Raoul Pal: The High-Priestess of Memes and Dickbutts w/ Meltem Demirors

25:14So excuse the barking. That's not me. Yeah, I think that's right. And one of the things I'm noticing here in the Cayman Islands, it's been an incredibly busy holiday season. So Americans, Canadians, everybody have been here en masse. We've had the busiest season. I think it's true across most places. And the reason I think is that in-person experiences, unique in-person experiences traded a premium now. So even though we're generally in a recession or around a recession where we're seeing consumer spending declining in most areas, holiday spend isn't declining. And that's, I think, a really interesting thing.

25:50And I think that's true. I think discrete in-person events, not generalized in-person events, but discrete, specialized in-person events traded at a premium. And so I think we're going through some big cultural shifts. The other huge shift, I think, is around this distrust. And we actually started Real Vision for the basis of this, seeing the financial system has lost people's trust because your generation was Occupy Wall Street, right? I saw that and that was what got me into Bitcoin in 2013. Right. I mean, I think my generation is trying to survive, Ro. That's my key point I'm getting to is the younger generation, the Gen Z and millennials have become risk takers in certain aspects of their lives.

26:33They're quite conservative in some, but very much risk takers in others because the cards that were dealt to them were, you do your education, you end up with massive debt, you can't afford to invest in the stock market, you can't afford to invest in real estate, what the fuck is left? And so this new asset class emerges, that's kind of more speculative by nature, that gives you the dream of riches, whether that's real or perceived. And that enabled a lot of people. It's the same thing as the GameStop thing. It's a rebellion and a pushback against the inability to participate in the same way that their parents did.

27:10Well, and I think that's such an important driver here. I think the other component is, again, there's these very complex factors that I think contribute to this. But I do think the desire for belonging, the desire for authentic, genuine human connection, the desire to belong to something is very important. So just kind of going back to this idea of memes, you know, people always ask me, like, what's up with the crypto dick butt thing, Nelson? Like, you were a credible person. Now you're talking about this ridiculous pixelated, you know, little cartoon. Why? What's happening? Okay, so here's what I think is really interesting.

27:48And for me, crypto has always been about participation. So the way I have learned just throughout my career, through a series of left turns and just being in the right place at the right time, you know, these things are not so intentional. But the way I've learned the most is through actually participating, right? Showing up and participating. And so I was looking at what was happening with NFTs. And obviously, in crypto punks, you had bored apes, you had all of these different sort of NFTs that were memes, but they were also sort of identifiers, right? If you have a picture of a punk as your profile picture, that says something about you.

28:23What do you mean by eternal September when you're talking about Bitcoin. Yeah. So Eternal September is an idea from the early days of online communities. I forget the name of the specific online community, but basically there was this online community. And you have to remember when people were first getting on the internet in the early nineties, people didn't have computers at home, right? People didn't have internet connectivity at home. And so every September when new people would go to university, right? A bunch of kids now had access to the internet at their university. So every September when a new class came in, all these kids were getting online, they were joining this online forum, and the existing community, right, would have to educate all of these newcomers on the norms of their community and sort of help teach them and fold them into the way of being into the culture.

29:12What happened? AOL, right, launched and AOL added the join link for the specific online community to the AOL homepage, millions of people across America had AOL, and all these new people flooded this online community. And so as a result of all of these new people coming online, the old ways and this community's standards of operating changed entirely because they were just inundated and flooded by this wave of newcomers. And so this entirely new online culture was created in the process of this eternal September because the existing community couldn't integrate and sort of adapt, you know, this whole new wave of people.

29:52It's a net influx, a net flux of immigration into a online community, essentially. Exactly. And we've seen the same thing with Bitcoin, right? You bring in a lot of new people into a nation, the culture of the nation changes. It changes entirely. The social norms change, the philosophies change, the popular narratives change. I think we've seen the same thing with Bitcoin. You know, I think a lot of people who are just getting into Bitcoin now, you know, they don't recall, you know, the era from 2013 to 2016-ish, the block size wars that started in 2015. I mean, my defining Bitcoin experiences were like sitting at consensus in 2017.

