E94: Asymmetric Founder - How to get rich with Memecoins (without getting lucky)

25:28And also, why are we paying so much money for these things, like et cetera, et cetera. And so what happened was Napster, Napster came out and said, Hey, like here's the current system that people are opting into because it's really the only thing that exists for music production, distribution, et cetera. We're going to create an alternative system. It doesn't mean that like, this is necessarily bad. It's just that we want to have choice. And well, what happened in the music industry at first they ignored it. Then they laughed at it and then they fought it in chord and then streaming won, right?

26:03The entire music industry is radically reshaped as unrecognizable versus what it was in the 1990s, which kind of makes sense. It's been 25 plus years or whatever, but that alternative system for say, obtaining music, distributing music, producing music, listening to music, purchasing music, right? It was free. So, uh, that is now what I see happening with crypto. It's an alternative financial system, the fiat kind of swift banking, you know, a traditional way of doing money management and access to financial services, that system is likely going to exist for a very long time. But now there's an alternative system that people can opt into.

26:43They can still actually operate in the old system too, but they can operate in this new system. And so, you know, as you get back to the point of like Aave or pick a lending protocol or pick a DeFi protocol, I'm not picking on obvious specifically. The point is, it's not what the protocol is and well, how do we get new users? And they should just know that this is better and this and that. It's like we're building an alternative financial system. And so how do you get people to opt into that in a meaningful way? Well, in most cases, and when I worked at this design agency years ago called Frog Design, one of the things that I learned from a lot of the user experience researchers there was in order for people to make a fundamental change in how they do anything, it needs to be a 10x improvement.

27:21There is not a 10x improvement currently for most people in the developed world to adopt DeFi protocols. It just doesn't exist. However, if you go to developing countries or countries that have, you know, history of the countries defaulting on their debt or, you know, seizing of their assets or whatever that may actually be, those folks are adopting this stuff because they need to opt out of the system because they don't want to, you know, kind of remain in this ridiculous inequality gap that continues to kind of build itself out, irrespective of what happens with, you know, sort of the developments themselves.

27:54Why should anyone listen to you? They shouldn't. Absolutely not. I'm just some guy on the internet. I mean, it's so funny, honestly, like this is probably like my skeptic coming in. But, you know, when people ask me for advice or when I say stuff on Twitter, I'm like, Do not take advice from me or literally anyone anywhere at any time. Like think for yourself. I don't think people should listen to me 100%. That's so important. Think for yourself. What does that mean? And why should everyone think for themselves? So, I mean, how much time do we have? No. I mean, it's more depending on you than on me.

28:39Yeah, sure, sure. I know I do have another meeting. So why should everyone think for themselves?

28:48I think that a lot of folks get comfort in consistency, tradition, frankly, candidly being told what to do. it's just easier for a lot of folks and you know i'm not suggesting that those folks should change their lives to be like yeah you should just like be independent and think for yourself but i do think that there's folks out there that are probably listening that res that will this will resonate with that there's something intrinsic about independent thinkers or folks that are i think somewhat anti-establishment or contrarian in the way that they view the world that change the world. And those are the folks that will eventually be leading the folks that need to be led.

29:39And I think that if folks have this sort of intrinsic feeling about their view of the world, or they the way that they want to express their will to power, which is another Nietzsche concept, they have to think for themselves. And I do think that there is value in, you know, tradition and community aspects, like whether it's, you know, you're living in a particular neighborhood or you maybe attend a particular religious group or activity or whatever. I think there's a lot of value in that, but there's also a lot of nefarious activity that comes with those type of group things. So you could look at like the history of cults.

30:17You could look at pick a war that was triggered by say, you know, religious differences, people kind of blindly following others is not, I would say, on balance positive in the most cases for society. It requires critical thinking and independent thinking. And more importantly, I think it actually starts at a childhood level. If you are indoctrinated from the very beginning to, you know, believe in a particular like political value set or religious value set, you as a child actually haven't developed the brain well enough to make a decision on your own. And so a lot of people don't ever break out of that conditioning from their indoctrination.

31:00And I can't really blame them. That's why I say, should everybody think from themselves? I'm like, I'm not sure everybody can, depending on how indoctrinated they were as children. And so as that changes over time, and some people kind of like break away from that, the world kind of opens up in a different way. And you end up with, you know, folks that are, I think, radically changing the world for the good. Do you think we're moving to the right direction to have more people thinking for themselves? Oh, of course. And I mean, I think one of the benefits of like having this type of a conversation is if you talk to people like on the internet, I was, remember I was talking to somebody in a telegram chat the other day and he's like, why is everybody so upset?

31:33I'm like, it's the internet. No one is happy. Like it's, come on. Like it's the, it's the, it's the way people operate on the internet. Like you could airdrop everybody a million dollars cash and someone would complain about it. It's just inevitable. Right. And so like, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't think, um, I don't think that, uh, there's sort of, uh, a solution to that. Um, but if, if we sort of think about how we could be happier as a community, uh, maybe things would change for the better. Hey, when shift happens, family time to toast our partner, Devin, they're taking luxury wine to the blockchain with their super fun concept called Uncorked to Earn.

32:20Buy your favorite wines, enjoy unique experiences, and get an airdrop each time you open a bottle with your friends. Cheers to Divin for bringing transparency, authenticity, and exclusivity to the fine wines industry. So I asked you, why should people listen to you? You said they shouldn't. But you believe in yourself and you're doing pretty well with that. You're an asymmetric. the world top performing fund in 2023. I know that you're not a big fan of books for investing, right? But I read one that is really good. A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Bertrand Marquille. And if I remember well, one of the concepts I remember already many, many years ago, probably 10 years ago, one of the key concepts was that funds performance should be analyzed over 20 plus years, right?

33:10And that the best performing funds over the long term rarely perform extremely well during certain year. They're more like number three, four, five. You never really see them. Whereas the ones that perform extremely well, usually they catch all the eyeballs one year and then they end up having a dreadful performance the following year. How do you avoid being one of the latter? You don't drift from your style. So look, I mean, we launched the fund in late 2022, did really well in 2023. we were not trying to be number one. We were informed of that, which was awesome. And we're not trying to be number one again this year.

33:50We maintain the same type of style. I think what happens in a lot of cases, and I mean, I certainly, this is my first fund, so I'm not like the Oracle here, right? But I think what tends to happen with a lot of, you know, called hedge fund managers, portfolio managers, traders, whatever is, they have some modicum of success. And then they try to recreate that success by drifting away from what they're good at. We don't do that, Right. So I'll give you a prime example. This has upset a lot of people, but it has served us very well. Like we have owned zero Ethereum all year in 2024 and will not own any for the rest of the year.

34:22Why? Not because we hate Ethereum, but because we had a view that Ethereum will underperform Bitcoin and Solana this year. Very simple. We could we could be still wrong about that. But so far we have been correct. And so by watching what happened in Ethereum in January, so that the ETF news comes out and Ethereum ripped, we could have chased that. How did you feel at that moment? Fine. Because if anything, it was evidence to us that there is demand for the next ETF. And so if Ethereum gets approved as an ETF, what do you think the next ETF is going to be? Right. So we had that kind of thing happen.

