Micron Earnings, HYPE Unlock, and is LIT Bearish?

0:00What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Full Port. We are obviously getting well into the lifetime of this series and we cannot be more excited to be increasing the production quality. We’ve got a lot to go over today.

0:16The main two topics, or the main three topics here are Micron earnings last night. Obviously, the AI memory trade is well alive. Guidance there, creating quite the commotion online. We’ll have some commentary from gmoney on that.

0:33And then on my neck of the woods, Hyperliquid and Lighter, the Perp Dex head-to-head goes pretty much all over the timeline this week with unlocks as well as being dropped from Robinhood on Lighter’s side.

0:48A lot of ups and downs there. We’ll give you our takes as we get into things. How are we doing this morning, G?

0:54What’s up? How are you? I’m good, man. I can’t complain. On top of not only the trades, we’ve also had a little bit of drama. MetaMask, having a security incident. A lot of people worried. There’s no dull moments. It’s feeling like the bear market or the bull market at this point.

1:15It was like an issue with staking, right?

1:18Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

1:20Okay. Yeah. No, I remember I was thinking about it last night when I saw it when it first came up. I’m like, what does that even mean? Does that mean like I have to remove my seed phrase from MetaMask?

1:31Like, am I just – like, do I just lose – like, in that event, if MetaMask, let’s say, if somehow their wallets were hacked somehow, does that just mean like lose everything on my hot wallets?

1:43I was like, fuck. I was like, well, I lost my crotons. That was literally my first thought. I was like, I lost my crotons.

1:52But, yeah, but then when I looked into it, it was – it seemed like it was a staking thing. So, not as big of an issue, I guess, for, like, retail, but maybe more so if you have – you know, if you have ETH, like, earning yield and whatnot.

2:09Yeah, I think it’s just another good example of, you know, what if the Black Swan event does happen, right?

2:17Like, I would say wallet provider is up there with large industry-wide Black Swan event as much as, you know, one of these, like, large language model or frontier labs going down for, like, a day.

2:31Like, there are significant impacts that will affect the global economy, per se, at that point.

2:41Yeah, I want to jump into things. The number one topic here is going to be Micron that we discussed today.

2:48Love to get the chart up. Love to get your takes. And I think you already do.

2:54What’s your take here, and what was the actual guidance coming out of the company yesterday afternoon?

3:00So, yeah. So, numbers came in. They pretty much beat on everything. I think gross margins came in light because of mix and because of the LTA agreements that they had.

3:10So, that’s kind of what weighed on things a little bit. It initially sold off, and then it ran up to, like, $10.80.

3:19I went long into the print. I bought some calls for November, and then I put on a position in perps.

3:26I actually sold my perps position this morning, maybe, like, 40 minutes ago, around 10 a.m., because more so because even though, like, the numbers looked great, and I thought guidance was good.

3:42And personally, I wanted clarity around capital returns, which they basically said after, I think, the expiration of the CHIPS Act, for some reason, they’re not allowed to buy back stock until then, which would be early December.

3:56I think December 9th, that they’ll be working on beginning to return capital to shareholders.

4:04So, I thought that that was crazy bullish, and I think they said they were going to return 100% of, like, excess cash flow or something like that.

4:13Yeah, I forgot the exact terms, but it was – I read it as bullish, and they basically said that supply would be tighter in 2028 than it is today, which is people were thinking that we were at peak tightness in terms of the industry.

4:30So, I read it as bullish.

4:32So, I read it as bullish. I’ll say that maybe the negative reaction that we’re seeing.

4:36So, like, I bought some more this morning, and then I basically just hit it out.

4:42I got out of it at, like, 10.33, around there, like, pretty much, like, the lows of the day, but, like, that was just, like, the trade I put on on the stock.

4:50I didn’t do anything on the option side of things, but I think as I’m digesting this, I guess people were a little disappointed in the fact that price appreciation is slowing down.

5:05So, like, second derivative effects, right?

5:07The slope of that is slowing down, so that’s some cause for concern.

5:11But, again, I think that what made me bullish on the LTAs is that you do have more visibility into earnings, right, on the out-year basis, which is kind of what I think will end up re-rating this thing higher.

5:29So, I am still bullish on it.

5:33I think, like, the trade, I thought, you know, maybe it was going to – because this morning we were around in line from yesterday’s close, so I thought, oh, this could possibly run on the open or maybe have a quick sell-off and then rally all day.

5:46It seems to be weaker out of the gate, so I hit out of my shares.

5:51Still watching, still bullish, haven’t done anything with my options positions.

5:55Maybe at some point when I feel maybe the selling has settled down, I’ll add to the November calls that I bought.

6:05But other than that, like, you know, I think this is just another strong data point.

6:10But, again, I am looking at the fact that it’s weak on it, right?

6:15And so that, to me, is kind of like maybe a community in the gold mine.

6:20But, again, like this is kind of like one of those things we were talking about a couple weeks ago where the news comes out over the weekend of, like, AI slowing down.

6:29You want to throttle all of it.

6:30I’m like, okay, well, maybe, you know, my assumptions are wrong, right?

6:35And I think always in trading you always want to be thinking that, right?

6:38It’s like, hey, how am I wrong and what does that look like, right?

6:41And so one of those things is you have a blowout quarter, numbers are great, and stock is down.

6:47So that’s just something to think about.

6:50Yeah, and I would say the rest of the AI industry, there wasn’t any, like, massive sell-off.

6:57There wasn’t any pop anywhere, right?

6:59I think this is maybe just a bit of turbulence in the sector, not seeing anything, you know, disastrous as I was looking through the pricing this morning.

7:11Yeah, I mean, I think that, again, like, everything is kind of probably trading off Micron, right, where that’s where everybody’s – this was the new data point, right, that everybody was waiting on.

