E77: Luca Netz: My Blueprint To Building The Crypto Empire

31:57And it was. We were working our tail off, outperforming everybody with 100 times more money than we do in their treasure, than, you know, 100 times more money than us. 30, 40, 50, no matter what it was. Look at any of the top 10 NFT projects. They all were extremely more well capitalized and had tons of time to kind of get where we were. And I felt like we were just outperforming them on every vertical, outperforming them from a business perspective, outperforming them from a community perspective, outperforming them from a headline perspective and a narrative perspective. Anything that I think you could do to basically define a quantifiable metric, we were doing better.

32:37And you'd be a biased bag holder to say otherwise. Just like, look at the truth. I know when we're doing good and when we're doing bad, it's just what it was. So that's what I think kind of drove that run. But I was upset because I knew people wanted something. And I was like, well, we got nothing to give you right now. We just came off like a monster quarter four. You know, we got the end of the year. If we got to take a little bit of a break, we kind of kill ourselves here. And so I'm kind of glad that it's stabled out. obviously it took its little dip you know nothing in crypto doesn't you know go 50 off at some point right uh and uh and we're definitely now in a spot where we're ready to go and by the time this interview comes out i should be making some serious noise on the timeline uh and getting people really excited and the objective is like from now until the end of the year put on put on the the nail in the coffin show people why there's no other person to bet on no other ip and community to bet on than the Penguin.

33:41The community is known for its good vibes. Even Yatsu, who I had, I think two or three days ago, talked about that, right? Very inclusive also of women, which is very rare in crypto, but mostly good vibes, right? But yet we saw some signs of cockiness when everything was going up, right? It pissed me off. And obviously, we don't want to mention other projects because it's kind of like in the human nature to be like that. Totally. How do we avoid becoming just another bunch of cocky NFT holders when everything goes up? So I really tried behind the scenes to stop that. So my answer initially to you would be it starts from a leadership perspective and I have to curate the culture.

34:25Now the thing is I'm not a dictator. I'm not telling people how to act. Like at the end of the day you have a really expensive NFT and digital identity and you're not coming here to follow rules. That's not what this is, right? I'll never do that. no matter what like that's just not what it is but i really tried to set the tone through these inner igloos and some through some of these back channels and just didn't work now i will say though and and i have to say this in their defense the penguins got laughed at for so long and i almost the penguins life and my life my personal life are very similar and i remember being completely laughed at, always the poorest kid in the room, always had not a dollar to my name and just completely felt secluded and just like everyone, it felt, it wasn't actually like this, but it felt like people were just laughing and pointing their finger at me.

35:23And Pudgy's life cycle early on was also like this, right? Everyone laughed at them. Everyone joked and they were almost like the laughing stock. The ones who should have made it that didn't. And now that we're in a position of strength, I also remember when I became successful that I was like that, right? I was rubbing it in the face of anybody who I thought disrespected me and made fun of me in my time of despair, right? When I wasn't feeling, when I wasn't up to the standard and to the bar that I wanted to be. and I think Pudgy had that moment. We found success. We finally rose to the top against all odds.

36:11They laughed at us. We laughed at them back. It felt good, but this next run has to be different. It has to be different just like me. When I got over that, I evolved past that. I got it out of my system, and I said I focused on what mattered, which was like legacy and and taking it to the next step and hopefully through pieces of content like this the community can listen and be like yeah he's right we had our laugh we did our thing you know not only from floor price but from all the airdrops like we got there's no nft collection has even come close to performing like we have right over the last you know two years we're in a league of our own.

