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Mezzanotte Podcast #3 feat. Vers la Lune
65 Plays1 year ago
In this podcast we discuss podcasting, Vers auditing job, the crypto market, WIF, Ansem's rise to fame, taxes, Linux operating system, Zyn nicotine pouches, Elf vapes, and if Up Only will ever return...
https://twitter.com/vers_laLune
https://twitter.com/mezzanottenft/
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Transcript
Role in Smart Contract Auditing and Business Development
00:00:00
Speaker
So what's, what's going on? How are you doing? What's, what's happening? Um, good. I'm good. Um, we are, I mean, I've been working all day. I work for, uh, wait, can I say it? Yeah, I can say I work for like this like smart contract auditing company. So I've been trying to find some leads on that. Like, do you, what do you do for them? I do biz dev.
00:00:26
Speaker
So I just. So is that like, what's that like? Similar like B2B sales or like, you know, just growing the business, getting more clients. And you just like hit people up and stuff? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. I hit people up. Uh, I talked to like project founders and there was of people and see if they need like code auditing, especially if you're going to launch a coin, make sure that there's no like security fault. So you don't get like rug pulled. Okay. Okay. Okay.
00:00:56
Speaker
How long have you been doing that for? Since the beginning of this year. And it's nice? Yeah, it's solid. It's hard because we're a newer company, so we got to build our reputation. But otherwise, yeah, it's good.
Life in Austin vs. New York
00:01:08
Speaker
And you're in Austin, right? Yep. You like it there? Oh, yeah, I like it a lot. It gives me a lot of the...
00:01:17
Speaker
Entertainment that like New York does put a little bit slower pace so I don't have to like so it's not like every single day like it's go-go-go it's like I can choose when I feel like being social but when I do it's always a good time.
00:01:30
Speaker
That's cool. I haven't been there in a really long time.
Crypto Market Trends and Investment Strategies
00:01:36
Speaker
What do you think about the market right now? Like a slow February? Like kind of just like... Yeah, I've been feeling it's kind of slow, but there's some good things that are... I mean, like obviously Bitcoin is doing really well and the stuff built on it is doing really well. Solano has been kind of slowing down unfortunately, but it'll be back. And there's like obviously the Ethereum, the 404 projects like Pandora were doing well this month.
00:02:01
Speaker
Did you get into any of that stuff? A little bit too late. I always get a little bit hesitant when it's like brand new. I kind of wait till it looks like things are unrugging and then of course I got in like right at the top and so that didn't go too well but there's always more opportunity. It's weird because I just did an interview with this artist that does this project Jabba Forms. I don't know if you're familiar. Oh yeah, I know Jabba Forms, yeah.
00:02:28
Speaker
So that was like, we were talking about it and he was like super anti like ERC 404 because he was like, he's like all about the art of the NFTs. And he was like, it's just like the art is like second to the like coin or whatever. Yeah. The 404 is basically just a means to pump it. It's more of like a, it's definitely like trading them as like financial instruments. The arts not even really relevant.
00:02:54
Speaker
Like for almost all of them, except actually I literally couldn't tell you what the art looks like for any of the coins that are 404. I just saw one, which is like Adworld. And I saw that one. I saw the art for that one, which was cool. But those are my friends. Did they do a 404? Did they release one? They did. Yeah. It's like ape in. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Those guys are cool. Yeah. But they did that. They did a 404.
00:03:24
Speaker
Oh nice, I'm gonna hop in that. Gotta support the homies. Yeah, for sure. What was I gonna say?
Journey into Podcasting and Media Consumption
00:03:33
Speaker
I'm new to this game. I'm new to this podcasting game. I'm trying to like, I just figured I'd try it out. I don't know like how you feel about it or like what, like what are your thoughts on podcasting? So I like it. It gives me a creative outlet and you know, it's, uh,
00:03:52
Speaker
It also helps build social life online, which has always been good. I make more friends. It helps out when I go to events and stuff. When I started doing it in 2019, it was just to promote a book I wrote, which sucks. I'm not going to even show my book.