7:23And I think people’s assumptions are going to change with that.

7:27You know, also, I think concurrently, like, right around the time that they released earnings last night, I think Bloomberg ran an article on Gemini and their new model that came out because I think they announced it, I think, in the afternoon.

7:43And it beat benchmarks, like, it was, like, at the top of benchmarks, but then I guess Bloomberg ran an article quoting employees saying that it’s not performing tasks well.

7:55So, you know, they’re not – they’re not able to utilize it to, like, do actual work.

8:01So, again, I think that kind of – I thought it was interesting. Without seeing that article, if you look through the actual benchmark reports where it kind of was, like, oh, as an overall model, we’re number one, that it didn’t seem to be – like, there wasn’t, like, any one area where it was just, like, better.

8:22It was, like, all right, it’s a little bit better here, and then, you know, it’s only, like, 1%, 2% better than Claude or Opus 5.5 or Astra 6.

8:37But it still seemed like if you were going to do, like, serious workload, like, coding stuff, you would still go to either Astra or Opus after looking at the benchmark, which was an interesting takeaway.

8:47Yeah, and I think, like, look, like, even just looking at the stock reaction, right, open at the highs of the day.

8:53It’s currently at the lows of the day.

8:55I just brought up Meta to see how Meta is doing comparatively and Meta is, like, holding in.

9:00And so, yeah, I think because, remember, a couple weeks ago also people were teasing on the timeline about RSI and about Google getting there to recursive self-improvement and how people are like, oh, my God, Google is going to leapfrog everybody.

9:18So, obviously, that’s not the case, and, you know, I think there is – I think the fact that – it’s funny because I was talking to a couple of my normie friends about it last night, and, you know, one of them was like, oh, yeah, like, great.

9:33Google came out with a competitive model, so now I can, like, plug in all my stuff from Google because Google has everybody’s things and, like, access to everything.

9:42And, again, kind of going back to what we said on Tuesday, I think Apple number one, Google number two in terms of trusting you with my data, right, and stuff like that.

9:54So that being said, I also – I started the download for Instinct.

9:59This morning, I want to try it out. I haven’t tried it out. I’ve heard, like, good things about it. My biggest concern with Instinct is that, I mean, apparently, so they raised at $10 billion, like, I think, like, at Monday. And then somebody told me that they’re raising at $20 billion now. So, like, I’m like, wait, didn’t they just close $10 billion, like, literally, like, two days ago? And they’re like, yeah, apparently, like, they’re raising another round to $20 right now.

10:25So, obviously, they’re the next new hot thing. A lot of people that I’ve been trusting on, like, the AI stuff over the last couple months are, like, instinct-pilled. So, I’m like, all right, well, let me just give it a shot. Like, I’ve been pretty happy with my setup of pretty much running everything on GrokBot and then, like, the really important tasks that I have, running them through, like, Astra or Fable, depending on who I think is better in that moment.

10:51But, yeah, I just think that, like, the interesting thing here with Google, to tie it back to, like, Google’s price action, is that if the model is good enough, Facebook has showed us that consumers will flock to brands that they trust. Right? And so...

11:10Yep. I mean, that trust is going to become such an important metric going forward.

11:16Which is, you know, since we had that combo on Tuesday, I was, I think I was thinking about it yesterday as I was driving, it was like, if Apple came out with some sort of AI solution that was good, like, I would pretty much move everything, like, granted, I’m already in Apple, right?

11:37I have a MacBook, an iPhone, I have a Mac Mini, I’m already in the Apple ecosystem.

11:41But if Apple had some sort of solution that I felt comfortable with, I would, like, go full, like, I’d bring my entire stack on Apple before anybody else.

11:52And I think that’s a testament to, I think, how...

11:55Yeah. ...how much people trust them. I, you know, you have to also realize, though, that they’re, they’re not stepping out of this on, like, a conscious decision to, like, let everybody make the mistakes.

12:08I would, I would take basically the rumor mill that you’ve seen online of, like, oh, they just weren’t able to do anything competitive and they couldn’t come up with anything, like, really solid in the AI space.

12:19And they’ve really struggled to make that transition from, or that transition into the AI sector as their deterrent.

12:29And that actually might end up helping them, because they’re not caught up in all this drama.

12:34Now, you could point to somebody like X and Grok and say, like, well, okay, they’re also kind of, you know, playing this battle.

12:42But, you know, maybe sometimes it’s better just to be on the sidelines, let everybody find the landmines, and then swoop in with the most polished product and win people in trust.

12:53That could be the multi-trillion dollar play that Apple’s officially taking.

13:01I don’t know. I’m still, I’m still very shocked that we haven’t seen more integration of AI into Apple product.

13:09I will say, with the new iPhone 18, still feels like there’s no, like, I don’t feel like I am on my laptop, right?

13:18Like, I can literally turn my laptop and be like, I need you to make a PDF and do this, do that, and I need you to email Gmoney, and I need you to also turn it into a musical play and render it, and, you know, like, it’ll just happen.

13:36But the fact that I don’t have that magic, or I feel like Steve Jobs always used to be like, it should feel like magic when you use our products.

13:44I, like, don’t feel that magic with AI now being the most magical technology out there.

13:51Who do you think is doing it the closest?

13:54Like, who’s doing it the closest to making it feel like magic right now?

13:58On the hardware side, like, as a hardware company?

14:01I think just in general. Like, I, like, the first thing that pops up to my head is, I’d say, I haven’t used Instinct, but from what I’ve heard, Instinct feels like magic.

14:11From what I’ve heard, Muse feels like magic.

14:13Like, I think the most interesting thing, I think, about Muse is the fact that he’s working on consumer hardware, so I’m very interested, obviously, with the little keychain Tamagotchis that are going to come out, and then the new glasses that are going to come out next year.

