"I Lost Everything": How Ran Neuner Recovered from Bankruptcy

27:35And one of the criteria for my next move was it has to be something that's exponential and something that makes mass impact. Like in my head, Airbnb or Facebook or Uber, those were all exponential technologies that made mass impact. And that's what I wanted to do with my life. and in 2017 i had an idea to run a radio station 24 7 365 crypto radio station and it was called banter and i registered banter and i parked the idea because the thought of running a crypto radio station just sounded very linear it sounded like more sponsorships more program equals more sponsorships more spawn it just sounded like a very linear non-impact kind of business and then i went on this ayahuasca journey can't believe i'm saying this on a podcast people are gonna think i'm crazy but it is what it is you won't be the first person who will have said this on real vision so i wouldn't worry about that the first night of my ayahuasca journey was terrible it was lots of purging and it was it was hell it was hell and i remember praying to god and saying if you will just stop this, I will do anything that you want.

28:47And then the medicine basically said, she said, like, in order for me to heal you, I had to get rid of all the negativity you had. And you've been living in New York for a year and a half. And I was just a ball of negativity. I lost my confidence. I hated the people around me. I hated my friends for succeeding. It was, you know, like, I just felt I became negative. And I'm a positive person. So day one was about getting out all the negativity. and day two, I kind of asked a question. I asked, well, and at this point, I'd moved to live in Miami and I just came back to South Africa to visit my family.

29:24And I asked Ayahuasca, like, well, what should I do? What's my next business move? And she said, banter. And I was like, banter? No, like banter is a linear business. And like, all I want is an exponential business. I've been out of linear for three or four years now and all I want is, or more, five years, and all I want is an exponential business. And she said, banter is your platform to get into everybody else's platforms. And I didn't know what that meant, but it just sounded good. And once you see something on ayahuasca, you can't unsee it. Your brain's programmed like that. You don't forget it from ayahuasca, from an ayahuasca trip.

30:01You don't forget those messages. Your brain becomes wired like that. So everything else you can't, it's like everything else is now wrong. You know, like it's very hard to explain. I mean, we can explain it. I can try and expand it, but what it does is it rewires your brain through showing you things that are true. And once you see something that's true, you can't unsee it. And so for me, it said, do banter. And then I said, I asked a very cool question. I said, like, am I going to be happy living in Miami? Because I just moved to Miami. Literally, I'd moved, I put a container, my container had moved from New York to Miami, right?

30:35Like I lived in New York and I just moved to Miami and I was really, really, really enjoying Miami. I was looking to buy a house in Miami. And I was going to say to me, you're not going back to Miami. And I was like, I didn't know what she meant. It just bothered me. She said, you can't do what you want to do in Miami. And I was like, I don't know what you mean. Like two messages came. One message was, banter is your platform to get into everybody else's platforms. And two is, for some reason, you're not going to go back to Miami. And I was loving Miami. I just lived in New York and I was loving Miami.

31:08And she said, you're not going to go back to Miami. but in my mind I'm still going back to Miami I told my wife we're going back to Miami we have a lease and then we stay here in Cape Town just for a week because we want to enjoy Cape Town and a week becomes a month and a month becomes oh well it's November and December is the best time here why don't we just stay for December and in December it's like well you know January let's put the kids in school and we've been here ever since now let's go back to the banter story so I start banter The idea is to start a 24-7, 365 crypto talk radio, kind of like what Spaces is today, but at the time there was no Spaces.

31:48And the problem is there was no distribution for podcasts. Specifically, there was no way to distribute a live podcast in 2020. And I think even today, other than Spaces, there's very few ways to do call-in radio and broadcast it live. And so the only way that I could think to do it was to do it on YouTube. But the problem is YouTube, I had to put a camera on my face. Okay, well, let me put a camera on my face and start broadcasting. And this is where everything turned. So it was me and a friend of mine, and then Fred joined us a couple of months later. And all we did was we said, we want to, I knew from my days at CNBC that the more I study crypto, the better investor I would become because of the information asymmetry.

32:40And the thing to keep me disciplined about doing my research was to put a camera in front of my face every single day. Yeah, it holds you responsible. Exactly. It makes you accountable. It makes you responsible. It also makes you accountable for what you say, because if you say bad things, the fact checkers will catch you out. And if you say good things, you attract more people. And if you attract more people, you're actually attracting more fact checkers. And if you attract more fact checkers, it makes you have to dig deeper to get better research. And so it becomes a virtuous cycle. And so what landed up happening was, we realized that the richer we were becoming, because of all the research we were doing, the richer our community was becoming, and we were also blessed with a bull market.

33:25And this is 2021 bull market. And we then realized that what we were building is we're actually building the most profitable community in the world, which is what we call it. And that's when the penny dropped for me. It was the realization that I had a superpower. And what my superpower was, was if I can do a lot of research and I can be accountable for doing research every single day and I would act on that research and honestly and transparently tell people exactly what I'm doing and be over transparent in how much I share, if I landed up making money, hopefully they would also land up making money.

34:10And so the superpower was that I figured that if I did this, I could change people's lives. And how do I change people's lives? Because remember, I've got money now, so it's not really about money. I mean, I sold my business for$150 million. I invest a lot of it in Bitcoin very publicly in 2015. It's not about money at this point. It's about making mass impact and being exponential. And that's the part that what I realized was more and more people were making money and they loved us because they attributed a part of the reason why they got into crypto or the reason why they made certain decisions to what we had said on the channel.