36:56And so we have to realize that just like when I was, you know, turned 22, I realized I'm in a league of my own. There's no need to be on the internet trying to prove myself and trying to rub it into people's face. You know, we had that chapter, we did it. And now we're turning a new chapter, which is one of legacy. Especially if that's what's so loved about this community. It's people who are builders, humble, not bragging but it's human nature it definitely is human nature we will evolve I promise you that

37:33one of the things that I mean we talked about airdrops right that's what we're going to talk about right after that but like one of the things that you mentioned is I mean again talking with Yatsu the other day he was saying hey look and even talking to Casper from Spartan, who's an early investor, the problem is, it's kind of a double-edged world with an NFT. It is. When the price goes up, people want the price to go up because they're in the community and it makes them happy. Pudgy have a good vibe of being people who are chill, but if the price goes up, it becomes sort of a luxury asset, right?

38:14That makes this community different because it's not that easy to access it anymore, right? So obviously there is little pudgies and rods, but what is the role of little pudgies and rods? Because concretely, I've been evangelizing pudgies a lot, but most people are like, I can't pay 50K for a little peg, right? Even the little pudgies are starting to become now a bit less, but it's still to be very expensive, right? Yeah. So that's the problem. if you think about it. It's great for the holders, but you want to build a strong community and the more people, the better. But if the asset price goes up too much, you can't include these people.

38:59We totally can't. You go to your local Walmart and your local Target and you buy some pudgy toys and you scan that QR code and you make your account. And there has to be that separation. In its traditional form, that NFT is our first edition and it needs to be worth a lot. If my first edition is hollow and anybody can access it, then I don't think it's a good first edition. And there's something to be said about, you know, having that status and that pedigree. I tell people this all the time, but, you know, look at it from a fundamental perspective. What is a PFP that's worth that much money really at the end of the day?

39:45It's a status symbol and it's a signal that you're smart or that you were early, right? Now, if the people who know about that PFP are a million people or 10 million people, that status symbol becomes that much more relevant and that much more prevalent. I'll give you an example. CryptoPunks is probably, you know, over the course of time amongst rich crypto natives, probably the most popular PFP just because of how long it's been around. because it was the first. What? Maybe a million people know what a crypto punk is. We think that's probably a fair assessment. And so it yields some sort of intrinsic, intrinsic status because a million people know what that is.

40:27And when you see somebody wearing a crypto punk, you subconsciously think, well, that person's smart, that person's earlier, that person's rich. And all three of those things, if you're a crypto consumer, signal to you subconsciously that I should probably follow or interact with this guy or listen to what he has to say because those three things signal something positive for my life if I can kind of absorb what this guy's doing. Now, with the Penguins, the beauty about building the brand is, you know, if we build a brand that, you know, 10 million people know and love, right, that 8 ,888 is an incredible tool that yields access, the most prestige within the community and and does has a network effect that i think is akin to crypto punks but because there's more demand and more people that know and want the first edition almost like a pokemon you know what what makes traditional collectibles valuable it's the fact that people know and love you know what that collectible represents whether it's a first edition charizard or michael jordan fleer you know you have some sort of affinity towards that.

41:34And so, you know, it's important that that that status symbol is not accessible, that people work towards getting that, that there is, you know, you know, one thing internally we're thinking about is like the company buying some NFTs because, you know, I want to give it to maybe the person who's not rich, right, but like just goes the super fan that just does something above and beyond, maybe give some a group of people out of that 10 million one day the opportunity to earn that through insane fandom, right? But the point of the matter is, is those assets, those NFT assets have to be priced at a premium because I think that's what yields the status.

42:20And the beauty of our brand is there's so much for you to consume. I mean, we have$3 toys that you can go out and collect, right? And we have merchandise and plush and content. And you can be a part of the community without owning a Pudgy Penguin NFT. You just don't get the access and all the perks that that stuff comes with. So you really mentioned before that there is two different games being played here. Yeah. There is the toys, plushies, online views, kind of mass adoption game, and then there's the crypto game, right? Yeah. And that you kind of, you have to play it if you're in crypto. Have to.

42:58One of the ways that you've been playing it amazingly well, and that's probably going to continue, is airdrops. We've seen a few NFT communities get handsomely rewarded by protocols launching their tokens. And as we both know, obviously, PergiPenguin is one of them. Why does it make so much sense for a new protocol launching their token to airdrop to an NFT community? and sometimes airdrop more tokens to a community that is not using the protocols than to actual users.