14:31Well, this is... Because I feel like there’s the opportunity to make it feel like magic, right?

14:36Yeah, this is to my point when OpenAI invested, like, what, like, $20 billion or whatever it was, like, some obscene number into Figure, the robotics company.

14:47And a lot of people are like, well, why is a Frontier Lab investing in robotics company?

14:52Like, do they just want to, like, lock in that partnership?

14:55And I do believe it is a, you know, an age-old tale if you’re, you come from, like, the development space or technology space.

15:02Otherwise, if you own the technology, if you own the software and you own the hardware, that’s how magic happens.

15:08If you only own the software and you don’t own the hardware that’s happening, that’s, you know, executing on this, it won’t be as unified.

15:16Apple is, again, another age-old example of this where the only way to get to the most, you know, controlled environment possible was to kick Intel out.

15:26They’ve kicked out AMD on their, you know, some of their GPU stuff.

15:31They’re making as much of their stuff in-house at this point because then you can, you control it all.

15:38And I feel like that is where going from software to hardware will be insanely hard.

15:43It is not the same thing to build software and hardware, just a different problem set.

15:49And I feel like you will see Apple, who has mastered the supply chain, has mastered distribution of actual product and physical goods.

15:59They’re also pretty good at software, can make the, like, double down and be like, yeah, not only do we own the phone, but now we have a great LLM and it’s competitive.

16:08And we have the best privacy and security.

16:11Cool. Sign me up. I’m there. Yeah. So, we’ll see. I think it’s interesting. I probably also think part of it, too, has been the fact that they have a new incoming CEO.

16:21So, he’s probably going to have a very opinionated POV that’s probably different than Tim Cook’s.

16:30And so, we’ll see. I think it’ll be interesting to kind of see what happens there on a go-forward basis.

16:35Yeah. I’m comparing it to the Nick Saban leaving Alabama.

16:39Can they continue the dominance that they had for the previous decade here?

16:45We will see. We will see.

16:48Gee, I want to jump into, is there anything else on, like, the AI trade here?

16:53I’d love to touch on a couple topics.

16:57One of them being the revenue trade within crypto right now.

17:03Two big ones, ponds and stock.

17:05And obviously, also touch on hyperliquid and lighter here.

17:08Not sure if there’s anything you want to touch on before we hop into those topics here.

17:12No, I’m not too up on, I guess, talk to me a little bit about ponds and stonks.

17:20Like, everything I’ve seen on stonks.fun for the last week has kind of been a lot of negative stuff around, like, the team, I guess, or whatever.

17:32But I haven’t paid that much attention because I just generally don’t pay that much attention to Solana.

17:38So, like, if you have, I guess, some tea on that to get us up to date and then talk about, you know, the revenue meta.

17:48Because I think, obviously, that, it’s funny because, like, people keep talking about the revenue meta.

17:52It’s like, that’s just, like, that’s just corporate, that’s just organizations making money.

17:57Like, that’s the way it should be.

17:59And that’s the sad thing.

18:01To me, there’s no revenue meta.

18:03Mm-hmm. Right? Like, all stocks are revenue meta.

18:07Yeah, welcome to business, right? Like, business financials and valuations are finally making their way into crypto.

18:13So, you love to see it.

18:14Let’s pull up what we got going on over here on ponds real quick versus stonk.

18:19I want to, I pulled this together real quick this morning just as an example of what is actually happening from a numbers basis.

18:27Forget what’s happening on, like, the team side.

18:30Who is actually performing better?

18:33We had ponds run up to a billion dollars.

18:35That is now down significantly.

18:37And we are seeing more and more people kind of flood into the Solana side for stonks.

18:47My take here, I’m still a bull, I’m very bullish on ponds.

18:52I believe that they have still established themselves as kind of the cornerstone on the side of a new launch pad.

19:01And it does show when you look at the actual daily revenue here, while ponds is falling significantly behind pump fund, who is the winner of all winners when it comes to the launch pad trade, I do think you have to recognize that they’ve held pretty solid around a million dollars a day in revenue.

19:20And I am expecting as more people come into the Robinhood ecosystem, as Robinhood pushes harder on the tokenization of equities and RWAs and they more integrate crypto into their app, you are only going to see more traders come to the Robinhood chain, more people on Robinhood’s app come to the Robinhood chain.

19:41And within that, you know, it’s a distribution thesis, will more people use ponds or will more people use pump because of that?

19:51And do you think stonk fun will be the end game winner here?

19:55I don’t, I don’t think so.

19:57I don’t, I don’t.

19:59You know, absolutely. I’m not fully bought into it. And that’s, that’s kind of just my, my take for right now. I do think Pump is still the triple A grade golden example of if you want something that makes money, has distribution, has the marketing, and is pretty ruthless company when it comes to, you know, protecting their, their market share.

20:25Uh, I do think that that is still a good buy. We’ve seen that move up to, I think, around, uh, .005 or 55. Um, as, as people pointed out in clips, we were calling that down around .0015 to 18. Um, so, you know, a 3x now nibbling towards the 4x off of those lows. Um, I think you just gotta go and bid strength into any of the weakness that we’ve seen.

20:55And that’s Pump, that’s Hyperliquid. Uh, and to be fair, I, I think on the AI trade, it, it kind of, where, where was the weakness that got flushed out very quickly? That’s where I’m putting my money right now. Um, I am curious on your take, you know, we covered a little bit on, like, Pondstunk, Pump, um, and we’ve got some graphics around Hyperliquid and Leiter.