00:04:13
Speaker
What was your book? You don't want to talk about it. I wrote a Bitcoin book, but it's so out of date now that it's not even more. Also just under my real name. So it's not even like, so I probably wouldn't even show it anyway. But I wrote this Bitcoin book and at the time I was proud of it, but I'm a better writer now. And I started doing a podcast to promote it. And then ultimately I was like, Oh, actually kind of like podcasting more than the book itself. And I kind of kept up with it.
00:04:41
Speaker
That's cool. Um, yeah, that's something I think about sometimes because I feel like the flow of information, like some people don't listen to podcasts at all. Like I was talking to this dude, it's like an advisor, like a venture capitalist guide. He was like, I've never listened to a podcast. I only read. And I was like, huh. Cause like, for me, it's like a good way to like,
00:05:09
Speaker
get information. I don't know. I see both sides of it. Um, I don't listen to podcasts that are like political. I honestly for, or like anything kind of serious. I only, the podcast I personally listened to or like anime related or they're like pure comedy or mostly comedy. Um, I mostly for, I do end up reading myself for like anything that's actual information. Cause I won't, I won't like retain it.
00:05:37
Speaker
Yeah. I watched this one stock market, one that's really like all in the compound. Oh, I've never seen that one. No. Um, there's like a couple, like it's, well, one of them is with the guy from CNBC, downtown Josh Brown. Okay. Okay. And then like his buddy, Michael Badnick, and they're just talking about like trad fi. I don't know why, but I've been watching it for years and it's like,
00:06:05
Speaker
kind of entertaining to me. I don't know why. No, I like, I mean, I like, like I'll listen to lectures. Like I totally like understand the appeal. Um, though the one like kind of technical podcast I listened to on and off is all in, which is like those VC guys. Yeah, that one I like, but I don't want you like regularly. I watch it like once a month or something or something big happens. No, it's kind of cool. I mean like, yeah,
00:06:29
Speaker
It's definitely like something where it's like I fall asleep to it and then it's like I wake up and there's like the next three or plant like the you know, it's like just got it keeps going and like whatever and like YouTube keeps going and I wake up to some like Random shit. It's kind of crazy. Actually, I don't know if that's a great way to know I fall asleep to I've been falling asleep to ebooks and like I wake up like 25 chapters deep. I'm like, okay
00:06:54
Speaker
I'm reading the expanse or like listening to the expanse before bed. And, uh, any, I've listened to probably a few chapters, like six or seven times in my sleep. And it's weird cause I wake up and I listened to it awake and I kind of remember the parts. So it's, it's, it's getting your subconscious. That's cool. Yeah. No, I like that. I think it, I think it definitely does like, um, yeah, I have no proof, but I feel like it does. Um,
00:07:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean like, I'm in WIFF. What about you? Oh yeah, of course.
Crypto Trading Insights and Tax Implications
00:07:32
Speaker
I'm podcasting with hat on right now. Same. I mean like, I'm pretty like heavy into WIFF where I'm like, I just have this just strange belief that I feel like it's just going to go to at least one dollar at least. Yeah, I think so too. I mean, I have, we have stickers, my friend here in Austin, we put it around bars.
00:07:52
Speaker
He's like he like made with stickers for no reason and we get drunk and we're just like yeah, we're doing marketing Do you have any like with alpha because I don't really know not really Yeah, same. It's just like there's nothing. It's a feeling it's a feeling It's just a feeling that's all it is. It's like yeah, it has like the it has like the very well like the only alpha I don't know if it's alpha but like it has the meme appeal right and it also has like a
00:08:22
Speaker
the, you know, obviously the dog picture is good, but like the hat, like I see girls with like posting with, and they like do their little like crocheting and they make their own with hats. Like Brittany venti just made her own little with hat. And like my friend's mom was making them like, I, it just has like a cute girl appeal. And usually if girls like it, a mean point, that's usually a good sign.