34:47And so what we landed up doing was we landed up creating a business with a mission to change as many people's lives as possible by making it by building the most profitable community in the world. And then I started to realize the impact that we were making. And the impact that we were making is I realized that I'm not going to change people's lives by doing surgery. And I'm not a doctor. I can't change people's lives by doing surgery. I can't change people's lives in any other way, but giving them financial freedom. And, you know, then I thought to myself, but is that a big enough gift to give someone is to give them financial freedom.

35:24And then I realized that most people who don't have financial freedom stress about things like, I've got kids. I know that when I see my kids, I love my kids to bits, but it's very stressful for me because I know that I just want to provide them with the future and I have a sense of responsibility. And then I saw people who were similar to me but didn't have money and I thought to myself, that guy over there is worrying about how he's going to pay his rent at the end of the month. He's working two jobs to do it. He doesn't have a life. He's alive and he's breathing, but he's not alive and he's not living because he's too stressed about financial freedom.

36:01And then I realized that probably one of the best gifts that you can give to people is freedom. Because if you're punished by society, your freedoms are taken away they put you in a in a silver case in a metal cage and they take away your freedoms but they they pay for your lights they pay for your food and they pay for your accommodation and that's more than most people who don't financially or are not financially free have because they don't know where they're going to get lights they don't know where they're going to get accommodation they don't know where they're going to get food and then you extrapolate that out and you say look if i can help make a million people richer i'm changing the path of a million people's generation and that becomes mass impact yeah this is the same by the way it's the same thing that's driven me as well it's the how to unfuck your future idea that i talk about is people's futures are so fucked and here we've been gifted this opportunity this exponential opportunity that if you get it right you can unfuck your future and you can change the entire trajectory of your life i don't care about my future like honestly i'm fine i'm going to be fine wherever I go.

37:10I've been taken down 10 times and I've got up again as an entrepreneur and I'm perfectly okay to do it again. And also I have enough money. It's not about money, but for me to make a mass impact on a mass scale. I was having dinner with a friend of mine who's known me for many years. And he said to me, I've never seen you on a high like this. You've got celebrities phoning you, Formula One drivers phoning you, like crazy shit. He says, your life is a movie. He says, do you love the fame? And I said to him, you know, I actually hate the fame. The fame is the trolls and the fame is people tracking your life.

37:48I said to him, I hate the fame, but I love my life. And he said to me, what is it about your life that you love? And I realized, hold on, it's not fame, but it's something like fame. And then I said to him, you know what it is? I think it's mass recognition for being able to make mass impact. So when people see me and realize that I'm making a mass impact. That is the part of my journey that I'm loving the most is that I'm actually realizing now that we, me, you, we, if done correctly, we have a formula that can really seriously change people's lives. I mean, one of the things, and you'll get it, I get it literally everywhere I go in every single country I go in every single city in every single airport, somebody comes up to me and goes, thank you for changing my life.

38:32I mean, it's like, oh my God. You run on the street in Nashville, you enter the USA, and it's the customs. You know, I once went to the USA and walked through TSA, not TSA, Customs and Border Patrol, Security, whatever, police. And the guy was looking at my passport, looking at me, looking at my passport, looking at me. Why are you here, sir? How long are you going to be here for? And then I could see him. I could see he wanted to talk to me. And then he said, like, he gave me my passport. He said, thank you for welcome to the United States. Should I sell my Litecoin? And I was like, immediately.

39:04It happened to me twice. One was at the border patrol in Australia. They're really tough in Australia, border patrol. And the guy put my hand on my shoulder. I'm like, fuck, what did I do? Did I bring a banana in with me? You know, am I going to get arrested? And he just said, I won't fuck this up. But thank you. the other one I was I was at the border crossing at Tijuana into San Diego and they didn't recognize my Esther because it was a you know a physical crossing and it wasn't an airport so they weren't used to Estas and I was arguing with the people saying listen I've got a visa for the United States and suddenly some woman on the US side of the border said come with me sir takes me into a room she goes oh Raoul I just want to say thank you blah blah blah don't worry we'll get you through It's amazing.

39:51So that's what you call mass impact. That's what you call mass impact. Yeah, we're blessed as well to have that. Yeah. Actually, to be honest, I wrote a tweet about it last night. I'll read you the tweet because I was just thinking about a thought. And I tweeted, I said, I'm trying to find the tweet. I said, my tweet says, I've studied and completed multiple universities, degrees and charters, and I can categorically confirm it. The best way to become an expert on any subject matter is simply to put up a webcam and start broadcasting about it daily. Having a camera on your face, streaming live to an audience makes you accountable.

40:25You have to do the research every time and you have to speak the facts. If you don't, you'll get called out and eventually the audience will disappear. The more you do it right, the bigger the audience will become. The bigger the audience becomes, the more fact checkers and critics there are, and therefore the harder you have to work to get your facts and alpha out there. The repeat of this process makes you smarter and smarter. The smarter you get in the subject matter, hopefully the better you can monetize it. The more you can monetize it, the more research you can afford to do. And so the cycle perpetuates itself and you create a network effect.