43:36Because it comes down to what I said earlier. All tech can get competed in a way. There is no piece of tech that anybody's building with the exception of maybe two or three or four guys in the entire space that cannot get competed away. Your X factors are three things, community, culture, distribution. Airdropping to NFT projects fulfill those three desires. So if you're a tech guy building a new narrative, you know, tapping into a nerve that you think is exciting, if you don't get eyeballs and create excitement around that tech, it will fall on deaf ears and do nothing for you and do nothing for your company and ultimately will create you a liability.

44:23There's been multiple instances now where people airdrop to the Pudgy Penguin community and all of a sudden the dynamic within their company changes and with their token changes. And what I mean by that is you now have a group that is championing. You now have a group that is governing, if it's a governance token. You now have a group that is meaning. You now have a group that is staking and participating. You now have a group that is there for you on the defense when you need it. And I think that the people airdropping to these communities can do maybe a little bit of a better job galvanizing and really rallying and integrating.

45:07I think a hollow airdrop is maybe not as efficient, but, you know, it takes one tweet from one pudgy penguins holder, which I think pudgy penguins have the most affluent group of holders in the space today in terms of, you know, builders, executives, high net worth power users. it just takes one of them to see another penguin on the timeline shilling it for them to maybe repost it or quote retweet it that whatever value you gave the community is reciprocated because my read on the crypto industry is as follows an abundance of brilliant tech minds that i can't even fathom how smart these guys are i'm not this guy right but a lack of abundance on go-to-market a lack of abundance on distribution a lack of an abundance on community and culture and they have no clue what these things are.

46:00And as much as I respect them for their brains and the technology that they're building, it is no longer the X factor, especially with AI. Not today, but if you think that tech is how you're gonna live and die and how your company is gonna succeed, you're in for a rude awakening, especially five years from now. I mean, AI is just gonna build on top of itself so quickly. Pretty soon, these things will be coding. I'll be able to tell it to go to study Ethereum And I'll be able to, in its own way, probably five years from now, copy it. And if not, it can support that. And so at a minimum, AI will speed up the process to replication tremendously.

46:40And so, again, your tech is not a moat. Instagram, the story of Instagram is completely aligned. This is not just a crypto thing, right? Tech is generally not a moat in traditional Silicon Valley startups, right? Tech is, Zuckerberg was emailing a CFO when Instagram came around. And it wasn't that they couldn't build the Instagram technology. They could. They needed six months to do it. But it was because Instagram was growing so quickly that they were going to own that behavior and basically own that market share. So it was like, we got to buy it, not because we can't build the technology. We can build the technology, but because they're gaining users so quickly.

47:22And Instagram Reels is a perfect example. TikTok came out of the gate. You know how quickly they cranked out Instagram reels. It took them a couple months when TikTok really started hitting peak virality for them to copy that. Again, where's the moat? It's in the users. It's in the transaction. It's in the community. It's in the culture. What did Instagram have that Zuckerberg was afraid of? He was afraid that Instagram would solidify itself as the cultural hub for these images. And by the time he acquired it, that was the case. And that's kind of why the acquisition went through is because he didn't have six months to go and replicate it.

47:57And so the moat in this, and again, it comes back to this point that you're going to hear me repeating like a parrot until the end of time, is community, culture, and distribution are the moats, not what type of tech stack you can build. And so airdropping to a community, if you're a super gigabrain developer, is the best thing that you can do because most of these guys, at no fault to them, it takes, you know, being a developer doesn't necessarily mean, you know, there are two sides of the brain here. You know, being a developer is not symbiotic with being a good go-to-market marketer, right?

