In short
Episode topic: Crypto PR and crisis communications, using real examples from crypto firms and mainstream brands; also covers crypto/AI messaging and a separate market segment on rates, jobs, and macro risks.
Guests (backgrounds)
Aubrey Strobel, founder of Halcyon (crypto comms/PR agency), host of The Observation podcast, and senior executive at PubKey NYC; previously nearly 10 years in crypto/Bitcoin communications. Bimnet Abibi of Galaxy Trading discusses markets and macro.
Key claims
Crypto has a “comms problem” because loud messaging has often been wrong; PR must be proactive and story-first, not just reactive crisis statements. In AI’s “god moment,” deepfakes will make video/brand identity harder to trust, increasing the need for digital identity verification. Coinbase is portrayed as reinventing itself with both successful and questionable campaigns.
Notable examples
Astronomer’s Gwyneth Paltrow crisis video (addresses questions without addressing the scandal); Coinbase ads (housing-cost themed, “upgrade the system” AI-sounding claymation, Base/“base is for everyone,” military sponsorship, and a “pimping” controversy). Roman Storm/Tornado Cash conviction is discussed as a broader privacy-vs-government power issue.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOCrypto Comms and PR Discussion
0:45 to 1:36
Exploration of Aubrey's work in crypto communications and public relations.
“We look at some crypto firms like media and we critique them as to whether they did a good job and whether they handled crisis well.”
Roman Storm's Conviction Impact
1:36 to 4:00
Discussion on the implications of Roman Storm's conviction on the crypto space.
“that count was operating an unlicensed money services business, and it carries a max sentence of five years.”
Bimnet Abibi on Market Conditions
4:00 to 9:21
Bimnet Abibi discusses current market conditions and future trends.
“But for now, let's hop right into it with Bimnet Abibi.”
Job Growth and Economic Dynamics
9:21 to 14:00
Analysis of job growth, economic indicators, and their implications.
“In FX, you know, you have, you know, dollar had rallied a ton.”
Economic Consequences of Spending and Debt
14:00 to 19:22
Explore the implications of governmental spending and debt cycles on the economy.
“Like 10-year yields just jumped by like five plus basis points in the middle of the day on no headline.”
Halcyon: Addressing Crypto's Communication Problem
19:40 to 21:32
Aubrey discusses her new agency Halcyon and the need for effective storytelling in crypto.
“I think we have a fun conversation lined up here.”
Crisis Management in PR
21:32 to 26:58
Analyze the effectiveness of PR strategies in crisis situations, using Astronomer's example.
“So I think something that's really important, and I think we've seen this with the Coldplay debacle that happened recently, is when you have a crisis, sometimes a press release or a statement's not the best.”
Coinbase's Unique Communication Strategies
26:58 to 28:01
Aubrey critiques Coinbase's current PR tactics and their impact on the crypto market.
“And maybe Coinbase is a good place to start.”
Current Sentiments in Crypto
28:01 to 28:50
Discussion on the current feelings and trends in the crypto space, especially regarding Bitcoin and Coinbase's creative direction.
“And I think right now, broadly, in Bitcoin and in crypto, people feel weird, right?”
Coinbase's Messaging Challenges
28:51 to 30:53
Analysis of Coinbase's recent marketing strategies and the disconnect between their messages and target audiences.
“I mean, no one knows what the future looks like, but we really don't know what home looks like for us.”
Show all 24 chapters
Controversies and Missteps
30:54 to 33:03
Exploration of notable controversies surrounding Coinbase's advertising and communication strategies, including a specific incident involving insensitivity.
“I do think that ad that they did with the generations was really good.”
The Future of Base and Solana
33:04 to 35:02
Discussion on the competitive landscape between Coinbase's Base and Solana, and considerations regarding decentralization and user experience.
“And Coinbase, you're a publicly traded company.”
Creator Economy and Blockchain
35:03 to 37:42
Insights into how blockchain technology attempts to integrate with the creator economy, addressing both opportunities and challenges.
“They're really leaning into that creator and social fi stuff.”
Bitcoin as a Medium of Exchange
37:43 to 39:21
A detailed examination of Bitcoin's properties as a form of money and its potential advantages over traditional currencies.
“But I and on blockchains are permissionless.”
Coinbase's Strategic Positioning
39:22 to 42:00
Discussion on Coinbase's evolving strategies, including their Bitcoin acquisitions and efforts to integrate advanced technologies like Lightning.
“Well, to me, money is really like a medium of exchange.”
The Evolution of Coinbase's Bitcoin Approach
42:00 to 43:50
Discussion on Coinbase's transition and current strategies in the crypto space.
“set up different contracts with it and things like that.”
AI's Impact on Crypto and PR
43:51 to 45:54
Exploration of the intersection between AI technology and the cryptocurrency sector.
“And in general, like, I don't know, what's exciting?”
Challenges of AI in Digital Identity
45:55 to 48:21
Insights into the implications of AI for digital identities and misinformation.
“So I think I think there's going to be a lot of that to come.”
Stablecoins and Their Market Demand
48:22 to 50:58
Analysis of the current demand for stablecoins and their role in fintech.
“So really storytelling from the ground up is the important part.”
Legal Precedents in Crypto Development
50:59 to 55:45
Discussion on the implications of recent legal cases for crypto developers and privacy.
“It's like the only, it's the only thing that's really found traction and people want to use.”
Surfing and Work-Life Balance
55:46 to 56:00
Lighthearted conversation about balancing surfing with work responsibilities.
“I know this from following you on Twitter.”
Surfing and Bitcoin: A Spiritual Connection
56:00 to 57:40
Exploring the parallels between surfing and Bitcoin, emphasizing self-sovereignty and personal responsibility.
“I'm like aren't you in New York working right now?”
The Atmosphere at PubKey
57:40 to 1:02:14
Discussion about PubKey, its significance in the Bitcoin community, and memorable events that have taken place there.
“You don't, you know, you have to be tough to like handle it and want that kind of responsibility in your life.”
Closing Thoughts and Show Wrap-Up
1:02:14 to 1:07:04
Final reflections on the podcast and thanks to guests, with a reminder for listeners to check out additional resources.
“But we, you know, that was at the standard for a while.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Alex Thorn:Welcome to Galaxy Brains.
0:25Alex Thorn:Welcome back to Galaxy Brains. As always, I'm your host, Alex Thorne, head of firm-wide research at Galaxy. Bitcoin, not zero. And we have a great episode for you this week. Aubrey Strobel, founder of Halcyon, host of the Observation podcast and senior executive at PubKey NYC, is our guest. It's a great and fun interview with Aubrey. We talk a lot about her work in crypto comms and PR. We look at some crypto firms like media and we critique them as to whether they did a good job and whether they handled crisis well. We talk about Coinbase. We also talk about the Coldplay couple and how the now ex-CEO startup astronomer reacted to that.
1:03Alex Thorn:We talk about surfing and AI and PubKey and a bunch of other good stuff. It's an interview I know you'll enjoy. We'll also talk with our good friend Bimnet Abibi from Galaxy Trading, as always, talk about markets, talk about the Fed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whether there is incentive for the government to ever stop printing all this money and get its debt under control. It's a banger with Bimnet. And before we get to that, I need to remind you to please refer to the link to the disclaimer in the podcast notes. Note that none of the information in this podcast constitutes investment advice or an offer, recommendation, or solicitation by Galaxy or any of its affiliates to buy or sell any securities.
1:35Alex Thorn:Before we start, I want to say that Roman Storm, the developer of Tornado Cash, the anonymity-preserving privacy protocol on Ethereum, was just convicted of one of the three counts that he was charged with in a New York federal court moments ago. that count was operating an unlicensed money services business, and it carries a max sentence of five years. Everyone I talk to thinks that not only will Roman appeal the verdict, but also that there are plenty of grounds for appeal. Judge Fela, in the hearing where the verdict was read, acknowledged that there was plenty of grounds to appeal, and she believes that Roman will appeal in making the order that he need not be remanded to prison while he awaits his sentence.