40:53I did it in crypto. I started broadcasting to force myself to do daily research and make me a smarter investor. Today I have over 1 million subs and 10 plus researchers working with me every single day. You can do it in anything, crypto, travel, fitness, cooking, literally anything you like. Switch on the webcam, start streaming and start streaming your passion to the world. That's like how I think about it. The part that changed my journey was that when I put a camera on my face and I became accountable. Um, you know, I'm not hiding behind an avatar. I've become accountable to the viewers every single day that I'm going to do better research all day long.

41:25That brings us into the next part of the journey. So now 2021, you're changing people's lives. Everything is great. 2022, the downside, where you now realize you're responsible for a load of people. It's not only your own money, but you're responsible for all the people who've come with you in the journey. so talk about your anus horribilis of 2022 because it was shit yeah i mean look for me it was extremely shit and i'll tell you why it was extremely shit i built a lot of wealth in crypto a lot i was filthy fucking rich when i tell you i was filthy fucking rich i used to watch the footballers on their yachts and i would think to myself i can buy that yacht and and you know like that kind of thing i was really rich i was talking to my wife about what we should do with all our money.

42:13We decided not to buy a private jet because we live in Africa. And, you know, there's no jet that you can buy in Africa that could actually help you fly to the USA or fly to Europe. You need a real plane for that. And that's not what we could afford. We were talking about buying holiday homes. We don't like holiday homes because it forces us to go to one destination and we want to travel the whole world. So we don't want holiday homes. And we literally had so much money that we didn't know what to do with it. And we were making money like crazy. And then Luna. And when Luna collapsed, I had over 50 % of my portfolio in Luna and Luna related projects.

42:49Okay, so you can imagine that I had over 50 % of my portfolio in Luna and Luna related projects. On top of that, I genuinely at the time believed that Luna was going to change money. I had drunk the Kool-Aid, and I'd broadcast to my community for months and months and months and many of my community had followed me into Luna and as you know in four days the whole trade unraveled and I lost over 100 million dollars I lost 134 million dollars it was the toughest the toughest cannot explain to you what it's like to lose that amount of money like I just can't explain the feeling to you also I was completely helpless completely helpless why because my Luna was staked so there was no ways that I could have sold it I couldn't have gone short because I couldn't the volatility was too crazy and the funding was absurd my Luna got wiped out but then the rest of my portfolio also got wiped out because because Bitcoin dropped all the altcoins went to shit and I pretty much lost everything that I'd worked for the last five years to build, I pretty much lost it it was dark it was dark, and you know what the problem is not only did I feel dead inside and i say i felt dead inside i was alive and i remember speaking to my kids but not actually hearing what they said to me i was alive but i wasn't like i was so distracted and i remember looking at my wife and looking at my kids and going you had everything and you fucked everything up like you had everything you had all the money in the world you like you gave them i could have given them anything and in that time we were in the middle of the carnage why were you taking more risk if you'd had all the money why take all the risk because greed because luna was the future of finance because because you wanted to be a billionaire as opposed to yes but also yes it was about the money but it wasn't only about the money it was also because luna was the future of finance And I couldn't unbelieve it because I believed it.

44:55And I'll tell you, like two weeks before Luna went down, Scott Malka was on my show and I showed him my portfolio. And he said to me, bro, de-risk from Luna. And I said, where should I put the money? Solana? I don't think Solana is going to be as good as Luna. He said, just put it into Bitcoin. And I was like, ah, you're dreaming. Luna is much better than Bitcoin. And that's how we left it. now look it's that was the the worst four days of my life worst five days i just want to ask you one more question because obviously the question that goes through your head and that's the one i'm interested in because you've gone through this cycle before is when your voice says why the fuck didn't you see it yourself not you know sure most people missed it so it's not like you know oh i got it right but it's the voice inside your head saying Randy thought you were good but you didn't see it Greed, greed it is not wanting to believe now look I did a full post mortem on what I did wrong and I broke a lot of rules like I broke the rule of diversification which now I live by no matter how much I believe in Solana or how much I believe in ETH none of them will ever be that part of my portfolio ever again, never because I've never been in that position again also it's when you believe in something you only want to see the one side of it and what i realized is that actually the one side of it is completely useless and all you should be listening to is the critics and there'll probably be a hundred critics that and you'll hate everything that they have to say and you won't agree with it but you should spend 10 times the amount of time reading about the reading the what the critics say than what the people that actually believe in your views that was one of the biggest mistakes that we made on luna is that anyone who who didn't believe or who criticized was shunned by the community and and by me in the luna situation they were attacked yes um but and what i learned now is that and to be honest i'm much friendlier with the critics now because i realize that it's actually them that are more important than everybody else that believes.

47:03I really believe in Solana. But like, I really, really, really believe in Solana. But if you're a critic of Solana, regardless of how flaky your argument is, I want to hear it. Yeah, how I think about this is, I build my conviction to get into a position. And then it is my job to stress test it. I don't want to hear everybody confirming my bias. At first, you get into the position, then you need to stress test it endlessly. Yes. So I'm glad to say that this cycle I've played by the rules so far and it's been amazing. But let me also take you to one other place. Yeah, sorry, I just want to go back to this moment because it's this community moment and that moment from going from the high of border guards are loving me to then how do you think about it in your head about the community and thinking a lot of them came with you?

