HYPE on a Run — Can the Rest of Crypto Catch Up?

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1:09Happy Friday, everyone, and welcome back to RectVision. I'm Bijan Malecki, your RV community manager, filling in for Mando. And today we have a guest who's been on RectVision before. for someone who has been in the NFT and Web3 space for quite some time, CryptoPunks OG, one of the first 50 employees at Uber. Stats, thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing today? What's up, Bijan? I'm doing good. Nice to be here. Yeah, absolutely. It's a pretty good Friday. We had some pretty nice price action yesterday. I always make this running joke that Normally, on Fridays, when Mando is hosting, the markets are usually down.

1:54And then lately, since I've been filling in on Fridays, the markets have been kind of up. So anyway, hype just hit an all-time high yesterday, right? That is like all the news. So why don't we start there and kind of just get your take on what's going on with hype and just your take on what's going on in the market right now? I mean, it feels like crypto is a narrative space, right? And it feels like right now, everything is working for the hype narrative. I tweeted yesterday that ETH has become public enemy number one on my timeline. And it just feels like Bitcoin's not going anywhere. ETH's not going anywhere.

2:28Solana's been kind of on the side. And hype has taken over as the darling child of the space. And people who don't have exposure want exposure. You've got Andreessen Horowitz saying positive things. You've got a couple of regulatory things that seem to be, you know, you've got some regulatory things that kind of create a better narrative for it globally. Just feels like there's a lot working in hype's favor right now. But overall, it just feels like the space, crypto Twitter has transitioned from the majors to hype as far as where it's focused. It's like meme coins didn't work, but here you got something that has cash flows, that's big, that has a user base, and it has narrative.

3:10And it's to the races. Yeah, you know, I actually just came in recently, Kalshi Crypto tweeted that Bitwise and 21 shares bought$16 million worth of hype in the last 24 hours. So that narrative just keeps continuing. And I think one thing that we saw really, especially with hype, is when they brought the perps trading into their book. And I think we've seen that really kick off. Now, obviously, you said it's narrative driven. Do you see that hype narrative driving away? Because now they have revenue sources beyond just crypto trading. Yeah. I mean, look, I think you have one of the better, like you can kind of make a cashflow argument for hype, which is something that we're just not used to in crypto.

3:51So, you know, on top of, I mean, the fact that they're using profits to buy back their own token or using the revenue to buy back their own token, it just kind of adds to the story. You know, it's a lot easier. I shouldn't say easier, but yeah, I think in a world where kind of a bit more fluff narratives or cultural narratives have gotten people burned. The idea that hype actually has a lot of cash flow that they're using to buy back token, I think does. Yeah, it just creates a better narrative. Yeah. And a source of buys as well. Yeah, absolutely. Now you mentioned ETH, right? Public enemy number one on your timeline.

4:32Does that tell you that maybe it's a good time to buy? Maybe it's a contrarian type of trade right now? How are you looking at ETH these days? I don't really see crypto as a place where you want to be contrarian. I think this is more of a momentum space. And I think that I always say the problem with going down 90 % is you can do it again. Now, ETH has not gone down 90%. It's held its 2 ,000, 3 ,000, 2 ,000, 2 ,500 range has been going on for a few months now. But the fundamentals of ETH feel weak. It just feels like the L2 narratives kind of died. DeFi has taken a lot of big hits because of AI hacks and just the risk reward of DeFi not feeling great.

5:19You've got members of the ETH Foundation leaving. It feels like there have been some big institutional sellers. I think the big tailwind that ETH had was the ETF narrative that the Bitcoin narrative or the ETF narrative was a great driver for the whole space. And that's just tired now. And I think there was a view that Bitcoin would do well and then ETH would kind of ride the coattails as the second. At the time, it was the only other coin that had an ETF if you go back like a year and a half ago. So it was the idea that if Bitcoin went up, people would just turn to ETH. And that narrative is dead because a lot of other assets have ETFs now.

6:00And more importantly, it's just, you know, it's not new anymore. And the whole idea that this whole new buyer base is going to come for our assets kind of, I think that drove some of the waves in the past few years, but I think that's a dead narrative. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of ETH, another thing that I've seen on the timeline, maybe not so much recently, but definitely in the last month or so, is a lot of people talking about pivoting to NFTs, right? Maybe a little bit tongue in cheek. But what's your take on the current state of the market? Do you see NFTs making a comeback? Is that going to look different than 2021?

