff, right? It's it's um you start to think about like will the adoption come from consumer apps that never they're not they're not maybe on crypto Twitter but they just desperately need cheaper rails. How do you think about this from

rails. How do you think about this from like I guess both the operator shoes doing what you're doing with inversion but also the investors shoes?

>> I mean it's like would you rather own CLA stock or a stablecoin issuer equity and what's the price of that? CLA is

sitting at 12 billion. I mean there there's reasons why like their BMPL hasn't been like a great business for them for a variety of reasons but it has 100 plus 100 million plus

users. that business becomes

users. that business becomes structurally more efficient and can offer an interesting like can enter into other wedges and expand the customer relationship uh one that is very visible so it helps

their retention it improves their LTV uh and they can just do things faster better like you basically like software as a service on prem a business like LLA made more efficient with stable coins

the end user feels the impact they don't have to work through the whole gymnastics of like figuring out how to how the you know interact with crypto So, I haven't looked at the metrics specifically, but doesn't scream like

it's totally overvalued.

Compare that with equity in a lot of companies in crypto that are well above that number. Struggle like I struggle to

that number. Struggle like I struggle to justify the valuation. And I struggle with this again first mover. If you're

circle, well, has anyone checked on on the stock price of circle lately? It's

back to the, you know, it's a business that is fragile. it's getting competed away and so again as a deployer on the emergence side I love it because it's just a race to the bottom right like

>> you're seeing this we talk about this poly market and call sheet competing again on fees stablecoin issuers with a hyperlid RP process competing now it's a race to the bottom in many ways is a

hyper competitive industry and so I for this reason just I get more excited about a business like CLA and I think it offers a probably more interesting return profile

than your nth stablecoin issuer of choice >> who is >> I would say the one thing on that is the the markets did like the the announcement so there did or did not

>> they did it did so the stock was up a couple points yesterday the stock's up three points again I think today right now as we're chatting so um outpacing the rest of the market so people clearly

are excited about you know what they think this can do for corn probably reading into this call it you know expansion you know, their TAM and like other types of, you know, uh, business lines, but

um, the market.

>> Yeah. Rob, who um, who which crypto infrastructure players do the best when when you see this kind of thing, it's like, you know, they're not using Agora, they're not using Rain, like they're

not, you know, it's entirely Do you get worried that like Stripe, you know, this is entirely a stripe operation here?

Tempo bridge.

>> Yeah. I I mean there's there's a question right about about Stripe. So um

I mean CLA has their own card product.

They they didn't announce a cryp uh crypto card product so they might still use Rain. Uh so I don't know about that.

use Rain. Uh so I don't know about that.

But for the stable coin issuance side, yeah, they're they're using bridge and their their open issuance platform. Um,

you know, listen, we know for a fact right now that, and this is obviously in incredibly enticing for these businesses is that Stripe is going to people and the CRO is going to people and he's

saying, "Listen, like we serve all of these merchants already. We have this unified offering of stable cocoin issuance through bridge. We have the uh

kind of global connectivity on the orchestration side. We have the bank

orchestration side. We have the bank account connectivity. We do um we have

account connectivity. We do um we have Stripe link, we have these virtual accounts, we have um the ability to offer consumer embedded wallets through Privy and we can give you and I I

actually I literally was talking to somebody yesterday where uh where I think Bridge was competing against BVNK

for a deal and and Bridge came uh came in and said if you take us Stripe will give you um some amount of free um verification.

hits essentially like we the stripe verification product we'll give it to you for free for some amount of of up to a certain limit right and obviously like BBK doesn't offer even a verification

product right that is not something that they do um neither does bridge but stripe does it right and so they're winning these deals by saying hey listen we can offer you this full stack

solution including like this verification product from Stripe and we will give you some of it for free and we'll make it economically worthwhile for us in in the total, but maybe you know certain parts will be able to win

against these other providers, right?

And that's happening. We're seeing that right now. What we also know is that

right now. What we also know is that Tempo is essentially like lending out their engineers like in an FDE model the same way that that Palanteer is and going directly these companies and saying like we'll build all these

integrations for you. We we'll we'll do the basically the entire thing for you, right? And so that's incredibly

right? And so that's incredibly enticing. like why if you're CLA and you

enticing. like why if you're CLA and you already trust Stripe, you already have a deep relationship with them and then all of this other stuff is happening. Why

wouldn't you want to use them? Now um

this market is going to be humongous.

There is a lot of people who are going to want to operate uh in this way and a lot of people in the traditional fintech

side are not going to want to push or you know tempo or stripe because they're also under pressure and competition right so I was talking to a chord network who specifically told me like

yeah we we have a deep relationship here but um we actively are going to try to push other chains than tempo because we do not We believe that this is, you know, hurts our relationship with them,

right? This is going to continue to be a

right? This is going to continue to be a topic of conversation, but listen, Stripe is, you know, in the totality of what they're doing is the behemoth in the room in every one of these

conversations. They are trying to win

conversations. They are trying to win every single uh deal with this, you know, kind of total operation. A lot of people who are are not even the sophisticated people do not want to have

to take, you know, four or five or six vendors to, you know, recreate the same thing. And so all the startups, I mean,

thing. And so all the startups, I mean, we're heavily invested in probably every part of the stack that um that Bridge or Stripe would compete against. Um all of them are thinking through, you know, how

what is our reaction supposed to be to what how deeply Stripe has leaned into into the space. But listen, it's a big market. Like if you look at, you know,

market. Like if you look at, you know, uh you know, ISVS, you look at PSPs, like they're they're they're not uh it's not winner take all. multiple, you know, multi-10 15 20 30 40 billion dollar

businesses that are built around these and different markets. And so I expect that'll be the case here. But it it's it it is the, you know, sort of the the the behemoth that everybody's looking at right now.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> Can I can I just say something? Claro

price of sales three five times three times, four times, five depend. It's not profitable

now. Um, and then you have like Ethereum

now. Um, and then you have like Ethereum at 200 times price of sales. Salana

80 times price of sales. Uh,

how do you think about that? Like like

you could also look at like a for instance, it's going into kind of this segment. You could I was looking at like

segment. You could I was looking at like okay CLA has 100 plus million active users in their platform. The entirety of crypto has 40 million active users. Uh,

who's in a better position to monetize?

who's in a better position to expand LTV and and actually monetize that captive user base. Um, again, like would you

user base. Um, again, like would you rather own Clarao? Would you rather own A? Would you rather own CLO? Would you

A? Would you rather own CLO? Would you

rather own Salana or Monad?

>> What do you think?

>> Clao.

>> Yeah. I mean I mean there's a there's a real question here around like uh Santi Obie is the the the fundamental value investor in the room. Um, and I'm not saying Clen is a bad boy. I haven't I

haven't spent that much time looking at it, but I mean it is down 30% since its IPO two months ago. Uh that said like you know the question that the market is

asking itself is who is going to grow more right like that has always been the question. the market always prices

question. the market always prices growth better than they uh price you know EPI or cash flow um for anything

that is techreated and you know obviously a stable coin product for CLA is a tech conversation and you know how much that he's been talking about AI

replacing you know a lot of their costs and for them being um be able to operate much more efficiently a traditional bank like they are trying to sell a tech story not a bank story. Yeah, you can

look at a firm bit more expensive. Um,

you're going to go PayPal. Kind of in a in a tough spot candidly. It's a stock that I constantly track for what it's worth. Like a lot of people saying, "Oh,

worth. Like a lot of people saying, "Oh, you must have sold your entire crypto book and now you're going to like I'm like I'm really not I'm excessively long, irresponsibly long crypto." Uh,

but it's like a common question, right?