47:58How does that feel? Because it's not easy. I was about to say, losing the money was tough. Losing my freedom, because I had financial freedom to do whatever I wanted, was tough. Looking at my kids and thinking that I've destroyed their lives was tough. Going onto a stream and getting the comments in the YouTube telling me that I'm a scammer and pretty much making me feel like I was the reason why Luna actually went down. The community had to blame someone. I got them in. I'm a scammer. you're an insider you knew this was going to happen you ragged I mean you know that and then and then at the same time I had a guy who was here from London um who community members community members fly in all the time and he came into the office he's like look he lost everything his wife's asking him for a divorce like bro we're all in the same boat and he came into the office crying I mean it was the weight of the world on my shoulders and probably the darkest five, ten days of my life, but probably also the biggest turning point for me.

49:04Why? Because at that point, I was completely demotivated. I'd lost everything again. Everything, not everything, but fuck, I'd worked for so many years to build. Your hopes and dreams. The hard thing is when the future vision of yourself doesn't meet reality, or that's the crushing thing. I remember speaking to one of my good friends, mentors, business partners, and I said to him, I just don't have it in me to start again. Like I just, I've worked for, you know, this wasn't an overnight success. This is a marketing business that took me 20 years to build. This was a crypto nest egg that took me two cycles to build.

49:45This was two bare markets of building. This was like, this wasn't an overnight. I didn't take a hundred grand and turn it into a hundred million dollars. Like this was my life's work. and at the time, I didn't know how bad the damage was, because every day the damage was worse and worse, and I was like, fuck, I have to start again, like, I can't believe it, after all of this, I'm starting again, I just can't believe it, and then I had to face the people in the office, who saw their leader destroyed, and I kind of remember looking in their eyes, and thinking, how are we going to fund this business now, like, what was funding the business, was my investments, like, that's what I was funding the business, and I didn't really give a shit about the broadcasting, And that was the most incredible turning point because I realized the best way for me to make back the hundred plus million that I'd lost is to do something that is in my control.

50:36And the one thing that we had that was in my control was the business, banter. But banter wasn't a business. We were just streaming. We didn't have sponsorships. We didn't have affiliate links. We didn't have – we didn't monetize it. It was just a place for us to broadcast to the world. And then we decided to turn banter into a business. and you know you could probably say the rest is history we built a business that is a huge business at the moment i think we're the biggest crypto media business out there today i mean you know like it's it's a massive massive massive business 88 employees over five million dollars a month in revenue it's a proper proper proper business and that would never have happened if luna didn't happen now when that happened after the eight days of or 10 days of no blood i'm going to try and describe the feeling to you.

51:24You're the walking dead. You can't sleep at night because you're so stressed and you can't concentrate on the day because you're so tired because you haven't slept. You hate yourself. You hate yourself. You disappointed yourself. You disappointed everyone around you. You can't go to gym because you just don't have strength. There's no energy. You're the walking dead. But after the eight days or whatever it was, which I call the pity party, the fucking line woke up in me and then i was like i know what it feels like to be there and i've got one mission now fetch okay peak bear market i've got the drive of an 18 year old and all i want to do is fucking conquer the world and i am now mobilizing all the troops around me step changing saying look yes banter hasn't been a business but the only way we're going to make back this money is if we go and turn ourselves into business mode.

52:22And then I went back into old run mode, which was the run mode that built the marketing business. And I said, all right, let's build the business. Let's, let's start playing games. We've got a community of like half a million people. We can, we can do this. Let's launch newsletters. Let's launch affiliate links. Let's do sponsorships. Let's keep doing what we're doing. In that process, I mourned the loss of Luna because every, remember my shows are like this show. It's unscripted. I just say what I feel and at the time that's what i was feeling and we mourned the loss of luna and we decided one day to check out and to move on and to rebuild and we took the community with us on a rebuilding mission because they were also they'd all fucked it up too most people have right crypto cycles are brutal whether it was luna or not luna doesn't matter most people have to deal with that down 80 percent it's like it's all over we're so back where it's all over again cycle but you kind of then rebuilt sort of with them, I guess.

53:18Well, I think that's the success of banter. The success of banter was we didn't give up. A lot of people gave up in the bear market. We made shows every single day. I know I drummed into my partners and my staff here that consistency is integrity and that we have to be consistent. We have to be every single day, bull market or bear market. Every single day we make a video, bull market, bear market, market condition. Today, I'll be honest with you, Rell, today as we record this was one of my toughest days in my life of producing content. The market's been sideways for 167 days. There is no fucking news out there.

53:55There is nothing going on. And today I had to show up and I had to make a show and I had to find a way to make it interesting. And I'll tell you today, it was the one day in the last three years where I've actually said, I really don't want to do a show today. It's so boring. I just don't have it in me to entertain people today. And I showed up and I did a show and I was looking at the stats just before we started, but actually the show's performing really, really, really well relative to all our other shows. So it just shows that consistency is integrity. And I think that what I've learned in business is that two things.

54:28One is you're going to get knocked down and the important thing is what you do when you're knocked down. I got knocked down multiple times. The first time was my marketing company where I was this rich dot-com millionaire, and I went to zero, and I was insolvent. I got knocked down when I lost the lunar money, and what did I do? I had an eight-day pity party, and then I went into what I call beast mode, and beast mode is saying either I've tasted what 100 million plus feels like, and I'm now going to make sure that I get that. And I'll tell you that early on in the cycle, I actually tweeted, and I said, my portfolio was the same level, pre-lunar collapse, which was like, for me, it was a major achievement.