6:38And if it does make a comeback, is that going to help ETH ultimately as well? I mean, 2021 was hard. It wasn't hard. It was great. It's hard to repeat that level of optimism, of chartering new territory, and kind of the future of what felt like some new kind of cultural technology wave. And I think we've now gone through three to four years of that having proven to be a bit of an illusion, or I shouldn't say an illusion, but just nowhere near as strong as what people hope for. I think it's hard to recreate that with something in kind of like a second jump up. So I'm not, you know, it's, yeah, it's hard.

7:17I mean, there's a lot of supply created in 2021, 2022. There are a lot of people sitting on losses. And when you have a lot of supply and a lot of people sitting on losses, I think a lot of like the kind of things that drove NFTs is really, really hard to repeat. You've seen strength in the punks market, not super strength, but the floor is at 33 ETH right now. It's kind of holding up in the 70 ,000s for US dollar terms. So I think you are seeing a few assets within it. I was just talking to Eli Scheidman, who's probably one of the biggest brokers right now behind big NFT trades. He's seeing a lot of interest in XCopy and CryptoPunks, like pretty healthy dynamics and a couple of like the keynote things.

8:03But when you get one level lower, like even, you know, looking at looking at the other PFP projects or the other generative art projects, it's just hard. Again, too much supply, too many recent losses. And it's hard to get people as excited as they were. I think 2021 is going to be very, very hard to repeat. Yeah, I agree with you, especially just with the fact that so many people are down and kind of feel tired of the space. And you mentioned something interesting, right? Punks, X-Copy, right? Like those are, those have a historic place, a very artistic place in this space, right? So I feel like that speaks to one side of it where, you know, kind of the art that people are interested in holding from real artists are things that they're buying.

8:50And then you mentioned kind of the PFP space, which we've seen a little more trouble with them, you know, repeating or I guess having somewhat success from 2021. But we have seen some of those like, you know, maybe the Pudgy Penguins and the Rekt, you know, start to evolve and start creating outside revenues, revenue streams for their projects beyond just, you know, buying the floors. Do you see that evolving to other projects and that kind of being successful for NFTs going forward? Or is that kind of just, hey, these guys found it and they're big and that's why they're successful? Which specific dynamic are you talking about?

9:26Like NFT projects, particularly PFP style communities, finding outside revenue sources and sustainable ones. Yeah, you know, I think that that's the model that really struck. this idea of let's mint these NFTs and then trust this team to go find revenue generating models out there. I don't even think we have a single success story of that. I think there were illusions of that, like the Walmart partnership for Pudgy Penguins. Now, you saw this idea of those revenue streams with Pudgy's, but at the end of the day, that was a much bigger deal for the news flow and for the branding and for the narrative than it ended up being for this thing where the project was going to go and buy back the NFTs with the revenue.

10:14And at the end of the day, a lot of these guys, when they get their revenue, they don't even use it to buy back the NFTs. They use it to grow the business, to think maybe, but Pudgy's not talking about a potential IPO, which means that you also are going to have to have a lot of revenue to give to shareholders, which won't go to the NFT holders. And I think that that's where a lot of this stuff gets in trouble. Even if you have something that's good, if you're not focused on the one asset class, then that cashflow may not even help, may not even help the NFT holders. So yeah, I don't think we have a single example of that model truly working.

10:46And we have a lot of people who tried, so. That's a very interesting point. I'm glad you brought that up because we tend to think of those NFT projects that have created outside revenue sources as trying to, as like basically operating like a hyperliquid where they're using those fees and, you know, the fees that they're generating to buy back their token or project. But it seems like that's not necessarily the case in this space right now. I don't think it's ever been the case. I just haven't seen any examples of, you know, I mean, maybe every now and then people flirted with all like the royalties go towards buying back NFTs or something.

11:22But at the end of the day, they don't even do that because the team want to keep the royalties. But even if they do that, it just kind of becomes a bit of a Ponzi because it's like, you know, when the activity dies and the buybacks die. At the end of the day, I think the use case for NFTs that has worked is collectibles and people feeling connection to the art, the project, the team, the traits. And I think, you know, I think we've seen that work. I think, you know, even Bored Apes right now are still, I don't know what they're at, like maybe eight or nine ETH. Like, yeah, these are not these are not low prices for digital collectibles.