2:17Alex Thorn:So he will be out until sentenced. Very disappointing ruling, I think, across crypto for a lot of reasons. By the way, the jury was hung on the other two counts. So technically, the DOJ can bring those if they choose, bring another trial. Those counts were avoiding sanctions, whatever, sanctions evasion, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. I'm quite happy that he wasn't convicted on those, particularly conspiracy to commit money laundering. It makes it sound like me and Phineas are in a room like literally conspiring on how to launder money. Like that is not what Roman did. That is not what Tornado Cash did.
2:52Alex Thorn:It's an autonomous protocol that he coded. But in general, I think people are very disappointed, rightly so, at the conviction. It doesn't make a lot of sense that he can be convicted for operating an unlicensed money transmission business when the federal agency that oversees money services businesses, FinCEN, wrote guidance in 2019. pretty explicitly saying that if you were a non-custodial application, you need not register as a money service business. And I think there are a lot of builders in crypto that build non-custodial services, which Torino Cash was, relied on that guidance. So it's very strange for Treasury's FinCEN to have said, you don't need to register while the Department of Justice is saying you are going to jail for not registering.
3:35Alex Thorn:I think there's a big conflict here and it's a very bad day in the scheme of things for privacy on the internet, regardless of the minutiae or very specific facts of Roman's case, like it in general, this continues and will probably for all of our lives, especially with the rise of AA, to be a sort of intractable battle between government power and privacy. So just another stage. We'll probably talk about that more in coming episodes. But for now, let's hop right into it with Bimnet Abibi. let's go now to our guest bimnet abibi from galaxy trading as always bimnet welcome back to galaxy brains thanks for having me so um we're you know we're down a little bit from like a week or two ago we record on wednesday of last week you were saying that you know that um it felt like maybe in crypto and possibly all markets you could you know get another leg higher but then some stagnancy i mean we're it kind of feels a little stagnant now but i mean again 115k btc again like It's high price.
4:33Alex Thorn:Yeah. We've been sitting here when it was$16K. Yeah. I remember those days. So it's like eight times as high. But either Bitcoin or the market in general, what does it look like to you at the moment? Yeah. I mean, let's just go through it by asset class. I think in fixed income, you've had a lot priced into the rate curve. So you've got about 60 basis points priced out to the December meeting. There's like 22, 23 basis points for the SEP meeting. And so the Fed is expected to start cutting in September for Jackson Hole. And they're expected to continue cutting for the rest of the year. And that is largely based upon growth and employment figures that are showing warning signs, basically.
5:23You had almost 250 ,000 downward revision in the job series last week. And so that's pretty meaningful.
5:35Alex Thorn:Yeah, well, let's talk about the jobs number because it obviously preceded the firing of the head of the BLS by President Trump. But I was reading Joe Weisenthal's commentary on this, and I guess one of the things that people were most concerned about other than the top line numbers is just that, like, what is actually growing? Where have the remaining jobs actually come from? And it's like in-home health care services for older people. Yeah, and there's one other main category I'm forgetting. But not like particularly bullish like areas of growth. Yeah, the private payrolls stuff was weak. Yeah.
6:11It's not – but it's such a weird situation. Again, you've got the immigration dynamics that are lowering labor supply. True. And then demand is coming down because the economy is slowing a little bit. And so it's really strange. Like if you look at the unemployment rate though at 4.2 percent, it still suggests that you're close to full employment. Now, there's some other metrics with respect to underemployment that are reasonably elevated and some stuff that just doesn't get picked up in the data series because we don't really think about it that way, right? It's like, okay, a college computer science graduate gets a job at a firm that has nothing to do with computer science, but he's counted as employed, but the guy didn't take out 200 grand in student loan debt for a -
6:56Alex Thorn:Work at an insurance company or something. Correct. Yeah. Right? And so there's elements of weakness across the board. But again, the economy isn't markets. And I would say given how big markets are, you can make a reasonable case that markets are more the economy than the other way around. And so even if we do see this weakness in markets, that might not – in the economic figures, that might not translate itself into pain in the equity sector quite yet. And I still think there's some technical dynamics that might push stocks higher. And so, you know, one, there's a level of under-positioning amongst institutional investors.
7:36You know, you're seeing like a pretty decent short squeeze today in names like Apple, which is pretty large and a huge portion of the index. I mean, it's the, what, second or third largest company in the world? Yeah. And I think it's behind NVIDIA and Microsoft, I think. Yeah, okay. Top five, top three. Yeah, top five, yeah. Top three, yeah. That's probably the number three. But the point being is there's still a ton of retail flow that's going in every single day. Some of the retail buying stats are just out of this world, like consecutive days of just net retail buying and institutions that are a little underweight and might be forced to chase if the index moves higher.
8:18And so there's some technical factors that might continue to push, you know, equity markets higher. And so that's why the S &P and NASDAQ and corporate earnings have been really good. And there's, you know, you're back in, you know, corporate buyback season again. And so, you know, you've got solid earnings. You've got a pretty nice fiscal backdrop of, you know, government spending. You've got technical factors. And so, you know, there's a really clean path for stocks to continue to trend higher over the course of the year. But I do think that, you know, like we're probably a little overextended right now.
8:57And so there might just need to be like a little bit of position clearing for the trend higher to resume. But, you know, I think you're, you know, within eyeshot of, you know, call it two, three percent of local top before you correct and, you know, then resume the trend higher and stuff. And I think crypto will likely follow suit. It's kind of my view on markets at this point in time. In FX, you know, you have, you know, dollar had rallied a ton. But now, you know, euro is trading back above 116.50. Uh, and so, you know, the, the dollar trade, dollar weaker trade is still alive and well in, in markets, although you've had a huge positioning, you know, kind of flush out.
9:46Um, and so, you know, I think the pain trade right now is probably for dollars to, to weaken a bit further. Um, and yeah, and then on, on the commodity side, like gold is within spending distance of all time highs. and no matter what the geopolitical pressures do to oil on a short-term basis like the long-term dynamics are there's still a ton of supply and opec is continuing to pump oil and so you know like all the rallies in oil this year have basically been faded and like i think that that trend continues um and so you're you're in a place in the market where you know q4 should be strong because of how much money the government is spending.
10:29Yeah, the beautiful bill, the big, beautiful bill. You also have, you know, corporations that by and large are doing quite well and they might actually have some, you know, like money to spend because now, you know, you don't have the tariff uncertainty anymore. So in terms of CapEx, right, folks probably feel a little bit more comfortable in Q4, you know, putting that money to work, knowing where tariff policy is for sure. And so if you're a company that needs to move manufacturing back on shore, you know that for sure now. And so you're probably going to start to invest because it takes time to get all the resources, the labor, the zoning, the permitting, et cetera.
11:10And so now you feel a lot more comfortable making that decision. And so I think between the big, beautiful bill, between, you know, corporate CapEx and a consumer that's still reasonably strong and a market that hasn't really broken like you know q4 should probably be a decent you know nominal growth quarter which again weighs against the the fed that looks like they're about to cut and so it doesn't really might make much sense to me to cut to cut yeah and you know and you don't even know like what the realistic tariff impacts are going to be told like months down the line right is it a one-off or does it create more persistent, you know, price pressures.
11:53And even if like you don't create the more persistent price pressures, the underlying rate of inflation is still super elevated. Like before these tariffs, you're talking about core PCE that's still 70 bps plus above target. We haven't even seen below 2 % in four plus years. We haven't been at the inflation. It's still running hot yeah right and but i think that this presidency um is committed to running the economy as hot as possible right like i do agree with the decision that something needs to change in the bls how they record the data um has been poor right and nobody trades on the revisions until we talked about this
12:38Alex Thorn:last almost exactly a year ago people there was like a massive revision yeah we talked about and And like the argument people make now is just like, guys, we have AI. We have all the data in the world. Like God forbid the number doesn't get adjusted by like huge orders of magnitude. Yeah, surely there's got to be something that can be done. Right. And like the private payroll companies do a pretty good job. Like ADP has been much more accurate than NFP. Right. But people are like, no, that's not the measure that the Fed uses. So like it's like less relevant. Right. Interesting. Again, that's based on like actual jobs and people that work.