55:11It was like my, to build my portfolio from where I was. It meant that if people were following me, they also built their portfolio to pre-lunar collapse. And that for me was a massive milestone that I needed to conquer. So, so the first thing is that I learned is it matters how you get up. And the second rule that I've known this all the time, but consistency is a superpower, which most people don't have. Most people fail because they cannot be consistent. Bull market, bear market, boring market. I listen to eight hours of podcasts every single day. I study crypto for 10 hours every single day.

55:52I watch every single bit of content on the internet. Bull market, bear market, quiet market, sideways market. Consistency is integrity. And consistency is a superpower that most people don't have. And if you've got consistency, you don't need to be that talented. you will beat 99 % of people out there. Just keep on keeping on. And that's like one of the, I think one of the reasons why banter is banter is because we've been here every single day, bull market or bear market, making shows, every single one of us. Now, one of the things that you'll have seen is people's appetite for speculation is getting higher and higher.

56:28And so if you talk to people about owning Bitcoin, they just don't care. Oh, it can go up 3x, it doesn't move my dial. You know, I'm the 30 year old. I've got 10 grand in savings. What am I going to do with that? I can't even buy a new car. And so people have gone wildly into the more speculative stuff. And so you've had to follow them in that route as well. And then you'll get into waters, which is these things are pretty small and you're a big player. And before you know it. you know what do you end up moving markets yourselves and you know how do you think through all of that i've been through it all i've been attacked by the zach xbt's although he did withdraw and he published an apology that he maybe attacked us incorrectly um i've done you know in my journey since cnbc days i did like some irresponsible things i think i've learned and i've applied everything that i've learned at banter we if we're going to talk first of all Number one, we separate any token that we're involved in, whether we're invested or whether it's a sponsor, and we clearly label it, and it's in the descriptions of our YouTube, and it's in the corner of our YouTube streams and whatever else.

57:36Two, we avoid talking about low caps, and I'll put a disclaimer on there in a second. We do it, but we're very explicit in the way that we do it. We also segment, for example, memes, and we've segmented them into a separate show. when he said, look, once a week, we'll do a dirty DGN meme show. And if you're watching the show, you know what you're getting yourself into. You know that memes are a game. You know that they're not an investment. And this is separate programming from our normal shows. And we try and segment it into the casino show, if you want to call it that. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah.

58:12I mean, I think just talking about memes and maybe talking about people's appetite for risk, I think that we're at the end of a meme coin cycle. like i think that i think that the meme coin cycle is now coming to an end and i think to be honest thank god because i love memes don't get me wrong i think memes are fun memes are memes are fun memes are amazing memes proved a lot of things to us for one they moved they they proved that we could create and trade value instantaneously globally on a layer one blockchain based just for attention alone? Based on attention alone. That is an amazing achievement for blockchain.

58:53I don't know what memes are going to evolve into, but I can tell you that that is an amazing achievement in blockchain. We created probably the world's most participated in game of attention musical chairs or attention hot potato, whatever you want to call it. And it was fun. But I think like every market, I think that there comes a point of market saturation. And I think that now when you look at meme coins, when we started playing meme coins, meme coins were fun. And the reason why they were fun is because your odds of making money were pretty decent. Problem is, after the Trump debate last week, sorry, the Trump discussion with Elon last week, 157 ,000 coins were created that day.

59:34157 ,000 on one platform alone called Pump.Fun. The odds are now so skewed against the meme coin people. And how I think about this is there's a finite group of people giving their attention. What you're trading here is attention. You're now trying to split your attention across another 150 ,000 things on top of the tens of thousands. So it becomes near impossible, which is I'm kind of sympathetic to the view is the final stage of the meme coin cycle is there's a few chosen ones that end up sucking all the attention. Everything else goes to zero. We kind of saw the same in NFTs in the last cycle.

1:00:13Yeah, I think it's all about network effects. And some memes have network effects, not real network effects, but they've got network effect share of attention. And those memes will probably survive because I do think there's a space for memes. Memes are chain mascots. Memes are culture, et cetera, et cetera. But I think that this phase of meme coins is now done. And you know what? And it kind of excites me. We've proven what we needed to prove. We've proven that on a monolithic layer one, we can execute large-scale transactions really cheap. and the transaction really works. We've proven that we can create a value out of attention and trade that value almost immediately and have a lot of fun doing it.

1:00:52I mean, think of advertising ran from 15 years ago, thinking, fuck, that attention, I can now tokenize. I mean, your whole thing was the study of attention, right? That's basically what advertising is. And now suddenly it's become monetizable in a way that was very different to advertising agencies before. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's absolutely mind-boggling what we've created. Most people don't understand it. No, they don't. They just see speculative casino. Yes, of course. But, you know, don't forget, half the kids in the world play games. It's everybody. It's like a way of our brains love speculation gaming.

1:01:30When in the history of the world have we been able to speculate on attention, barring stock markets, which are, you know, barring markets, Where have we been able, the man in the street, been able to speculate on attention? Never happened. And I think most people are very honest about the meme world. As you said, it's a hot potato game. It's like if you capture the attention and attention grows, you'll make money. But when attention peaks, you have to jump to the next thing. And I think people understand the game they're playing. I don't think they think this is a long term buy and hold investment.