11:54You know, I think it's it's it's I'm looking up it right now, looking up it now. I think it's easy to, yeah, floor price for Bored Apes at more than 90 ETH. That's a$20 ,000 digital collectible. And I think it's easy to laugh at it because the floor price was 150 ETH. But$20 ,000 is nothing to scoff at. Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's crazy to think that it's actually low compared to where it was, right? Over$100 ,000 at one point, which is just crazy to think about these days. So Stats, I want to pivot a little bit because obviously like AI, it's just all the narrative right now. It's all the buzz in the space.

12:33People are making a killing off of AI trades. People are diving into learning AI and building out their skill sets to be prepared for this future that's coming. But I want to start because you were at Uber, right? You were at one of the first 50 employees at Uber. And this is something I was thinking about before we came on air, because you were inside, you had a front row seat into a company that was genuinely disrupting how the world moves at that time, right? You were fighting regulators, the industry expanding, all of that. How does that compare to what you see AI doing right now? Is it bigger?

13:15Do you think it's similar? What's actually different or the same about that? Yeah, I think it's just like a totally different category. I mean, Uber was trying to go and kind of add a little bit of a technological edge, a lot of regulatory indifference, a willingness to break the law, truth be told. because I think Uber saw a lot of the laws around the taxi industry as kind of protective of taxis and not consumer-friendly and went in and tried to take advantage of that and kind of displace the taxi industry using tech. Also, Silicon Valley war chests. We had billions of dollars that we could go in and create network effects just kind of through brute force and then break a bunch of laws that were not consumer friendly.

14:11And if you broke them aggressively enough and with enough money and quickly enough, you know, consumers start to get your back and disagree with the regulatory bodies. Like it was very, it was very, I think it was specific on that. It was very targeted and it was just one industry. Whereas AI feels like, I mean, AI, AI is basically, I think at the end of the day, displacing the human brain, you know, like it's kind of pretty much everything that human the human brain does which in the United States you know a place like United States which is a huge services economy uh India obviously a huge services economy like um you know I think it's literally doing everything that humans do but better now we're not there with robotics yet and we're not fully there with uh we're not fully there with kind of like the the thinking side either, but we are in a lot of ways.

15:05So I think it's kind of a displacement that is just on another level from any technological change that I've personally witnessed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty, AI touches literally everything it seems right now. Whereas, you know, I guess Uber was, you know, in a specific sector of the market, but yeah, that's a great point. You're building with AI, obviously, right? You post about it often about your journey with AI and what you're learning and what you're doing with it. Just kind of big picture before we kind of dive into a little bit more of it. From someone who's so involved in it, what is one thing that's like genuinely excites you about where this future is going?

15:43And then what's one thing that makes you be like, I'm a little bit concerned about it maybe? Yeah, I mean, I guess there's like a couple different ways to look at the concern. Like, am I concerned for the economy? Am I concerned for myself? Am I concerned for the world? You know, look, it's, you know, it's cool. You know, I was talking to, you know, to Beeple about this and he says like, there's something very addictive about being able to do whatever you want. Like, you know, it's all these, you know, it's not like, it's not like you couldn't just make an app in the past, but you would have to go onto Fiverr or whatever, find a developer in India or find a developer in the U S like work with them, kind of go back and forth.

16:23Things would take days or weeks. And here, pretty much anything you want to make in the world of software, you can at least get like a working model up pretty darn quick. So I think for people who are more into doing things, less into structure, organization, working with other people, teamwork, it's like you can almost just kind of on your own do a whole lot of stuff with this that simply wasn't possible. I'd say, I think that the big thing, you know, there are all these tweets, like when Claude Code came out about how this is going to make the next round of 100 millionaires or millionaires and stuff.

17:01And I think that I don't know if that reality is actually played out. And I think that the big thing that's missing is attention and distribution. Like you can build the coolest product you want, but at the end of the day, no one else cares. And, you know, It is very hard to get consumer attention. And if you build a game, it's like, well, you think consumers don't have enough games to try? So how do you get your game in front of people? How do you build distribution? AI can't do that for you. It can give you advice on how to run an Instagram account, but it's given thousands of other people advice too.