35:01And my point is there have been moments throughout the year where Ethereum has had these kind of idiosyncratic spikes and have outperformed Bitcoin and Solana in a very short period of time. We could have drifted from our style and said, let's go buy a bunch of Ethereum call spreads and then they would be worthless. Or we maintain focus on what we're doing. And in doing that, hopefully we avoid being a one hit wonder. It could still be the case. I'm completely okay with that. I'm not going to modify my strategy or style based on the AUM we have, the type of LPs we have, or the environment that we're in.

35:35We keep managing risk the exact same way, irrespective of any of those factors. I think it applies pretty well to like any kind of business, right? Entrepreneurship. You usually start with a niche or an idea and then you get better and better. And it's very tempting to kind of diversify or people start to come with a lot of great ideas. For example, this podcast, people say, hey, you should do conferences because of all the guests you have. You should do a fund. You should do this and that. And I'm like, that's the playbook, right? Everyone does that. I'm like, why would I not just double down and become the best podcast in the space and see what happens?

36:07And maybe it's wrong, but at least I'm kind of comfortable with what I'm doing. A hundred percent agree. Yeah. I mean, look, I'll put it to you this way, right? So we have an early stage venture capital fund, as well as a early stage Bitcoin kind of DeFi metaprotocol fund. And in the early stage venture capital fund that's been fully deployed, you know, we launched in 2022. I've spoke with myriad founders that are, you know, some of them have made the mistake of chasing the next new shiny thing and others have laser focused on their core product. And even like the sponsor of this podcast, Jupiter, right?

36:41When these guys laser focused on creating the best swapping capability on web three period. Now they have a foundation and the user base that has an expectation of what the experience is going to be like for a Jupiter product. Now look at all the products they have, right? As opposed to, Hey, we're going to do a lending protocol. We're going to do a stable coin. We're going to do NFT trading. We're going to do perpetual exchange. Like you've already lost. And I think that that is the same application to what you're describing with your podcast. Yes, you could do a fund. Yes, you could do a conference, but why not be the best podcast?

37:15And then maybe see incrementally where you, you know, branch out in forms of media if it makes sense to you. Absolutely. One of the main reasons your fund performs so well is your understanding of the Solana ecosystem early on and of the meme coin potential. You said is my first fund, right? But you said also you developed this judgment throughout the years, which you called pattern... Pattern recognition or pattern matching. Exactly, pattern matching. What previous bad or catastrophic events or patterns in your investing, trading, or entrepreneurship career helped you recognize that the FTX collapse was an opportunity and not the end for Solana?

38:02Yeah. Oh man, what a great question. um so i think i take a deep breath because uh it's just like remembering that time was just insane i'm sure that was for everybody that was involved um i'll put it to you this way like my myself my trading partner when when f when the the kind of rumblings about the issues at fcx were happening in fact it was at breakpoint in lisbon um we were about to fly home and we were starting to hear some rumblings and believe it or not, um, we were actually short the market heading into October into Q4 that year. We were, and people can like read our market updates. We have all the receipts.

38:43Like we were bearish, super bearish from a macro perspective. And we were expressing that through being, you know, long Bitcoin put spreads. Um, the day that the kind of shit hit the fan with FTX, those things were worth a fortune. However, we've seen this movie before with the global financial crisis. And what I think a lot of people, especially, you know, younger folks that weren't necessarily trading during GFC may not be aware of is a concept called counterparty risk or embedded credit risk in your counterparties. So we trade with a lot of broker dealers with options like these, these put spreads, but what happens if that broker dealer is bankrupt, right?

39:18And you have a position on with them. Well, you get to go through a bankruptcy proceeding. No one wants to do that, especially when you just launched your fund. And so what we did is we flattened our entire book. Our dealers knew what we were doing and they gave us shitty pricing. That's the, that's the business. But we, you know, we, we were like shoot first, ask questions later. And when, um, we started to see the pile on of shorts, uh, with anything that was associated with FTX, Solana was the clearest thing that was wildly associated with FTX, rightfully so. It is a blockchain technology that jump trading is also involved in, right?

39:54So it's not a surprise that if a former employee of Jane street, which is a competitor to jump saw the technology of Solana and wanted to be associated with it in a meaningful way, that it would make sense that Solana would actually also get hammered as FTX was kind of imploding. We saw it as a major opportunity, mostly because the fundamentals of Solana had not changed, right? They have come to a blockchain from a very different set of first principles, which is, you know, we want to be optimizing global state at the speed of light, right? We want to be the NASDAQ for blockchain. That has trade-offs in the way that you design the system.

40:30Like any system, you're going to have trade-offs. And the fundamentals for Solana had not changed. What had changed? The price. And so if we zoomed out and we were like, okay, earlier in 2022, we knew there was going to be an aggressive tightening policy by the Federal Reserve, as well as other central banks globally, that's going to hammer risk assets. There's going to be certain price levels that we are going to be comfortable owning certain assets, no matter what happens. And those price levels, believe it or not, with Solana were between eight and$11. And so we started buying Solana when it was trading down 11, 10, nine, and then just kind of closed our eyes and shoved all in at eight because the fundamentals had not changed.

41:07My view has been since 2019 that in order for this kind of new form of technology, call it smart contract programming, call it blockchain, decentralized finance, whatever it is, you have to have an underlying operating system or, you know, system, the L1, if you will, be deterministic on cost and deterministic for the user experience. And Solana is, to this day, maybe there's some other L1s that have adopted kind of a parallelized approach, like, you know, Aptos and SWE, say, were investors in SAE, like, but at the time, it was only Solana. And so, you know, there's a first mover advantage there, as well as having, you know, arguably, like, some pretty sophisticated applications that were built and being built.

41:49And so as I looked at it, I thought, look, I could be dead wrong on the adoption of blockchain in general, or, you know, web three applications. Maybe I'm wrong there, but the fastest horse is Solana. It's not going to be Ethereum. And this was back in 2022 when there wasn't like the, like they were still talking about their scaling solutions. A lot of them had rolled out yet. And I still believed that, Hey, look, you know, I have a software development background, what you're looking at between Solana and what people are calling a modular architecture, which is actually a service-oriented architecture, there's trade-offs with those as well.

42:20And I've seen those play out in previous patterns, right? Service-oriented architecture has been around since the 1970s. This is not a new concept in software development. There's hardcore trade-offs when you move from a monolithic stack to a service-oriented architecture, period, end of story. I still believe that a monolith is actually the best way to scale a blockchain today. And that was the case when we bought it at eight bucks in 2022. And so the long-winded answer is, it's a combination of all this set of experience that I had in say traditional markets, understanding various forms of risk, managing that risk, but also making sure that I was comfortable expressing a view when price hit a certain level because the fundamentals hadn't changed.

42:57You think in terms of probabilities, right? What was the probability we were assigning to Solana being successful at that moment? Oh, very high, 80, 90%. What's the worst that could have happened to you and your fund had you been wrong? The 10, 20%. I mean, the worst thing that could have happened is the price of Solano would have kept going down, right? And we also have a risk-adjusted way of doing that where, you know, like I think one of the things that we kind of, I've done for my entire trading career, 24 years, is I don't get into a trade unless I know the exit in advance. And I mean that in both directions, right?