13:16So it's a really interesting set of, you know, market conditions.
13:21Alex Thorn:Sort of like converging trends too, right? Yeah. In some cases, opposing trends. But the things that we know for sure are there's the big, beautiful bill. That money will be spent, right? For sure. We do know that spending of that money necessitates raising of that money. So, you know, debt issuance is going to continue to increase. And we've already seen that. Like this week alone, you had, I believe, the largest T-bill issuance ever as part of like normal auctions, which was like, you know, I think it was like$100 billion issued in like one specific T-bill, which is like crazy. But also like, you know, you had weird price action today.
14:02Like 10-year yields just jumped by like five plus basis points in the middle of the day on no headline. It was just like a weird pop, right? That is a sign of like some kind of illiquidity. I mean someone was just selling and it was slightly illiquid in that tenor or something like that. Somebody might have fat fingered. Who knows? But like that's the type of stuff you get when a market's kind of thin on liquidity, these outsized moves. And so you're at the point in the reserve cycle, in the debt cycle where spending a ton of money is going to have consequences within the market. And so if you're going to be spending a lot of money and driving inflation higher ultimately via that spending and via tariffs but also simultaneously cutting rates, that's bad for the dollar.
14:50And so over time, the big picture trends are not changing. There are consequences to spending a ton of money. And you might create a bubble in that market. And, you know, there's, you know, one of the guys internally that's been on the podcast, you know, I was talking to Chris Ryan today and he, you know, he seemed pretty convinced that, you know, until you get to like these super frothy bubble-esque levels, nobody will take the job of getting inflation down like that seriously. right and part of it is because of the system we've built where it never makes sense for a politician to make the hard choices right it's like hey i'm gonna raise your taxes yeah hey cut spending cut spending grandma grandpa sorry like i know you were looking to retire at 65 but wait we might have to push that to 70 oh your social security check where we've constantly done the inflation adjustments.
15:51Maybe that needs to be less. Hey, you know, Warhawks, I get it. You want F-35s everywhere. You want to be able to bomb anyone at any time. You want to put some shit on the moon. I get it. But maybe we got to reduce that by 10, 20 percent. Maybe your district might lose like a thousand military jobs. Like nobody is willing to have these hard conversations because the incentive model for people to do these things is not there. All right? And so how do you deal with an issue where nobody has an incentive to properly deal with it?
16:28Alex Thorn:It's a conundrum. This is why the debt is, what,$40 trillion almost or wherever we are now? Does it even matter right now? Does it? So why? It does matter, which is why we're here. It's just so easy to kick the can to your point, right? My three-year-old is not the one voting. Correct. You know? And, you know, the flip side to that argument is like, okay, look at the level of wealth in the U.S. Like you could easily like just tax people to death eventually. But like at what cost, right? And the issue that people don't realize is that over time because of mathematically how debt works, right, the consequence is increasing, right?
17:08The cost of fixing the issue over time only goes up. And so, you know, you're at this weird point where it's like everybody knows it's an issue. People run on the fact that they'll change that issue when they get in office. And when you get in office, it's like, ah. I don't know, man. Tough decision. Can't do it.
17:27Alex Thorn:Yep. You know, Murkowski needs a bridge to nowhere to get this bill passed. Sorry, here's the extra$50 billion. Here's a bridge. Yeah, I mean, don't – I'll get Murkowski. I don't know the details there. Yeah, but unless you want to be very upset, like don't put the big, beautiful bill into the 03 model of Chachupiti and ask it to find you the most outlandish things that were spent on. Don't do it. I'm doing that immediately. Don't do it. Don't do it. This is great. BimNet, I know it's a tricky time. It continues to be. It just, you know, what would it take for the animal spirits to come back, you know?
17:59I think they might be on their way back because, like, this administration is so pro-business, right? It's pro-spending, right? It's pro, like, really loose monetary policy. Yeah. Right? And it's going to, you know, it seems like the end outcome is, like, there's going to be a bubble if we're not in one already. Yeah. Right? And so there's, yeah, it's just hard. It's hard. It's just hard. And, like, you know, Bitcoin and gold seem like really easy, you know, hedges for that trade. But ultimately, like, you know, if the fix to this issue is massive deflation or massive growth shock, like those assets are also not going to work for it.
18:41Right. And so it's like, oh. Right. OK. There's a debt crisis in markets. How do you solve a debt crisis? Like, you know, austerity. Right. Like spending less.
18:55Alex Thorn:Which hurts the economy. Right. Well, yeah. Yeah, what do you think Bitcoin is going to do when people wake up and are like, oh, I have come to Jesus on debt? Yeah. You want to think that – But in the meantime, like, you know, so – Well, I guess you got to meet Mr. Market where he is and not – you get the market you have, not the one necessarily you wish you'd have. It's complicated, but it remains exciting. BimNet, Bibi from Galaxy Trading, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Let's go now to our guest, Aubrey Strobel, founder of Halcyon, host of the great podcast, The Observation, and senior executive at PubKey.
19:31Alex Thorn:Is that true? It's true. It's true. Rumors confirmed. Welcome to Galaxy Brains, Aubrey. Such an honor to be here, Thorne. I thought I'd never make it. Well, I'm so happy you did make it. And we were just yugging it up about the stuff we want to talk about. I think we have a fun conversation lined up here. We do. But before we get deep into it, what is Halcyon? You just started this. So congratulations and tell us. Yeah, thank you so much. I mean, I've been in the crypto space, Bitcoin space for a very long time, nearly 10 years. So I've been doing comms for, you know, my entire career. And it's just been watching this massive gap in the market of just needing really good storytelling.
20:07Crypto has very credible numbers, but we don't have the storytelling to back it up, you know. And so I wrote an op-ed that I published, I co-authored with my co-founder, Elena Nesinov, and we talked about how crypto has a comms problem. And it's our fault. To be honest, it's our fault that crypto has a comms problem. We've had a lot of loud messaging, but it's been wrong. We've had stadium names. We've had celebrities. It's been ridiculous. You've been here. We've all seen it. But it doesn't stack up to the numbers, right? You know, there was an article that came out in NPR recently that was like, talk about this new cryptocurrency called Stablecoin.
20:47Did you see that article? Yeah, Stablecoin, yes. Yeah, it was like, oh, this new—
20:50Alex Thorn:They talked about it like it was its own crypto. Exactly. And it was like, that's sad. Like, that's NPR. That's a very trusted news source in our country. And it's not—it didn't seem like malicious. They just did that bad a job. They just don't know. They just don't know. And meanwhile, like stable coins are a massive industry. Like they 20, they settle 27 trillion annually. They're beating out Visa and MasterCard. Like, you know, Bitcoin ETFs are like huge. The largest, the best ETF launch in history, like 50 billion in inflows. You know, it's crazy. But the stories like look at this new cryptocurrency called stable coin.
21:25And so that's honestly, it's our fault. And I'm trying to fix that.
21:28Alex Thorn:Cool. So it's a, it's a comms and PR agency. It is, but it's internet native. So I think something that's really important, and I think we've seen this with the Coldplay debacle that happened recently, is when you have a crisis, sometimes a press release or a statement's not the best. You need to go to React and put out a video. So we offer video services as well to help people tell their stories. Because let's be honest, we're on a podcast right now. This is how people like to consume media and understand the world around them. So it's a bit of a both, internet native first. So I want to talk about like crypto PR more, but maybe we should roll the clip of Gwyneth Paltrow from that company, Astronomer.
22:05Alex Thorn:Astronomer. Because I thought this was really interesting. I'd love to get your take on that. This was the company addressing the fact, because this is a venture-backed startup with a billion-plus valuation who, what, just had to let go of the CEO for, you know, whatever happened at that Coldplay concert? Yeah. But they still want to do business. They still exist. And so this was them sort of addressing it while not addressing it. Let's roll that video real quick.