21:17I gotta rant. I gotta, I gotta give my two cents here on, and I’ll actually, I’ll, I’ll let you go first on this. The Hyperliquid unlock that happened. There’s a lot of concern over this. The timeline was quite divided. Um, what, what was your take? Cause mine is, I’m bullish. Um, but I think there’s probably a stronger take on.

21:37Um, yeah, I mean, I think, so we were talking about it either last episode or two episodes ago about the hype unlock that was coming up. Right. And that it might weigh on the token.

21:51And then it was announced that there was some entity that came in and bought it. I don’t know if people disclose the price, but they bought all, I think it was like 300 ish million dollars worth of the token.

22:05And it was all, it was an OTC trade. Those shares never hit the market. Like that’s crazy bullish, you know, because like this was, this was a huge overhang, uh, of people being like, all right, there’s going to be, uh, tokens for sale.

22:20And that’s going to weigh on the price as the market absorbs that. But guess what? Somebody came in, uh, whether it was a discount or it was at the last sale or whatever, some negotiated price, those, um, people that, uh, probably lightened up on their positions, anticipating this or sold short or whatever, uh, now had to reverse the trade.

22:42So, you know, I think we saw the token react positively, uh, yesterday it was, it was up today. It’s giving back some of those gains, but like, I think ultimately it’s crazy bullish, you know, like I, I think, uh, you know, probably like to me, this hype kind of looks a little juicy for, you know, probably buy some here, give it to the low from like yesterday, whatever that low is 84 ish. Um, and you can probably put on that trade there.

23:12And yeah, I think if you’re a bear on hyper liquid right now, you should take yourself out away from your desk, turn the computer off, burn it, uh, and stop being a LARP trader.

23:26I don’t see the bear case. I think the same people that were fighting, uh, hype at $10 over the same unlock schedule, the same fears, uh, are still on the same thesis of, Hey, because tokens are getting unlocked, it’s going to go down.

23:43The fact that there’s appetite here, uh, is certainly a strong indicator that there are outside firms that see this going at least two, three, four, five X.

23:54Um, and I’m seeing price targets of like $285, $315. Um, and obviously these are multi-year price targets, but you know, it does make you question, you know, is in our current landscape, does hyper liquid have that, that ceiling to get to, but also is the perp decks, uh, terminal trade still on?

24:19That is the one question. Um, I’ll pull up, uh, the, uh, real quick here. Oh my gosh. I’ve hit the wrong button. I’ll modify this. Oh, I’ve lost the, uh, the other one. Um, well, I’ll pull the bouleverse bear case here on, on lit. Um, I had a good graphic that I’ll, I’ll pull in actually in a second here, but, uh, the bouleverse bear case.

24:43Um, I, I got this from Eric and matter online this morning. Um, a hyper liquid currently, uh, at that time seen around $89. Uh, and now, uh, we have the big question around with hyper liquid, um, not getting any partners bailing on them.

25:04Um, if anything, more people coming to the table to work with hyper liquid while lighter had Robin hood, do them so dirty, uh, during the Robin hood summit where Robin hood was like, Hey, actually we’re going to go work with bit stamp and build all our own perp solution.

25:19We don’t need lighter. Um, and completely just ghosted lighter, uh, at the altar essentially. And now we have a lot of people questioning on this large pullback on lighter. Um, what’s going to happen? Uh, you know, I do think, I do think that’s worth jumping into here. Um, and I’ll show you if I pull up the other, uh, uh, the other graphic that we have here. Um, all right, at least, at least we got the graphics working a little bit.

25:55Well, shout out to wait for timeout. Also shout out to you for making these graphics. I know you’ve been working on them for the last week or so. Uh, very cool stuff. So wait, bring it back up because I don’t think people got a chance to see it.

26:08Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, I appreciate it. I know you’ve been the power, the power of AI and, and being able to build this stuff kind of relatively quickly, obviously to how long it used to take, but shout out to that.

26:21Give people and people give, give Hunter is his kudos. Cause he’s been working very hard on this.

26:26I appreciate it. Shout out to the index team, uh, who has put up with my dictator like, uh, behavior over the last few weeks to get to a point where we can have ESPN level graphics and data and investigation at the click of a button and spin these up in a couple of minutes.

26:47I love it. Um, but look, I, I think if you step back over the last, this is over the last 10 days. Um, and I think if you look, they’ve traded pretty neck and neck on the 29th evening, that large pullback on lighter that was at the Robin hood summit.

27:05When again, Robin hood literally just was like lighter who, uh, completely forgetting that they existed. Um, and you’ve seen some buyback here on that token. Go ahead. Yeah.

27:17So I, I was unaware of this. So please tell me a little bit. So I, I haven’t been tracking that much around what’s been going on with lighter. Um, so I know a couple of months ago, it was announced that Robin hood was going to use lighter rails, uh, to build their perp decks. Now, I think one of the issues that people brought up at the time, again, correct me if I’m wrong. I’m just, I haven’t been that close to that story, but one of the things people brought up at the time was that.

27:46Um, the lighter rails would have, um, the lighter Robin hood rails would have separate liquidity than like the lighter perp decks. Right. So it’s almost like they were building like a second perp decks for them. Uh, and people were like, Oh, this is going to be bullish, blah, blah, blah. Like obviously spinning things as, as bullishly as possible.

28:08And so then, um, I believe, um, I believe part of this run-up was also the fact that, you know, people were anticipating that because of Robin hood, all this volume was going to come onto lighter, uh, because Robin hood obviously is the retail flow company.

28:25And then basically, I believe Robin hood had a two day, uh, summit, right. I think it started on the 29th and then it was yesterday. And then I think it was over last night. And at that summit, they basically announced like, we’re going to be utilizing.

28:44Bitstamp. In order to build out our perp product.