30:31We had Roger Ver and Jihan Wu on one side of the room. We had the Blockstream team and a bunch of the Bitcoin cordabs on the other side. Like me and Eric Lombroso were in the middle trying to facilitate a peaceful discussion. But like that was the thing that was going on. And we sort of have gone through this interesting time in Bitcoin where I think we've lived through kind of the dark ages of the Inquisition with the laser eye mask these and this whole culture of intolerance that emerged where people were very unaccepting, very critical of anything that was, you know, not this Bitcoin kind of Puritan view, which I think is absolutely fine.

31:07But now we've gone through this. All right. okay i see dude not my dog as i said okay um sorry so we went through this cultural schism and now i think we're seeing a new sort of culture emerge around bitcoin which i would like to call the enlightenment we're seeing the renaissance with the emergence of ordinals and brc20 tokens and new l2s and sidechains drive chains and all of this innovation that i am optimistic will sort of bloom on top of Bitcoin, introduced a bunch of new cases, including, by the way, a casino. Like the casino is the place where people want to go on the Internet. And so a bunch of people are very skeptical, you know, because building a casino on Bitcoin is the antithetical to sort of these very core ideals.

31:53But again, the really cool thing about open permissionless networks is that nobody can dictate why, how they should be used at the end of the day. Right. As you and I know, the market dictates what it wants. And if there are people who are willing to pay transaction fees, which they are, transaction fees in Bitcoin have nearly doubled. We've seen over 10 million inscriptions as ordinals on Bitcoin network, which has driven a ton of transaction fees, mining fees, but also, by the way, has led to the activation of Taproot, which is a fundamental upgrade to Bitcoin protocol. all. So I think, you know, people are very dismissive of this idea that things are used in a way that they don't like.

32:32But at the end of the day, the market dictates, right? And so I do think there's this very interesting sort of community aspect where you can try to coerce and control. But there's this massive tide. And as people rush in, and there's an influx of newcomers, culture will inevitably change. There is only one constant in the universe, we're going to nerd out a bit here, right? The laws of thermodynamics. Everything that is possible in our observable universe to date is dictated by the laws of thermodynamics. And the most important law of thermodynamics is the third law, which is all things tend towards entropy, which to me, one articulation of that is everything changes, right?

33:10Nothing is constant because we are constantly moving between these states of disorder and order, right? Chaos and not chaos. And I think the same thing is very true here. Anytime it feels like we reach a stable trajectory in crypto, something goes completely sideways is an awful new wave of chaos emerges. We see it all over the world. We see it in markets, by the way. Stocks are almost as volatile as crypto now. Treasuries, by the way, are super volatile, which if you would have told me, I used to trade overnight, right? I used to trade overnight, overnight repo rates. They're like 15 basis points.

33:45Overnight repo rates are now volatile. Like, how is there vol in markets that have historically represented the risk-free rate? I think it's just an incredibly interesting chapter where this rate of change and just the level of payoff in these systems is just insane. And we have to adapt to that. And I also love the Bitcoin side. As Elon says, the most amusing outcome is the most probable outcome as well. So the hardcore, as you said, the Spanish Inquisition of crypto have now got people dancing dressed as wizards. And it's hilarious. And of course, that was going to happen because that's the best outcome.

34:23them. But again, like there's also this element of, you know, in a world where everything feels so serious, so heavy, and there's so much fear, we need a bit of levity and a bit of joy. Like we're supposed to be having fun, like magical internet money. And there is, there are elements that are extremely serious, but I think people forget like human beings, like levity and joy is an important part of the experience of being alive. So you can't just operate on this very serious side all the time. And I tried that and it wasn't really very fun. And so for me, the Crypto Dick Buds, like it's fun, it's entertaining, but I'm learning in real time how you build online communities.

35:05I have anointed myself the unofficial high priestess of Beach Island, which is the ancestral home of Crypto Dick Buds. For a while, I was doing these things called Sunday service where we would like do sermons. And I was experimenting with lore and storytelling and different ways of building canonical lore within a community. And I wrote a liturgy. I recorded it like I chanted in Latin. I published it on Spotify. So if you go on Spotify, you look up Crypto Dickbutt Liturgy. You will find that. And through this process, I just learned, A, how difficult it is to build online communities, see the importance of lore and storytelling and creating sort of canonical truth in building online communities.