Like as an investor, uh, you know, Monad four four and a half billion. Um and

then and then you also look at like I get your point around like investors just like valuing growth at all costs and willing to overlook that. Revolute

uh no what is it ramp is raising out I think like a 60 billion or something or was it 30 billion 40 billion 40 >> they just raised at 32 >> 32 billion

>> stripes at 100 ramp >> clearly like so maybe like expanding that universe would you rather own some like ramp a strike

>> ramp's a great business like I mean and also ramp is raised three times this year right like they're on a rocket ship at the moment Yeah. And your best

Yeah. And your best >> Yes. Would I rather own RAMP at any time

>> Yes. Would I rather own RAMP at any time this year than anything in crypto?

Probably. You know, maybe not Bitcoin.

>> Then why why why then why are you still investing in crypto?

>> Because RAMP is like a RAMP is like a one of company, right? Like there is uh like and and to be fair, right? So I'm

in crypto, I'm in Bitcoin, I'm in a bunch of alts, right? Uh I still believe in the growth story broadly of what it's happening. We've talked about this a

happening. We've talked about this a bunch, right? Um, and and I think there

bunch, right? Um, and and I think there was a Smack uh from Compound VC put out a a um a tweet yesterday maybe that

talked a little bit about how we're now in this time of crypto where actually we're getting a lot of what we wanted.

We're getting stable coin adoption.

We're getting tokenization. We're

getting, you know, real market participants wanting to participate in a way that is not just as a pro proof of concept, but is actually moving businesses on rails, right? But that

doesn't necessarily acrue value to uh you know the rest of the ecosystem and there's now real dispersion around the winners and the losers right and so what

he said in his post which I do agree with and Santi you and I talked about this a little bit last week is that the core crypto VC or the core crypto

investor the core crypto trader can no longer just be a core crypto trader investor you know participant right you have to understand what's happening more broadly in the market.

You have to understand how this is what's happening in fintech. You have to understand what's happening in financial services. You have to understand the

services. You have to understand the macroeconomic market. And you probably

macroeconomic market. And you probably have to be we we went through this period of time where all of the generalist investors were awful crypto investors because they didn't understand

the technology. And now it's flipping on

the technology. And now it's flipping on its head where the crypto investors need to be better generalists. They need to understand how AI is changing the world.

They need to understand what is happening in fintech. And if you're not an investor that has that ability, then you're going to miss out. But that

doesn't mean there's not opportunities in crypto. It just means that you have

in crypto. It just means that you have to be broader. You have to have um a big purview and you have to be able to make decisions like should I buy ramp or more

salana? Well, I'm allocated to both, but

salana? Well, I'm allocated to both, but like what should I be doing this time?

because I would definitely rather own there's a couple of our portfolio companies that are growing you know faster than ramp today that I would definitely rather own than any token and than any token that we're talking about

or that I would rather own than you know Bitcoin at the moment but you know it it is more of a holistic decision-making process today than ever.

>> Yeah. I mean last thing because again I look at a business like PayPal it's trading at 13 times PE not growing as much analysts kind of have been very very observant around the challenges

that business has faced they have PYUSD they haven't pushed it as much 13 times P the broader market is trading at 30 times and you could argue a lot of that is just driven by the max 7 but at some

point you mean to revert and I am thinking constantly about that because we're in a later like as much as people are so hyped up on this stuff I just I just for the sake of me can't like my business historically has been investing

in early stage stuff and I think in crypto you've been incredibly successful if you picked any infrastructure bet subundred million you would have made money like like like

almost blindly and like let's just that's okay like if you're like I just sort of came to terms with that that is like I'm enjoying myself after pify I want to cycle the

world and just chill for a bit and I say okay if you bring me an infro deal and you're a smart team and elite investor like Dragonfly has done the work on the docs to make sure that I don't get

absolutely rocked.

I'll put money if it's below 100 million like systematically just kind of did that. I'm not like I'm sitting there and

that. I'm not like I'm sitting there and I'm seeing Monabad that I participated in the $600 million deal. It's trading

at four and a half five. Okay,

interesting. Will it be able to sustain that valuation? I just don't know

that valuation? I just don't know because maybe to your point like Tempo comes along and it's valued at what five billion and Stripe's going to use their entire muscle and it's limited right to your

point it's not credibly neutral but they're doing the palent or FD model to win over CLA like again like I'm saying you're raising it you know as you think about

like investing here like why wouldn't you again just knock on the door of the founders of ramp and say hey gents We're Dragonfly. We're a crypton native firm.

Dragonfly. We're a crypton native firm.

I think we can really help you here. I

think there's a part of your business that probably benefits.

Uh allow us to invest in this $ 32 billion round and just compound the out of that position in >> I I would just I would just say one

thing to this, which is that like we I mean we do everything right at Dragonfly, right? So, we're, you know,

Dragonfly, right? So, we're, you know, uh, we we led the seed round and the seed extension into Monad years ago, right? And, uh, I'm very bullish on

right? And, uh, I'm very bullish on Monad, by the way. Like, we can talk a little bit about Monad, but, you know, it's been live for two days. It's been

performing incredibly well. I think TVL is now up over 200 million bucks. It's,

you know, traded down to uh, right at the two and a half mark and now has continued to grind up. You know,

launching in this market, I think, is a actually a blessing in disguise if I'm being honest for them. And I listen if

you I I per personally do not believe that innovation at the blockbased level is done and yes some of it will be owned by the corporates but most of the corporates are just doing other stuff

out of the box right um and so like I I I'm very bullish on what they're doing and I think there's still a world in which that type of innovation needs a

very cryptonative tech first understanding of what is happening like I do not believe that a traditional mark uh investor could come in and truly

understand the intricacies of DeFi to to back the next novel product that gets made in DeFi. And I don't think we're done building novel products in DeFi, right? So, I'm still bullish about what

right? So, I'm still bullish about what is happening in this market, right? That

said, as you know, we're in these businesses like like like uh like Rain Yano mentioned earlier, they started out like basically like a ramp competitor and now they're they're much more broad

in terms of uh infrastructure for uh card issu card issuance and uh and issuer processing and also merchant acquiring all running on blockchain rails though and like Rain is probably

one of the single fastest growing companies in the world right now. um you

know they they they don't publicly talk about their numbers but we we see them and it's incredible right and that is a company that required I think some

cryptonative understanding and it required foresight to look at um what is coming in the stable coin space but it also required a deep understanding of

how traditional payments work and that is where I think the market is going is that you need to be able to cross the chasm and do both that doesn't mean that there aren't opportunities anymore in

the cryp very cryptonative side. It just

means that you have to have a holistic perspective today and and I I I mean I talk about this with the LPs. The reason

I think Dragonfly is so well situated is because we have this ability to do both because of my background and his background and Tom's background are so differentiated uh among the three of us and that we do so many different things

and I think the VC funds that are not able to look at you know the whole broad set of opportunities through that lens are going to really struggle going

forward right um to your point about RAM specifically 32 billion is kind of out of my mandate with my LPS uh but like you know could I have done it at a billion dollars. I I probably would

billion dollars. I I probably would have.