17:37And at the end of the day, going from Instagram to building a brand, having people use your product is very hard. So I've always said the skills that I find extremely important right now are building a trusted brand for yourself that people want to do the things you say. And that's why I think guys like Threadguy and guys like Clemente and some of the easy Raul, Mando, these people who have attention in our space, I think, have a lot of power right now because a lot of people have a lot of products. They just don't have users. yeah uh well said a great shout out to to those guys building as well out in the open there was another you had a pretty viral tweet as well um referencing the the the artist formerly known as nft god uh alex right because he's also sharing his open claw journey but like he's doing it in a way that's very interesting too right he's not just saying like yeah he's obviously building apps and products and really cool things but he's like building it out in the open and he's sharing his journey as he's doing it.

18:40And I think that's a very powerful way to kind of build your brand up too, right? Because Gary Vee also says it too. The easiest way to start something is just learn something and then publicly show your journey learning it. So I think that's a very powerful use case as well. And I think when people think of the AI and like all like claws and everything that it can do, I think they immediately maybe go to building an app or coding, but like there's so many other things that you can do it. You mentioned helping yourself with social media, helping yourself, maybe helping a company use social media to attract clients.

19:12And there's just so many other ways you can do it. And I think it's just absolutely fascinating where we're going with this. Yeah, it's pretty wild. There's really nothing. And I think a lot of people kind of get a flavor for this through chatbots. But it wasn't really until I started. I mean, the chatbot side was interesting because I actually used AI as a therapist. I went through like some stuff last summer and I was talking to AI every morning about that issue and about some of the stuff I was going through. And it actually, the chat bot side, I was like, wow, like in many ways it was extremely effective and probably more effective than a human therapist.

19:51You know, I've seen that kind of go the wrong direction. So I've seen like the benefit of the chat bot side, but there is nothing that like made me go, holy shit, until I started using Cloud Code. I mean, that was when, on the design side, on the building side, on the just ability. And one of the funny things about Cloud Code is maybe because it's trained on humans and it's trained on human engineers, it often says like, I can build this, but it's a two month project. And then it takes it seven minutes and it's fully done. You know, it's like not even aware of how much better it is than everything it's been trained on.

20:28But yeah, I find I have found Claude Code, Claude Design, like pretty earth shaking in terms of like, I don't know, just my view of the future. Yeah, no, I'm using the same thing and I absolutely love it. And one thing to kind of while we're on, like how do you use this stuff? Like, yeah, you can build an app. Right. But you mentioned it's very hard to get distribution. It's very hard to get clients and customers to get onto your product. Right. You know, maybe building a social media brand is, is maybe it's not for everyone, but they're like, again, there are other ways, like prompt engine, prompt engineering and an agent operator.

21:03That's going to be a job in the future for many companies. So like just learning MCP CLIs, I think is, is also just something that you can be very powerful to build your skillset. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, the first thing that occurred to me is like, I think if AI does its job, then prompt engineers won't be a job because it's just, it's so easy, you know? At some level, the speed with which this stuff is improving and becoming so easy for the everyday person, I'm not sure you actually need that specialty. One of my friends once said, are you teaching your kids Cloud Code? I'm like, no, it's too easy.

21:37I can just teach them whenever they want. This isn't something I need to get them started on earlier. If they can speak English, they can pretty quickly learn Cloud Code. and the speed with which it's changing, what I teach them in May is not going to be relevant in December. You know, so I don't know. I think it's very hard to know where humans are going to fit into this thing in the future. I like that part. I think there's a lot of uncertainty around. I think there's a fair bit of data out there. You know, one of the things that they said in the medical field, as it became clear that, as it became clear that that ChatGPT was as good at kind of diagnosis and stuff as human doctors were, kind of the buzzword became that what really works is humans and AI working in collaboration.

22:26Right. And that you need people overlooking AI and kind of in that collaboration, you get your best outcomes. But some of the studies I saw actually show that every time a human intervened, it made outcomes worse. And this is studies from last summer, like that when we think we know and we think we can chip in, we're actually getting things wrong. And I see that a lot in the work I do, where I'll work, I'll intervene. And then a month later, I'm like, wait, why did I start spinning in circles, versus just letting the things that were obvious do their thing? Now, I don't think that's always the case right now, but it's funny.