00:08:44
Speaker
No, that's true. Yeah. And I remember that I forget I was watching something with Anson where he was like, I showed this to like my IRL friends and they were all like, that's the best meme. Yeah. And that was what sold it to me kind of in a way where I was like, this actually is the best meme to me looking like it's simple. Like I don't really know. Like I had win. My biggest fail was having like a small bag of win. I missed win entirely. I didn't know it was a Drake thing.
00:09:14
Speaker
It was, it wasn't actually a Drake thing. It was, well, it is. It's like a reference to, I need a max winner or something. Yeah. But like that shit just lost me money or whatever. I missed it completely. I just had to watch it, rock it up. And just me having to sit there on the sideline. Sad. I know. It's kind of weird. I mean, yeah.
00:09:36
Speaker
It's hard to know whatever is going on. I just try to pay attention loosely and stuff, but I don't really. Do you actively trade? Define actively. I feel like I trade one trade a week and then try to hold it. Nowadays, I'm worried about taxes like I used to not be. Now that they actually can track it,
00:09:57
Speaker
I'm like... Wait, what's up with that? We're talking about that. I heard you talking about that with Lucas on your planet a while ago. Yeah. So they care about... They apply similar tax stuff that they do to the stock market with crypto. So there's short-term versus long-term.
00:10:15
Speaker
And the more trades you do, it's obviously more short-term stuff and then it gets taxed similar to income or whatever. I don't know the exact details. And if you hold something for like a year, it's treated like long-term investment and the tax rate is different.
00:10:30
Speaker
And while I think that that's... I'm not the kind of person who's super, super risk averse. Yeah, risk averse. So I still am trading short term. But it's easier to deal with 100 transactions at the end of the year or even 200 versus 5,000 because I'm going in and out of a shitcoin left and right. So if I'm going to trade, I'm going to make it... Because every trade is a taxable event. So I might as well make it worthwhile.
00:11:01
Speaker
You mean like long-term? No, no, just like, you know, over the course of the tax year, right? Every time you do buy and sell, not each thing is susceptible to cap gains or whatever. So I'm like, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to make it each one worthwhile as opposed to just doing like I used to do back in the day. It
Life and Work in Texas
00:11:17
Speaker
just like go in and out of trades willy-nilly do like five trades in a minute. You know what I mean? Stupid shit like that. Really nilly is really fun. Yeah.
00:11:25
Speaker
No, no, I get that for sure. It's weird because I did my taxes for 2022. This is hilarious. We can try to make this as boring as possible. But I had crazy losses in the trad-fi market. So I have an accountant. And so I gave him my Vanguard whatever. And I went willy-nilly or whatever in stocks that year. And so my losses,
00:11:55
Speaker
kind of like made me have like lower tax, like a lot lower. Oh yeah. For 2022 was like kind of crazy. Like I was really scared that it would be high. I love that. I was like so surprised cause I pay taxes in New Jersey and like the state tax is like the third highest, I think in the U S but it was slow. So it didn't really matter. I mean, yeah, you don't have state tax in Texas. No, we don't know. That's like the one benefit. That's why people like lives there. Oh yeah. That's a big one. What? Yeah. That's a big benefit. It really makes a difference.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah, it does. No, I mean, yeah, for sure. A relative mind moved to, I forget, a tax-free state. But how's your pod doing with Lucas? Is it
Podcast Growth and Technical Challenges
00:12:44
Speaker
growing? How do you guys promote that? So it's definitely growing. We've been bad the last few months because we try to upgrade the video too fast and scaling that is just 10 times harder than
00:12:56
Speaker
audio. So we've been inconsistent. We've been trying our best, but we're just not putting out the same consistency that we were doing when it was only audio. So now we're scaling back down a little bit, doing audio and video if we have a guest or something. So the growth kind of slowed down. But yeah, we're on episode 71, right? So it's a little bit over a year.
00:13:15
Speaker
And last year, considering we started effectively at zero, we have grown pretty big. On Spotify, we have 50,000 listens now. Does Zencast put it on Spotify and Apple? No. Actually, I think there is a way to do it. I just have never figured it out. You have to buy a pro account. But then I just uploaded myself on Spotify and Apple.