35:47but also i think um you learn a lot about incentives about motivation um and you learn how to create a sense of purpose but also you know create spaces where people have have fun so we do these little crypto dick fat events um i recently did one in a banya which is like a place where you go to sweat you know the schvitz is a very quintessential new york experience so we went to the fight i banya but it wasn't a normal banya because of course the crypto dick fat event so i I wrote and staged and produced a 20-minute crypto dickbot opera. I think it's the first NFT ecosystem opera. I hired professional opera singers and did this whole unhinged sort of operatic performance in a banya, which I think left everyone very confused.

36:34But these things, they're fun. They're zany. It's supposed to be a little weird. There's folklore in the end. You're building folklore by doing ridiculous things. People remember it. 100%. But that's how culture is created, Raul, right? That's how culture is created. And at the end of the day, like, we cannot sit back and be critics. We have to try new things and create. And in the process of creation, right, there's creation and destruction. But in this process of creating, we learn really fundamental truth. And I think as an investor, I have learned a tremendous amount. I have validated some hypotheses, and I've been able to reject others.

37:10And that has for me has been a very important part of my learning process as someone who's still earlier in her career. Right. And I don't really know if I'm any good quite yet, but I'm figuring it out. And hopefully through these experiences, I will become much better at doing what I do, which is creating culture, creating narratives and then investing in those narratives. Here's where I struggle with investing via memes is the time value of memes or the persistence of the meme, right? So it's really hard. Some can be fleeting. There can be a weekend. And others can be persistent like Bitcoin.

37:45All right, Raul, which shitcoin hurt you? Which meme coin did you trade that hurt you? I have not. I generally keep out of the shitcoin pool just because I have no edge. I just can't navigate my way around that world fast enough to be able to do it but you know I watch some of these and I get just very interested I just observe them I keep a very open mind to it all you know I'm watching this entire shit show going on about this Ben.Eath and all of these other things I'm wondering whether it's going to go one way or the other either everybody's going to end up in prison or something magnificent in terms of art is happening in front of our eyes and I have no idea which but I'm just watching it with a wry smile.

38:27I think in a way, a lot of this is performance art, right? Like it's very elaborate performance art. And by the way, it's not just crypto. Like, do you remember what was the company? Nikolai, Nikola, the EV company that was... Yeah, Nikolai. Right, it was, yeah, Nikolai. It reached$29 billion market cap. They didn't actually have a product, right? You look at Greensill in the UK, hey, you look at Wirecard in Germany, right? Like these stories are so insane, but they happened. It's like, this is real life. It's not just crypto. This financial performance art is happening everywhere. It's absolutely insane.

39:07I do think, okay, so what you're alluding to, I think is some memes are very ephemeral in nature, meaning they're very short-lived. You know, it's this very small moment in time. I think one of the interesting things in crypto is when you're allocating capital, right? There are these very ephemeral trends that are short-term driven. And I think those are game 100 % of musical chairs, right? It's just a game of musical chairs. If you get in early and get out at the right time, maybe it works. But nine times out of 10, it's not going to work and you're going to lose all your money. And as you've alluded to, I think one of the important things is like when you're playing a game, you should know what game you're playing and what winning is in that context.

39:43So as long as you understand that trading these meme coins or colloquially as we call them, shit coins, right, is a game of musical chairs and it is fundamentally a zero-sum game, fine. But I think for most people who get into crypto, it actually does a lot of harm, right? Because they end up playing this game of musical chairs, not understanding the game and they lose. So I agree with you. The question is really what means have persistence, right? Because what you're saying here is as an investor, where your edge is, is things that have persistence, things that have durability, where you can play out a longer time horizon investment thesis.

40:19this um but also i think right just from an infrastructure perspective like what are you set up to trade what are you set up to track there's only so much time in a day i can't even keep up with the insanity like this ben dot e i don't even know what it is frankly i don't want to know what because i just don't have the mental capacity like there's so much in my brain i i can't do it um so i think some of the the sectors pieces um that have been around for a while obviously infrastructure and sort of this underlying financial infrastructure is an important component of that. I do think infrastructure has fundamentally been over-invested in.

40:56There's way too many L1s. There's way too many consensus mechanisms. My view, which maybe is the wrong view, is there will only be four or five dominant consensus mechanisms or about five dominant networks that really have ongoing utilization as reflected by transaction fees or the willingness propensity for people to pay for block space. Right. Because again, at some point, there is real CapEx and OpEx that has to be spent to make these networks operational. Somewhere there's someone with a chip. These networks do nothing but sell block space. When you break it down to its component part, do you sell attractive block space or not?