43:31So for example, if a salon is trading eight, we sold puts at a$7 strike price for like, I don't know, it was like a month out or something, end of year, maybe it was December. And had we got put to it, we would have had to basically buy salon at like$6.10. We were comfortable owning salon at$6.10. Now, if it had kept going, well, then we would have had to stop out at a certain level. Fortunately, we collected the premium from selling the put and it went to 25 bucks in like a month. Right. And we had also put on a risk reversal call spread and nailed that 2025 spread. So we were pretty good with our probabilities of and the accuracy in the short term trading.

44:14Right. Had it gone the other direction, we would have stopped out. And this is, I think, one of the mistakes a lot of traders or investors make is they struggle with this concept that every human being has, which is loss aversion. And if you apply like your emotions or, you know, thinking that you're right and the market's telling you wrong, market's going to keep telling you you're wrong until you actually, you know, commit to it. I usually never ask about price prediction because this podcast is really not about that. But. Oh, I have a good answer for you. What's your, I mean, I'm a big Solana believer also since last year.

44:50I was a bit later, like$20, I think$17. Nice. thanks to Raoul Pal, Akshay and Chris Berinsky. Shout out.

45:02Where do you see this all going this cycle in a bearish base case and bullish scenario? And you can maybe talk about macro, right? Because it's probably linked to your macro outlook. Yeah, so I mean, whenever somebody asks me for a price target, my answer is always the same. It's higher. And the reason I say that is because price targets were invented by Wall Street to sell shit. They are easy little like quips of information that pretty much anyone that isn't a sophisticated investor can be like, oh, this really smart guy in a suit on Wall Street has told me that the price of IBM stock is going to be$300.

45:41That's their price target. And it's only 200, you know, that's a 50 % return. That's why I'm asking to this smart guy in a t-shirt with tattoos. Exactly. Which is why I'm telling you price targets are nonsense, everybody. Like they make for great headlines. Like I'm telling you right now, my PR agent really wants me to be putting price targets of like Solana at a thousand bucks. Like she really wants me to be doing that because of course, every media outlet will be like, Oh, hedge fund manager, Joe McCann says Solana is going to a thousand and they all print it and it's meaningless. Right. And so this is what my point is, is that with price targets, It's I don't view, you know, it's long to go in a thousand.

46:23Sure. Is it going to 500? Probably. Is it going to six bucks? No. Like, you know what I mean? Like it's like, it's just, it's kind of, it's kind of ridiculous. And so what we have is not so much a like bear base bull case on the price of soul. What we have is a macro view and we use that to inform how we express it like through crypto. So crypto, in our opinion, and I think Raul probably agrees with this, is the best expression of macro today. Period. End of story. There is no better risk adjusted return than Bitcoin. And then anything that's beta to Bitcoin does extremely well as well. And so our view on the macro landscape shouldn't be a surprise.

47:03It's consistent with what Raul sees, is we think that we're not even remotely close to the end of a global liquidity cycle. We think that there's a chance that global liquidity probably tops at some point in the second half of 2025. Could it keep going? Absolutely. Right. Like this is a forecast. I think the other thing to note is there's significant structural changes in kind of the, you know, I would say power brokers of countries around the world right now. China has a major demand issue internally. Their domestic demand is effectively zero. That's a problem. They're an export heavy country.

47:39That's great. But lacking internal domestic demand. That's an issue. Russia has, you know, with the Ukraine conflict kind of isolated themselves to a certain extent that the energy that they produce can no longer be upgraded with modern equipment because they can't get it. That is also choking them from the inside. Right. If you look at what's happened in the United States, we have some of the biggest CapEx investment projects happening probably in our history in 2025. that's going to continue to drive GDP in the United States, continue to drive consumption, which should be, you know, help folks like China that are export heavy businesses.

48:19But the point that I'm making is, uh, there is a, there is an opportunity likely in 2025 that could extend into 2026 where risk assets inflate to levels that would follow a four-year cycle. Could we be wrong? Absolutely. What would be different this time, right? A lot of people get really hung up on the fractal nature of Bitcoin in these four-year cycles, I think one of the big key differences this time is that we finally have the institutionalized products associated with Bitcoin. What happens when BlackRock owns the majority of all Bitcoin? Do we know what that looks like? Has anybody probabilistically weighed that outcome?

48:56What does that mean for the floor or the bid? People are like, oh, Bitcoin's going to rip the 250K and then crash 70%. It's like, really? How's that going to happen if BlackRock is holding the majority of Bitcoin. They're not going to let that happen in theory, right? So your idea is maybe does happen, but always have, always express your portfolio in a way where there is a probability that it doesn't happen, right? That's correct. Same as you did with Solana at the bottom. Like, how do I kind of hedge myself or predict myself in case any of the potential outcome happen? Yeah. And I mean, look, this is also like asymmetric.

49:31You know, I tend to tell people we're a macro shop dressed up in crypto clothing. My trading partner, 20 plus years, global macro, cross asset, cross geo. I have macro experience. He has significantly more, but the way that we think about our vehicle is like, we're actually a macro fund. We just happen to use crypto as the key expression. There is a case to be made that we over-index and we have the latitude to do this at asymmetric where we could be like, Hey, instead of, you know, 95 % of our portfolio trading crypto products, why don't we shift that to, I don't know, 30 % and 70 % we go trade, interest rates, FX, you know, these types of things, because we know how to trade those.

50:09And in the case that there is kind of a stalling out or a blow off top in crypto, and there's going to be, you know, a winter or bear market again, probably makes sense to actually have exposure to macro products, because unless you're just going to be naked short or in cash, you know, my investors aren't going to want me to just hold their cash. So maybe there's an opportunity for us to actually kind of shift our perspective away from the expression of macro being crypto to macro being macro. And I think that that's kind of how we're positioning ourselves at the second half of 2025. You said we are a macro shop dressed with crypto clothes, right?

50:44Correct. There's probably no better way to say that than your sort of trademark thesis, which is depression or dog coins to a trillion dollars. That's right. Can you explain? Yes. I wish I was, you know, clever enough to have coined that phrase. But you coined it. Good artists create, great artists steal. So I stole that from a friend who will go unnamed. He's actually a very talented macro portfolio manager at a very large hedge fund, Tratify hedge fund in New York. And the concept of it is pretty simple. While we were going through this sort of incredibly aggressive tightening cycle by the Fed and other central banks, particularly the Fed, we were watching what was happening going at some point, the rate policy is going to be so restrictive that either the federal reserve is going to drive the United States into a full blown depression, or they have to print money, which means that all the dog coins go to a trillion dollar market cap.

51:48And I was like, depression or dog coins to a trillion. And I was like, holy shit, that's actually spot on with the conundrum that Jerome Powell faces at the head of the fed. And so it's a quippy tagline, you know, it's stuck. I'm going to keep it for a while guys, until we see, you know, it either be invalidated or dog coins actually hit a trillion. And then I'll do an incredibly cringeworthy victory lap. But the truth in that statement could not be more obvious as to what's happening in the United States today. And so for example, and maybe around the world, but I'll speak from a U S perspective lens.

52:25there is a, you know, we've written about this, this concept of what a bimodal distribution is. Most people know like the standard bell curve, the standard distribution. That's how most economic data is presented. They say on average, the GDP is this, or on average credit card delinquencies are that, or on average, you know, mortgages are this and that. The reality is that in the United States specifically, there's, it's not one bell curve, it's two. And there's the people that are struggling and there's people that are doing very, very well. And the economy is very much set up this way. And so the folks that are not necessarily doing that great, they would rather throw 500 bucks at a meme coin and hopefully turn it into a few hundred thousand or a couple million, which the media loves to cover.