22:33Thank you for your interest in Astronomer. Hi, I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. I've been hired on a very temporary basis to speak on behalf of the 300 plus employees at Astronomer. Astronomer has gotten a lot of questions over the last few days, and they wanted me to answer the most common ones. Yes, Astronomer is the best place to run Apache Airflow, unifying the experience of running data, ML and AI pipelines at scale. We've been thrilled so many people have a newfound interest in data workflow automation. As for the other questions we've received, Yes, there is still room available at our Beyond Analytics event in September.
23:16Remember, we will now be returning to what we do best, delivering game-changing results for our customers. Thank you for your interest in Astronomer.
Read the full transcript
23:30Alex Thorn:So they don't address the thing directly. They, right, the screen is saying, like, you know, what in the hell was going on with the whatever? And then Paltrow is like, oh, we're great at, like, SaaS AI stuff. What did you think about that approach to, like, acknowledging it? I think it's brilliant because you have a lot of attention on you. So you need to make a bad situation good always. And I think in 2025, what people want to know and feel as an audience is that they're always in on the joke. So the worst thing you can do when crisis is breaking out is try to like hide away like the guy did.
24:02He hid under a table.
24:04Alex Thorn:I think if he hadn't done anything, the guy wouldn't have said anything like the Coldplay guys wouldn't have said anything. That was my take. Just do nothing. That was my take. I was like, if you would have just like, even if he just buried his head like down, you know, he would have been fine. Yeah. The guilt was just so apparent. I know it was. It was sad to watch, honestly. I've never seen a moment like that, like in a long time, really take over, you know, especially for a brand. And overnight, everyone knew of Astronomer. So it's like you have a terrible storm and you need sort of the comms to fix that problem for you.
24:36And it's brilliant. I don't know what the background was. I don't know if like Chris Martin, because he previously dated Gwyneth Paltrow, you know, felt bad because he did call it out as like, you know, is this an affair? And volunteered Gwyneth to do this. Obviously, she probably made some money off of it, but she didn't add for them and explained what they were. And even though maybe some people don't care, maybe some people do. And at the end of the day, their public perception is that they let go of the guy and they put out a funny video.
25:04Alex Thorn:Yeah, and do they end up pivot, like succeeding in turning the moment in their favor? I mean, they got a lot of free advertising. And then that video, I mean, obviously their name, I'd never heard of the startup. So obviously millions of people heard of the startup. And then that video, we all watched for that to see, well, what are they going to say? But then it was like, oh, this is what the company does. Did that work, you think? I think it worked for some people. I think overall, you just don't want the company to have to shut its doors or have people not want to do business with you because they don't trust your executives.
25:37And if you need to bring back, you know, the board obviously fired him. It was really funny that people didn't understand how he could. Did you see that tweet that was like, how could he be fired? He's the CEO. It's like, wow, people really don't understand how things work. They don't know how companies work. Yeah, that's a whole other issue. I mean, that's why we have those articles saying new cryptocurrency called stablecoin. So, yeah, I think, you know, they probably had some interest, I mean, on the B2B side. But, like, I don't know.
26:02Alex Thorn:I bet they see a spike in inquiries at least. For sure. And I think, you know, you get new leadership in there, you look good. And now people who never heard of you finally have heard of you. Yeah. So. And I will say it's not like this now former CEO broke the law. I mean, it's an embarrassing and terrible event, certainly for him and their families and stuff. But I'm saying, yeah, it's not like he literally has to, like, go to jail. It's not like a fraud issue, right? It's not like the kind that should sink a company technically. It shouldn't. And it's one of those things, too. It's like this isn't illegal.
26:33You technically won't go to jail for cheating on somebody. But ethically, do you want that person if they make those decisions running your –
26:40Alex Thorn:Well, especially because the recipient of the cheating was the head of HR. Dude, HR people are the worst. I will stand by that. HR people, you know, I don't know. Are we allowed to say that? No shade. I've just, you know, we don't have HR at Halcyon. Let's talk a little bit more about crypto comms. And maybe Coinbase is a good place to start. I think obviously a juggernaut, a great company, been around for, I think, since 2012. And I think they've been doing a lot of great comms. They've also got some other comms issues. Maybe in your mind, what have they been doing that's great? I mean, one thing that comes to mind to me is this is like their recent like Bitcoin video ads that they did or like how it was expensive to buy a house.
27:25Alex Thorn:And, you know, these ones. Yeah. I mean, they donated to the largest super pack. They, you know, there's a lot of great things that Coinbase has done and Brian has done, you know, fair shake. And they've really were able to change a lot of the momentum going into the 2024 election. So we have to give them credit where credit's due. I really like right now that they are shipping like a startup. It's really rare to see that happen, especially with companies who've been around for so long. Even take Apple, for example. All the phone releases look the same. It's like the innovators paradox or something like that.
28:00So people just aren't interested in trying new things. And I think right now, broadly, in Bitcoin and in crypto, people feel weird, right? Because we're kind of hitting, like, we are hitting all-time highs. We're drawing back a little bit. We don't really have a full message going forward. Like people are almost reinventing themselves. And I see Coinbase as reinventing themselves. But they're doing a lot of weird stuff. Like have you guys seen their claymation stuff? They're like doing claymation stories, videos on their channel. Go to their homepage. It's pinned. They're doing like a claymation video of like little animals like describing their products.
28:38It's weird. I'm like, who is your audience here? Like you always have to ask, who's your audience? Well, who are you guys talking to in this example? Yeah. And so.
28:46Alex Thorn:Oh, you know what? Let's, I see it here. Do you see it? Yeah, let's run this. It's one minute long. Yeah. I mean, no one knows what the future looks like, but we really don't know what home looks like for us. And that's the cost of living. Babe.
29:02Is it really the money or is it everything else you have to give up in order to be comfortable? Yeah. Right. It's not just the financial aspect. It's all the other costs. The family cost. Yeah. The relationship cost. I think home is all about you as a person. Yeah, I feel like home is like a feeling. Most definitely. And to some people, that's materialistic. Yeah. Especially with a baby coming into the picture. Yeah. No one's ever truly prepared. Yeah. But we'll have multiple kids. Yeah, five kids, six kids, big house. I am all for it. Grandkids. But we have to financially survive the first one.
29:36And then we can talk about having more kids. But yeah, same. Yeah. we're expecting
29:45Alex Thorn:and it says if it's hard to stay afloat it's time to update the system Coinbase what does that even mean? yeah what does that mean? that is AI slop I'm sorry it's AI slop Coinbase I don't know who's your creative director reach out it's not was that meant to be a real conversation and then they animated it? like is that to normal people? I don't even know if that's a real voice I'm not sure I don't know also I don't know what their I know what they're trying to do, right? They had that great ad months ago about the people in the 60s getting married and going to buy a house and being able to. And then eventually it's like millennials going to move into a tiny apartment.
30:25Alex Thorn:And it's like, upgrade the system. Something's not working for millennials, right? They're sort of talking about housing prices and the malaise that is affecting the youth, if we can be called that now. I know. And it seems derivative from that theme that they're trying to say, hey, these people are talking about how it's going to be expensive to have a kid. But I'm not seeing the connection really clearly drawn. I know because it's done badly. That's why we're here. No, I think it's so true. I mean, it is funny. I do think that ad that they did with the generations was really good. They used to do some really evocative moving ads where you're like, wow, my money is broken.
31:02My money doesn't work. Like, look at how we've been left as the millennials. Look at those boomers buying a house for a tin of blueberries. and like selling it for millions of dollars and retiring. Like people, millennials especially, really resonate with that. So I think they've done a good job on that. I think the stand with crypto movement, you know, has really like, there was like a grassroots approach to that. People really got behind it. So there's been a lot of really good stuff. However, they're sponsoring like the military.
31:31Alex Thorn:Yeah, that was a weird one. The fighter jets. Technically the 4th of July parade is what it was, right? But it was sparsely attended and it said it literally was like a military bleachers where like the president was sitting and it was like, yeah, it was like guns and tanks brought to you by Coinbase. It was crazy. Also, this was pre B2 bombers. That was before that. So it just like. You're talking about the B2 bombers that like almost have hit a passenger jet. The ones that took out that base. Oh, you mean like in Iran? Yeah, yeah. Like dropping, yeah, sending them. Yeah, you're right. Before that observation happened.