41:34And that's going to be the defining process. Exactly. And then for me, the fun part as a former commodities person is this block space. is a digital commodity. So how do I build new financial markets around hedging? How do we build new derivatives, right? There's this whole world of financial engineering that now needs to get unlocked to help prioritize, allocate this block space to help companies that use block space as the primary input for what they do, right, to hedge costs and to just, you know, in the same way that people who produce things in the physical world hedge costs through trading of commodities, right people who produce things in the digital world are going to have to hedge block space compute right and it's not just block space um there are all sorts of compute derivatives that i think will exist in the future whether that's gpu compute whether that's you know data storage whether that's in an energy network battery storage or energy availability all of these really interesting things that are going to be unlocked as a result so thesis one is you know block space is a valuable commodity in what networks will block space continue to be valuable and have persistent value.

42:39The second thing that I think is sort of interesting, very durable, is memes that have long-lasting value. So if we look at certain memes, right, and this is, again, why I think crypto dickbooks are so interesting, these jokes are funny. They're always funny. They're consistently funny. They're consistently relevant. Same thing with sort of crypto punks. I think crypto punks have sort of crossed this cultural barrier where they now have permanence. The challenge with identifying things that have permanence is very difficult to know early on. So this is an area where maybe you make a few bets and you follow your intuition.

43:12I'm a child of the internet, right? So to me, these things feel more intuitive. And there are a lot of people who come from the industry of culture creation who I think are very well attuned to sort of understanding what creates and drives persistent cultural value to these things that are more mimetic in nature. And then I think there are all of these other interesting narratives that are starting to be created. And again, one of the really important things and exciting things, not just about crypto, but about technology in general, is as investors, as people participating in the creation and proliferation of this technology, one of the things we can do that is so important is create new narratives and then invest in those narratives and manifest these narratives into reality from a market perspective.

43:56And so I do think there are a lot of investors who are working hard to create these new narratives. And I see your punk in the background, right? And that's what Tug6529 is doing, which sees the means of production. This is what others are doing, right? I think positioning Bitcoin as magical internet money is a part of that. But I do think that we have this ability to create narratives and then to invest around giving those narratives permanence. And so it's a difficult game, I think, investing, right, particularly venture investing. You don't know if you're any good for quite some time because it takes a long time for these species to play out.

44:33But I think we've started to see, I certainly think Bitcoin has cemented its place as a core consensus mechanism and a core network. I think Ethereum is the same. I think after that, there's still a lot of wait and see. A lot of these networks are very young. They're two, three, four years old. They don't really see consistent utilization or persistent value for that block space. But I think over time, we will start to see that emerge. Yeah, one of the things, so I try and, you know, because I'm not good at VC, because everything sounds amazing to me, or everything sounds shit. And usually when I think it's amazing, it's shit.

45:07And when it's shit, it's amazing, right? So I steer away from VC. But what I try to think of is the macro, use my macro lens where I do have experience and think, okay, so punks for me is pretty easy. And we'll test this hypothesis in the next cycle is all trophy assets. end up trading at a premium in the latter stages of the bull market when people have money and they want to show status right it's a simple thing london real estate goes up new york real estate goes up at towards the end of the bull market because everyone's flush with cash and we see it with rolex watches we sit with art the art market's highly correlated to that same liquidity cycle we also see it with so we see it with sports teams right like the new trophy item for billionaires is owning a sports franchise.

45:58And these sports franchises are trading at multiples that are insane, right? I was listening to a podcast the other day. They were talking about sports franchise ownership. These franchises trade at multiples that are astronomically overinflated, but there are more billionaires than there are sports franchises in the world. And so again, the power of mimesis, the power of wanting what other people have, right? I think punks are very much like clearly within that thesis of, mimesis and our desire for what others have. Yeah. And so, you know, that's why in my NFT collections, I've tried to just buy both culturally interesting stuff where communities I enjoy, whether it's rec guy, whether it's crypto dick butts, whether it's MFs, that kind of irreverence I love.

46:46And then I've gone for art, but stuff that I like that has, I think, cultural relevance. and then some of these things like punks or apes that could last and have value as a status symbol in the future because then as the space grows i think it's their prices expand in eth terms but eth goes up as well so it's kind of that's how i try and deal with the space because it's too difficult i just don't have the time to be deep into all of this and i think the other aspect that's interesting is the financialization of the NFT space. So one of the things that NFTs have that traditional collectibles don't, right?