53:11Don't you guys, you love to cover those headlines as opposed to, you know, let me put$500 into a T bill that earns me 5%. Well, what's 5 % annualized on 500 bucks? So small, it doesn't matter. Now, if you've got 5 million bucks, 5 % a year, pretty good. Especially when the rate of inflation is two and a half. Your real rate is call it two and a half percent. You're getting two and a half real yield for doing nothing but holding US debt. Those other people, they don't have that option. They've got 500 bucks. What are they going to do? They're going to do a four-team parlay on DraftKings because the football season is back in full swing, or they're going to buy meme coins.

53:53And this is a concept that I think loosely is called like financial nihilism. And that is not going away. I think it also is permeating throughout the kind of global zeitgeist, particularly with the younger generations, but it is absolutely the case in the United States. And so if that doesn't change, you will see people gravitate towards the dog coins when the Fed actually has to print because that's their only way out. you're talking about the little guy who would throw 500 bucks into a meme coin right but you invest for the big boys and you throw money into the dog coins that's right why really simple my job as a hedge fund manager is to generate returns to my lps let me be super clear about this like no one starts a hedge fund to change the world like it just a hedge fund is to generate money.

54:44Venture capital fund. Okay. You'll see VCs say to you things like, we back the founders that are here to change the world. No, you're not. That's actually not true. I'm sorry, guys. That is nonsense. The reality is like VCs won't say what I'm saying because they know it's true. VCs raise money from limited partners. Limited partners put money into their fund and they say, I want to return on this. And so when a VC tends to invest in a business, your business model becomes their business model and their business model is generated returns. And if you don't meet their business model, guess what?

55:21They will find ways to make sure that you're not in business anymore, or you have to get really, really lucky. Right. And so with what I'm doing at the hedge fund side, um, yeah, we're here to generate returns for our LPs. There, there is no way to like sugar coat that. That is literally the job. And so what I look for is not the investments that are going to make me look good on a panel at a conference. I look for investments that are going to generate returns. And I think at asymmetric, we're kind of at the intersection of technology, culture, and capital. That is a very rare combination. And it's obviously very self-serving for me to say that, but that is what has enabled us to have those types of returns that we had in 2023, because a lot of the performance drivers were macro driven, expressed through crypto, but also understanding culture and that being expressed through crypto.

56:11So as an example, we were very early to Bonk and still are huge supporters and holders of Bonk. I had identified in October, major capitulation event on Bonk. It looked like someone had just finally said, I can't take it anymore, just dumped as much as they possibly could. When you see that It's a form of capitulation. That's a pattern that exists in trading and investing, etc. Typically, when you see that level of capitulation, the price goes up. The last seller has sold. That's when bottoms actually form. And so that was number one. Number two was we were actually approaching Q4, which is historically a great quarter for crypto in general.

56:48Number three, we had the Solana Breakpoint Conference coming up. Number four, I built some proprietary software in-house at Asymmetric that allowed me to see kind of block order flows across the spot exchanges and started to see these kind of huge prints hitting the tape. And number five, we did on-chain forensic analysis of stablecoin flows into Solana. My view was if Solana is going to go break through the kind of FTX implosion level and start ripping, people are going to migrate to Solana. We're already starting to see that with stablecoin flows. Well, if they're going to be buying Solana and they own Solana and the value of Solana goes up, well, they're going to want to lever against that.

57:21What are they going to buy? A dog coin. What's the dog coin on Solana? Bonk. Bonk also has an incredible story behind it. Like it's like Netflix quality story behind it. That's very easy for people to kind of get behind. Lo and behold, it was a$28 million market cap that went to$2 billion, right? Did we get lucky? Sure. Was it an informed probability? Yes. And I think that that is one of the reasons why when we talk about the comfort in owning meme coins, celeb coins, you know, shit coins, you name it, because our LPs don't care as long as we're doing it in a risk managed way. And the last thing I'll mention about this is that we do manage the risk of these types of assets in a very strict way.

58:01So we have what's called a concentration risk policy where any asset that is in the top 20 by market cap, at most, we can spend 2 % of the funds AUM on it. Why? Let's say you have$100 million and you spend 50 million on bonk and you're wrong. You're fucked. If you spend 2 million bucks and it drops 50%, it's not the end of the world. If it goes up 100x you just crushed it ask yao wang he was early in with right ask him do you still hold with he says no why he says i'm not sure it outperforms solana in the future and i want to put that in i want to ask you the same question right because you say i own bonk and i want to put that into the framework of the question would be depression or dog coins for a trillion dollars.

58:49So I'm basically asking you depression or dog coins for a trillion dollars. Dog coins for a trillion, for sure. No doubt about it. For sure. Yeah, of course. I mean, let's like unpack that a little bit more, right? So in the United States, the federal government is a business and the way that they generate income, there's like a handful of ways. There's tariffs, which are small, which could change under Trump administration. There's tariffs, but then there's taxes. And taxes is the majority of the income for the most part for the U.S. government. Well, if you look into the types of taxes that they receive, the largest amount of income that they receive is from capital gains.

59:28What are capital gains? That's when you buy an investment, it goes up in value, and you have to pay either short-term or long-term capital gains. I'm not a tax professional, but this is like loosely the understanding of how this works, okay? And how does the government ensure that they keep having revenue from capital gains? They have to inflate the value of assets. So like, let that wash over you. The U.S. government has to inflate the value of assets to get capital gains tax revenue. Why is nobody saying this? What percentage of the revenue for the government is the capital gains versus the other?

1:00:05Is it a huge chunk? Yes. Okay. Yes. And like, I mean, this could again change with say, you know, Trump has, I think if he, if he becomes president again and he follows through on his tariff plan, like that could fundamentally change. But yeah, the majority of the tax revenue comes from, or excuse me, the majority of revenue for the federal government comes from taxes, period. And I don't know the exact number off the top of my head. I'm sure somebody will gladly fact check me in the comments, but ultimately that is their business model. And so once you kind of understand the plumbing of this system, you can look at it and go, so the value of homes, what is the value of all the U.S.

1:00:45homes in the United States? Some trillions of dollars. Okay. Yeah. What if that drops 10 % in value? What happens to the capital gains tax? Zero. Or very small, right? They can't have that. the business model is not set up to have assets go down in value. So therefore, depression or dog coins to a trillion, there's actually only one choice. They have to inflate assets. And because Zoomers, a lot of millennials cannot afford to buy a home, guess where they put their money? In things that may enable them to buy a home. Dog coins. Dog coins. Now, I will say that, you know, the guy who said, I don't hold any whiff anymore.

1:01:28Like there is, uh, we haven't even really seen, seen retail come back thus far in the cycle. We've seen like little spurts of it. Um, meme coins are like there, there, you can, you can press a button and create one. Like there's this trivial to create a meme coin at this point. Right. The difference is, do you actually have some level of, you know, utility, which I know people hate to associate with meme coins, but like, sorry, Bonk is really good at this. Iggy Azalea's mother is really good at this. Like there are examples of this out there, or you have absolutely captured attention and maintained it.