32:05It was before that. It was before that. Bizarre timing, weird alignment.
32:09Alex Thorn:Yeah, people were doing memes that were like, you know, the B2 bombs in Iran brought to you by Coinbase, basically. Exactly. And so they have that, and then they have base, you know, their, like, product, and they really want people to get behind it, use base. Base is for everyone, they say. Base is for everyone. They call it on-chain. On-chain. And so on that side, they're trying to be – they want to be degen. They want to be, like, Solana. They want to take them out. And they have two different sides of messaging. You have like Jesse Pollack over here being like, you know, doing really funny, interesting, weird campaigns.
32:43Interviews and stuff, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, what was the one huge mess up that they had that I actually called him out for? I don't know if you remember this. But they did their – it was like bass is for – and then it was pimping.
32:57Alex Thorn:Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like a gif that like cycled through a lot of things and one of them was pimping. And he doubled down on it. Yeah. And people were like, well, you know, that's like exploitive to women. Yeah. And Coinbase, you're a publicly traded company. What are we doing here? So it's like it's. Right. He claimed it was like they had an artist make it and like the artist put a bunch of stuff in it. Right. It was weird. He took some time for him to walk it back, like doubling down on pimping. OK. There's areas where you can like hold the line. Right. Maybe the maybe the Sydney Sweeney situation.
33:26But for this in particular, prostituting women. Right. As a male. Right. You really can't. You can't be. I'm sorry. I'm not even trying to laugh at it. It's a brand. I'm laughing that he doubled down on it. Yeah. It's bizarre to do that. And so he did send me a message about it and was like, yeah. Well, I mean, look, it's comms as hard.
33:46Alex Thorn:I mean, this is why you have this business too. It is. I mean, it's a lot of judgment calls too. The other thing about Bass that I've been thinking about a lot is that they really try, they do want to compete with Solana. Yeah. Solana is significantly more decentralized than Bass, to be clear. and I've been making this joke that like, you know, is this chain in the room with us right now, Brian? Like it's not a blockchain. They totally control it. Like it's totally, and Ethereum people justify this when it comes to these roll-ups because you can unilaterally exit. Like, but you can't unilaterally exit with assets that don't exist on the L1.
34:18Alex Thorn:And there are other things they can do, like set whatever fees they want. And one of the things that's interesting is it does have a lot of usage base. It's like the vast majority of Ethereum roll-ups usage is base. um you know they're making two to four hundred k a day typically in fee revenue from their users um and the question i have is like is is this really the future of finance like a computer in brian's basement and and is it for everyone or is something that's actually like revolutionary from a technology standpoint really more for everyone i mean i've used base and it's i mean this is when it was beginning it was incredibly clunky very difficult to use um and so So I think it's not in its final form.
35:02I think crypto has long tried to figure out how creators fit into this system. And we haven't figured out that answer.
35:10Alex Thorn:They're really leaning into that creator and social fi stuff. Yeah, Zora, all of that. And you have to give them credit for making this try to happen. But you have to think about how creators work and then solve. not oh how we want to do it and then creators fit into our puzzle does that make sense because it just it just doesn't make sense most of it doesn't make sense um again like i do i do like that they are shipping the way they are like i mean there's there's something to be said about it um they are kind of sort of failing in public right now in some ways and i and i say that because i think more companies actually should uh not and i just might be kind of sound a little contradictory for someone who works in comms.
35:54But if you have built something and you want to keep going and you really believe in this dream, well then you're going to have to take a few more risks to really get there. And there's going to be some failures along the way and we'll judge them on these chairs.
36:07Alex Thorn:We will from these chairs here. The other thing I was thinking about with the creator coins on Zora, I'm pretty sure someone on my team showed me that the top one is porn. Which by the way, that sounds like a pretty big market. that might not be bad I have no problem with that like as no but again doesn't that like if that's where it like if basically Zora were to become like tokenized only fans which yeah does sound like a big opportunity to be clear in terms of total addressable market totally um does doesn't that just like directly conflict with those adorable walruses we just looked at thinking about starting their family right the the more serious message of upgrading the system and and appealing to millennial like I guess that's the permissionlessness of it all you know um I it's funny it always starts with porn yeah it's like even on the bitcoin blockchain like the first jpegs were pornography like why why do why must that scene in tropic thunder you remember where he's talking to robert downey jr and he's like well the reason like hddvd ended up losing to blu-ray right was because it's what big porn decided to use you know that scene yeah he's like you're talking to me this whole time it's true it's like it is maybe it's because the people who are building those systems are people who are first to tech or i don't know into porn or whatever But I mean, I think by and large, like if it did become like an OnlyFans and that was a use case, then maybe other things would trickle down after.
37:30You know, it's hard to say. We don't really want to be known, I'm sure, as an industry that our first like creator product is pornography. And we figured out how to cheapen fees for those creators. But I don't know how much we can say on the pornography. Yeah, I agree.
37:47Alex Thorn:And you're right. It is open. But I and on blockchains are permissionless. I'm not certain that base is actually permissionless. Surely they could block someone. They definitely. Yeah, they definitely could. But they're trying not to. They're creating an open. I mean, if pimping was OK, like, I don't know what the bar is. We should have known. We should have known. Maybe that's the whole time. And I would say, too, like, you know, we're picking and choosing. Here are some notable things to discuss. Coinbase is a tiny even dunking on base. Like, I think they earned 15 million in revenue in Q2 from fees on base.
38:19Alex Thorn:that's a tiny tiny portion of the actual company yeah um so you know just want to disclaim that that like they are doing other stuff than other than this but yeah no for sure i mean yeah coin base has brought so many people and i my take on uh coinbase too on the bitcoin side is that bitcoiners really love to to hate on coinbase but name another company that's brought in more people to bitcoin i you probably can't you probably can't and they've been doing bitcoin They did another ad where they showed the physical size of the amount of money that the Fed had printed. You have to zoom way out. It's like the size of the city of New York or something.
38:57Alex Thorn:And they've talked about that a lot. And CBBTC and stuff. And they also announced, I think, in their second quarter results that they had acquired like 2 ,500 more Bitcoin for their balance sheet. Oh, they're trying to become. So, yeah, they're leaning in. Brian has a quote. In fact, let's run this clip of Brian Armstrong. he was saying that Bitcoin is great money. Bitcoin is probably the best form of money that's ever created. What is money to you? Yeah. Well, to me, money is really like a medium of exchange. And it came out of this need from the barter system not fully working, right? Like if I grow apples and you raise beef, and I kind of want some beef, but you don't need my apples right now, you got enough apples, it's like, that's a barrier to a trade happening, right?
39:41So it helps if we have this common medium of exchange. that can be used to price things and just allow a transaction to happen even if you don't need the exact good that I produce, right? And, you know, over time, lots of things have been used as money, right? Like, people use salt as money at one point. In prisons, people use like cigarettes or different food items as money. Seashells, you know, famously, all these like kind of things. And there's certain properties of money that make it good money or bad money, right? Like, Like scarcity is one of those. Can people just, if you can just find a bunch more seashells on the beach, then that's like a bad form of money, right?
40:20Or durability, like, you know, will the thing deteriorate over time? Like bread or something like that is probably like a bad form of currency because it just, it goes bad, it rots, right? How portable is it? Like, you know, a bar of gold is great as like a store of value, which by the way is another good property of money, but it's hard to move gold. Like if I need to pay somebody in Japan, I need to fly that bar of gold, right? Or how subdivisible is it, right? Can I like chip off a little flake of gold to pay for my coffee? So people look at these different properties of money and you can kind of score different monies.
40:58And this is partly why I think Bitcoin is probably the best form of money that's ever created because it is scarce, provably scarce, just like gold or something like that. But it's more portable than gold. you can send a Bitcoin transaction anywhere in the world pretty quickly. It's subdivisible down to eight decimal places. It's very durable. It's not going to go bad. And it's fungible too. You know that if I have one Bitcoin, it's just as good as another Bitcoin. Imagine if you had different purities of metals and like, oh, is this one diluted a little bit? or like are they hiding some lead in there?