47:27Baseball cards, Rolexes, art, sports franchises, maybe a little bit more financializable. But I think for a lot of traditional collectibles where there's a physical custody component, right? Where you have to physically hold the asset, you have to verify authenticity. The beautiful thing about an on-chain collectible is you can verify authenticity immediately. because it's issued from the smart contract, right? That issued that token originally. So this authentication process sort of goes away because that's innate to the asset being on chain and issued by a smart contract as a token, number one.

48:00And number two, you can actually escrow your asset, right? And utilize it to obtain a loan and to do all these things. So the financialization of culture through NFTs, I think is an interesting thesis. I wrote a blog post late last year called market microstructure for NFTs, which sort of alludes to like how cultural markets are emerging. And the financialization of culture is something that has been going on for quite some time. We see it, by the way, with Instagram and Instagram influencers, right? That was sort of like this massive wave of the financialization of culture and influence and mimetic value.

48:38But I think what we're seeing now is that on Hyperseed, on Warp Seed, because these digital collectibles, these NFTs, pardon, are trading on market microstructure that lends itself to incredible liquidity, incredible latency, right? We can trade these things at light speed at the click of a button in all sorts of new and interesting ways. And so that for me is sort of the extension of this thesis that I think is my core thesis as I look at crypto. Trade anything with anyone, anywhere, clear how you want, margin how you want, settle how you want. 24-7, 365, all markets on chain. it's very simple the way that gets expressed is complex but that's where we're headed but the issue is here and like i agree but i fear we're going to recreate the financial system all over again by excess financialization right now the good thing about crypto and the bad thing is the underlying asset is so volatile that leverage is actually the way to the poor house pretty quickly.

49:43Unlike real estate, where you get these periodic cycles where leverage gets washed, crypto washes leverage really fast because it's the underlying as a 70-ball asset, which is pretty hard to borrow against unless you're quite cautious. And every time everybody gets over their ski tips, everybody blows up. But if we are going to financialize the industry, do we think at core blockchain makes it more stable because we know who owns what that was my core thesis but i don't know if it stands or not anymore what how do you think about this yeah are we building something better or are we just fucking it up all over again well i go back to um there is truly nothing new under the sun which is from you know ecclesiastes the book of the bible ecclesiastes and that is what like 2 000 years old at this point so you know there truly is nothing new under the sun um i do think what we're experimenting with what we're playing at um is interesting feels new and novel but i think again um we are inevitably going to repeat the same things we've already done it once with sort of the centralized credit club we saw and again i think some people look at that and are dismayed.

50:57I think one of the things I have learned, and maybe this is part of my maturing as an investor, is to not view through a skeptical or sort of dismayed lens, but to view it just as human psychology is pretty consistent, right? If we look at even governance, right? These narratives around on-chain governance and on-chain voting and all this like shit human governance sucks it has sucked for 3 000 years and polybius right 3 000 years ago wrote about human governance and everything that was written 3 000 years ago is still relevant today we have basically completed one loop around the kyclos cycle right or an cyclosis or like there are just these fundamental patterns for how humans govern themselves ourselves and we're now about to do another lap.

51:47We have new technology, new tools. We have new narratives, but it's the same thing because at the end of the day, like human psychology is the same. And so again, I get excited about it, but I also recognize that there are only so many business models, right? And I think one of the things that happens in crypto with investors is we like to spend disbelief and believe that somehow there are these like incredible new business models being created. At the end of the day, for business to have persistence and longevity, there are three fundamental truths the three fundamental truths are cash flow income statement balance sheet and so i look at some of these things and i'm like this sounds great it sounds very sexy it sounds very cool how do you make money how do you continue to produce more profit than you consume and cost right whether you're protocol whether you're community whether you're an ecosystem or company i don't care right at the end of the day there is a chip somewhere in a machine plugged into a power source and there are human being machines, there are entities that are performing work that needs to be paid.

52:50So how are you going to pay those bills in a consistent and sustainable manner? That is really the question when we're having the block space discussion, right? And this discussion around the value of block space, that's really a discussion we're having is, is there enough value that is being created here that there's someone willing to pay more than it takes to operate and maintain these systems, these companies, whatever they may be. And so I think you sort of have to keep this balance and it's hard because in some ways you have to suspend disbelief and you have to invest in these zany, wacky things.