1:02:06Now there is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like whiff was crazy. It got, it captured everybody's attention, but then all the exchange listed it, all the market makers wanted to trade it. There's all this behind the scenes kind of infrastructure that mechanistically rolls out for what becomes a blue chip meme coin. Well, now all these market makers like have inventory and there's a bunch of holders of these various meme coins that are blue chips like whiff they're not going to let this thing go to zero because they make money on the markets and the exchanges make money on that being traded and then they offer new products because that's their business model so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy mostly when a token ends up like as a blue chip what i see is like a billion dollar plus market cap because you've got the infrastructure in place to ultimately support it does that mean that it that it won't go to zero No, it just means that the probability is less that it goes to zero.

1:02:54So kind of framework that you're using from what I understand for kind of different things in the world to assign probabilities on where things are going is understand the business model of every actor that is involved and what's their basically incentives. That's it. Really simple. Yep. If you can understand the incentives of the other side, it makes the kind of, the picture becomes way less cloudy, you know? And that whether it's understanding like the US government's business model or it's understanding what makes a blue chip meme coin, it's the same thing. And if you understand those incentives, it's a very powerful position to be in.

1:03:32So you bet big on Solana and bet big on meme coins. What was Asymmetric Fund performance in 2023 to earn you the best performing fund in the world award. We were up 193%. And that's, again, with our risk management framework in place. And that's, you know, nine figures of AUM. There are some funds that have reached out and be like, oh, well, we were up 250%. I was like, how much did you have under management? They were like$2 million. I'm like, well, yeah, like kudos, but add like two zeros of that and see if you can generate that same type of return. It's very difficult. So because you did so well and because you're all in crypto, you're probably the right person to ask too.

1:04:14how do I make it in crypto as a new investor? And you have a bunch of secrets that no media nor people want to hear. So let's take them one by one. The secrets to making it in crypto that no one wants you to say and no one wants to hear. Oh, where do we start? The first one is you need to have skin in the game. That's right. Don't read a book to learn how to trade or invest. Don't go to business school to learn how to build a business. That's right. Yeah. So let me kind of opine on that a little bit.

1:04:53I have traders in my Telegram chat, Market Mercenaries Telegram chat, constantly ask me or DM me, hey man, you know, really learned a lot from you and whatever, but like, what books did you read to learn how to trade? And I was like, none. They're like, what? And I'm like, zero. You don't learn how to be a trader reading a book. It just doesn't work that way. And unfortunately, I think a lot of folks in developed nations, certainly the United States, assume that, oh, wait, hey, if I just like go study this course and I read these books and I do these exercises, that now I'm going to be able to do X at kind of like a semi-professional, professional way.

1:05:34And it's just not true. In fact, one of my closest friends went to Harvard Business School. And I remember I contacted him. This must have been like 14, 15 years ago. And I was like, I don't know, man. I feel like I need to get an MBA. And he's like, Joe, he's like, don't waste your time. He's like, if you want to learn how to start a business, like just start a business. That is actually the best way to learn how to run a business. It's not a class or a course or a textbook. It's the same thing with trading. And the reason is that in an academic vacuum, everything works like it's supposed to.

1:06:09When you actually have skin in the game, like if you want to open a bakery or something, right? Like you have to put your blood, sweat and tears, your money, your time behind it. It's a very different emotional state than if you're reading a book about how to open a bakery, right? The same thing goes for trading. you can learn, you know, like the vernacular and like the general concepts of things like order flow and technical analysis, but no one's going to teach you from a book how to trade because trading is for human beings, very emotional. And the only way to actually understand how to trade is to feel it.

1:06:45Well, how do you feel it? Put your skin in the game, put your money in the market and make mistakes, right? Like there's no, you have to do that. And because human beings, by design, we have this emotional construct called loss aversion, where we hate losing more than we enjoy winning. And so when we start to see like a losing investment or a losing trade, you can start to feel it in your gut, right? You start to feel, oh man, this doesn't feel good. I'm losing money. Like what is going on here? And then your brain stops operating in a rational way. And before you know it, you've blown up your account, right?

1:07:20And so part of the point that I'm making is if someone tells you that you need to take some course online or you need to read a book or you need to go to school for things that require skin in the game, run from them because they actually are giving you bad advice. The only way to actually learn these types of things that require skin in the game is to put skin in the game. Why do you think there's so much theory and so many courses and out there? Show me the incentives and I'll show you why. Think about it. How many YouTube videos exist out there right now teaching you how to be a trader or technical analysis or do yield farming or any of these types of things?

1:07:58Do you think those guys and gals actually care? No, they're trying to get page views. They're trying to get advertising revenue. So the incentive model is set up such that people want the easy button. So they search the internet and go, how do I become a crypto trader? And these things surface and they pop up, right? Great, that's awesome. But that's not actually gonna make you a really good trader. And so the media also loves to highlight these types of things. The same incentive model for the broken media system is advertising as page views, engagement doesn't even matter the quality or the it's really the quantity of information and people that they end up getting on their site.

1:08:33So if somebody is like, meet the kid who put 800 bucks into whiff and made$2 million, like everybody loves that story. That's a lottery ticket, right? That's not actually a thing that's a value to you. And until that incentive model changes, you're just going to see more and more people actually produce that type of content, which goes back to the same thing about price targets. These, these media outlets love price targets because it's like, it's like a cheap hit of dopamine for people that can read that. And I don't think that it's changing anytime soon, unfortunately. and by the way that kid probably lost the money afterwards because if it was luck the first time he probably feels like a god right and then he's going to make the mistakes and learn right correct and the other thing that you said was regarding the the online courses or it it comes back to what we're saying before understand their business model and incentive of this party and then you understand why they're doing that and why it's probably not the right way to do it right yep The secret number two, you kind of mentioned it.

1:09:31You need to blow up your account twice. That's right. Why? This is another thing that no one's going to tell you because when people want to become a trader, do you think that they want to hear, wait, I have to blow up my account twice? That's going to turn off like everybody for the most part, right? You're going to be like, wait, what do you mean? Like, why do I have to blow up twice? Let me explain why. So, because I've done this. I want you to ask. Yeah, of course. Give us the examples of two times you blew up your account. Oh, they were so long ago. I don't even, I don't even, I just remember the second time doing it.

1:10:03The first time I definitely remember because it was unbelievably painful. It was the same God complex. Like, uh, so what happened, I'll just speak to my example. Like this was, oh my goodness. Um, this is a long time ago. These are like Chinese internet IPOs on E-Trade. Like this is so long ago. Um, probably 20 years ago. So I saw this IPO for like Baidu or something like that and was very, still like relatively new to trading. Wasn't doing it professionally, just kind of learning on my own. Hadn't really made any money. Didn't really lose a lot of money, but was trading a decent amount and really committed to this IPO.

1:10:44I was like, this thing is gonna rip out of the gate. I just know it. It's gonna be huge. That's what happened. It went for like, it opened And the thing was like 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100,$120, something like that. And I bought it at like 40 bucks and sold it like 120. And at that time I was like, I mean, this is way before crypto. That's like unbelievable in the stock market. And also if you're new to trading, you're like, wait a second, I just made like$20 ,000 in five minutes. Like, how is this even legal? Right? It's crazy. And then I fucked up. The next day I thought it was going to keep going.