28:48Yes. Yes. And so, you know, you have the entire lighter investor base going into this, uh, event all being, you know, like, Oh, we can’t wait for them. They’ll talk about crypto. We can’t wait for them. The bull post our bags.

29:01Um, and unfortunately they walked into, uh, you know, uh, a buzzsaw and essentially Robin hood said, yeah, uh, we’re going to go a different direction here. Thanks.

29:14But then I guess like, I guess two questions come to mind is one is, does that mean like they never had an agreement or like, you know, it was never, I think, I think there was certainly something in the works, but it was probably, again, the ball is in the court of the people.

29:31Of distribution. And so I’m sure that there was a way for, uh, at, at least for Robin hood to be like, ah, we’re like, we don’t want to do this, but like we’re all pay for like development work or whatever.

29:44Like, or you guys didn’t meet certain metrics. So like, we are going to like default on the agreement. Um, because you can’t, you know, we couldn’t do X, Y, and Z. And we said, we’d only, you know, go forward. If you could meet these, um, Look, I’m sure they are looking for the most competitive partner, and I believe there’s some investment exposure on the Bitstamp side with Robinhood.

30:08I don’t know if they’re an investor or what, but I do know that there was, when I was reading through some of the news, I was like, oh, that makes sense.

30:16Like, there’s more alignment with the Bitstamp camp.

30:21I guess my question is, like, does Bitstamp have a perps product?

30:26Well, clearly, I mean, they have something.

30:31I actually don’t know. I’ve never used Bitstamp.

30:34Yeah, same. So that’s why I think that’s kind of interesting.

30:39But yeah, maybe they, you know, a significant investment from that team.

30:43No, no, no, so they do. I think they own it, because when you go to Bitstamp, it’s Bitstamp by Robinhood.

30:50Okay. So, again, you know, I guess they do.

31:00I thought one of, personally, like, I thought one of the most interesting announcements to come out of the Robinhood conference that, and again, I wasn’t following it too closely.

31:13I was only kind of following maybe, like, certain people that were there and that were bullposting and posting from the conference, was I thought the most interesting thing was the social feed that they were going to introduce into their main app.

31:30Yep. Which, to me, is, like, very – it seemed like it was a very direct competitive threat to FOMO, because, obviously, they have the distribution, right?

31:42And so they already have people that, like, are YOLOing, zero-day options, and stuff like that.

31:48So I just think it’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out.

31:53Yeah, go. Yeah, I was going to say, well, look, you have to understand and look at the investor base for FOMO.

31:59A lot of the early investors in FOMO, whether it’s Falcon X or individuals, have exposure at Robinhood and or early investors in Robinhood.

32:10So there’s alignment of – and that has been pitched.

32:13I’m positive Robinhood’s looked at the app.

32:15And I’m sure that the price that FOMO has wanted to get does not align with what Robinhood thinks that they can squeeze on their own.

32:25Certainly, Robinhood here is going to give it their best effort to take over the social trading space within their app.

32:34And, obviously, if they can’t establish a social graph at a, you know, defensible, like, moat, then they will turn around and be like, okay, we’re going to acquire a social graph right now.

32:46But they are not acquiring FOMO for any of the tech.

32:49Right. Like, they’re – No, well, I – It’s a social – it’s a graph acquisition.

32:54But, like, I think that – like I said, I thought the most interesting thing is that I think if – for anybody to do social trading, I think Robinhood’s probably in the best position because they do have pretty much that – let’s say whatever that overlap of user base is, they have it over there, right?

33:13And so I thought that was probably, to me, the most interesting announcement to come out of the Robinhood conference over the last two days.

33:23I didn’t think that there was anything else that was that much more significant, but I could have missed it because I was more – it’s funny because, like, on the X feed, you – once you, like, like something, you go down – like, you get fed more of that.

33:37And so you might end up in, like, this little echo chamber.

33:40So, like, yesterday I was obviously in the AI Micron echo chamber.

33:44So that means I was, like, getting served less crypto content.

33:47I was – I was getting served nothing but AI VC drama content yesterday.

33:54That was all I got. Ooh, let’s talk about that. You’re talking about Vinod? We have to talk about Vinod.

33:59Have to talk about Vinod.

34:01I got served that as well.

34:03So I guess for people that aren’t up to date, there was – who was it?

34:09Cognition? Right? Cognition? Cognition and – man, I forgot the name of the other one.

34:16Oh, man, I’m blanking. Hold on. I’ll just look at my feed. It’s definitely the first thing on my feed.

34:22Cognition, drama.

34:29Cognition and factory AI.

34:33Factory, factory. So basically Chris Degnan was apparently, I guess, a board member on factory AI.

34:43Yeah. Pull this up on your screen if you can, your timeline.

34:48Yeah. Let me share this tab instead.

34:50So this is the tweet from the founder of factory AI, the CEO of factory AI, Matan Grinberg.

34:58And so Chris Degnan was on their board apparently.

35:05And I don’t know exactly what factory AI does or cognition for that matter, other than the fact that I know cognition, it keeps coming up with people being very excited about what they’re doing.

35:16But I haven’t, like, looked so much into it.

35:18I think they’re more – there might be more focused on the enterprise side of things.

35:21So that’s probably why I haven’t necessarily looked that much into it.

35:24But there was this drama where he was on the board.

35:28He accepted a job from cognition, I think, to lead their sales.

35:36And Matan, the CEO of factory AI, is alleging that he was sharing secrets from factory AI and going back and sharing them with cognition and then got brought on to cognition.

35:52Like, high level, right? And then he was calling him out for being unethical.

35:57And so then Vinod, who is – I don’t know the name of this font, but he’s like – It’s his last name. It’s his last name. Oh, Kostla. Kostla. Kostla Venture. Yeah. Vinod Kostla came out and kind of – Who, by the way, has really been in the news over the last six months, especially with his acquisition of the Seattle Seahawks.