>> Santi, you're um I I get what you're getting at and you're ragging on the stuff a little bit, but uh just the counter would be you did monad at 600.

It's trading at 4 and a half. You're up

7x on it. Why not just keep doing that?

>> So, I did monad at 600. It's trading at 4 and a half. I'm up like 6x on it. Why?

Why keep doing it?

>> No, why why not keep doing it? Like,

you're ragging on the system, but you did just make seven and a halfx on monad in a year and a half.

>> On paper. On paper.

>> On paper.

>> On paper. So like we'll see what the unlocks like pretty and by the way I'm not I'm not going to continue to do it one I just see more value in who's going to capture the benefit of this technology

my thesis has shifted as I rewrite my thesis I fundamentally think the deployers are going to capture more value companies that can cut cost that can enhance a customer relationship a

lot of so so since other pair I think I invested in over two 150 on paper there's closer to 200 companies I've seen Some most of them that have gone under are for the single reason that you

know there's not enough users on chain and no one cared about the products that they built and I am seeing I am seeing an interesting dynamic of like this technology be inc you know it's open

source and it can be forked and everyone talks about network effects and I just think first mover advantages and network effects are overstated.

I don't think I I don't think we can support the valuation of of most of these networks where they are and they're valued on this crazy TV like terminal value growth

number of everyone coming on and um I have so so like I am definitely rewriting my thesis now will I do the occasional infra deal to look I'm not disagreeing

with Robon I do think there's incremental marginal improvements that we will continue to be made in the infer layer we're never going to know until we onboard a 100 like we triple 10x the user base. So like I'm building an

user base. So like I'm building an avalanche. Dude, am I going to be in a

avalanche. Dude, am I going to be in a tough spot if I onboard 100 million users through an acquisition, but we're never going to know until until we do it. And and I think it's normal and it's a normal way. I just

think like if you overlay the the sequential waves of of investment, like we've overinvested in infrastructure to the tune of 100 billion and I think you now need to see less

investment in infrastructure, more in the deployment of it.

Um, and I I think it's one of those things where as I've seen more and more corporates get into the mix and their decisions of how to deploy and which providers and how competitive that those

RFPs are, I do worry that if you're underwriting something around network effects and value capture and the moes of TVL and Lindy

like you know it forces the question around is the value capture going to be there like Ethereum there's no version of this world where that asset is worth 400 billion like

like uh I cannot I don't own it. I

haven't owned it since 2000 since basically when I moved to a tax friendly jurisdiction. Um

jurisdiction. Um and is could Monad be the next Salana at like 100 billion? Because that's

probably what you know you're thinking there and saying could you displace Salana? Could it do a better thing? You

Salana? Could it do a better thing? You

would have to believe that Salon is accurately valued at 75 billion, which I would argue.

>> Yeah.

>> No. Um, so no, I'm not doing that. I'm

I'm no longer investing as much through my family office because a I don't have any time and b I'd rather deploy I'll probably be the largest LP in my fund in the private equity fund because I just see more value in buying a business and

reaping >> the benefits of this technology.

That's a better riskadjusted strategy for me.

>> Can I >> You know what I love about this pod is that I get to come on and and hear Santi uh and one of my founders be like, "Yeah, I'm not investing anymore. I'm

only working on the startup."

>> The startup. I

>> I don't think Rob like what is I mean I I don't know like there there was a time where like I saw like really good teams. I think

now I I just haven't seen I've seen some projects in Monad. I've seen some projects like the hundth million like prediction market like I haven't been wowed and maybe it's because founders

just haven't reached out that much but I we talk about like what's the quality of the founder coming in to the space.

Electro capital does a developer report which I think is no longer going to be made. I think they changed the format.

made. I think they changed the format.

But Rob from your standpoint I get your strategy. Is the quality of the founder

strategy. Is the quality of the founder getting better or worse?

Are you seeing super high quality deals right now?

>> Depends on the part of the market that you're in. Yeah, I mean it really

you're in. Yeah, I mean it really depends on the part of the market.

Listen, I we've talked about this a bunch and I don't want to belabor the market points. I want to move off this

market points. I want to move off this soon, but I um what is what was true in 21 was that the incremental smart kid at Stanford was

working in crypto, right? What is true today is the incremental smart kid at Stanford is working in AI. Like that is a fact right now. I do believe like you know earlier today I did a reference

call on a founder on a seed deal that we're looking at and these founders have really traditional one of them comes from a big fortune 500 and ran the

digitization aspect of a you know a fortune 500 that you've heard of before uh household name and you know it's coming into crypto because they want to build something new on stable coin realms right and we are starting to see

I think in those parts of the markets in certain verticals that there are really good founders we're seeing really good founders on the market infrastructure side. We're seeing really good founders

side. We're seeing really good founders on the stable coin side that is increasing. But you're right, you know,

increasing. But you're right, you know, is the incremental like deep tech research engineer like coming into to crypto today like they're it's less it's less likely that it's happening. And so,

you know, we've been and I think I said this to you before, Santi, we we've been quite slow this year in terms of investing but that I think is the right thing to be

doing at a time when the market seemed overly euphoric, right? like we try to be counteryclical and my guess is like going into next year now that you are so bearish I will probably start putting

more money into the market. That is

probably the way this is going to work.

>> All right, let me can I just say one let me tell you something. Um

something. Um I will there there's always going to be a place in in my book in my heart to back founders that are willing to do interesting things. Uh Monad at 600 was

interesting things. Uh Monad at 600 was above my initial valuation. And I would have loved to have catch it at sub 100.

I don't want it to come across like totally discounting. Look, people as a

totally discounting. Look, people as a founder, it's it's aing grind. I mean, I just know those guys are grinding. It's

a stack team. They're trying to do something against like kind of all odds when the market's telling them we don't need another infra. There's infra

fatigue. So, I'm super grateful of that.

I'm not trying to be dismissive. just

sometimes I think I think there's a world where you can objectively talk about prices without it demeriting the hard work and effort of founders that can't control where the stock goes or

the price of the of the coin goes.

That's market driven. So, so like I just want to make that clear because a lot of times when people hear me be critical of prices, they're like, "Dude, you're being you're an because what about the hard work of these teams?"

It's like, "No, like I'm just like it's totally totally different things. You

could be very critical about the stock of Salana. That doesn't mean that I'm

of Salana. That doesn't mean that I'm bearish the infrastructure. That doesn't

mean I hate Tuli and all the incredible builders in the space. It's just an object like an intellectual discussion about it. And it will serve us well as

about it. And it will serve us well as an industry to be open-minded about having these discussions as opposed to being like, "You're an idiot. Your math

is wrong." I'm like, "Okay, yeah, okay.

Themsel fine, dude." Like like like, "Okay, good. Cheers." This episode is

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All right, let me take there's other news I want to cover. So, let me take us away from market talk. Um, one, so we you guys mentioned prediction markets a little bit. Santi mentioned uh Kashi and

little bit. Santi mentioned uh Kashi and Poly Market raced to the bottom with fees. There was actually a very

fees. There was actually a very interesting Robin Hood prediction market news this week. Um so I'm going to read the headline and then we can talk about the maybe second order implications of this. Robin Hood extends its prediction

this. Robin Hood extends its prediction markets offering through new JV with Susuana to operate CFTC licensed exchange and clearing house. So so what does that what does that mean? So, Robin

Hood is partnering with with SIG, who's the one of the biggest market makers in the world, to purchase a clearing house and launch their own vertically integrated prediction market. Um, so

little bit of context on this, right?