1:11:17Right? Because I was like, oh, this thing's just going to keep ripping. Nope. And so I bought it and it was going against me. And I was like, shit, okay, I'll buy more. Nope, buy more, buy more. And the thing just plummeted till it blew up the account. I had using leverage at the time margin. This is a long time ago. So you get a lot more margin than you can get in like the traditional brokers today. And it blew my account up. And I was just shell shocked. I was like, what just happened? I went from like being on top of the world to being in like a full blown depression. And what I did after that was I spent a considerable amount of time slowly and incrementally building my account back up, putting some pretty solid risk management principles in place.

1:11:58And then an idiosyncratic event blew up my account. I had no control over it. No control. What's an idiosyncratic? So imagine you're long. So in crypto, it's 24 seven in like stocks, you have what's called gap risk, overnight gap risk, because the markets close and then they can reopen the next day. Right? So I don't remember what the asset or the stock was, but I was levered long it and some news event came out. I think it would may have been like a pharmaceutical or biotech stock or something like that. That was super negative news. And it gapped down like 40 % in the pre-market and just liquidated my account.

1:12:38That taught me a very, very valuable lesson, right? I was like, wait a second, like you did all of these kind of like incremental things to get you to a point where you felt like you had control over it and then you realize you have no control. And so once you let go of the control and recognize that there are aspects of the market that you literally have no control over, then I think you're actually ready because instead of trying to outsmart the market or out muscle the market, you kind of have to get in this bizarre flow state with the market flow state. And I think that that takes just a considerable amount of time to develop.

1:13:16In fact, my trading partner at asymmetric, I was telling him, I think this was, this was earlier this year. You know, Q1 was a ripper this year, but you know, I think it was like some point in Q2, I was, I just, I just messaged him. I was like, you know what? I'm, I'm out of the flow state. Like I have to stop trading. I just have to like take a beat because I'm recognizing what I'm doing and I'm consistently wrong. You know, in the short term, these are like baby trades, but like just trying to like get a feel for the market. Like in some cases, there's, there's certain tactics you can do as a trader to kind of like test the market.

1:13:51Right. So let's say, you know, you're trading, I don't know, pick an asset like, um, Solana, and you flash like a$2 million bid on the order book and see if it gets hit or do you still, or does that cause the order book to go the other direction? There's little bits of like clues and information there that you can do as a trader. You know, you have to have the capital to do it, of course, but you can see how the market reacts. And I was doing these kind of testing the market, seeing what was going on. And I kept getting the wrong information based on what my view was. I was out of the flow state.

1:14:22And so I said, that's it taking a break. Like, you know, I know that this is what's cool about me and my trading partner. We're kind of like Kobe and Shaq or Jordan and Pippen or pick your athlete duo. And I knew that he kind of could manage everything while I got reset. And so getting back into the flow state is critically important, but also understanding when you're out of it and not like, I think in like poker, they call it being on tilt or trading, like over trading or something. Not trading, being in cash is also a position, right? And it's important to kind of like step away a little bit and allow yourself to get back into the flow state because I don't think you can force the flow state.

1:15:01I think it just ends up happening once you kind of start to get into a rhythm with what's happening with the markets. This is kind of linked to mastering your emotions and your guts, right? Correct. So one of the secrets that I wrote is contrarian investing, mastering your emotions and going against what your guts tells you. I'll give you an example. Excuse me. So in August of 2024, we had a VAR shock, a value at risk shock. This is when, you know, August 5th, you had Japanese banks opening up like down 21%. You saw crypto get smoked over the weekend, then the US equities markets, and then the VIX went from like 26 to 66.

1:15:47And like all these crazy things are happening. Right. Um, we love those events. We love those types of events because they present enormous opportunity because the majority of people panic. And when you panic, there's a lot of opportunity if you're not panicking. Now I am not going to sit here and tell you that, you know, when I saw a salon ago from one 90 to one 20 or, you know, Ethereum from 3000 to 2100, like that. I wasn't a little like, Hmm, this doesn't feel so good. But what you develop over time is you, you detach like your mental model and framework of thinking from the emotion so that you can look at the emotion.

1:16:30So for example, when my stomach was churning a little bit, and I also hadn't slept because the markets were kind of insane. Right. I looked at it and said, oh, I know this feeling. This is the feeling that you get when you're supposed to panic. Now, when you panic, what do you do? You sell the bottom. So instead of selling the bottom, why not sell a little bit and rebalance your portfolio or what's called swapping delta, right? So like if we're long spot tokens, we want to sell those and buy options where you can get more benefit on a kind of reflexive bounce. that I don't know how to teach. I definitely can't teach that.

1:17:08That just comes with experience over time and being in those positions, but also being able to master and control your emotional state. It is very hard to do. Like I still, from time to time have these kind of euphoric or panic moments. I'm not, I'm a human being. I'm not like some sociopath that has no emotions or can understand this type of stuff. The difference is, is that when you're in a trading mindset, you have to find a way to say, man, we're up enormous amount of money. Like I'm getting euphoric. I'm looking at buying second homes or a nice car. You know, like there's little things that you're, you start sharing your P and L with people.

1:17:42I'm screenshotting my portfolio. These are like, it's so classic. Right. And the same thing happens at the bottom. Like I kid you not. I had so many people DMing me on Telegram, Signal, Twitter, et cetera. Like, is this the end? Is it like, I'm about to get liquidated. What do I do? Like, I'm like, oh, we're so close. We're so close to the bottom, you know? And so there are other aspects like that, that I think will start to inform your view when you can also recognize like the feeling in your stomach, uh, and act on it in kind of like the opposite way that you, your body is telling you how to react.

1:18:18So as you said, right, your, your guts is your second brain. So you need to kind of split both brains, the first brain, the second brain, and use the first brain to rationally have a look at the second brain, which obviously is way easier said than done. That is correct. And this is one of the reasons why there's been such a rise in, you know, computer algorithmic driven trading, because there's, they're machines, there's no emotions, right? You put emotions into, you know, investing in trading, and you end up with these kind of euphoric and catastrophic depressive states, which are opportunities for the people that kind of do the inverse.

1:18:52The next secret, you kind of mentioned it already before, but I want to go a bit deeper, is you need to intimately understand the concept of loss aversion. What is loss aversion and why is it so important to understand for anyone who wants to become a great crypto investor? Yeah, so we have this, you know, emotional construct of human beings called loss subversion, which I kind of alluded to earlier, which is we hate losing more than we enjoy winning. I don't know why it's probably some instinctual, you know, fight or flight thing. I'm not sure. Like maybe you're always kind of on the defense because you don't want to get eaten by a lion or something.

1:19:32Right. Maybe that's where it goes back to. But nonetheless, pretty much every human being has this innate feeling or emotional construct. when you apply, when you have skin in the game and you apply your own money to something as an investment, you as a human are immediately emotionally tied to that and its value. And you can see the value of it in real time, especially with crypto, right? Cause it goes up and down every second. Um, the challenge that I think people run into with loss aversion is somewhat what I alluded to earlier is that before you put a trade on, let's just talk about like liquid token investing or liquid asset investing, you should know your exit before you put it on.