36:20I mean, he’s really kind of, like, come on and, like, shaken up the space of drama.

36:25And not good drama, either.

36:27Yeah. So, you know, first off, he’s got to whip that defense into shape because my AI picked them for fantasy football.

36:37So I think last week they got me one point.

36:40And because of that, I’m 2-1.

36:42So I have a loss officially.

36:44But anyway, besides that, besides that, he came out and he, like, railed factory AI for making those comments.

36:57And I think he called them, like, a second-tier competitor or something like that.

37:01He said you’re a second-tier competitor.

37:03But turns out Kostla Ventures is an investor in both cognition and factory AI.

37:12So I think, like, what was showing up on my feed beyond the initial drama where I was just like, all right, like, sucks, but whatever, is the fact that here you have a VC making investments in competitors, obviously picking favorites, right?

37:28And, like, I don’t know. I’d be pretty pissed if somebody that was on my cap table said that about my startup.

37:37And I think it kind of, like, goes back to the fact of, like, you know, should VC investors be investing in competitors?

37:46I, for the most part, like, I’d love to know, like, your POV, like, me as an angel investor, I kind of feel the need.

37:54Like, I think obviously investing in startups is very hard.

37:59Like, VC is a very hard business despite what people might tell you or what you might believe when, you know, when you see somebody hit, like, an open AI or an anthropic, whatever, because for every one of those, there’s, like, a thousand zeros, right?

38:14Maybe not a thousand, but, like, you know, those are, like, one in a million types of wealth, you know, like, reflexive wealth generation events.

38:23Not every investment is like that. And so those winners have to pay for all the losers if you expect to make money over that.

38:30But I think, to me, it’s very difficult to invest in competitors because ultimately they kind of want the same market share, right?

38:41So it’s very, and especially, like, as a startup, even people that might not be competitive at the outset might end up crossing into each other’s lanes because, like, a startup is just trying to make money, right?

38:56Like, they’re trying to survive any which way form possible.

39:01And so the thing that, like, I realized pretty quickly is you’re not necessarily investing in the idea because the idea is going to morph.

39:09What you’re really investing in is the founder, right?

39:12And it’s not necessarily the idea. So, but I just think still, I think maybe I can’t – I definitely have had overlap, but, like, not intentionally.

39:24Like, it just is very hard in my opinion.

39:27Like, I just don’t think I could be, like, a great value-add investor on the cap table if I’m like, oh, well, like, I’m also invested in your biggest competitor, right?

39:37I mean, so I can speak to this, one, because I’ve played both sides, and I’ve had this happen already.

39:45As on the investor side, Dylan and I, when we invested, and, you know, I’ll take Blast Ecosystem because that was one that we got pitched every single, you know, startup.

39:58We sat down and said, look, we have to identify the winner in each of the sectors if you’re going to invest there.

40:05And obviously, blast is a whole disaster, but our philosophy has always been like you don’t go and invest in eight of the lending protocol companies because you’re basically going to be like seven of those eight will lose.

40:21And essentially, you’re going to have to at some point king make somebody.

40:24And I don’t think ethically we were aligned with that.

40:26It was more we should be able to identify the winner and stick there.

40:31I do understand that there will be some overlap, but when it is a direct one-to-one competitor, that I don’t like.

40:39I would never do.

40:41I know people that when they came to Loot, they’re like, hey, I’m an investor in, you know, one of your competitors.

40:49I want to invest in you as well.

40:50And I was like, well, I don’t know if we’re like fully aligned then, right?

40:54Like, there is, like, who do you want to win?

40:58Who, how are you going to help us?

41:00How can I know also, like, when I say stuff to you, it’s not going to, like, I don’t want there to be a conflict of interest.

41:06And I don’t, as a founder, I don’t like that.

41:09I want people that are going to be on, like, when I hire somebody at Loot, you’re full-time Loot.

41:15You’re all Loot. You, you know, you see the vision.

41:18You’re bought in. It doesn’t matter how good or bad things are.

41:21Like, you were just, it’s, how do we prolificate the brand and the technology?

41:25I want the same thing with my investment. I don’t want an investor who’s like, yeah, you’re just another one.

41:29Good luck. If you win, you win. I totally agree. I, even, you know, at 9DCC, I was, I was very, like, cognizant of who was investing in what because, again, like, I want you to be ride or die, right?

41:44And if I, like, need and ask of an investor, right?

41:47Because I do think, like, my approach to angel investing and even my approach when I had 9DCC as a founder was, like, you’re there when I need you, right?

41:58Like, if I, like, I don’t, you know, if I need something from you or if I think you can help me on something, if I want to run something by you, it’s good to know that you’re a phone call away and that, or whatever, a telegram message away and that I can get you on the phone and I know you’ll do your best to help me out.

42:14If you are invested in one of my competitors, right?

42:19Like, I don’t know. Like, is your investment bigger in that competitor?

42:22Do you think, like, you know what their, what their roadmap is?

42:26And you’re like, oh, well, there might be overlap there.

42:28So you try to push me in something else. Like, I just don’t necessarily trust your judgment a thousand percent because your motive is to make money.

42:38Your motive is not necessarily for me to be successful, right, per se, right?

42:45Like, obviously, if I’m successful, that helps your portfolio.

42:47But if you could have, you know, like, as an investor, if you could have all your portfolio companies do well, then obviously that helps with your DPI and your returns.

42:56So you kind of want to try to play for that.

42:59But as a founder, like, I want to win, right?

43:02And so I think, I don’t know, I just, I thought it was all very interesting, like, how this, like, came to light.

43:11But I think also, like, Vinod has been called out, I think, in the past, like, for doing, like, again, like, similar investments in direct competitors, right, within the same industry.