So, the Robin Hood's a broker. They're

the front end. They own the customers.

They get the deposits. They have the distribution. The clearing house is the

distribution. The clearing house is the back end. They have they handle margin

back end. They have they handle margin and risk and settlement and kind of the rails, right? This would be like a CVOE

rails, right? This would be like a CVOE or CME. And Robin Santi, correct me if I

or CME. And Robin Santi, correct me if I get some of the stuff wrong, but I think I'll get I think I think I'll get the basic definitions right. So, you've got the um uh what what Robin Hood did when they wanted to get into prediction

markets was they part uh they partnered with Koshi. I think over I haven't

with Koshi. I think over I haven't looked at the numbers in the last couple weeks, but at one point in one at one point about a month ago, over 50% of Koshi's volume was coming from Robin Hood. And

Hood. And >> it's it's over 60%.

>> It's over 60% now. Okay. So what Robin Hood is doing with this announcement, my understanding is they're bringing all that flow back in house. So Robin Hood said, "Look, we want to get into the prediction market space. Let's uh let's be really quick to market. Let's partner

with one of the existing prediction markets." They partnered with Cali. They

markets." They partnered with Cali. They

did something like a 50-50 revenue share and boom, it worked for both parties.

The uh what this announcement is showing though is that whoever owns the distribution distribution remains king. So Robin Hood is I don't know if they're officially ripping out Khi, but they're definitely

bringing more and more of the stuff inhouse um and building their own DCM, the DCO, uh and the customer relationship instead of paying someone

else aka Khi to do that. Um and yeah, it just there's a obviously this is one of the big battles this year is Poly Market versus Koshi. Poly Market has tried to

versus Koshi. Poly Market has tried to take more and more of the users for themselves. I would say Kalia is trying

themselves. I would say Kalia is trying to do the kind of white label or embedded model a little bit more it feels like and yeah this this would probably be an argument for owning the

customer relationship instead of selling your your services. So I'd love to hear your guys' take on just I don't know this development what you think.

>> Prediction markets is all at war right now. You can see it on Twitter uh and

now. You can see it on Twitter uh and you know how many people are spending on astrourfing and marketing and you know the partnerships. Uh to your point like

the partnerships. Uh to your point like you know it's also become clear that everybody's like Khi has actually been giving rebates essentially or paying people for their flow. Um I think they public Weeble publicly announced that

Koshi was giving at least 50% of the revenue back to to Weeble to to to work with them. I'm sure there was a similar

with them. I'm sure there was a similar story with uh with Robin Hood. Um and

then all of a sudden Robin Hood says okay well listen prediction markets is the fastest growing part of our business now. like sports I mean it's it's sports

now. like sports I mean it's it's sports specifically but sports event contracts clearing on couch sheet is the fastest growing part of our business why would

we give up 50% of that revenue or more to another provider by the way another provider who like you know is definitely much more of a startup than we are and we have a history of you know they

already run their own clearing broker right they already have their own separate entities to be able to do a lot of this infrastructure with Susuan I mean I I think they use more Citadel and and

and a couple others. Not Susuana on the equity side, but Sesuana is the largest sports uh market maker in the world. Uh

they're behind basically all of the sports markets. And so like why wouldn't

sports markets. And so like why wouldn't they do that? Why wouldn't they increase their margin by 50%. And you be able to replace the infrastructure provider and and so I mean DraftKings is working on

something as well. They announced it.

They acquired a prediction uh really funly. They they they tweeted out about

funly. They they they tweeted out about how prediction markets were a fraud.

Three weeks later acquired a prediction market company and now and then announced like two weeks later that they're launching their own. Um you know FanDuel is is working on their own. Like

there's a bunch of others. This is going to be an allout dog fight. Uh and you have to have some level distribution because these it's not that hard for these guys to stand up that business because it is just a it's a financial

market, right? It's not there's not some

market, right? It's not there's not some sort of like you know real huge regulatory moat when these DCOS and DCMS are already owned by these companies or when they um are able to you know

acquire them for cheap and you know building these contracts like Susuana and J and all of these guys they're they're happy to do it for everybody involved and it's not actually that tough of a business that doesn't have

that much lock in and so um you know I tweeted it out that you know this is unsurprising I think it was surprising to me how quickly Robin Hood decided to uh displace Koshi. And by the way, I'll

just preface something here. We don't

know for certain that Koshi is not going to get any flow or is completely ripped out. There's been no discussion of Koshi

out. There's been no discussion of Koshi from Robin Hood and there's been no response from Koshi uh or Tar or anybody in the you know 24 hours since this came out. And so there could still be

out. And so there could still be something to be be worked out here. But

um I I don't know why they would give up any of of of their economics. And it

reminds me that you have to have either some reason that you have really really good lock in which is a regulatory mode, it's a coverage mode, it's a technical

mode or and and people almost always over represent what their lock in is or you have to own that distri some distribution yourself and you have to have a brand yourself right and this is

you know the poly market cy debate you know that we've been having for a long time that is the place where poly market has really leaned in and won in a way that Cali has not which is that when you hear people talk about prediction markets it's they talk about the poly market right they don't talk about you

know whatever so >> Rob um would you rather own DraftKings at 15 billion I think that's current enterprise value

>> or Poly market equity at 15 billion >> uh poly market equity at 15 billion as a current shareholder of poly market equity a lot of poly market equity um

listen I I actually don't know I haven't studied draft king's business that closely.

>> Um I I I'm actually and and I'm going to take a step back because I said that somewhat facitiously, right? But I

actually want to make it very clear. I

would actually rather own Poly Market's business. And the reason I I I will say

business. And the reason I I I will say this, right? and you're going to come at

this, right? and you're going to come at me and you're going to try to tell me some multiples uh and uh you know some sort of like >> no I mean let's not forget uh I have a

very strong economic interest having invested in the seed and verified being a huge owner of of poly markets it's an objective discussion >> yeah but but let's let's not forget what

has happened here right DraftKings and FanDuel have the businesses they have today because they spent years building a legal and regulatory moat with the

state gambling commissions, right? They

entered and they went state by state.

They lobbied. They they helped draft legislation and they got approved in the states that they're in. And what

happened is Kelshi came in and with Robin Hood and Poly Market's coming in and they all of a sudden said, "Hey, this is a CFTC, nationally regulated

derivative that allows you exposure to the same market that DraftKings spent years trying to build up that mode in and all of a sudden just started taking

a ton of market share. Right? So for

DraftKings, what happened is they had a specific vertical that they were dominating that they had built a regulatory mode around and that got crushed overnight by just the form factor of how people were getting that

exposure. Right now, there's a long way

exposure. Right now, there's a long way to go in the uh legal fights around this. I think that Nevada just came out

this. I think that Nevada just came out with a pretty bad not a ruling, but a pretty bad conversation and early um and some early indications around how they

might view a sports related event contract relative to the sports gaming commission and whether or not it should be locally regulated versus uh versus CFTC regulated. But all of that said,

CFTC regulated. But all of that said, DraftKings is still a vertical business focused on people getting exposure to sports. That is not Poly Markets

sports. That is not Poly Markets business. Poly market's business is

business. Poly market's business is about 35% of their markets are sports.