1:02:04That game was fun. Playing that game was a lot of fun. but that game hasn't been fun for the last month what is the new game i think that to be honest i don't think we need a new game i think we just need to go back to investing in technology and not in like we need to go back to to to worrying about the tech we lost sight of the tech for for quite a while because we we were playing the meme coin game which was it was taking up our dopamine it was taking up our attention it was giving us the the dopamine and the money hits that we needed but now people aren't getting it anymore. And so I think that we're going to go back and try and find the returns in the things that actually matter, which is the tech.

1:02:47And so I think that certain things are going, we've proven one use case, which is what we said, attention speculation, if you want to call it that. I think that there's other use cases now which are about to explode. If you were to ask me which ones specifically, I would probably say that even though it doesn't feel like it, I think gaming might actually might actually. Yeah, the new Avalanche game off the grid is a very big deal. PlayStation. And yeah, and there's a bunch coming around gaming. We'll see. We'll see if that hypothesis works because we've got AAA games coming to market that are crypto.

1:03:25So we'll see. One, I think that crypto has taught people that trading can be fun and you can trade anything. and that's a use case and therefore like i always think that uh buying the the networks and buying the exchanges the dexes the perps dexes that are on chain is always a safe bet because i don't i don't know what it is that we're going to trade i don't know if it's going to be a meme coin or a fan coin or a gaming coin i don't really care what it is i know we're going to trade value and in trading value the l1 will survive and the dex or the perpetuals uh uh uh uh platform will always survive.

1:04:00And so for me, like that's the beginning of an investment thesis is they're the tolls you have to pay. You have to pay the chain you operate on and you have to pay to execute. So somewhere within that, you're going to capture the value of the growth of the system. So it makes total sense. Yeah. So that's, that's my investment thesis is simple by the L1s, by the, by the DEXs and by the trading platforms, whatever the trading platform actually looks like synthetics not synthetics on chain doesn't matter just buy the trading platforms i don't care what the value is the value will be traded and then the third thing is have fun on the chain have like if you're spending 80 to 90 percent on the layer one and the trading platforms and then you're spending 10 on the fun i'm gonna say 10 on the fun the memes the games like the fun and to be honest actually this was a discussion that that you being on my channel actually molded for me it was with it was you and dan tapiero on my channel and i was criticizing memes at the time and you said to me but memes make finance fun and i thought about it if the best strategy you've got is to buy and hold 90 percent of your portfolio that's pretty fucking boring yeah so go and spend 10 percent of your well 100 percent of your time or 80 percent of your time messing around in stuff that you could lose it all and make a bit of money but you have fun doing it that was the turning point for me that was the beginning of the meme cycle and at the time we were all questioning what this meme cycle was and you and Dan came on and you said to me memes make finance fun and then like that that stayed with me now like I started thinking about it as saying look now 80 % of our investment is the the bricks and the the the rails and 10 % have fun and you know you'll make money you may make money on the fun you may not make money on the fun if you do make money on the fun you may make a lot of money like if off the grid works and Godzilla games actually gets us right, you'll make a lot of money.

1:05:56Some of the meme coins that we invested in have gone to multi-billion dollar valuations because of the power of the attention of the meme. And so we had fun and we made a lot of money. And so that's pretty much how I see this new economy is I see rails. The rails are for trading value at the speed of data. And therefore, if this whole thing is about value, then it's about the value exchange, be it on-chain or be it the perpetuals and the derivative market around it. And the rest of it is just invest in the things that you think will be the most fun, whether it's memes, games. I don't really give a shit what it is.

1:06:35It could be NFTs. I don't really, whatever it is. What's missing for me now, because I know what the L1s look like. I know what the trading platforms look like. I think now what the market's looking for is the next version of fun. Is the next version of fun games on Telegram? Possibly. Is the next version of fun NFT games? Possibly. Is it a derivative of attention that's not meme coins? Is it prediction markets perhaps? Possibly. That, what is going to get, what is going to be fun? And the definition of fun equals dopamine hits. So what is going to give me dopamine hits in crypto? I think that polymarkets and betting on user-created...

1:07:25So polymarkets created something that hasn't really existed up until now. We've had polls. What's a poll? Do you like Joe Biden? Do you like Kamala Harris? Just vote one or the other. There's no implication to your vote. So you vote. There's really no implication to your vote, and you move on with the rest of your day. that changes when you have to put a wager on it right like then then all of a sudden it's not I'm just voting it's like hold on I'm putting down 100 bucks let me just think a little bit more about what my answer is and if you can then win then hold on a second let me really think about what my what my answer is here so I think that I think that poly markets have done something which if you combine with meme culture kind of says um prediction on culture outcomes i don't know what that means i don't know what that means but i think it's people micro betting on things that really matter um like like i'll give an example of things that really matter is next season's fashion in high fashion retailers going to be caramel or dark brown that's a bet that really fucking matters.

1:08:34Yeah, hundreds of millions of billions of dollars will rest on that one thing. So Zara got that right. Zara almost got that right. And how do they get it right is Zara managed to shorten the amount of time that it takes from experimentation in their big stores to being able to have the items on the shelf. They got it down to 28 days from the time that they tested something in a store to the time that they actually had it on shelves. If you combine meme coins and meme coins plus poly market, what you get is you get a forecast market where people can take risks on behalf of retailers. So give an example.