00:13:43
Speaker
So you make accounts on there? Yeah. If you go to like Anchor, I guess now it's podcasters.spotify. It used to be called Anchor. And then you make your account and then you get a RSS link and you can connect all the RSS feeds to all the other podcast platforms. And then when you upload it to Spotify, it uploads to all of them. Okay. Okay. Okay. So wait, what is that called again? Sorry. It's anchor.fm. It's going to change the name of the link, but that's what it used to be called.
00:14:14
Speaker
Anchor like a C anchor. Spotify bought this or whatever. Yeah. And does this cost money or no? No, no, it doesn't. It's free. Oh, that's chill. Um, so like you can retroactively put ones up like that. I just put out on Zencastra. I could like put that up on a hundred percent. You just have to upload it, you know, to their thing, but yeah. So you just like,
00:14:41
Speaker
post about it from your Twitter's basically to grow it. Yeah. Twitter's going on all the podcasts like we're doing here. Um, yeah, I would just cross promote, do what we can. And then now we have the intern who does our video clips and that helps a lot. Like it doubled our, our Twitter following and our YouTube following clips with the like video game, like stuff, like the tick tock reform stuff.
00:15:09
Speaker
Yeah. Like a lot of people were like, I only watch the clips. I don't even listen to your podcast, but I like your podcast. I'm like, you know, honestly, great. I'm glad the intern's doing like the, I would say like a, probably a solid half of our audience is just watching the, the couple minute clips every day, every day that he puts up. Does the intern get paid?
00:15:28
Speaker
Not directly, but kind of. So like he actually probably makes more of our podcast than we do. Because like anytime we get like, sometimes you get airdrops from people. Sometimes we get like, if we do promotional stuff, they'll like give us coins or something. Like we just did a barrel chain thing. They're going to help us out, whatever.
00:15:48
Speaker
And he gets it too. So we split him evenly in those type of things. And then if he gets us any... We did a promotional ad for this blockchain game. And they paid us in USDC and we're like, we split it with him. So things like that. So we pay him out in the proceeds. But we don't have to make enough money to pay him directly.
00:16:12
Speaker
Um, and you have like, do you have sponsors that like pay you guys like monthly? No, no, no. We, we, as of like November is when we got the first thing in this bear chain thing we were, we were negotiating. So like, but they're not monthly, but he's, he will, uh, he's messaging a ton of people, like our DMS in the, on the podcast account, or he just messaging a million people. So to try to get that shit, because I feel like one of the coolest things about doing a podcast would be like,
00:16:43
Speaker
literally getting a monthly thing. That's where the actual money is. It's not like the listing or the views or anything like that. It's those sponsorships. That's what I feel like. It's like, I feel like there's gotta be like, if we're going to go into like a bull run or go to all time highs, like there has to be like some company that's just like, sure,
00:17:08
Speaker
So they all... Oh, yes. I'm sure that very soon, normal companies are going to want to jump in. But the problem is there's the two big podcasts are like Bankless. And it was up only. I don't know if they still do episodes. But Bankless takes almost all the money. They have millions of viewers that mostly don't watch every week. Their actual views aren't that high.
00:17:31
Speaker
But they have the name recognition and they get the companies on. So they charge a ton of money for promotion on that. And the people who watch bank lists will ape into anything that gets shown on there. So they have 90% of the pot themselves.
00:17:48
Speaker
So like we're trying to do like more of like the smaller upcoming things. Like for example, bear chain is big. They actually have a big, like they've raised a lot of money, but they're not like, they're not, they're not even on main net yet. Right? So like there's opportunity there. We can just be like, Oh, Hey, what's up guys? We can use, we can leverage our likes or network, meet them, do whatever and be like, Hey, come on and do an episode type of thing. Yeah, that's an L one. That's kind of like not, it's not even out yet.
00:18:16
Speaker
No, the testnet's out. And if you use their testnet, there's implications of it getting an airdrop, but it's not confirmed. So are you going in on that a little bit? Oh, yeah. We play around on it. And obviously, we are in talks with the main guys, founders and stuff. We had the founder on the podcast two weeks ago.