48:31Like those are not synonyms. They're probably antonyms, actually. And that's a great way to cheat it, cheat the system. And I think it's great. And the way that I do the math is as follows. It is, as long as it's more positive EV than it is negative EV to do it, they will continue to do it. And as far as I'm concerned, you would have to, there would have to be real, real fatigue for that to kind of fall off. And I'm kind of telling our community too that if it's something like BS,$100, we're not endorsing that. You can, because sometimes they try to psyopsis. Right. So I'm talking to the community team and we're making a really big effort where it's like, look, I don't want your airdrop if it's 50 bucks.

49:19You keep it. You distribute that to somebody else to a community where the floor price is smaller, where that will make a more meaningful difference. I can tell you a bunch, you know, right. But like when you have when you're a part of our group and the positioning that we're in, you know, we want to get behind the best, the best. And we only want to rally behind five, six, seven of these a year. And we can give everything else to everybody, which I think, again, the dollar amount also matters in terms of like how this effect actually reciprocates. Fifty dollars, it's, you know, it's gas fees on a bad day.

49:52So people are not going to galvanize behind that. You're not going to get those pros. But if you're a major protocol, again, you know, there's plenty of examples that, you know, raise tons of money, but again, are super smart people, but with no go-to-market strategy, it is the best way to go to market in crypto and cheat your way to the top. Do you have some airdrop alpha for the penguin community? Man, look, I know there's some big people building that own penguins, and I know they've got protocols set to launch by the end of the year. So I would be surprised if we didn't get another one. That's all I can say.

50:29And to that point, this is where, you know, it's an interesting value proposition. One that I also kind of want to set the meta in terms of rewarding rares. So the problem, the double-edged sword with this is penguins have lost a little bit of rarity because the floor becomes really valuable because of this, you know, type of income. but through our base layer and the protocols that launch on top of it i can almost curate and create these opportunities rather than just sit back and wait and hope for them to happen right so when you look at you know the elephant in the room which is like what do people want in a bull market they want opportunity rather than just like you know nudging somebody and like at a dinner table and being like, hey, you got the Penguins?

51:20I can actually, you know, incubate that internally. You mentioned the community of holders. We already talked about that in the last podcast, but I have to say, because I talk to most of the big builders in the space, most of them are hyper bullish on Pudgy. You know, I talk to James Hu from DFG, Alex Van Evey, Luke Belmar, Casper from Spartan, Daryl Wan from Tangent, Ryan from Ash, Yasru from Anioka. Every time, I basically make them talk about budget so we can clip that and share that to the community. Thank you for that. Great penguin right here. Give him a follow. Doing my part of the job.

52:07But this leads me to two questions. One is positive, one is negative. Which one do you want first? Negative. let's say the less positive one is if everyone is already in in the big builders who is left to buy and how do we go up from here because and again you say price doesn't matter but last time you told me number one NFT collection means highest floor price yeah you have to get there I think it's really simple and I can tell you this I'll give you a really honest assessment a couple weeks ago a couple weeks ago we had like a big loan contagion cascade and I started buying I bought like a penguin or two I think that's my phone I bought a penguin or two and I got a pretty big crypto portfolio I was like well why don't I buy 20 or 30 and And all the market needs is the wind in the sail.

53:13And there's so much sideline capital trading meme coins and diverse or, you know, other alt coins or hedge into majors. Because if you know the timing of the cycle and if you're a good trader, which most people with big size or, you know, tend to know how this stuff works. NFTs are not supposed to run right now. And so now's not the time where you're deploying capital. I even thought about it. I was like, I would love to buy, you know, I've got like 30 of them now, you know, I'd love to get it to 50. But I'm like, like, I don't want to go against I don't want to go against the wins. Right. Like it doesn't make it doesn't make sense because there's opportunity, you know, in Solana and these other places.