43:23And look, like, I don’t think VCs are going to stop this anytime soon.

43:27I’m sure there’s a bunch of VCs that are in OpenAI and are in Anthropic and are in, you know, we’re in XAI, now SpaceX, that, you know, they’re like, yeah, like, I don’t care which one wins.

43:38Because if one of them wins, you know, I’m doing great, right?

43:42But, you know, they prefer all of them win.

43:44So I know that, like, as much as I would love for this thing, for this to stop, I do think there are certain investors that just some founders, like, well, I just want you on the cap table, right?

43:57Because also, like, what does that mean for, you know, making it easier to raise from other investors and, like, stuff like that, so.

44:05Yeah, look, I will always stand on the strength of, like, you’re either in or you’re out.

44:11Like, there is no in-between.

44:13But that’s also just what kind of ship I run.

44:16And I wouldn’t – it’s, like, a double standard.

44:20I want – you’re either in or out. I feel like that’s got to be the way that you approach this.

44:25And certainly, I think in the VC space, it has certainly been, like, a signaling of, like, what capital is behind you.

44:32It does mean something when you have – you know, I don’t know what the order of investment here was.

44:37But let’s say you are a lower tier and you haven’t made it to, like, you know, the upper echelon of the, you know, of the labs or AI providers.

44:48To have somebody come lead you around that has a big investment in your biggest competitors.

44:52Like, oh, great. Like, they’re going to want us to win. Like, all the money is going to come flowing in alongside us.

44:58I can understand that logic.

45:01I still don’t know if it’s – I don’t think I could ever get past, like, hey, this guy actively has a big investment, like, hedging you.

45:12That’s not good.

45:15But, yeah, I think this really kind of bubbled over significantly here into last night when it was basically everybody just going back and forth to each other.

45:29You know, there’s a great meme.

45:31I quote tweeted it on X of the missiles being fired from two towns at each other.

45:36And I was like, both of these are Kalash Ventures firing missiles at each other.

45:44It’s just drama. Drama on the timeline. I don’t think it will affect anybody significantly here.

45:50But, you know, this is what we got.

45:55It’s just – yeah, you got to pick a side.

46:02But, yeah, this is my favorite meme of the night.

46:05Listen, I don’t think – like, kind of your point and kind of what I was saying is, like, there’s some people that is like, hey, as long as I get the cosign from Khosla, then, oh, it makes it easier to raise money from others.

46:19And then maybe it doesn’t matter, right? So it’s like I think everybody is – you know, every founder, every startup is in a different position, right?

46:25If you are intuition where you’re raising around at, like, double what you just raised at this week, you can be like, no, like, if you are an investor in Anthropic, like, I don’t want you, right?

46:39Or, like, whatever, right? Whatever it is, you can set your own terms.

46:42But I think as you kind of go down the quality stack, people are willing to forego, you know, certain things, right?

46:49And then ultimately, you know, it’s – I saw this tweet – actually, I’ll bring it up – yesterday or this morning, actually, and I think I quote tweeted it.

47:01It was from Jake Bruckman who was talking about clearly not a sentiment of a founder.

47:11ICOs were a pretty good replacement for VCs, to be honest, right?

47:15And so, I mean, I always say this.

47:21The biggest headaches on the cap table or, like, pretty much any business dealings I’ve dealt with are the smallest checks.

47:30And that has been tried and true throughout my entire career, whether it’s from an investment perspective, from a fundraising perspective, this and that, where the reason why that makes sense is that the people with the biggest pockets understand that, like, this is a – it’s a game where – you know, like, it’s a percentages game, right?

47:52And so, you want to have, like, a good slugging percentage and you need to have, like, a good on-base percentage and at-bats and all this stuff.

47:59And it’s not – you know that not every investment is going to work out, but you’re playing the odds.

48:04And the people that don’t understand that are the people that cut the smaller checks because they don’t have necessarily that same experience and they are upset because you lost, you know, $5,000, $10,000 or whatever.

48:20But meanwhile, the guys that are writing, like, seven or eight-figure or, you know, nine-figure checks, like, yeah, that’s just, like, part of the game, right?

48:27And so, yeah, for some reason this just came to mind of, like, yeah, I totally agree.

48:32I think that, like, there is no replacement for, like, a good investor on the cap table, right?

48:41Like, I’d rather have a large investor that understands the game.

48:45And I want to give a big shout-out to Collab Currency and Derek Edwards and his team there because they were the guys that led the 90CC round.

48:53And obviously it didn’t work out, but he was, like, super supportive the entire time and kind of helped me – helped guide me in, like, the right direction that I don’t think I would have had if I just had, like, a bunch of angels on the cap table or had done an ICO where – it’s funny.

49:11The first comment, you know, is definitely sarcastic, right?

49:15When buybacks where – and, you know, Shaw kind of lived that with his AI-16Z and Eliza stuff a year or two ago.

49:25But, yeah, where it’s, you know, people are like, oh, how are you accruing value to shareholders immediately?

49:30And, like, my thing has always been is, like, you’re in a – if you want dividends and buybacks and all that, like, buy Apple, right?

49:38Like, don’t buy a crypto startup that needs every – like, I think Hyperliquid was a little bit of a unicorn in the sense that they were able to generate a ton of cash, kept a very lean team, and were able to start generating instant buybacks.

49:54But most startups are not like that, right?

49:56Most startups are – You know, you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in a – you’re in If you make a million dollars, you need to take that million dollars and reinvest it back into the business because you want that million dollars to turn into a hundred million.

50:05And if you are taking that money outside of the business, it’s going to be much harder to return capital to shareholders.

50:13It’s going to be much harder to get to that hundred million. Right. And that’s that’s just a fact. Right.