Their business is about the being tokenizing the markets for literally everything. Like I have talked to I

everything. Like I have talked to I talked to an insurance company last week that wants to sell insurance and hedge on poly market, right? Like they want to be the oracle for truth and data for

every single thing that you can put money on, right? And so that is a much bigger addressable market in my mind than sports gambling in the US which is what really Koshi was was focused on and

what and has been focused on to date and what um the uh and and draftings is focused on. There's a great episode uh

focused on. There's a great episode uh Jeff from Sus Khana, one of the founders. He talks about uh there are

founders. He talks about uh there are investors in poly market and talks about the the insurance use case and other use cases around like pricing risk continuously and obviously he made his cut his teeth being a poker player and

thinking constantly about probabilities and like just overlays his lens to what poly market has unlocked and prediction markets and so it's just interesting to just go listen to that. It's a very neat. He doesn't he doesn't typically do

neat. He doesn't he doesn't typically do podcasts and interviews and I just found it to be as someone that that was like familiar with prediction markets. His

perspective was like pretty awesome to hear.

>> There's another top anything else on prediction markets I want to get into.

>> Didn't Poly Market get officially approved in the US?

>> Oh yeah, they got CFTC approval, right?

>> Yeah, you may mention that, but I just want to make a note of just another >> Yeah, another check mark for their their re-entrance into the US.

>> What does that allow them to do, Rob? It

allows you to trade poly market through brokerages uh polyarket.

>> Yeah, they can be they can be the infrastructure provider and the bro they can also be the broker uh and you can click clear as well.

>> So you'll finally be able to use poly market in the US.

>> Yeah. So poly market in the US is coming. So very clearly.

coming. So very clearly.

>> Yeah. Um when does their app go mainstream or when does the app get off like beta? Do you know?

like beta? Do you know?

>> I mean they haven't said anything publicly. Uh so not not my place to say

publicly. Uh so not not my place to say anything but um I you know it it's they're definitely you know working towards that in haste. So

>> yeah, let's >> uh Okay, can we just one minute? Um Rob,

um Poly Market is deployed on Polygon.

There's been rumors about the token. Do

you think that they like a will it stay in Polygon? Does it build its own chain

in Polygon? Does it build its own chain >> ties into the whole infrastructure like uh block in that we've talked about or do they go elsewhere?

>> Uh listen, they're going to do what works for them, right? And like at the moment, uh, Polygon seems to be working incredibly well for them. And there's so much lowhanging fruit for them to

continue to expand upon. And so, you know, they have this focus on the US app and they're continuing to expand the types of markets and the core infrastructure, right? And so, in my

infrastructure, right? And so, in my mind, yeah, okay, they raised, you know, over a billion dollars. Uh, they clearly have the resources to go and, you know, to kind of do whatever they want at the

moment. But if Polycon is working and

moment. But if Polycon is working and for them then that's not going to be the main focus. What will they do over time?

main focus. What will they do over time?

You know I I can't tell you right.

>> So I I saw Ivan X Dragonfly Matter Labs join Poly Market. I talked to him during his journey about you know leaving Matter Labs and whatnot. So found that quite interesting given his background

uh was there knowledge proofs and stuff like that. Seems like they're beefing up

like that. Seems like they're beefing up their engineering team is all I'm observing from the outside in.

Yeah, and they're beefing up their engineering team both on the blockchain side and on the uh you know, call it the core, you know, traditional engineering side as well. Um, and yeah, I I've enjoyed and he seems very happy there.

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Let's talk uh let's talk equity pers guys. So Hyperlid launched uh stock pers

guys. So Hyperlid launched uh stock pers via HIP3 um which basically lets you add contracts for traditional assets, traditional equities assets. So Nvidia

and Google, Tesla, they've got an index called XYZ 100. Um and I think the interesting thing that I want to talk about with you guys is they just uh there was um hold I had the I had the

data pulled up. Uh HIPP just pulled in 537 million in daily volume with NASDAQ leading followed by Nvidia and Google.

The uh this was a tweet from Crypto McKenna. Uh the markets are scaling much

McKenna. Uh the markets are scaling much faster than I previously anticipated. So

I just um Rob, I saw you guys back something. I think it was a project. I

something. I think it was a project. I

think it was called Trade XYZ on maybe mega ETH. Um I

mega ETH. Um I >> Hello Trade.

>> Hello Trade. Thank you. Yeah. Um Oh,

Trade XYZ created XYZ 100. But

>> Trade XYZ is the brand that's on top of that. that you're talking about right

that. that you're talking about right now through a unit that's on uh HLP3. So

>> yeah. So yeah, I would just love to hear your guys' thoughts on these um yeah on onchain equities basically. It seems

like this is the early days of a big narrative feels like something where a lot of people are like, "Yeah, but how big could this really get eventually?" I

think it gets very very big. Um and I' I'd love to just hear what you guys think about this.

This is interesting because uh we've obviously had equity perks earlier this year like Osteium uh launched them a few other people launched them um and some

of the exchanges have I've have I've launched them as well uh and they haven't done particularly well or a ton of volume but trade XYZ has been

incredibly uh successful so far right in a very short period of time. I think

maybe this is wrong, but I was looking at uh data earlier today that said the 24-hour volume on Trade XYZ was about 990 in the last 24 hours,

>> which would make it like 12 12 and a half% of all of Hyperlid volume, which is actually incredible uh that it scaled that quickly. the the infrastructure is

that quickly. the the infrastructure is still a little bit interesting to me because um they have this the way they think about the oracle is that they do this has been a lot of the debate with

Osteium and versus unit about how you think about the the oracle here but the way they do their oracle is they do they do call it like an internal order book reference price during non-market hours.

So, they're still open during non-market hours, but they limit how uh far away or how much this the price can move

relative to the max leverage relative to its closing price when the market clo when the reference market closed, right?

And so to to say that very clearly and and that probably because that probably wasn't that clear. If a stock closes uh at after hours trading at 8:00 p.m.

on a Friday at $100 and you can get 10x leverage on that stock, then they don't allow it the the the reference price to

be more than 90 to 110 over the weekend.

>> 10%.

>> Yeah. 10%. Because of the 10x leverage, it would be different if it was different leverage amounts, right?

>> Yeah. And so the so what it tells you is that you know they're still also very worried about the risk during these non-market hours. That is obviously the

non-market hours. That is obviously the big unlock that or the big concern that people have been focused on because the markets and no the the market makers haven't wanted to carry that amount of

risk over especially over the weekends, >> right? And so they're saying okay well

>> right? And so they're saying okay well we'll let you bet on it but not you know big moves which you know if if you look at the way Bitcoin has moved on some of these like Trump tweets during tariffs

on a Sunday like it still creates a lot of risk for the thing to just to gap you know on a Sunday right and so I'm interested to see how it performs over that period of time because they've

osteium was closing markets at market hours they've decided and and the guys at Hello Trade who'll be back who are not live yet they've been debating exactly how they want their uh market to work and they're they're kind of coming

around to keeping it open but doing something similar to to trade XYZ but they're So there's a lot of I I I I see an opportunity or a lot of surface area for attack around those off hours and

I'll be interested to see how they perform during that time. But

congratulations to them so far. It's

been incredibly incredibly quick growth >> on this point. So like it reminds me a lot of like after hour trading like historically probably is a problem that markets had to resolve and it probably

goes to do you have a robust set of like market makers to to to create a market here after hours? Um, and if that's the

case, then wouldn't it be economically solved? like someone like Winter Mute or

solved? like someone like Winter Mute or Jump or someone can just just make more money during these afterh hour when the market's closed event or how do you as much like how much of it is like

technological or how much of it is market structure and if it is like so I think there was um maybe it was totally or somebody said that uh that per

uh I forget exactly what what word he said but I can paraphrase into like per basically the hardest single hardest smart contracts to which most people will tell you that that is probably true. The single

hardest application to build right now is perpetuals on chain and the attack vectors are are very large economically. It's less like technical,

economically. It's less like technical, it's like economically understanding how this works, right?