53:56And that's just and and I'm giving you a purely honest answer. And I think it's one of my great advantages is the fact that like I trade, right? And I collect and it's just the opportunity. And now you want to get in early and you want to allocate in early. Like now is actually the time to kind of buy these things. And I'm actually convincing myself to start to make that move and start buying, you know, some sooner rather than later. but that I think is I think everyone has one but they could have 20 and I think that's the difference you talk about timing right? yeah that's very interesting especially because you say you're building a layer 2 if you think purely about timing I don't know how the layer 2 is going to look like launch a token whatever but like if you think purely about value, because you think about, I know that's not how you're thinking, right?

54:59But if you think purely about value, you launch your layer two when NFTs are already doing really well, right? Which is what Bored Ape did with the Ape coin. How do you think around that? You know, I don't want to rush this process. I think we've seen two sides of the spectrum in the L2 land. You've seen it rushed as of recent, and you've seen it take its time over the last couple of years. And I think there's a happy medium. I don't want to do this in three months, but I don't want to do it in two years either. So I think we're in this perfect pocket. And so take it until the end of the year, see where it's at, get people building protocols, get the incentives going, get people excited, get the penguin feedback.

55:44The penguin feedback is always phenomenal and stellar and helps tremendously. And just see where it goes. You know, the beauty in acquiring Frame is they've been building this thing for eight months. It's not like we're just starting from scratch, like twiddling our thumbs. You know, we bought Frame for a reason. One, because I think Sygar and Team and Beans are phenomenal. I think they're some of the best developers in the space and they do this with the best of them. But two, also because, you know, they have a product and they have a team that's been ready to go and been firing on all cylinders for a while now.

56:17And so for us, you know, how do we really just, you know, do the things that everybody hasn't done yet and we'll do the things they have done and do it better and just time that thing perfectly. I think we will. I'm sure you will. The other question, the more positive one, but we can go quickly on that, is how did you attract literally all of the biggest brains into the community? That's one of the reasons why I bought it because they were already there. I attracted some. I'll give myself a little bit of credit. I mean, I hustled too hard and fly too much and take too many meetings for that not to be the case.

56:54But I would say a good 60, 70 % of the big brains were already here. Probably 70 % were already here long before me. And that's what made Pudgy so great. Pudgy has, I say this and I bought it, which is ironic, but Pudgy has the community that you can't buy. You either have it or you don't. I just got lucky enough and I was able to buy into it. They have every major player that matters in the industry from a cultural perspective, or you're talking about crypto culture, they own a penguin. Or somebody right next to them, either on their right or the left, owns a penguin. There is not a case of that.

57:34And so from our perspective, that's what makes this great. It's like, if I want to be a part of a community, I want to be a part of a community of chats. Right. So when I buy a penguin and I rock my penguin and I'm posting good content, whether that's signals or, you know, charts or, you know, political theories and opinions or base takes, you know, if I follow the right people and engage with them, they'll slowly surely go to my page. And if my page provides them value, then they will follow me. And then all of a sudden I'm building a network of chats. And and that's the premium. That's why it's worth 50 grand.

58:12That's why hopefully one day it's worth a million dollars. Because I remember back long before NFTs were around, I paid$100 ,000 a year for a mastermind. It was one of the best things I ever did. Because networking is invaluable. It's not what you know, it's who you know. 95 % of all of my income and money I've ever made has been because of who I know, not what I know. And in crypto, this is an alpha-driven market. If you're not getting alpha, you are playing a losing game. I've learned this the hard way. I now see it for what it is, and obviously I'm behind the scenes in ways that most people are not.

58:44This is an alpha-driven market. People are running things behind the scenes, and if you were just straight-up retail and don't have a group that has some access to somebody that gives you an edge, you're going to lose. And that's what you see, right? Like there's a small sub-segment that wins because they have that edge and they have that alpha and the rest just get, ultimately lose and end up on coin fessions. I love that you were just saying things out loud that no one really wants to talk about. It's just the truth. It's just the complete truth. Absolutely. I read this tweet about, made by a seed phrase a couple of weeks ago, where he says in a nutshell, that he thinks that token launches is what will kickstart the next big NFT wave.