41:40You know? So, yeah, I think you could think of Bitcoin as like a digital gold. And it has some of the best properties of gold, but some of the ones that gold doesn't have too, like the portability and subdivisibility. The programmability too, I would say, you can use it in different, set up different contracts with it and things like that. So that's kind of what money is to me. It's intended to be a medium of exchange. and uh i think crypto is really providing a better alternative on that dimension
42:13Alex Thorn:who's asking him it's uh sean ryan that like military podcast guy um but yeah he said uh probably but that's a start right i mean isn't that like you know they're clearly trying to like be more bitcoin they also have michael rohani on the team who's a great bitcoin i love michael really great and they have a bitcoin squad growing over there so i i mean it's hard there There's a lot of moving pieces, I think, at Coinbase right now. They added Lightning. I talked to Victor Boonin last summer about how they added Lightning and how they love Lightning. If people want to use Lightning. Yeah, then they can.
42:50Then you can.
42:51Alex Thorn:I use it at River personally, but you could use it at Coinbase. You could use it at Coinbase. No, I think it's really good. I mean, they were very anti-Bitcoin for a while. It seems like that. It felt like it on the product side. Like if you could just see where their values aligned, I guess, during the last cycle with what they shipped. And there was very little innovation on Bitcoin. It seemed like that was the pet rock that they had forgotten about. So I get the pause from Bitcoiners of not liking Coinbase. Also, Coinbase for the OGs used to shut down all the time. It was like forced hoddling for everyone.
43:22Alex Thorn:Literally, the market would move in either direction and be like, Coinbase is not functioning. You can't even sell if you want to. They have mostly fixed that as far as I can tell. But, you know, I think they're doing a decent job. It's interesting that Brian's even going on podcasts and, like, doing this circuit. You can tell that they're trying to be a startup. So how it shakes out, how they end up at the end of this, I don't know, because they're running in, like, 10 different directions. They are. Well, good. This is a great conversation on Coinbase. Let's move on. Yeah. I want to talk to you a bit about AI.
43:53Alex Thorn:Yeah. And in general, like, I don't know, what's exciting? We talked about it on your podcast like almost a year ago, I feel like. Maybe it was last fall. Oh, yeah. And I said it was when the big meta in like meme coin crypto was like AI launched coins, like AIXBT and whatever. Yeah. And I said that we were surprised. We knew AI and crypto were going to overlap, but we were surprised. We didn't think that dumping, you know, altcoins on us was going to be the first thing. The first thing. By robots. I know. Robots dumping altcoins on us was going to be what we got. The first thing is always what we don't want.
44:26It's the AI robots. It's the pornography. Yeah, yeah. I think, well, it's good to see like sacks in the administration. Yeah, a lot of progress. A lot of progress has been made. And I think we don't want China to win. And I feel like that was very evident in the last piece of this document that they put out last week. Maybe it was a week ago. Yep. Talking about AI, talking about innovation, infrastructure, global leadership. So I think it's interesting how the government has played out at the same time, right? Because we have the tornado cash situation happening at the same time that we're talking about.
45:03We want to be leaders in code and AI. And it's like, well, where are we going? And it's going to be interesting to see how it all shakes out. I feel like right now AI is having its like God moment. And we're still like on the calm side, at least trying to describe Bitcoin and crypto and stables to people. So it's like people feel AI. They understand AI. They see it in their jobs. They see it taking over. But on the other side, we're still back a little bit on Bitcoin crypto. Besides maybe stable coins, honestly.
45:33Alex Thorn:So AI like comms and PR has leapfrogged crypto comms and PR? Well, so our thesis at Halcyon is AI, stable coins, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, DeFi. That's like what I believe in. That's what I want to work on. But there's so many things that are intersecting AI and crypto right now together. I mean, a lot of people are going the agent route, but I don't know if that entirely shakes out. I think a lot of it is going to be cutting out, you know, taker fees, making things a little bit more accessible, building products that are on the blockchain that are AI native. So I think I think there's going to be a lot of that to come.
46:11I don't think it's totally like filled its void in the crypto side. But I mean, like AI is totally here. I use AI all the time. Yeah.
46:20Alex Thorn:What about, I was going to say, in comms and in PR, like, you know, AI video, are we going to see ads all be made by AI? I've seen some good ones. You probably have, like, seen ads and not known their AI. Yeah. I think it's clunking to begin with, but I think we're going to be, like, very soon, you know, how people used to get faked out, you know, the older generation by, like, spam calls and all that stuff. That's going to be us. They'll be like, yeah, that's – I mean, I already – there have been many where I can't tell. I mean, you look for things like extra fingers and stuff, but most of that seems to have been solved.
46:52Alex Thorn:No, I know. Like Google VO is really good. And like, you know, I've definitely seen some that I'm like this, I could not tell. I got faked out on a few and it's embarrassing. So I think that's why on the, you know, on the personal side, like the KYC level, digital identities, how that's going to shape out for people, verifying your own identity is going to be really interesting. Yeah, I've seen some videos of the president, totally AI, sounds exactly like him. Now the mouth moving perfectly. Yeah. Like, what does it mean for brand identity or for executives? Literally, we are going to live where you just can't trust any videos at all.
47:32Yeah, because imagine, you know, a brand, you know, a competitor brand wants to put out a video that's, like, defaming or, like, causing a PR crisis for somebody else. And it's the CEO saying this, you know, then what happens? That's a huge probability, and it's likely to happen. I'm not saying that a competitor would do that, but misinformation and videos like that, deep fakes, are going to happen. So we need dids, basically, to back that for brands as well. And I don't know if they realize that's a problem yet. It's almost like a forward-thinking issue. And I think with Halcyon, too, so much of the comms has been reactive, defensive comms.
48:11We only solve things when there's a crisis. What we're trying to do is put out an offensive strategy to talk about these things ahead of time before they even get there. So on podcasts like this, in our op-eds that we're putting out and publishing with the companies that we work with because these are going to be future issues.
48:29Alex Thorn:So really storytelling from the ground up is the important part. Totally. People know if something comes out of left field that it's fake. Yeah, I mean you're going to have to put the fire out in some way and you're going to have to verify it wasn't you and it wasn't AI. But the better AI gets, the harder that's going to be. And you said dids. You mean digital identities, right? And we don't really have a protocol for that. There's no widely adopted one. There's not. There's a lot of people working on it and trying that. Block was working on it a little bit. Even MicroStrategy announced one. Yeah, MicroStrategy was announced one.
49:00Alex Thorn:Right, Block was working on it too. Block was working on it. Was that what they called Web 4 or Web 5? Web 5, yeah. My friend Evan McMullen, she was working on it for a bit at Disco. So there's different companies trying to solve for this. I think it's going to become important for brands, important for private individuals, important for everyone. Yeah. Because you can't have moments like that. And the AI literacy, even just like internet literacy, is terrible. Like people are putting queries into AI thinking like they can't pull that data and like use it if they're taken to court. Yeah. Like that's people just have no understanding of how this technology works.
49:39And it's honestly really, really hard to teach people this kind of stuff because people aren't even financially literate.
49:46Alex Thorn:So what on stable coins, you said, so stable coins, Bitcoin, DeFi or Bitcoin. What was the last one you said? You know, you want clients that are like a little bit separated. So like a Bitcoin client and Bitcoin DeFi client as well. So but on stables, what are what level of demand are we seeing in growth from your seat? Or like what is the what does the Genius Act mean? Does it mean that we're – is it going to be banks that need your help on this or is it going to be started? I don't want to work with the banks. The banks aren't going to even want us anyway. They're going to have to adopt stable coins.
50:16They're not going to want to. But, yeah, I mean, just on top of inbound, this week has been crazy. We've had so many people reach out, a lot of stable coin clients. And, yeah, I mean, it's come through the fintechs. I think it's going to come through remittances. And then the banks are going to have to get involved. and it's just going to push like cheaper fees and it's just going to be competitive. There's some really, really good stable coin clients out there and I'm really excited to potentially work with a few. So yeah, that's, I don't know. I just, I feel like stable coins, like I found their product market fit.