53:21But at the same time, at some point somewhere, there does have to be a sustainable, scalable model. And I think one of the things we are relearning is not everything scales infinitely, right? I think we have this view in technology sometimes that like everything needs to be globe scale and address the needs of all 8 billion, 9 billion people on planet Earth. And, you know, God knows whatever sentient entities are out there in our broader universe. Not everything scales well and not everything scales infinitely. it doesn't mean it can't be incredibly profitable right as we've seen with with nfts and luxury software if you will and it's a lot of crypto in many ways luxury software um but i i think you know at the end of the day what i come back to is there is nothing new under the sun the fundamentals that i learned about in under god in business school working in industry um those haven't changed the fundamentals we learned about with commodities right the laws of supply and man these haven't fundamentally changed no and i've always said there's persistent as the laws of thermodynamics right like there are these global truths there are these universal truths and um whether it's today or tomorrow at some point they will come back for us all and so i try to keep that in mind yeah my view in all of this is humans love two things above more above all others one is sex and the other is leverage and they just can't help themselves and it basically drives everything so when are we going into the porn business well that's going to happen right we know that i think this that we're already seeing some of the porn sites experimenting with nfts but just wait to this ai construction it's a complete change because everybody can have their own self-designed pornography that's instantaneous It's a crazy world we're going into.

55:03Right, but it's nothing new under the sun. It's a new media, but it's the same. And so, again, I find it interesting. I find it exciting. I do think that there are a lot of narratives here that are really interesting to untangle, to sort of play with, to rotate, look out from different angles. But I do think having a solid head on your shoulders I have gotten caught up in the hype. I've done things in bull markets that I would not do today. This is a process of learning, or maybe that is my inner degenerate. Fortunately, I do that with my own capital, not investor capital. And it's part of the learning process, I think.

55:47But at the end of the day, as the industry matures, as technology becomes more integrated into our global systems into our way of thinking into sort of the social, political, cultural narrative. I do think there is a maturing that happens. It is an evolution. And I think there are some fundamental questions, right, about, you know, ultimately, does the technology create more degrees of freedom? I think one of the ways that blockchains and cryptocurrencies consistently get positioned is these are tools that give humans more degrees of freedom, whether that's freedom and financial transactions freedom in terms of how information is transmitted stored um do we gain more degrees of freedom through this technology or in fact does this technology remove degrees of freedom from our human experience and i think we see that as well with the discussion around central bank digital currencies with the increase of on-chain surveillance with the increase of sort of permission services that are presented as permissionless services that in fact have pill switches or ways for people to be exempt or unable from using the system.

56:54So censorship, right, at a fundamental level that is contractually sort of embedded into this financial infrastructure that we're positioning as this tool for freedom is in fact like a tool for very dystopian, totalitarian, monetary and fiscal and control, right? So there is this fundamental question of are we enabling more degrees of freedom, which is something I'm personally excited by is how do we give people more freedom in whatever way you want to position that? Or are we removing degrees of freedom? And I think that's really where the balance comes in. If we look at the technology that's being funded today in Silicon Valley, defense technology, internet technology, a lot of software, it's removing degrees of freedom.

57:34And so I do think there is this fundamental battle for the soul of the internet that is currently taking place. If we look at section 230 the earn it bill um even the battle for encryption you know we're on crypto wars iteration 2.0 3.0 4.0 and it you know it's it's been 20 years since the original crypto wars but we're still having the same conversations under the guise of safety right and so um there's just a lot of things i think that are happening that are unfolding this battle for the soul of the internet is unfolding and um i think crypto is one of the the harbingers of that this industry has the capital, the resources, and the cultural zeitgeist, the cultural narrative to help fight that battle.

58:16But I do think over the next five, 10 years, that battle is going to accelerate. And it's going to be very important to dictating what direction this takes. Are we creating more degrees of freedom? Or are we removing degrees of freedom? I know what side I'm on, I think, right? And what I'd like to support and how I'd like to direct capital. But I think it's incumbent on everyone in the industry and outside the industry to sort of help sort of shape and dictate that narrative arc and to push in that direction. I mean, that's another age-old human state is the control of the people versus the power of the people, right?