59:32Yeah. Do you agree with that? I agree that there needs to be something exciting. Like you got to bring some momentum back to the market. And I think from our perspective, you're doing a chain and ultimately like that will be a token. And giving the opportunity to penguins to govern and participate in that. People know what that means and know what that's going to do for NFTs. Because penguins specifically, when we run, everything else runs. Not only on Ethereum, on Solana, on Bitcoin. I mean, we've done it now two, three times. But when other projects run, they don't take the whole market with them.

1:00:17When we run, we take the entire market with us. And that's what the market needs. I was working on Project Save NFT, right? I called it Project Save NFTs because it needs saving. There needs to be an exciting take. And at the end of the day, what gets people excited in crypto is making money. And everybody knows what a pudgy, you know, acquired chain and token with like our, you know, brains and hands and our community, you know, in it. with that all-star team and Saigar and crew with some of the other pieces that have since been put together they know what that means and and the penguins know that they're going to be a part of that in the biggest way and I think that's going to be one of the huge catalysts along with like all the other things that come in this whole sprint that is Project Save NFTs which while you're watching this should be in full force and should be happening uh it is it's it's it's going to be a huge momentum boost so i'm excited for it and i agree with seed phrase okay and i think there needs to be something a little more right so i'm not just coming with that coming with other i'm coming with multiple things you should see some of these things already by the time you listen to this i'm coming fully faceted and i'm just gonna take over and anybody who ever faded the penguin is gonna be like again facepalm it was obvious it's gonna be obvious this time around I'm already a budget holder I have a few but like you give me fucking more four more last time actually when I talked to Alex he was like you know one thing when you talk with Luca is you really get bullied

1:01:55NFTs are communities yeah there's another thing that's community meme coins what should we take on meme coins I think meme coins are great I wrote a whole article if you go to my sub stack future of culture is tokenized. I think they play a huge role. But again, it's not my place to say, and nor am I going to be a whistleblower here. But again, I think 99 % of people watching this don't know what's really going on behind the scenes. And that's all I'm going to say. I'm not going to allude to anything greater than that. That's also not fair to MemeCoin. There's also a lot of things, for a lot of these other tokens that you guys don't see behind the scenes.

1:02:39That is pretty ridiculous. I believe in it. How dare you? Yeah. How dare you? I totally believe in it. But people think that they disrupt or they kill NFTs and they couldn't be more wrong. There is so much more camaraderie around NFTs, I feel like, just because of the identity layer. I think NFTs and uh and and meme coins can be paired though like one thing i really like i'll give a shout out to the to the remelios the remelios and mog right they almost like pair the two that's an interesting little that's an interesting uh uh frame to things i think uh the pairing but to think that a meme coin takes market share from an nft sure it takes attention and takes liquidity but wait till nfts start running because the beauty of nfts is like once eth is like four or five six thousand dollars people are like how do i compound eth there's only one way to go right and and you know what i found with meme coins that people don't really realize and actually it really pissed me off but i'll give you guys an analogy i put 5 000 soul in a phantom uh and and every night before i go to bed i spend 15 minutes trading and just shooting the shit i think it's really important because i have to stay in the forefront of trends so i can't lose the pulse like people want to you know it's fun because i can make some money and i'm pretty good at it but more because it's like i want to understand the culture i want to understand what people are doing it's good that i i know the new apps right photon and all these things like it's important uh and it's 5 000 soul call it half a million dollar or call it 750 000 for the sake of the conversation bought a bunch of meme coins whatever meme coins performed then soul went from 150 to 210 and my 20 on meme coins got outperformed by my 30 on solana and what i really want the whole reason why i'm trading meme coins because i want more solana i don't want more dollars like i want more soul i believe in solana right and then and that's that's where the mechanism ends up crushing and and that's why i think nfts can get really exciting it's because it's like i want more ETH.