1:09:11The meme is, let's just for simplicity's sake, call the meme the color of the fabric. And let's call the poly market the probability of success. And let's call that the funding for Zara's next range, for example. So if I bet 52%, if I'm part of the 52 % that bet that the next season is going to be caramel and you say it's going to be brown, and I'm right, maybe I'm the custodian of the return on that investment, which is a culture investment in the world. Now, what is that? That's a combination of two building blocks that we have. Poly markets plus meme coins. Culture plus probability of success.

1:09:50So take that, add in a third thing, which is raising investment for something, which is global funding, and all of a sudden you have a new use for blockchain and all of a sudden meme coins weren't that ridiculous they were actually just a way to tokenize attention and the return was a notional return but that return can actually be turned into a real return in other words it's no longer a notional return if you are really good at forecasting trends maybe there's a way to monetize it maybe it's in the form of a new burger at mcdonald's maybe i don't know what i'm giving you real world examples but yeah because somewhere within this i agree because don't forget we've seen it with like orange juice futures or you know commodity futures people can buy and hedge but there's something here that gives somebody market signal so if you go back to your advertising marketing days you're going to get a clean market signal but it can also be a source of capital for whatever that clean signal is correct correct you know can you bet on startups i know that becomes financial markets but you know it's somewhere within this contextualization i think you're right, this predictive market is something much bigger than people expect.

1:10:57Predictive market, when you mix it with memes, because memes is predictive markets, but mix that with a poly markets type scenario where there's actually real return on your risk with a counter bet or the opposite bet. And then it becomes, I think we've created another use case on a global scale. How will that be used? I have no idea. But I can see a new use case developing. And I can see people getting dopamine hits. I can see people becoming cultural strategists and basically sitting at home with a culture roulette and just allocating chips to things that are bigger than just meme coins, which are just, they're non-attention grabbing, barring just attention itself there's no there's no derivative return barring just the attention and the idea is how can we extrapolate that one one day for it so i think that's how memes eventually reinvents itself and i think that that's why everyone says to me so wait you believe that memes are going to die but you're still very bullish on think about this for musicians and record releases because they've lost all the money from that now but now you could bet is taylor swift's song going to sell or be streamed more than 500 million times.

1:12:15Correct. And then before you know it, she gets signal and there's ways of monetizing out of that. This is the stuff that keeps me up. This is the stuff that like everyone says to me, oh, but you're so bullish on Solana, but you're so bearish around altcoins. And the whole altcoin thesis around Solana is meme coins. I'm like, because you have no idea what this meme coin thing is actually about. This meme coin thing, what we just did now was version 1.1 which was the crypto kitties i don't know if you remember crypto kitties of nfts we still have a long way to go and it's the same don't forget i think memes meme coins and nfts that whole world is going to mix in ways we don't yet understand as well so final thing for you you know we've heard and you've got journey of many is you do well you fuck it up you learn the lessons you have the redemption arc you now run a better portfolio you feel better the business is more stable all of those things but in the back of your mind is that ptsd right and we got to deal with the market top and you're now scarred from all the people who shouted at you and called you a fucking moron and a scammer for not getting it right last time how are you going to deal with that because it's it's a really difficult thing to deal with because it's ridiculous that you should be expected to call the market top but whatever happens there'll be hate so uh i thank those people i thank the the the haters because to be honest without them i'd probably be a lot more irresponsible and i think what they're going to do is they're going to force me to be a little bit more conservative the cycle um because i know the mistakes that i made and i know the amount of hate that i got and i've got a lot of ptsd and as a result i'll probably end up selling too early and that's fine i think most people will this cycle that's my general thought that's fine that's fine and it's fine too because you don't need to sell the top yes and one of my one of my one of my critics reminded me today he He said it in a very ugly way, but he said, I just want to remind you that in the beginning of the cycle, you said this was a left-translated cycle.

1:14:33And you promised that you would start taking profits, 10 % of your portfolio you'd cash out in October this year. Because at the time, I believed that we were in a left-translated cycle because the ETF knocked the cycle out of kilter. And so he said, and I promised. So then I really got to critically thinking, what would happen if I just cashed out 10 % of my crypto portfolio this year in October? now what would happen i'd probably give up on a lot of returns but i'd have the money in my pocket which is better than i had in the last cycle and so you know like i think this time i'm going to be a little bit more conservative i'm going to make a little bit less money on paper but i'm going to make a lot more money in money world in in in in real terms lifestyle in life size that I call them lifestyle chips.

1:15:21You cash them off. You take them off the table. And those are real. The bigger house you can buy or the holiday home or the car that you've always wanted. You know, whoever, you know, for all of the people who do that, taking lifestyle chips off, that's in the bank. The lifestyle is the bank for me. Exactly. So I'm going to be a lot more conservative this cycle. I apologize to all of my viewers. We're not going to get the thousand X's. We're not going to catch the top. But I once read a quote, and I don't remember what the quote was, but it was something like, the way I made most of my money was selling investments way too soon.

1:15:56And that struck a chord with me to almost say, I'm going to take profits way too soon in this cycle. And you know what? It's going to be really hard to do it because there's nothing worse than taking money off the table and watching the token go up. But I'm going to do it because I made a commitment to over 100 ,000 people that watch me daily that I'm going to do it. and if I don't do it, then I don't have, then I'm not a person of my word. And if I'm not a person of my word, I'm not a person of integrity. And then if I'm not a person of integrity, why should they trust me about anything that I'm saying?