23:02One of the reasons people get so excited when AI hallucinates and they'll post online, like, look at how dumb chat GPT is. It's like, because it got one thing wrong, like that's going to get fixed in weeks, you know, like getting one thing wrong versus the amount of, you know, or people really love to point out where AI gets something wrong. That's outside of that's within their area of special, uh, of specialty, you know, like, yeah, I have a, I have a friend. Yeah. What was this example? Oh, yeah. I have a friend. He was talking about kind of wills and the, and the ways that things get passed on.

23:38He was like, Oh, I can't do wills as well as I can. Yeah, I think it'll be able to do it really soon. Even if you can see these things that it's getting rolling, that is not that niche of an area. So I don't know. I think it's very unclear where humans are going to fit into this whole thing. And I don't think it matters if you're at the bottom or the top of the expertise kind of funnel. I think it's still very unclear. Oh, well, that's definitely something to think about there. So a quick break in your regular programming. If you're serious about your future, grab my free report called Prepare for 2030.

24:14I think you've got five years to make as much money as possible. And this guide will help you navigate what's coming. The link is in the description. Download it now. I want to talk to you because you're mentioning Claude a lot. And obviously, there's a lot of competition right in this space is right. Gemini just literally released like a whole bevy of product suites just this week. Right. Right. ChadGBT 5.5. Codex is getting an upgrade. Claude Mythos. The Mythos was in the news. Like, it's just crazy. Right. And you're using Claude. But are you do you use other ones in tandem with Claude? Are you just focusing on Claude?

24:48How do you think of like all the different models and like how you decide what you're using and what's going to give you the best outputs? Yeah. So that's an area where I have not actually been too much of an expert. I've kind of like so I built I built two apps kind of for fun. one was like a headshot app where you like take a screenshot of yourself in the show and then it'll crank out like kind of high-end uh dramatic portraits of you so that's one of the apps i built and the other one does it with pets where you take a picture of your pet and it'll crank out like pictures of your pet on holiday in greece or as a cowboy or uh a painting of it whatever you know none of this stuff is all that novel anymore but um it still is like a fun kind of like collaborate you know they're like they're both pretty fun websites to use um but so with them i use nano banana on the image side like for what i was using i did not find chat gpt even close to as good which is taking a picture and cranking out an output for something like build a story of my life pictorially i think chat gpt is actually better at that like creating visuals and diagrams i think nano banana is still best in class when it comes to i'm not sure about it i gotta i gotta go back to chat to people when i checked so i've been pretty loyal to nano banana on the take an input and crank out something um on the coding side i think i've found cloud code to be so much better at design than codex that i've just used it but for what i'm using like cloud code is good enough like my my roadblock is more distribution than it is the power of cloud code like i'm not like oh i wish cloud code like that said there are times where cloud code starts spinning in circles and it just like the code base is too big it just gets lost and then i will go to codex so i'll be like hey i'm having this issue here's what cloud code says can you give me your diagnosis and cloud code will then give me shoot sorry guys and then cloud code will then send me back to code or cloud code i'm sorry codex will then write whole things and i'll paste that into cloud code and be like oh yeah codex is right and then i get it'll go adjust the thing so I do use both of those because I do find that Cloud Code can doom loop on stuff like infrastructure.

26:56Yeah, I think on the infrastructure side, I found Codex a little smarter, but sometimes it sucks too. So I just kind of need both of them to see things that the other one's missing. But I have not gone down. Those tools kind of do the trick for me. And like I said, I think for me, my... Oh, and Cloud Design. I love Cloud Design. I mean, it's fantastic. So, yeah, those are kind of the products that I've used. It's not because they're the best. It's just because that's just kind of what I've gotten used to. I mean, if someone came out to you and said, hey, this is a terrible example, but like WhatsApp, like here's a new one that's so much better than WhatsApp.

27:35You can't be like, fuck you. WhatsApp works for me. Like I have no need to change. I kind of feel the same way about the tools I use. Like my roadblock is much more distribution than the intelligence of the agents. Yeah, I was actually talking to Raul about this somewhat recently. And he was just saying, just stick to the one that you like, because they're just always iterating so much. It's like every week, one model is better than the one for one week until another model comes out and it's better than that previous one. So, you know what? I think that's the best case. So another thing I want to...