>> And the uh the market makers, as you know, Santi, as well as anybody, uh they're delta neutral, right? So like

they're not here like they're they're trying they need to hedge their risk somewhere else, right? And so on a Saturday, if you are exposed to large

swings of a perpetual of Nvidia, how do you hedge that? Like what do you do like overnight Monday through Friday you can probably do some sort of dirty hedging

with the sun right like you can hedge in different markets as like you know Asia opens and Europe opens and you know etc right so you don't have direct exposure but you know you have the correlated exposure but I don't know how you do that on a Saturday right and so the

weekends have always been the behemoth that everybody's been focused on and you have to make sure you have the right amount of margin and collateral requirements >> but I mean we've seen what's happened in

Hyperlid with Jelly Jelly Uh and you and I talked about um I forget which token it was, but a similar type of uh economic attack a week or two ago that

happened where they they closed the bridge because they're uh they were able to change the oracle price very quickly which caused a liquidation which caused

a loss on the on the the vault, right?

And the same things can happen to the market makers when things gap because uh with all this leverage, right? So that's

the concern for the market makers over this you know period of time where it's hard for them to stay delta neutral.

>> Yeah. Historically just the last point observation on this I remember when um deepseek I think came out over the weekend and like how do you hedge that right? It obviously has implications

right? It obviously has implications around Nvidia and some of these other players and Bitcoin just took a hit.

Historically, Bitcoin has absorbed that kind of a proxy, dirty proxy or a point around hedging, especially over the weekend. Some like macro or geopolitical

weekend. Some like macro or geopolitical stuff like people just go to Bitcoin and like short it or go long. We'll see how that continues to behave. But yeah,

pretty interesting developments.

I have another topic here which is actually a small acquisition but it's Coinbase acquired uh company called Vector uh which is built by the tensor folks and I think the acquisition is

less interesting than what happens to a token at during an acquisition and there's both the before and the after.

So before the acquisition came out a couple days before the token started running up token was up a couple hundred% and then after the acquisition actually I haven't looked but I can

assume what happened. Um

let's see. Yeah, to token has token has gone down. So uh here I can show I can pull up the chart here so you guys can see it as well. So this

is the chart of Tensor token. Um and I think basically there's a there's a there's a couple conversations here.

There's a conversation about yeah this token running up from like 5 cents to 30 cents in the days leading up to an acquisition. Uh there's also a

acquisition. Uh there's also a conversation about as acquisitions, you know, it's kind of M&A season in crypto.

They acquired the the tech and the team, but what happens to the token and does this token just go to zero over time?

Should Coinbase buy out the token? How

how yeah, just I don't know. It's kind

of newfound territory. So, I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts on this deal.

>> I think Sanji should go. This is like the conversation here is like an anti-token conversation.

Rob, I thought we're getting into the precedent of you going first always, but uh look, >> uh there's a couple of things to unpack.

One, there was clear insider buying there and I think that Coinbase team addressed it quickly and they're looking into it. Um I've known the Tensor guys

into it. Um I've known the Tensor guys for a bit. Uh they built Tensor, which is a pretty good NFD marketplace in Solana. than the vector stuff. I I I

Solana. than the vector stuff. I I I don't know honestly is the simple answer. Uh

answer. Uh I it has happened to a one portfolio company of mine smaller scale like subsequent I believe

went through this as well and like they they say the same things which is the foundation will continue to operate.

But yeah, look at that. Let's just

double click on that because to me that that's sort of the most important thing like ladies and gentlemen no matter what you're doing whether it's a if you want to assume that these things are not securities and think that you're going

to get away with this clearly not um so there was Omar shout out to Omar from >> I think this is the thought so just to walk listeners through it if you're not watching on YouTube it said so Coinbase

announcement Coinbase is only acquiring Vector the Tensor Foundation will remain independent from Coinbase and will steward the Tensor NFT marketplace place native token. Oh, see that's

native token. Oh, see that's interesting. So they so tensor

interesting. So they so tensor >> was originally one of the big competitors of Magic Eden. I didn't

realize that they're not buying the NFT marketplace. They're only acquiring

marketplace. They're only acquiring Vector. Okay. So then Duda said their

Vector. Okay. So then Duda said their story here I think really is listen the u the Tensor token and Tensor was originally started for the NFT marketplace, right? Like Magic Eden and

marketplace, right? Like Magic Eden and Tensor I think were the largest NFT marketplaces on Salana.

>> Yeah. they as you know NFTs went away they launched Vector. Vector was

essentially a memecoin uh uh DEX uh for but and or or trading platform and the Tensor token uh because it was the same

team the Tensor token had exposure to the economics uh through you know potential buy and burn etc of both Vector and of Tensor itself right and so

Coinbase comes on and they say hey listen we want to buy a trading platform on Salana for to sell to our users that's retail focused because we are doing a lot more through the you know

call it non-custodial app and we think this will be interesting um like a bunch of these you know non-custodial trading platforms like FOMO etc have raised money recently and Axiom is one of the biggest for one of the biggest business

businesses in crypto was the biggest the fastest growing business in YC last year right and Coinbase acquires them the team goes over presumably and I I have

no information here but presumably they get really big deals from Coinbase that, you know, make them relatively rich.

They get a little bit of money up front, right? And they get that tech and the

right? And they get that tech and the Tensor token holders get nothing. The

Tensor, you know, Dow, whoever the Tensor Dow is, you know, gets to continue to operate Tensor, right? And

Coinbase at a time, a period of time when Coinbase has been pushing, you know, quotequote the tokenization of everything, right? or this this so all

everything, right? or this this so all of a sudden what we've seen is we've seen people all acted rationally right which was that Coinbase only wanted the trading platform they want and they

wanted the team the the team is getting richer they're and they're able to go and have better distribution their Coinbase and everybody on the side >> that's the key point that's the key point it this everyone acted rationally

this is there's no crime there's no bad actors here everyone acted how they should have acted but there's clearly a loser which is the holder.

>> Yeah, there's misaligned incentives with the token holders. That is the question.

>> Can we what what are token rights like?

What what is a token what type of rights does a token confer to the holder?

Again, I don't think there was a misrepresentation of that because we've danced around a regulator environment.

>> I'm not saying there's a misrepresentation. I'm saying there's a

misrepresentation. I'm saying there's a mis incentive and a misalignment which is bearish for >> other tokens. Right. And so this is the question Sante like in the your point you've been making. The the interesting

thing will be I was not an investor in tensor. I think at one point the tensor

tensor. I think at one point the tensor token traded at like 1.5 billion. Now

it's >> do you remember your trade that you almost put on?