1:04:55The right NFT project outperforms stake ETH. Is a level bet on ETH. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so from my perspective, it's like that's the story that you want to tell. I want you to take your stake ETH out of your 5 % pool. Because it's like, I promise you, Pudgy Penguins over the course of five years will outperform 5 % a year. I think it's Mike Dudas who said that. He said, I stake my ETH in Pudgy Penguin. I think it's him. I think it was Mike that said that too. But that's something that makes so much sense. That's the way I've been feeling. That's why I'm like shocked that CryptoPunks, a lot of ETH ICO guys haven't noticed that.

1:05:31CryptoPunks should be a couple hundred ETH for that reason alone. You're telling me the first digital 10 ,000 identity should not be worth hundreds of Ethereum because for some reason it hasn't clicked in their head. They're staking all their ETH for 5%. But if you actually look at the math, is 5 % compounded? If that's what I need to beat, I'll beat that any time. Maybe in a bear market, there'll be a down year and that will fluctuate. But over the course of a 5, 10-year horizon, the right NFT project, which I think there are a couple, will outperform state ETH any day of the week. And that's the horizon in which I'm looking at things and where I think a lot of the exposures can come from.

1:06:15People want to compound the native token. That's why I buy meme coins. But when there's a huge run, you get caught kind of like wavering out and being like, damn, I made a mistake. I thought about that. All my meme coins are green. But my 5 ,000 soul is now like 4 ,600. And I'm like, huh? I spent the last seven nights, like 15 minutes a night, like buying these things. And I've still somehow lost money. Like I want soul. I don't want dollars. There's a part on this podcast that we've introduced since last time, which is called Crypto Alpha, where I ask the founders who their favorite teams and projects are.

1:06:56Not in terms of price, but more in terms of, I like this team because what are the maybe one or two teams that you really like? From a protocol perspective or an NTT perspective? You choose. Layer Zero is probably the most Chad-based group in all of crypto. Why? You can just tell they're the smartest. It's just evidently clear. And it's pretty biased. Brian's the best CEO, best marketer, handles it from A to Z. Everybody over there is an unbelievable professional. Every time I speak to them, I get impressed. They work so quick. They get it done. And I think everything just speaks for itself. I think they're up there with one of the best, if not the best.

1:07:39again i don't know enough teams to you know i'm gonna expand my horizons here i think from an nft perspective the dark horse is doodles it's glaringly obvious the problem is and i tell julian this all the time is like they need to do a better job being crypto native and they're just not but from a brand building perspective they're putting on a clinic um i'm loving uh some of these Bitcoin builders, they're putting the guys who made, you know, ordinals from an ordinals perspective. Everyone talks about every everything except for own B ZK shark is hands. OMB is a class of its own. And I say, this is something that own I own nodes.

1:08:26I own, you know, I'm actually, I probably actually own more node monkeys because ZK got me really early in on those. uh but oh and b's and zk shark i think if you're betting on ordinals that's the bet to make uh obviously udi too so it would probably be udi uh and and uh and zk i like to bet on execution i think there's this narrative that people are like i don't i don't want to bet on execution risk and i think that is the lamest thing ever all of the upside in life when you're making big investments are made on betting on execution risk anything else is totally lame i don't know so this idea that like you don't want to bet on execution risk that's the only bet i want to make because that's the only one with explosive explosive upside anything else has a has a real ceiling to it uh you know even even when you look at something like doge like doge doesn't run without elon like you can there was no execution risk but there's a driving force behind that and And, you know, if he doesn't do what he's supposed to do on SNL or something, then, you know, obviously execution risk is the frame in which you put it.