00:18:39
Speaker
Um, and you know, we want to, you know, trying to do any kind of like cross promotion and try to get our name associated with certain things that also helps with building the podcast. Cause like, obviously like most of our viewers are like people who are really, really online. And in other, in order for us to really grow, we need like normal people. So trying to piggyback off of things like that. I feel like normal people would like your podcast cause you just talk about whatever kind of, I mean, it is a little bit like,
00:19:12
Speaker
kind of schizo, but that's like the point, you know? But I feel like, isn't that like a lot of podcasts or like that anyway? I don't know. Well, I mean, I feel like we have a very online like center, like we're like kind of a tech kind of humor kind of schizo. Like we try to keep it like grounded. Like we get into the weeds sometimes, but like we made a very deliberate decision to kind of kind of keep it casual to hopefully get a bigger, more normal audience.
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah. So for sure. And it seems to be working. Like I can tell people I meet in real life, like, Hey, check out my podcast. And they'll be like, who aren't in tech or aren't on Twitter. And they, and they've been like, Oh, I really like it. So, you know, it's, that's the plan is just consistency. I mean, we've only been out for a year ish. So, you know, we can't expect to see too much. How often do you do it? Uh, we put out something every week. It's not the same day every week, but it's something every week.
00:20:06
Speaker
Isn't it better if you do it on the same day? It is way better. Yeah, but we are degenerate idiots. So we can't get ourselves together to put it out the same day. But the goal is to be out by Tuesday. What? Are you in charge? Are you in charge of like releasing it? Yeah. Yeah. That's me and him. Like he does a lot of, he does a,
00:20:26
Speaker
either the editing on the like actual content of it, like to make sure that the audio levels are good and like we didn't docs ourselves. And then after he's done with that, I put like all the overlays on it. I put it up on all the platforms. I do the visuals. That's cool. Does it take up a lot of your time like outside of your job or no?
00:20:50
Speaker
So when we do only audio, no. It takes like two hours a week, other than the recording sessions we do. With video, it takes up a lot of time. There's video, things go wrong constantly with video. All of a sudden, things aren't rendering correctly. You need to get a codec. Video is just dumb and editing takes forever. Even though we have a simple layout, it still takes forever.
00:21:18
Speaker
that's difficult, but even still like that's like another three to six hours a week, maybe. Yeah. But that's a lot, you know, like we have like social lives. We don't want to be, you know, no, for sure. For sure. I mean, yeah, I was, I just did my first one and I liked it. I liked the only thing I edited out was like the beginning where I just kind of fumbled the intro and I was like, this does not need to be in there at all.
00:21:46
Speaker
And I just like cut that out in Ableton and then just like, cause like I messed up. I fucked up with the Zen caster thing where it's like the dude Java forms guy like signed out his audio went missing. And then I was like, yo, you got to get back in. And then I just couldn't figure it out. And then I was like, I'm just going to, you know, you can download both of like the empty threes of each track or whatever. And then I just edited the levels in Ableton and bounced it and then uploaded that, you know,
00:22:15
Speaker
But it was kind of stressful in a weird way. It's not that big of a deal because I'm used to audio editing and stuff like that. But I feel like for you guys, the video aspect of it is good, I think. I think that that's what people want to see. There must be a plus side to that. Yeah. So for video, it's good for YouTube. The YouTube algorithm can pick up a video. It almost certainly won't pick up your audio only.
00:22:42
Speaker
Um, sometimes it does. Sometimes I can see people like search for weird things and then our podcast comes up because it shows you in the back in the analytics. But like for video, you know, you might have a topic and the next thing you know, yours gets like pumped to high heaven. So that's why we wanted to do video. Um, but you need a dedicated editor honestly. And if you don't have that, we, we found a guy who wants to do it, but we have yet to figure out the, the, the situation for that. We're going to work that out, but
00:23:10
Speaker
Because you edit that, you edit the thing, you're editing. Yeah, you're literally editing and the real issue is not just that, it's rendering time and then uploading it again. And, you know, like that, that takes like,
00:23:23
Speaker
I mean, depending on the computer and how much actual cuts are in the video, it could take an hour to render. It could take another hour to upload. And Lucas has horrible internet. So he's like, oh, it took me like Zencaster when you do video on it. It gives you like really big, raw, uncompressed files. So he's like, it takes me like three hours to download each individual video. And then I have to render it. I have to cut it up together, render it, re-upload it.