50:52It is the outlier in this cycle, if you want to call it that. I don't even know what we're in right now. I don't either. It's like the only, it's the only thing that's really found traction and people want to use.
51:03Alex Thorn:They like to own Bitcoin and they like to use stable coins. And outside of that, the only other thing that I, the case I've been making is that like swaps and lending and DeFi are very popular. It's just that most of the assets on chain aren't that good. I mean, you've got Bitcoin and Ether maybe and some native L1s and then stable coins. This has been my whole case for why we need stocks on the blockchain in some form. Yeah, tokenized stocks. Yeah, because like owning equity is great. Equity is great. Ownership of companies is great. It's going to be tokenized stocks is going to be huge. But even just like the foreign exchange, like swapping between like USD to pesos or whatever you want.
51:39It's going to be there. It's going to be so cheap, you know, and like goodbye, Swift.
51:44Alex Thorn:Yeah. Goodbye, Swift. I love that. Let's get a bunch of good topics here. Roman Storm is his trials going on. I guess this we're recording this on on Wednesday, July 6th. But it concludes the 11th, I think. well i mean the jury's out so like whenever it comes back it's over basically right so um this is a huge case it's in new york i mean mainly i guess ask you this as a crypto person and a new yorker um it's in the he's in the southern district of it's the southern district of new york bringing it i don't know where that courthouse somewhere downtown here this is a huge issue for crypto right because the case i mean while there are specifics in the case it fundamentally hinges on the idea of whether a open source defi developer can be liable held liable for the bad uses of their products.
52:30Alex Thorn:It's a little bit more complicated than that. I don't know. What's your take on this case? It's very symbolic for the entire industry. That's sort of what I mean. That's not actually what the case is, but it's very symbolic for that issue. Yeah, it's symbolic for that issue. And I think whatever happens here is going to set a huge precedent. I don't imagine... They have them up to 45 years right now. Crazy. The max he could get. Yeah. I don't see that happening, mostly because even if he does get charged, I think you get pardoned by Trump because I don't think with Ross getting freed and all of the, you know, that has happened in this past year that this administration or, you know, David Sachs in his year and everybody is going to let that fly.
53:20and if he was you know charged it just sets this terrible precedent for builders and people who want who see things differently and want to change the world it's like yeah a mixer we have to just we have to first of all i just don't think people understand i don't even know if the courts can really pop up like and the jury uh really come to a good decision on this because i don't think they really get it another comms issue um it's like okay so you look at all the people that are free right now that are also involved with tornado cash on some level you know like so he's like the only one that gets it doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense and if he goes away it's a terrible precedent for this country for people who want to build in tech i i really hope it doesn't happen um but if it does i mean i think people are gonna we should we should have protests honestly I think people should be outside New York.
54:12Alex Thorn:It's a big issue, too, because even the sort of more crypto-native parts of the issue aside, this constant clash between Internet and technological innovation and privacy is such a core, inevitable issue. We had a former FBI agent on here, Chris Tarbell, talking about busting Ross Ulbricht. He was the guy that caught Ross. yeah and i asked him about this and i was like are we destined to have this like government versus privacy problem forever and he was like actually i hope so because i hope the government never wins like yeah it's scary right yeah no it's super scary i mean i i would say and no shade to ross but like he had you know obviously a little bit more reason to be behind bars and in a sense and i'm not saying that he should still be i'm glad he's done his time i think it's good to be out um but there's so many other people like are you gonna lock up everyone from monero like next Like, what do you I mean, what's the precedent then?
55:07Like, it's just like is any privacy coin privacy mixer? Then like, are we going after everybody? Does it become a witch hunt?
55:14Alex Thorn:It kind of seems like yes, though. Yeah. I mean, if that does, then like everything goes back offshore. It just doesn't make sense. I don't think with where we're going and the people that we have close to the president, that that's going to be the trajectory. And I know this is obviously like in the New York courts and everything like that. But I think, yeah, I think that it shouldn't shake out. And if it does, I think people should really protest that because code is free speech and it's a First Amendment right. And I think that people should be pissed about it. Awesome. Here's another one. You are a active surfer.
55:50Alex Thorn:I know this from following you on Twitter. Yeah. When do you find the time to go surfing? because I mean that's what I'm always wanting. Every time I see you out there or see that you are out there, I'm like aren't you in New York working right now? And you are. So I'm confused. When do you – Well, I also – You go on the weekends? I do. I go to Rockaway Beach and I go – It's close. Which is – I mean it's close-ish. It's like an hour out. Yeah. And I also go to Montauk. I went to Ditch Plains this past weekend and honestly had like this session in my life. No way. It was just crushing it out there.
56:23it's always it's always kind of scary to go out by yourself because i don't have a lot of friends that surf so if you do surf you're watching this podcast hit me up i'd love to go uh but um yeah just absolutely there's like this last wave not to brag but there was this last wave that was coming in it was coming right to me and all of a sudden you saw everyone trying to paddle for it but they weren't in the right position it was it was coming to me and i was like i'm going it was big i was like i have to go on this rode it all the way into shore just then back up and left well because i was like i just want one more so when i rode that one back in i was like i gotta go out on that because it's just like that almost seems spiritual it is it is and then i went and got a drink and like it was like this is amazing um but love to surf i actually did a documentary um on surfing in bitcoin called like a feeling which went to the bitcoin film festival in warsaw poland and it talked about a circular economy in mazl bay south africa that was adopting bitcoin through lightning payments.
57:17And so there's a bit of self-sovereignty in surfing and Bitcoin, I think, of just, you know, you're on your own out there. You're in control of your own sort of destiny and path in this way. And there's a lot of responsibility when you go surf because you are in the with the elements, you're kind of without the ocean doesn't turn off. You can't get out. You know, you could really you can really get banged up out there for better words than you You don't, you know, you have to be tough to like handle it and want that kind of responsibility in your life. And I think that kind of lends itself to Bitcoin too because a lot of people don't want to self-custody, which is fine.
57:57That's fine if you don't. I don't know if everybody should. Like it's kind of one of those things. I don't think everybody should surf either. It's my thing. But you can come if you want. I just don't want to. I don't want it to become too mainstream. It's like Bitcoin.
58:08Alex Thorn:Yeah, yeah. It's like, you know, they're like, don't move to Austin. Yeah. Right? They're like, we like it here. Stay weird. Yeah, stay weird. Yeah. And that's really interesting. You know, I ski. I've been skiing my whole life. And I've really only even tried to surf like once when I was like 14. Never even tried really. And I always sort of like imagine to me like skiing, you're like riding the earth. It's fun. You go fast. But you're on a mountain. And I always thought that there was something very like sort of like nature oriented and nature coded and spiritual about that. And I always have assumed that the only thing that I could imagine that would be similar truly would be like surfing.
58:42Alex Thorn:Because you are. You're riding the ocean. you're in the ocean, you're subject to the elements. It sounds similar. Do you ski also? I've skied. I wouldn't call myself a skier. I've skied. I've snowboarded. And I think you're totally right. There's this off switch that you can kind of hit. Not always. Like sometimes there's only one way down skiing. But you can pull over to the most part. You have your phone with a GPS signal. That's true. Right? Like you have these things that are, you know, if you really got screwed, someone could potentially come get you. surfing you really like are by yourself maybe you can have an apple watch maybe i mean but you don't have your phone if you you know sometimes there's a cleanup set sometimes uh you wipe out sometimes there's like a riptide that could pull you out and you have to be able to solve this problem for yourself or you die and so it actually really puts you in the moment of um you know when you see a wave coming towards you and you know it's going to be bad, holding your breath for that amount of time so that you can survive and really not die.
59:48Which I think that's, I like that though. I don't know why I like it, but maybe there's something wrong with me. Maybe we should diagnose it in therapy.