1:09:35And then I want to give the right people their flowers. I like Wobbit Seals. I think the fact that he's still just pushing through, I think it's phenomenal. But let me give you, like, another protocol. Wasabi. so people don't know this but i actually believe there'll be multiple projects that hit 100 eth floor from a pfp perspective this cycle and i think there'll be one or two i'm betting on myself to go to 200 plus and the reason why is because of the unlocks of uh leverage in nfts so i made a tweet that basically said you know 2017 coins to 2017 to 2020 coins are okay the 2021 nfts to 2024 for nfts and the point that i was really trying to make was study leverage right 2020s run was initially kick-started by defy summer which was the unlock of leverage right true on-chain leverage obviously you had perps on finance but you know i think the ability to like take huge loans and collateral against a lot of people's positions uh is ultimately why we blew up but ultimately why we ran in the first place i think nfts are going to see the same thing if you understand how traditional finance works.

1:10:47Traditional finance is completely ran on margin of leverage, right? Like that is how this money sloshes around and why the ETF is so big. NFTs are going to have ridiculously violent moves once we start catching a bid. It's going to be violent to the upside and to the downside. Just be ready for it. It's going to be volatile. That's why I'm glad for this little dip in volatility that we got because it's going to get crazy out there. It's going to get crazy. I'm certain of it because of this unlock. And that, I think, is going to drive prices so much higher than anybody can possibly imagine. Because just study what leverage does in the markets.

1:11:23And so Wasabi is a company that basically is mastered at actually being able to leverage those things,

1:11:35leverage, add leverage to NFTs, whether through call options and other things, longs and shorts. and I think things are going to get really explosive through them and obviously Gmonad, we like Monad. So I actually think they're putting on a masterclass really inspired from a protocol perspective and from a chain perspective, how in tune they are with culture and community. Kion's taught me a lot of things the last couple of months and I look forward to implementing. What's your message to the budget community on there? Oh, and shout out Nansen. and he just did a whole P &L feature that's just like super badass.

1:12:11And ShadowCoinGecko, obvious ones. I don't think I should mention that, but two other great teams. What is my message for other founders out there? Culture, community, and distribution. That's my message. To the Pudgy Penguin community. Oh, sorry. What's my message to the Pudgy Penguin community? Our time is coming. The time should be happening as you watch this. We need to lock in and we need to be humble. I think you brought that up. We need to learn from our mistakes. I can tell you that I was a little upset. Maybe I think some other holders were upset with how I think we handled things. But it's human nature and we moved past it.

1:12:51We have bigger fish to fry. We have to go further than any NFT has ever gone. And we cannot talk shit until we flip the punk. At least if you want to talk shit, flip the punk. You know, that's the only flip that ever mattered anyway. The whole board ape, whatever. We got to pay homage for board ape. And that's what Yatsu told me the other day, he bought 10 Bored Apes. That's why he said just he's bullish, but also he said, thank you just for what Bored Apes did to the NFC community. So you can't attack them because they've been doing more good than probably any other project through the NFC community.

1:13:26And you were the one flipping the Bored Apes in your meeting, right? You were saying - You've got to pay homage. And that's not the flip that matters even. So, you know, they're working hard. They have shown us a lot and a huge reason of what they've gone through has put us in the position that we're in. But the only one that's ever mattered was the punk. Nothing else matters to us, I think, from my perspective. We've got to take the punk. This is the stretch to do it. We've got to do it with grace. We've got to do it locking arms. and now's the time to rock that penguin pfp to proliferate the ip to be on the timeline meaning to be doing the funny copy impastas not the negative copy impastas those are negative ev uh but now's the time to lock arms i'm gonna i'm i told i told the team this i'm gonna kill myself these next six months so i'm ready i'm ready i'm gonna i'm gonna put it all on the line i'm gonna do everything I know how to do to get us to where we need to be.

1:14:32I'm going to take a big break on New Year's, but I'm going to take all my learnings these last two years and put on a clinic. So if you're a Pudgy community member and you're listening to this, all I need is your support, a like, a retweet, a comment, your own set of championing, your own set of being happy for the things that we've accomplished. We try to consolidate things, but now's the time. It's lock in time. I've been on a hiatus the last three months. I know that. I appreciate your patience, but it's go time. Our time is coming. Thank you so much for that, man. That was awesome. Thank you, boss.