50:18The biggest companies, fastest growing companies in the history of the planet Earth are not distributing capital to shareholders in the first 24 months from inception.

50:30You know, they are reinvesting every single every single dime back into that business because there’s going to be their bet is that there’s more value accrual down the road.

50:39And so I think that’s something that very sophisticated investors understand.

50:44A lot of times retail doesn’t. And they’re just like, oh, I want like, why why do I wake up and, you know, the price is down, like fix this. Right.

50:55Your your sole job is at its greatest. Yeah.

50:59So, yeah, I mean, I just think that, like, there is there is there I think there always be a space for VCs and large investors, sophisticated investors that understand that.

51:10And I think for that reason, it’s like when you do an ICO, all these types of things like, yeah, like it’s it’s probably easier money in the sense that they’re not doing like as much CD.

51:23It’s easier to get the capital out of them because you can tell the story.

51:25Right. But now on the flip side of that is because they’re less sophisticated, they’re going to be expecting they’re going to be mad if, you know, it’s not up into the right only right out of the gate.

51:37Yeah, look, it comes down to who do you want to who do you want to deal with at the worst moment?

51:44That’s how I always think about it. Do you want to deal with somebody who’s going to be, you know, has been there before?

51:48Do you want to deal with somebody who’s going to be basically saying, get my money back at any cost?

51:52I don’t care about your company. Again, alignment is a huge thing when you’re a founder taking venture money from anybody.

52:00I have lived I’ve lived that life several times here, and I certainly have learned a lot over the last five years of whether I’m on the investor side or the founder side of the do’s and don’ts and the shortfalls of taking capital.

52:16I will give a shout out real quick here to power pay, as well as quad which in the chat on x appreciate the support GM to both of you hope you’re well and thank you for the the check ins and the the love there.

52:32I do. I do. I do want to also shout out everybody who over the last couple episodes has been following us on x love to see the numbers growing there, as well as the numbers on YouTube and Spotify are going up love to see it and very appreciative for those that support.

52:53We’ve got a lot of feedback as well on like graphics and what what you guys want to see so the show offered some of those will be continuing to ramp up there if you have ideas.

53:04You want comparisons if you want things visualized you want investigations analysis on any tokens again, please just drop a tweet tag full port tag G money tag myself in it and we’ll make sure to look out for any of those tweets and hopefully on Tuesday we’ll cover those.

53:25G what else we got going on right now I feel like there’s probably another thing at least that we’ve skimmed over here.

53:34So I know Athena was the one I was like I would do want to mention at some point has gotten a lot of timeline I pick up on this when when you start to see tokens get mentioned a lot Athena obviously had a big pullback right after its launch and now we’ve seen it starting to creep up.

53:56We also saw some target prices come out of standard chartered yesterday basically calling for an 8x over the next two years on Athena pricing.

54:08um I’m not familiar with uh the specifics around how that will happen um but I do think that it is one that has gotten a lot of narrative on the timeline um I’m not sure if you’re able to pull up the chart uh for ENA uh real quick um yeah take a look at it um I do know VVV also getting a lot of mentions near uh having a little bit of a pullback as well.

54:38As well as uh some other of the names I do think there’s going to be a little bit of a rotation into the blue chips here uh regardless of what we’re looking at with the screen share here.

54:51Um as you can see September fantastic month if you are a holder uh of the token you can see this really fall off um a lot of bull posting going on here I I don’t know if I’m a buyer right now uh at these numbers I’d like the dust to settle maybe a little bit and uh you know get some directional stability but definitely something that should be on your radar after this movement over the last 30 days.

55:18Crazy yeah I don’t I don’t know enough about ENA um I will I guess technically like again like I think you just want to be trying to buy strong stocks like ad support like you could buy it here and probably give to whatever that number is uh I can’t tell 24 cents 20 yeah below 24 cents you could probably use that um I think bitcoin has uh held in strong after what came out yesterday this the pce number yesterday yep um and so yeah like you probably buy it you know I was I was playing that breakdown off of gold uh and it didn’t break down and you know you know gold is I guess holding that low for now uh but yeah bitcoin is obviously much stronger at this point and you know probably like buy some here give it to the low um if there’s continuation there but I do think that you want to be watching rates um keep on creeping higher today’s probably the first red day in a few days and we’ll see you know for each top the 10 year top that um 5.3 or not and then here’s the 30 year again looks like it may have topped um maybe today put in the top today and that’s probably also why um probably micron’s starting to strengthen or or whatever maybe the low in in equities here but yeah I mean I I think that uh

56:43to me kind of going into the weekend you just kind of I don’t really see anything significant that I’d make change wise and in my portfolio allocation pending like maybe new news coming out AI which every every Friday I feel like at 5 6 p.m something new happens in the AI sector that people freak out over over the weekend and then it turns out to be a nothing burger by Monday so yeah certainly I’m sure there’s more uh ahead of us this weekend as there is every weekend um I’m I’m pretty I’m pretty flat into the weekend no no movement on anything um I’m kind of comfy in quoterons right now hoping for a bounce there um haven’t seen anything too significant a sell-off is a little painful uh to endure I will be honest but um like I still think if kraken and ink can pull out uh some some wins here you should see some appreciation on the price side um what is the floor right now I’m curious floors right right around 1.54 on the aft side on open sea um yeah it’s around like four thousand dollar uh token price um we’ll see we’ll see what happens uh still again not not giving up just uh uh there’s we got some we got some momentum to go here um let’s let’s call it a show here uh yeah solid um anything closing thoughts nope see you on tuesday all right we’ll see everybody on tuesday

58:20uh 10 a.m eastern time or 10 30 a.m eastern time uh appreciate you guys tuning in we’ll catch you on the next one cheers guys