>> Oh yeah. Yeah. Go to like like go long tensorans. Um none nonetheless uh

tensorans. Um none nonetheless uh profitable trading strategy. Um so so I would want to the only thing we haven't touched on is if you were a equity investor in tensor which I believe

raised money at the you know when FDX collapsed there was a bunch of angels that kind of gave him money. I think

Dudas might have invested there. There's

a lot of like die hard Salana guys. What

happens to that equity? Because

historically you do an equity investment then they launch then that maps out to some token supply that the team and the investors get.

um the tensor token will continue to exist cuz the NFT still generates fees and and so if you had an NFT well that's different but if you had the tensor

token there's still a like that protocol continues to operate right now no the real question here is who exactly on the team and I think that's where I think um

the tensor team said hey we're mo they're going into Coinbase but there's like a staffed up foundation that will continue to uh kind of operate the

tensor marketplace.

Um so the only thing that I haven't heard is if you invested in tensor equity, what was the waterfall there?

>> Yeah, I mean it's it's a good question in my experience in these things like you you they work out a something where like the equity holders basically get nothing, >> right? Um, and I don't know and I don't

>> right? Um, and I don't know and I don't know if the tensor deals were saf or if it was like, you know, equity plus warrants, right? Um, uh, in a world

warrants, right? Um, uh, in a world where it's equity plus warrants, right?

Theoretically, you own preferred equity if you're an investor and then you sit on top of the waterfall and then you also get the token warrant. Um, you're

you're still on mute, Zanti.

>> Oh, and related entities. So like you would own like if you as a founder and raise preferred equity from a sophisticated investor if you start building other stuff like the equity

holder has a claim on that unless it >> theoretically I don't know >> if you had a good if you had if you had an investor put that into the >> should it should have been that way and

and and to be fair they did and I'd have to go back and look at the what the exact language was but they did uh make it clear that the tensor token had economic exposure vector too, right? And

so if the to if you if you expected the the token would have economic exposure, then you also expected the equity would have economic exposure, right? Like it

was probably uh you know, structured that way. And so again, like it's not

that way. And so again, like it's not about misrepresentation. It's about like

about misrepresentation. It's about like what are we doing here if or when what do we do going forward to make it so that tokens aren't just you know we're

not just having a debate about okay well what are their multiples but in these types of situations there's actual alignment from token holders and the

economic outcomes and if there's not then are they just what whatever loyalty points and if they're just loyalty points how do we value that because it's not valued on a price of sales multiple,

right? And so like there there's just a

right? And so like there there's just a there's a maybe we're not going to come to the answer on this podcast, but there is an existential question that is raised about our industry and about how

much of it is structured and about the se the where we are in in part because of Gary Gendler and what the SEC did to tokens and where we do going forward, right? So there is a question being

right? So there is a question being raised here and maybe it's just hey like a new version of this SEC and CFTC help us solve this if we get a clarity act or they go and do rulem and we can we can

align more economic incentives and ownership.

>> But it brings forth a question that we should all be think about both as investors and as builders in this space about what we do going forward. if we

can sell a business that a token supposedly has economic, you know, exposure to without giving those people any money.

>> Yeah, it's a good case study along with unis swap uh of how to structure, you know, legislation and policy going forward because yeah, it's it doesn't

seem fair for a token holder. But again,

a SAP, I hate to say it, but a SAT is a receipt of sending someone money.

nothing else, nothing more. Simply,

thank you for your money. So, he

invested in all the ICOs. It was just that.

And obviously, that doesn't protect perhaps an unsuspecting investor that would have sat there and said, "Oh, I'm actually getting ownership into the work product of the all these cryptographers

and superstack team."

>> Uh, anything else >> from the week? Happy Thanksgain.

Yeah. Should we I'm happy to go Yaniano if you don't want to give the >> one of your reporters, Jack. But I read through it. Obviously, I'm

through it. Obviously, I'm >> No, Jack. Jack is great. I'm happy that he, you know, I'm I'm happy that he he he he had he what people didn't see is Jack had worked his ass off on the story and

it was really uh just you know we you know shut down the news team which you know we've already covered at length on the on Empire but uh you know Jack had put a ton of work into into the story so I'm happy that he was able to get it

out. Um but yeah Santo if you want to

out. Um but yeah Santo if you want to give context. Basically the TLDDR is bar

give context. Basically the TLDDR is bar chain raised a round um where Brevin Howard an affiliate of Brevin Howard uh called Nova Digital I

believe participated in the round to the tune of 25 million participated in the round as well and a couple other folks and there was a clause in there that

only applied to uh Brevin Howard affiliate that allowed them to get a re like it allowed him get a reimbursement

where if Barrett didn't trade above a certain level, I believe it was three bucks after TGE, I think a year or two

after TGE, they had this a G a year after TG, they had this ability to request their money back.

And so there's a I think that characterizes it well. Rob or Yano, I don't know if there's anything else that you guys want to go into, but that's sort of the TLDDR. where it gets where the controversy lies

is um that it seems like other investors were not made aware of this so and didn't have this kind of side letter particularly framework

um and I think that might trigger like most favored nation sort of basically this clause that if if if you're a lead investor you typically don't allow the

team to give a preferential treatment to someone else in this case it appears that Nova like this Brevin Howard affiliate got more preferential terms than Framework. So that of course is

than Framework. So that of course is something that Framework will have to figure out. Um

figure out. Um and and the second piece was how they marketed the deal, which is just as a like an equity raise, but with that

term, of course, it just is very different, right? It's kind of like a

different, right? It's kind of like a free option, so to speak, of trading really well after TG. And if it doesn't, like basically Brevin Howard just doesn't put any risk really other than

the fact that assuming that they're not going to burn through all that money.

Um, there's a lot of controversy on the timeline. There was some folks that

timeline. There was some folks that said, "Hey, this is like not real." I

think the I haven't read fully the the response from the Barrett team, but I don't know if Rob or I don't know if you guys did. Uh, I skimmed through some of

guys did. Uh, I skimmed through some of the responses. Gabe Shapiar, folks,

the responses. Gabe Shapiar, folks, >> as an investor in Barrett, does this make you does like do you are you frustrated reading this or you don't really care?

>> No, of course I care. I haven't reached out to the team, but I will. um to get their thoughts on it. There was an official response from Bear, so we could probably pull that up. I think it was

Captain Jack Sparrow or Smokey that put a response.

>> Smokey wrote a response. Yeah,

>> Smokey wrote a response. Uh,

so I I I don't want to mischaracterize it, but I will say as an investor, it definitely it it is definitely something that I pay attention to and want to talk with the team about

because even even though I didn't participate in that round.

>> Yeah.

>> It it just uh Yeah, it's >> Yeah. I mean, so so so Smokey put out a

>> Yeah. I mean, so so so Smokey put out a a response that was essentially like, listen, the framing of the story was inaccurate and

the whole reason that Brevin did it was because of the need for protecting themselves against, you know, whether or not there was no TG. And, you know,

they've continued to hold the token and they, you know, haven't exercised this right. And in fact they've been you know

right. And in fact they've been you know market making and doing you know uh like liquid type of TVL deals etc on chain.

Um and you know they he they also denied that any other investor had an MFN where uh Jack is saying that other investors told them they have MFNs. I'd be I don't know if this is true or not. I'd be

shocked if Framework didn't have an MFN.