59:57Alex Thorn:You're not the only one who loves it. There's a lot of Bitcoin surfers. I mean, it's like a big, there's El Zante. It is like, you're right, El Zante in El Salvador, there is Bitcoin Beach. Bitcoin Beach. You're right though. there are a lot of actually there are a lot of bitcoin surfers i think it's this mindset i truly think it's this mindset and you know it's evident there it's evident in mazel based south africa there was a there's a lot of conferences now having uh surfing integrated to it yeah so it's it's really cool um there was one in beer ritz a bitcoin conference was like how do i get flown out to speak at that one yeah why don't i ever get to that yeah you're a bitcoin surfer like that's right like that's my thing i didn't even get an invite to that one so if you're running in that one.
1:00:37I'm like always invited to the ones that are like you have to fly to Singapore and you have to do like this thing and six layovers.
1:00:43Alex Thorn:Yeah, yeah. It's not the best. Hopefully not so much of that anymore. Before we wrap let's talk a little bit about PubKey. You shoot the observation from PubKey typically. It's... What is your relation? I joke that you were a senior executive at PubKey. It's not a joke. Is it not a joke? I don't know. Do they have titles at that organization? What is your role at PubKey or what are you doing with PubKey? What are your thoughts on what it means for New York and for Bitcoin? Yeah. It's funny. I brought a friend over to PubKey recently and everyone has like a nickname. It's like Dags and this is Jerk and this is like this person.
1:01:21And they're like, what in the world in the sitcom is this? Like, what is this place? No, I mean, Thomas is great. I came in the day he had launched PubKey and there was just like sawdust on the ground and he was like doing electrical work. I was like, what? I thought you were a lawyer. Yeah. I was like, what are you doing here? I thought you worked at Fidelity. Yeah. And so he, yeah, he's, he's become a good friend. And I really, it's, it's now that PubKey exists, I can't imagine that we didn't have it before. I agree with that.
1:01:51Alex Thorn:I do. And so the media business is really good. I help with the media business and they have such a great back room where a lot of companies honestly trying to put their message out there, tell their story, can go in the back and do like a fireside chat, had a Q &A. And I think that's sometimes the thing that we miss when we're all in like crypto, Twitter, Bitcoin, Twitter all day is having these in real life conversations. I used to go to BitDevs back in the day and a lot of the different meetups. But we, you know, that was at the standard for a while. It moved away. And then there wasn't really a good watering hole for Bitcoin in New York City.
1:02:23And I feel like it's the perfect place right by Washington Square Park. The food's really good. The drinks are great. You know, having even, you know, despite your politics having a president right a presidential nominee a former president come right and you know try it out was insane like what they've been able to pull off they have mike germano there now too why was pump in the back looking like he looked like a secret service agent yeah service agent it was so funny but yeah germano's there i love mike germano i mean i think they have a really good team and so yeah just happy to be a part help them do their comms and like bring a lot of people in their way and and do some pr for them as well that not that they even need it because they honestly have crushed a lot of it on their own i mean i can't the the it really was a
1:03:07Alex Thorn:coup d 'etat when they had uh the now president trump come and he was like um he was like oh we're gonna have some crypto burgers and he's like throwing them out and germano's in the back he's like bitcoin burger he's like not a crypto burger i know people were like they're like this guy's 70 like let's just like give him a little grace because he's like no we won't they're like Like, oh, it took too long to do the lightning payment. See, lightning is broken. It was like Thomas was like, just to be clear, like there's like glare on the screen. And so like the photo wasn't taking it. It wasn't lightning.
1:03:36Alex Thorn:I know. They were like stressing. Like I could see some beads of sweat coming down their face. Make sure this confirms. Okay, great. Yeah, no, they're great. Bubke is great. Come by Waverly Place in 6th Ave. Great location right there on the corner. I think 85 Washington Place. Yes, 85 Washington. We're there quite often. Yeah, we are there often. And it is a great place. And it's cool. I love the way the pod looks now from there. Yeah. Their setup is great. Yeah. And you've had some great episodes. You just had Teddy Fusaro. You have Mike Cagney also from Figure. Who else have you interviewed lately on The Observation?
1:04:16We have a Nick Carter repeating episode coming on this week. He's a third time repeat guest. Great podcast guy.
1:04:23Alex Thorn:We just had him on last week. Yeah. Subscribe to The Observation. we film at the top of pub key and uh yeah it's been great honestly their media business the food the beers the vibes david or dave the bartender is the best yeah whenever i go i was meeting a a non-crypto friend of mine who lives in new york i was meeting there and she was sitting at the bar we're gonna watch the knicks game a couple like weeks ago months ago actually and uh she's sitting there and dave is serving her and and she loves this guy dave and and i know him obviously and We know him well. Yeah, great guy. And I come in and sit down, and he's like, this is your friend that you're waiting for?
1:05:01Alex Thorn:He's like, oh, my God, Thorne. He's just a funny guy, though. No, it was funny. I brought my good friend Gaz, who was like the second employee at Barstool in, and he was like, Aubrey, I don't want to go to a Bitcoin bar. And he's always like, oh, your Bitcoin stuff, blah, blah, blah. Like, I don't want to go. and I brought him in and he met Dave and he sat at the bar and he's like, this is, this is good. He's like, do I like this? Yeah. He's like, he was so confused and people were like coming up and talking to him. And he's like, the vibe was good. Like the music was good. And for someone who has like a very much a sports background coming into a Bitcoin bar, it's like, it's a good bar objectively as a dive.
1:05:39That's right.
1:05:40Alex Thorn:It's just a good like downstairs bar with all the good stuff that you'd like in a bar. The food's awesome. Yeah. So good. It was like the first time I got him to admit anything positive towards this industry. So I was like, that's a win. It's kind of like in some ways, and I don't want to throw any shade on any other great Bitcoin third places that exist. But like now if I go to one of these, like I was at Presidio Bitcoin for this quantum Bitcoin thing like two weeks ago. Amazing. I'd never even been to the Presidio in San Francisco. I didn't realize there was this like beautiful, like, I don't know what we would call it, like quadrant of the city that's just like open with lawns and it's beautiful.
1:06:14Alex Thorn:But, you know, no bar, no food. And I was like, I'm kind of like spoiled now. Like every Bitcoin place should be as good as PubKey. Because like, what am I supposed to do? Go sit in it? Is it a week? Most of them are really just like a WeWork. I'm so partial to it. Also, because when I walk in, it's like a cheers episode. It really is. Especially when I bring a friend. It's like everybody knows our name. I'm like, there's a drink poured. Like Guinness has poured for me as I'm walking into the door. Like they got the grilled cheese ready for me. Yeah, it's so true. It's so good. I'm like, okay.
1:06:43And people are like, this is, how do you know? I'm like, what do you do here? What do you do at PubKey? I'm like an executive. You're a senior executive. What are you going to do? Sorry.
1:06:52Alex Thorn:Well, come see us at PubKey. We're there often. And watch and listen to The Observation, a great podcast. Congratulations on Halcyon. I can't wait to see what you do, Aubrey. And thank you for coming on Galaxy Brains. Thank you, Thorne, for having me. That's it for this week's episode of Galaxy Brains. Thank you to our guest, Aubrey Strobel from Halcyon and The Observation podcast, which you should check out. and our friend Bimnet Abibi from Galaxy Trading. As always, everyone have a safe and happy weekend. We will see you next week.
1:07:22Alex Thorn:Thanks for listening to Galaxy Brains, the weekly podcast from Galaxy Research. If you enjoy the show, please like, rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. To follow Galaxy Research, sign up for our weekly newsletter at gdr.email, read our content at galaxy.com slash research, and follow us on Twitter at GLXYResearch. See you next week.
From the publisher
Alex Thorn talks with Aubrey Strobel from Halcyon, a Communications and PR agency that focus on companies working in bitcoin, AI, and stablecoins, about all the Coinbase faux pas and other screw ups in crypto. Alex also talks with Beimnet Abebe (Galaxy Trading, about markets, employment, the Fed, and the national debt.
This episode was recorded on Wednesday, August 6, 2025.
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