1:20:12Meaning - That's actually the last secret, yeah. There you go. So the reason you should know that is that if you don't, here's what happens. And I am almost certain many of you watching this and listening, this has been your scenario. Okay, I'm gonna buy Bitcoin at$65 ,000, okay? And I'm going all in. I'm putting all my money into it, which is a bad idea. But let's just assume that you guys do that. Uh, so it's 65 ,000. Oh, it goes down to 64. You're like, Oh, it's just a little, you know, whatever. It's nothing. Right. And then it's like at 60 K and you're like, well, it's down to 8%. It's not the end of the world.

1:20:46You know, Bitcoin's a highly volatile asset. It'll bounce back. Now it's at 50 K and you go, ah, well, you know, that's a big psychological level. We're going to bounce from there. Now it's at 48 K. Uh, you're like, Hmm, it broke that level, but you know what? I'm holding this for the longterm. I'm a longterm investor. You put a trade on not a longterm investment. Now, if it was a longterm investment, these prices are relevant to you, right? You're just holding it right. Like, but if you're watching the price to trade. And so what people end up doing is they justify why they stay in a losing position.

1:21:25It's so easy to do. Like we're human beings. This is what we do. And we find ways of rationalizing. Oh, Well, you know, uh, there's this supply overhang from a token. Stop. Like the price is the only thing that matters. That's the only thing that matters. And if it's going against you, you were wrong. I tell people all the time, there's nothing wrong with being wrong. Staying wrong is a sin. And that's one of the things that I had to learn the hard way as well as a trader and investor. I am wrong all the time, but when I'm right, I'm really fucking right. And that works in my favor because if you can clip things away that you're wrong at it's signal you're tuning in and you're also recognizing that you're not falling victim to loss aversion, which leads to the last piece, which is if you do have an exit strategy on a trade, not an investment on a trade, there's no emotion associated with it.

1:22:14Let's say you buy Bitcoin at 65K and you're like, I'm going to risk 10%. So if it goes down 6 ,500 bucks, I immediately sell it. Don't even think about it. I want to sell it if it goes up 20%, right? Just picking a number. That would be$13 ,000 above 65 ,000,$78 ,000. If Bitcoin gets to 78 ,000, I'm selling it. Now, what ends up happening? People see it go down 10 % and they don't sell it. They're like, oh, it'll bounce back. Of course. Because their emotions get involved. Or conversely, it's at 78 ,000. You're like, no, I think it's going to keep going. We look at all the momentum behind it. We just broke out.

1:22:52The institutions are coming. It's Q4. It's a Santa Claus rally. Let's find every possible reason to justify why this thing's going higher. And then guess what happens? It falls and reverses in your face every single time. Right. And so except the time that you actually sold. Exactly. And that is absolutely the lesson. There is this, you know, my trading part, I guess I've mentioned a handful of times, like we've got about 50 years of trading experience between the two of us. And there is a concept called paying the gods in trading, paying the gods. And there are traders, there are two types of traders, those that know paying the God that you should pay the gods and those that do not.

1:23:32And the ones that know that you got to pay the gods, sometimes when the market pulls back, you're like, all right, here's a few shekels, you know, do your thing. This is a completely made up superstitious concept. The same exists when you go up, you're like, you know what? We just made a little bit of profit. Like, let's throw a little bit in the, uh, the, the, the coffers of the trading gods, so to speak. and it's more of like staying in rhythm with the market as opposed to being some fictiony fictionary like or excuse me fictional god-like deity that's actually controlling the market but there is something to be said about like being in tune with oh man we're really ripping we should probably pay the gods pay take a few chips off the table if it pulls back cool but if it keeps going we'll still got some on or whatever that thing might actually be right and And so having like this strategy in place and knowing when to like, you know, take a loss on something, take profits on something, pay the gods in the meantime.

1:24:30It just, there's no way of learning this out of a book or a movie or a podcast. Like you just have to do it. Probably as a sort of summary, I'm just thinking about the conversation I had with some people who are learning, right? I mean, at the end of the day, we're kind of all learning to become better investors or traders. It always feels like shit. It always feels like shit. It's probably good, right? I need to buy when I feel bad, but I need to sell when I feel good. It always feels like shit. I'm never going to feel good. At least not in that moment. In the future, I'll be like, probably the price is going to go lower at some point.

1:25:10So I made the right decision, but maybe I made the right decision now in six months, right? because it's going to go much higher and then lower right it always feels like shit yep that's right that's it and so there that's why it's so hard exactly and that is why there are so few good traders absolutely because who wants to work a job where you're supposed to do something when you feel like shit like bye and then when you feel great you're supposed to end it Like who wants to end feeling great? Who wants to feel like shit all the time? Yes. And who wants to feel shitty a lot of the time, right?

1:25:47It is, again, it's like there's emotions that are involved with trading that most people just can't seem to overcome for very justifiable reasons. And I think that when you, when you kind of, you've like adapt, I mean, it's really just, you just have to go through the pain of this for so long that you just get calcified by it. I mean, seriously. And then also you develop like, I would say mental and intestinal fortitude such that you can identify trading opportunities and execute on them. And also like, I mean, dude, I've lost tons of money before. Like, of course, like that's part of trading, right?

1:26:28Like, if you're running a business at some point in your business, you're going to take losses. It is inevitable, right? Maybe you have an advertiser pull out last minute and you're like, shit, I thought I was going to have this revenue stream. It's gone. That's technically a loss. The same thing happens in trading, right? But if you can be, if you can minimize those losses and also learn from them and kind of continue to tack in on like how to optimize your way of trading and investing, over the long term, you should do okay. It's just that most people can't stomach the pain, unfortunately. You're an entrepreneur.

1:27:09So you're by definition extremely optimistic, but you're also skeptical. Why is it so important to be skeptical about pretty much everything? Yeah. Man, where do I start with this one? Maybe I can guide you. and we can start talking about some specific examples in your life, right? For example, the medical system. Yes. So, look, I think I kind of alluded to this at the beginning of the episode where growing up with my brothers and, you know, in a single-parent environment, you know, our mother enabled us to really explore other aspects of life as, you know, kids, adolescents, et cetera, and we could pursue things in a way with a level of license that I don't think a lot of kids get.

1:27:59That was what she could provide to us, which was fantastic. And in doing so, you know, we, I think me and all three of my brothers would agree, we have a pretty healthy dose of questioning authority in general. And it doesn't mean you have to question authority as like a rebellious teenager. It just means maybe you should be asking the question why something is a particular way that it is. Like price targets. Why do we even have price targets? Where did this thing come from? Why is an authority figure, CNBC or some investment banker, telling me about this? Where did it even come from? And why are we even talking about it?

1:28:37Can we just break this down for a second and look at it and go, actually, this is completely ridiculous? People tend to not do that. And I think that by constantly questioning things, you actually like unpack alpha that you didn't even actually realize was there. Absolutely. Right? That's how you build businesses too, right? Correct. And so, you know, I get this question a lot of people like, well, what's the killer app going to be for crypto? And it's like, no one fucking knows. Like, no one knows. But guess what? Like, you probabilistically try to find founders and spaces and things that are going to be potentially groundbreaking.

1:29:12And like, with a little bit of luck, things can happen, right? Like if you look at the artificial intelligence industry, it's been around for doing research for 70 years. Nobody in the 1990s was like, can I have a conversational search chat bot, please? No, no one was saying that because no one knew it existed. And then we had to break out out of app of chat GBT. And so as it gets to like, you know, being skeptical of things or questioning things, I think what you'll find is that by having like a healthy dose of skepticism can inform your view in a way where you can identify opportunities. where other people are not.