58:55That's an endless flux, an ebb and a flow that never, there's no final state that never is. But it does feel like as we've been given a new playground to battle with, that that battle is going to play out over the next decades. It's not, can we get some governments to use Bitcoin in their reserves? It's nothing to do with that. It's a much broader thing. And I think 6529 is very much at the front of that thinking. It's like, this is an important battle to take. And we all play our role in it. How we play those roles in what part of it, that's fine. Some people have chosen to be maximalists. They're the gladiators at the front.

59:31The others have decided to be the court jesters to try and change different things. Everyone's playing a role that they perceive within this thing. And that's good because there is no one truth here. And that's one thing I've learned in life. There is no truth. It is a shared collection of truths. And the more people who share that collection of truth, the more likely you are to create a broader meme that carries the power of the people together. Well, and if I could sum up my experience over the last eight years in this industry in one way, it would be precisely that. I think you start to learn that reality as we experience it, right, is not this emergent thing.

1:00:09It's something that's created through memes, through markets, and memes and markets thrive throughout the world. And memes and markets are dictated by human desire. And human desire is a very complex thing, but also a very simple thing. And so if we look at what we did with Bitcoin, and this is always so fascinating to me, we memed a global reserve currency into existence. Over the last decade, we have memed a global reserve currency, a digital nation state in the form of Bitcoin into existence. Whether you agree with that, not that it's the reality, right? If we look at where Bitcoin sits today, that's wild.

1:00:47And we didn't all agree on everything. We didn't all agree on everything. It wasn't us singing Kumbaya and all holding hands. There was a lot of internal strife in that. But that reality has now sort of been created. There are now these new realities we're working to create. We're not all going to fundamentally agree on all of the details. But if we can agree on the direction and we can agree on the vision, right, that's going to get really interesting. I do think, again, if we go back to this crisis, if we look at all of the narratives, right, there is nothing inspiring or hopeful in the current discourse that is happening in politics.

1:01:22It's all doom, gloom, sadness, austerity. stuff, right? As someone who's in her 30s, I'm not inspired. It's very bleak. Crypto offers, I think, and just technology generally, offers a more hopeful, optimistic future, hopeful, optimistic vision. Whether you agree with Elon Musk or not, regardless of what you think of him, I think he's done an exceptional job creating a compelling and optimistic vision with this idea of humanity becoming interplanetary. Again, think what you will, everyone has their own opinions, but the man's ability to create a new optimistic and hopeful narrative has inspired a lot of people, right?

1:02:04It has also caused his companies to trade like meme stocks at incredible valuations that far exceeds the economic reality of the underlying business. And so through the power of means through the power of narrative elon musk has effectively named himself into being the world's richest man if you look at henry arnaud right what does he say about lvmh business which again you know lvmh is an incredible business arnaud you know i think is you know neck and neck with elon at for world's richest man he sells hopes and dreams he sells people desire when someone buys you know a luxury handbag it's not because they're buying it for the utility or the form, they're buying it because of the nomadic desire.

1:02:46And so, you know, the business of selling hopes and dreams, that's what markets are predicated on. And so to me, what's been really incredible is just taking a step back and understanding, you know, we can get very technical and get very much into the nuts and bolts of investing. There's the technical analysis crowd. There's the fundamentals crowd. You know, there's the value investing crowd. There are all these very technical and rational ways to view investing. And I think when you look at investing in something like cryptocurrency or technology, you sometimes have to take a step back from the fundamentals and go into this world of the metaphysical and the philosophical to really, truly understand what is driving the shift.

1:03:27And for me, that's been the really fun part of the journey. I started, you know, very much in the world of spreadsheets and the fundamentals and the technicals of how businesses operate. and over time I've had to lean into the right and left side of the belt curve and really start to understand what drives belief what humans are motivated by how new realities are created and that's I think where the fun is if you can bring the technical rigor and the technical understanding the intellectual horsepower right the fundamentals but couple that with the philosophical sort of more esoteric understanding of how we create meaning and how we create reality I think those two together are really potent and I think can be really interesting as an investor.

1:04:14You know, it's sort of this new frontier is emerging and it's very fun. So I'm very appreciative that I get to do that on a day to day basis because I get to have very weird esoteric conversations, but at the same time also grill people on their balance sheet, which is very important. I think, you know, you are one of the people who have defined themselves now from being either the far left or the far right of the bell curve. And I think that's great. And it was interesting. I had a global macro event in Mallorca a couple of weeks ago. And I showed that meme and said, listen, guys, everybody needs to, because there's so much arguing over that middle ground with the well actually kind of crowd.