1:16:30And so if I said I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it. And so like I thought to myself long and hard, and I think that in October this year, I'm probably going to start taking profits and it's going to feel really weird because it's really early in the cycle. But don't forget, if you remember how difficult it is to buy in the teeth of a bear market because you're fighting fear and now you're fighting the equal and opposite force which is greed they're really hard to fight my best purchase ever was solana at 13 just after the ftx collapse and you know well that that purchase i bought on leverage on a leveraged buy but account and i can't allow myself to close the trade even though if i close the trade, I'd be able to buy 90 % of the position in spot.

1:17:18Just think about it because I'm on 10 % funding. I can't get myself to close that trade because it's my reminder trade that keeps reminding me to buy in the fear. It's such a big trade that it's like I bought Solana at$13 and I bought it on size and I put down 10 % margin and Solana has at least 10x since then. So you can imagine how much this trade up. I cannot get myself to close this trade. It's such a stupid trade to keep open on leverage and I cannot get myself to close this trade because it's my reminder of buy in the times when others are fearful the second time I bought was I bought the Nikkei uh a week ago two weeks ago on Black Monday I bought Nikkei and it was like what the fuck are you doing trading Nikkei I just saw collapse and I was like hold on this looks and fails and this looks and feels like Solana and I was like buy Nikkei futures and I bought Nikkei futures and it was such a great trade because here we were again everyone is panicking and i was like seen this before nikai ain't going anywhere you know although i am concerned about the japan cash and carry trade uh probably a different discussion for another time but um i'm much more concerned than you are about it the more i read about it the more i realize that don't read too much too many macro doomers my friend all they try and do is sell doom of the end of the world okay hold on five seconds.

1:18:41Can we just talk about it for five seconds? Since I've read about Japan, I have read that Japan hasn't been the best economy for many, many years. It's a very aging economy for many, many years. It doesn't have as much output as it used to have relative to the rest of the world. Easy formula. Print as much money as you want. Give that money to anyone who wants to buy anything for free. Let them buy anything for free. No one will complain because you're propping up everybody else's markets. And if they do stop investing in your market because they realize just how fucked you are, don't worry, you'll just invest in your market and bail yourself out, which is exactly what's happened.

1:19:23Like, the more I dig into this trade, the more ridiculous this trade is. And I'm just, what I can't understand, I can understand how governments may kick it down the road. But what I can't understand is how does this trade not unwind? because everybody's in the same trade everybody's debasing their currency it's not all about the yen it's just all a misnomer the whole system is based on leverage and they all know it and the only way leverage gets unwound is the opposite of what you did buying the nikki it's the nikki to full 75 percent and the housing market and all of the things that are collateral but luckily that can't happen why because of the magic money printer because it debases the currency so optically everybody knows the game the game cannot unwind the game the risk gets spread so what we're paying is an eight percent debasement tax a year right that's what they're doing and people go this is outrageous i'll put it the other way around how much would you pay for a put option that meant the world didn't implode.

1:20:30Would you say 8 % a year is good enough? You'd probably go, yeah, I'll do that. And that's kind of what it is, I think. Now, it means that we all have to take more risk because we need to get past that 8 % hurdle rate plus inflation, you know? But that's okay. We've been given the gift of fucking crypto. We've been given the gift to avoid all of this. Look, I hope you're right. And I think it's another podcast for another time. But I hope you're right. And I think you're right. and I want to hope you're right, but I have gone down the Japan rabbit hole of late and I'm a very positive person and I always like to see the positive outcome.

1:21:06It's called the Widowmaker. I've been in financial markets for 35 years. The Japanese unwind has always been the story that never happened. Same with the great reset of the United States. Don't worry about it. Anyway, my friend, fantastic conversation. Really enjoyed it. Best of luck with everything and I'll see you soon. Yeah, next time I think we should do it over a glass of wine or a whiskey and either at your place or at my place. And we need to get our acting order and actually do this thing. I know, I know. You, me, and Scott will get together. Let's do it. Well, it's so good to be on your channel for a change, and I'll see you again soon.

1:21:40Okay, mate. So as you can see, Ran has an incredible story. It starts off with a kid who grew up poor, who then built a great business, sold it, almost went bust two or three times, really almost lost his credibility in the space, rebuilt it, figured out what he needs to do. That is the journey of investing in crypto for many. And in fact, it's the journey of many of our lives. Nothing goes smoothly. In your mind, in your mind's eye, that vision of your future self is just a steady path up. The reality, it never is. The path has got pitfalls, speed bumps, brick walls, all of these things in your way between where you want to go.

1:22:25And all of us just need to learn how to remove obstacles, how to improve ourselves, how to reinvent ourselves and how to learn from our failures. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. And obviously next time I'll come back with some more great stories from more great guests. Make large crypto trades with Cracket OTC, execute orders of more than$100 ,000 off the open exchange through our premium OTC trading service. Get 24-7 access to deep liquidity, minimal slippage, and competitive execution and settlement services. Private and secure trading options include chatting securely with our trade desk for a personalized high-touch service or use our self-service RFQ for super-fast automated OTC trading.

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