1:29:47Because when folks tend to kind of just follow the herd, I mean, we were talking earlier about people tend to like, a lot of people tend to like to be just directed. There's like a lot of opportunity that is being missed. I'll give you like a completely ridiculously tried example. So if you've ever been in New York City, I used to live in New York. You can go to like in the subway, people will get off the train and there'll be like an L shape of like turnstiles to get out. And what you'll see is all of these people flowing into like one thing. I think about that every time I get out of the tube in London.

1:30:18Exactly. Exactly. I'm like, what? There's another one. There's like three open ones right here. Yes. And all of these people are just like herding cattle, like going through it. And this is a completely ridiculous example, but it underscores the point. Like, wait a second. Why aren't people just looking right there to go out? Because they're not thinking like. It's not written way out to this one. Yeah. Like they're just like, they're just going through life in a way. And again, it's not a judgment. It's just an example to showcase that like, if you don't actually question things or think like, why are we doing this?

1:30:52You won't find very obvious solutions. In the Metro, the escalator one is a good one too. When you have two escalators and one is empty, but moving and the other is full, everybody goes to the full one. You're like. Makes no sense. I'll probably go have a look at the other one. And worst case, what, I just come back, right? Yes, exactly. Yes. You said the system, the medical system is designed to keep you sick instead of feeling you. So that's one of the areas where you actually questioned a lot and discovered or realized that the masses are not doing the right thing, right? Yeah, look, as someone who grew up with humble beginnings, we did not have health insurance all the time, right?

1:31:30And in fact, when I was in college, I blew out my ACL playing basketball, not at college. I'm too short, unfortunately. I was just playing basketball one day. I was like 21 years old, blew out my ACL and did have health insurance. And I went to this doctor and said to him, you know, like, what's the deal? Like, what do I got to do? He's like, well, you need to have reconstructive arthroscopic knee surgery where you take a chunk of your patella out, anchor it with two screws. And I was like, cool. Like, how much does that cost? And he's like, well, you know, your insurance will cover it. It's probably like$10 ,000.

1:32:03And I was like, well, I don't have insurance. And he's like, oh. He's like, well, what can you pay? And I said,$900. And he said, we'll take it. And at the age of like 20 or 21 years old, it dramatically changed my perspective on the health care system in the United States. Think about what just happened. I got a 91 % discount by not having insurance. What? How the fuck does that work? You know why? Why? Because the system is captured by insurance, big pharma, the medical providers, to the extent where they can drive up certain costs that fit their particular models and then also force people to have insurance.

1:32:48Or if you don't, you're like terrified what will happen. You're like, well, you can negotiate. That's so interesting. Now we can take this one step further. So this was, you know, years ago. This is a long time ago. Today, the medical industry, and again, I'm just speaking from the US perspective, there are treatments that can actually fix you where you don't have to keep coming back to the hospital. For example, I blew out my knee, had ACL surgery, had chronic knee pain for 20 plus years. Last year, I had stem cells injected into my knee and the pain is literally gone. I've never had pain again in my knee that I had pain for 20 plus years.

1:33:3612 years ago, I had reconstructive ACL surgery in my shoulder, or excuse me, rotator cuff surgery, chronic pain. Couldn't even like lift my arm all the way up because of how kind of tight the reattachment was in the surgery. Stem cells and PRP, zero pain. Can do full load-bearing exercises, pull-ups, hang, everything. Completely gone. Last summer, I tore my left pec working out. did five rounds of PRP, no surgery needed, fixed, completely, completely sorted. There's a concept, this thing called hydro dissection where, you know, I know some people have this experience where like right on the tip of your elbow, there's like a nerve.

1:34:12And sometimes if you just touch it right, when you're getting out of like a chair or bed, it will shoot a bunch of pain through your body. Turns out that you can inject dextrose, which is a form of sugar into the nerve and it calms down instantly. Pain is gone. Why are these not covered by insurance? Because they fix you, Right. Why is it that the food industry in the United States has chemicals and is so highly processed to the extent that other developed countries in the world have banned the chemicals used in the U.S. food system? Well, if people, if we can maximize, you know, the kind of call it, I don't want to list any names of companies, but these large organizations, large companies that are mass producing food and can strip as many nutrients out of them and maximize profitability.

1:34:57It also serves the pharmaceutical and the medical industry because all these people are now sick. because if you're consuming things like seed oils or, you know, a lot of, uh, hydrogenated, you know, uh, oils, or if you're eating chemicals, literally like red number five and all these types of things that are pretty much not found in nature have to be heavily processed and then, um, package into food that actually makes you sick. And so why is it that we're not focusing as a country or as a, you know, industry on things like stem cell, PRP, hydro dissection, polytherapy, et cetera, as well as, I don't know, fundamentally changing people's diet and food.

1:35:37Well, it's very simple. Look at the incentives. What is the incentive of a food company in making wholesome food? It's too expensive. What is the point of a pharmaceutical company creating a pill that you take once, right? It's like me, I have to shave my head, right? I have to buy razor blades. That is a great business model. I am forever going to have to buy razor blades unless I want to look like a total prick with a horseshoe for hair. I don't want that to happen to me, right? So what am I going to do? I'm going to buy razor blades for the rest of my life. Pharmaceuticals, same sort of business model.

1:36:09And the health and the kind of healthcare industry itself is the same type of setup. I am a huge proponent for things like stem cell PRP. And it's not just for like acute injuries. It can also treat things like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, same with reducing your inflammation in your diet. All these things can be net beneficial to folks that have neurological diseases, yet they're not covered by insurance. So if you're questioning authority and you're looking at it from a healthy dose of skepticism, what you find is there's alpha in doing things like stem cells and PRP. And you can also know that the system is captured from a regulatory standpoint by big pharma and healthcare providers, and it's likely not going to change for quite some time.

1:36:50I always end up this conversation with the same question to every guest. So I'm going to ask you the same question as I ask everyone else. What's your biggest prediction for next 12 months? My biggest prediction for the next 12 months.

1:37:12I think in the next 12 months, there will be a pretty strong resurgence of American exceptionalism, which sounds incredibly biased as an American citizen. I just look at the forecast of how the United States has positioned itself in the arms race for things like chip manufacturing, re-onshoring, reshoring manufacturing, the strength of the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve, how they work in concert. It just feels like to me they've got a monopoly on the system still. And if you look at the power players that were involved in the kind of the last, call it 10, 15 years, China and Russia, they have been largely kneecapped by an administration's set of policies that whether you like Biden or not, like it's worked.

1:38:01You basically have China with very little domestic demand. You have Russia. Yes, they are, you know, they're still in an armed conflict in Ukraine. I'm not a supporter of any of that kind of stuff. But ultimately, clipping them from the banking system and disabling access to things that are going to help them upgrade their energy infrastructure. it just feels like America, the United States has an upper hand once again on like the geopolitical scale. So I would argue in the next 12 months, you probably see the United States continuing to kind of outperform, if you will, every other geo on the planet.

1:38:36So in a nutshell, bullish the US. How can I not be? Thank you so much, Joe, for doing that. It was a really amazing conversation. My pleasure. It was great to be here.

1:38:50Bye.