1:04:55And I'm like, you've got to get out of this. and the problem was is people just looked at me and said I don't know if I'm in the middle or I think I'm on the right but I think I might be in the middle now really hard to suspend beliefs in a way or know it so well that you can distill it all down to a very simple thing it's it's a it's a it's a it's an art form that you've managed to do and I think you've been amazing in this journey and you know thank you for all you do and all you share and you've taken a lot of people along with you for the ride to understand that yes you might be the crazy mean woman but you're actually far from crazy well look i'm having fun doing it um it it's always great to be on with you raul and i appreciate that you've created this this forum for discussion here on real vision you know where the crazy dick butt lady i used to be the crazy bitcoin lady i'm the crazy dick butt lady i'll take it but i do think it's important to have these discussions and again at the end of the day, right, as investors, here's a beautiful thing.

1:05:55There is a scorecard and it's called performance. And again, with venture, the time scale is a bit longer, but at the end of the day, right, performance sort of where you are and are you able to spot trends before they happen? That is a very interesting thing to try to be good at. And we're going to see if I'm any good or not. I've been very wrong many times and I've been right a few times. And hopefully those few times that I'm right will generate enough alpha that they offset the many, many times that I've been wrong. And it requires humility, I get punched in the face every day by my own duty.

1:06:28And that's good. You learn through that process. And so I think, you know, the market humbles us all. I've been humbled many times. But the few times that I've been right and had conviction, I think, have really been exceptionally right. And I'm looking forward to seeing how I evolve as I go on this journey. If I'm in the middle, you know, we're going to know very quickly, but I'm going to try not to mid-curve it. But it's the everyday process. It's hard. And as you said, whatever we think today is, is not what tomorrow is going to be or a year's time. So whatever our theses are now, they're not persistent.

1:07:02Well, some, you might have persistent threads, but everything will change. And that's half of the fun of this. It's an ever evolving puzzle of which we get to solve it at lightning speed as well. So it's a lot of fun to do. It's a lot of fun. It's a bit stressful sometimes. And I think intellectually humbling and you really have to remove your ego from it. People have a lot of opinions as well. I love the opinion, different opinions. Great. But look, I think this is the way the world is headed. It's only going to continue. And again, you can have a thesis. I think the thesis fundamentally has not changed.

1:07:41I think the expression of the thesis and where the market is moving and how you generate investment returns on that thesis changes, right? And so it's really understanding in this current moment, what is the expression of this thesis that is going to generate return, right? That is my function is to generate return. And so it's what is the expression of this thesis that generates return? And how does that evolve over time? And I think being cognizant of that is also, has been a learning for me. Fabulous. Meltem, as ever, a fantastic conversation. It's been too long and I've really, really enjoyed it.

1:08:19Not that the interview wasn't, the conversation wasn't too long. It's too long since I spoke to you properly. I know. Well, I am happy you have joined my cult of CryptoDickBud because you have a CryptoDickBud now, right? I do. Okay, I'm very proud of you. So we are in many cults together. We're in the Bitcoin cult together. We're in the CryptoDickBud cult. I'm sure we will join and maybe start more. You started your own, you know, cult of belief with Real Vision. And this is part of the fun, but always such a pleasure speaking with you. Such a pleasure being with your audience who have a lot of opinions and love sharing them, which I appreciate.

1:08:57And looking forward to hopefully, you know, starting many new cults and joining them. And let's all get weird with it. And have some fun. All right, my friend. Great to see you. And I'll see you soon. so as ever melton is both highly engaging can explain things really well but she really does live outside the mid curve and she's somebody who really inspires me in how she thinks gets you to think differently about things and i think her perspectives her pragmatism but yet wide-eyed optimism and suspension of belief system is something that is really really useful and she doesn't err on the side of hubris either.

1:09:38She is on the side of the kind of realism of what it is. And I think human behavior is the big driver of all of this. In fact, it's the driver of everything and memetics lie at the very center of it. That's how humans organize after all. Anyway, fantastic discussion and can't wait to get her back. What's up, revolutionaries? Thanks for tuning in. For more content like this, head over to realvision.com and get unfiltered access to the very best, brightest and biggest names in finance.