You would never co-lead a Well, I would never co-lead a deal not have an MFN.

That would be insane, right? And so um you know there are I think there are a lot of questions here and maybe the broader point here is around just the opacity of which these deals continue to

get done and even when the tokens are launched there is no you know way to have any disclosure around them right because if all of the investors like

like if if this was an SEC disclosure requirement you would have to put out there that a current large shareholder has the ability to get a refund at some price directly from the company like the

SEC would require that deal >> but but that's not necessary that's only on the on the private even on the private market >> the private market >> but but remember this refund right

exists 12 months after TG >> right so you're like you're basically saying it's a public market because retail investors can have access to the >> correct because this affects the public market investors who have exposure to >> you have a thing that's usually never

private like if block works raised around we had a side letter or MFN or whatever the rights that we give people.

We don't have to share any of that. just

like like you know all private all private rounds like Santi with inversion like if you guys had some special letter with dragonfly like that doesn't you don't have >> yeah we definitely have an MFN with

inversion and so as all as all leads yeah as all leads should but you don't have no >> we could say it more nicely man

>> we definitely haven't no I haven't heard a response from framework but yeah it poses an interesting idea of Like again on rulemaking if you know you're

going to have TGE and the docs reference TGE then like you have to think about like again this is like you can't fit old regulatory framework into these into

these rounds that eventually will map out to a token like even at TG you maybe the thing is you know you and I have talked about like block works and the opportunity here but like creating like

a Edgar SEC where like when TG happens these things need to be disclosed. By

the way, I've seen some exchanges like Binance require like for give me basically every piece of documentation of all the rounds, all the major holders, their wallets. It's a

colonoscopy. I would want to like if you're an exchange that listed Barra, you probably saw this document.

Especially if you're like a large if you're Binance, they probably saw this document. Question is why why is it

document. Question is why why is it surfacing now? Well, I and I will tell

surfacing now? Well, I and I will tell you maybe this is a good point. The um

the Monad sale on Coinbase, one of the best parts of that launchpad uh sale that they had was that they did so much disclosure around it. And I expect that

if Coinbase knew about a deal like this and they put this on the launchpad, they would have uh disclosed it as well. And

that is what we need. We need more disclosure. Now, maybe that wouldn't

disclosure. Now, maybe that wouldn't have changed anything. I mean, Barrow has been down only since it listed. It's

like $500 million market cap now or FTV now. and it would launch at three bill.

now. and it would launch at three bill.

But um I I think this is for me very much a uh a disclosure point. Um but you know because cuz I don't care like if the investor doesn't do his diligence

and he gets loses money because of it as a private investor venture capitalist that's going to happen. Like that's on me right? If I if this was me and in and

me right? If I if this was me and in and this deal like that's on me right? Yeah,

it would have look if if it is. So, just

to round out the the point here, the response from the bear team was like refuting it or there are some elements of truth here, but not all of it. It's

kind of mischaracterized.

>> They refuted a little bit of it. Um,

they basically refused to respond to any of Jack's direct questions. Um, it it didn't from from my vantage point, it did not look particularly uh nice or

good from from what they they said.

>> I I'll reach out to the team. I I

wouldn't want to talk. It's one of those things where if it if it were true, you would have just wanted to disclose it then and there. Um at least your lead

other co-lead framework. Um and then to other investors.

Um but yeah, I will be reaching out to Smokey.

>> Let's get into content of the week. Go

ahead, Rob. What kind of I really like this like extra long uh Thanksgiving week episode. to people when they're,

week episode. to people when they're, you know, home and they're like, you know, trying to deal with their families, they're like, "Just listen to us for >> a walk."

>> Hour and a half.

>> I love the long Thanksgiving walk where you're like, "I can't take the fam anymore. I'm going on a long walk."

anymore. I'm going on a long walk."

>> Listening to the roundup.

>> Yeah, listen to the roundup. Um, all

right. I got one. Mike Green. Um, Mike

Green, who's a I don't actually know what he does. He's like a fund manager, macro guy, Bitcoin per I don't know. I

just feel like he's like does the podcast circuit. um sp he's spoken at

podcast circuit. um sp he's spoken at our events for years actually been on our podcast but anyways great great great great person Mike Green he wrote this uh substack called part one my life is a lie how a broken benchmark quietly

broke America and he talks about uh I I'm going to I'll share it in the Empire Telegram channel um so people can read it there but basically the main

takeaway is like we thought that you needed I don't know 30 or 35k a year for minimum wage in America really that number should be more like 140,000 And um it's a good read. I'm not I'm going

to I'm going to botch it if I I won't do it justice if I try to uh summarize it, but I'll I'll drop a note in the I'll drop the link in the Empire Telegram channel.

It's a good read. It's related to Santi what we were talking about like I don't know three or four weeks ago about America and is the dream still alive and so good good read.

>> I'm going to cheat because I also had that in my bookmarks. I saw a bunch of people that I really respect um retweet it and and comment on it. Um I I guess

to add a more con more like an additional piece of content uh it was Prrenav that forward me Peter Theal's lecture which is I've I've seen before but it was just such a good one that I

listened constantly which is competition is for losers. um putting up at Sal Sam Alman that gives the introduction at >> it's not his lecture on the antichrist.

>> Haven't seen that one. Um but uh it's kind of if you read zero to one great great book it's just a seinal uh lecture and it's like 40 minutes an hour. So

again if you're starving for content while you're over stuffed on you know you know turkey and whatnot. It's a

great one. We'll link it in the show notes for real >> guys. This is the week everybody's with

>> guys. This is the week everybody's with their family. Okay. I think they need

their family. Okay. I think they need something light-hearted and it >> my life is a lie. Why not why why middle class does not exist in >> you guys are out here just like you know getting really heavy.

>> Give it to us.

>> Dude, you're going to give us a horror You're going to give us a horror movie.

So why >> Thanksgiving scary movie do you have?

Yeah.

>> No, no, not this week. This week is rivalry week in college football. It is

the best weekend of college football every year.

>> Go blue. Go blue, baby.

>> Ohio State. Got to put the hat on. Put

the hat on.

>> State Buckeyes the best rival in sports against Michigan. Going to blow them

against Michigan. Going to blow them out. Watch it noon on Saturday. I think

out. Watch it noon on Saturday. I think

you should >> That just means that hat looked way too big for Rob that that's definitely a dad hat right there. You know, we're going to have to get Empire hats. But what's

what's a poly market on that while while we, you know, while we're at it?

>> I mean, I think Ohio State is best team in the in the nation. So, let's see. Uh,

>> repeat champions this year. Book it.

>> Ohio State. So, can you bet on the game?

Can you bet on the game on poly market?

>> Yeah. Yeah, you mean you can.

>> You should be.

>> The odds are >> responsibly. I meant to say

>> responsibly. I meant to say >> Buckeyes are 110 78%.

God, there's only 12 12,000 bucks on the line. Rob, how much of you are that? Is

line. Rob, how much of you are that? Is

that all you, man?

>> It is obviously all me. I mean, the entirety of that market.

>> It's just the way. Interesting. All

right. All right. So, Buckeyes wins it, I guess.

>> Go Bucks. Noon on Saturday. Watch it.

>> Go Blue. Thanks for listening, folks.

>> Happy Thanksgiving, folks.