00:23:52
Speaker
And then you add stuff to it. So it's just, it's a, it can be a real hassle. And then like by the end of it, it's like a 10 gigabyte video file. It can get kind of crazy, but it, once you have a system like, and if you have like the computers and the internet and stuff like that, it's, it can be a lot more than a PC. Cause you guys were talking about on the pod. So I still want to buy the PC. I had it work. It renders faster on Mac.
00:24:19
Speaker
Mac renders is just like really well, really good for that stuff. PC has other benefits for software that Mac has like, I don't know. I think we should have both to be honest with you. I need to get, I still am fighting for the PC. I haven't bought, we haven't bought it yet though. I just use Mac, but, um, yes, I used to like, yeah, it's just Mac is like, I, yeah, it's like, I have like an M three laptop and it's like, it's like 18 gigabytes of memory. And that's like,
00:24:48
Speaker
It's pretty solid, you know? So the only issue that I'm already running into is that when we're doing these big video files, my actual, like the, the storage memory is to, is limited. Like I fill out my computer in like three weeks doing these files and it's just like, okay, I need, we need to get like the one that has like the most storage on it, like in built into it.
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah. But then you're paying $6,000 and it's just like, why not just get a big super PC rig for $3,000? So then that's kind of the issue. No, for sure. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. That makes perfect sense. I just am so used to Mac. I don't know. Are you mostly a PC guy or a Mac guy?
00:25:32
Speaker
I, so I'm not a P I'm a PC guy, but if I'm using a PC, I use Linux and that's what I would not be using for video stuff. So I would actually go back to windows and I hate windows. So I am a Mac in the Mac windows debate. I am a Mac guy, but I'm just a fucking nerd. I've been using Linux for like 10 years. So that's crazy. Yeah. I mean, that's really pretty nerdy. I feel like, yeah, I'm a deep nerd.
00:25:58
Speaker
What are the benefits of Linux? The benefits of Linux is other than the fact that you get to play around and actually do all the terminal stuff and you can feel like a lead hacker. The benefits are that it's really lightweight.
00:26:13
Speaker
If you're using a laptop, Windows takes up a ton of space and it's not optimized and whatever. You can put a Linux thing in. An old computer will run super fast. So now you have cheaper parts. You can pick the drivers and stuff and you can optimize your computer.
00:26:33
Speaker
But consequently, because everything's open source, you can't use all software, you can't play most games on it. It like limits what you can do. But you have like complete control over everything. So you get kind of like, you get to feel like a, like a real lead hacker, like doc, like doc, what's to say from back to the future when you're playing around with like the drivers in your computer? I don't know. It's just, it's just like fun tinkering stuff. It's almost like a hobbyist thing.
00:27:02
Speaker
And is it like a visual OS or is it just like a terminal? It's a visual OS, but like you have to use a terminal for Linux. So it doubles as teaching you stuff at all times. So you kind of like get better computers. Cause like to install, you have to use your terminal to like run certain things. Like a lot of it use a terminal a lot. Um,
00:27:24
Speaker
And that's just like going to be your thing for a while. Like you'll never change that. Well, I mean, I have, I'm using a Mac right now, right? So like for most things, like when I have the choice, like the Mac is just convenient for work and like editing and stuff, but for my own computer, I like playing around on Linux. That's cool. Um,
00:27:49
Speaker
So like you work five days a week or what's the vibes like from home?
Networking and Conferences in Crypto
00:27:53
Speaker
Yeah, I work from home five days a week.
00:27:55
Speaker
You get out of the house, debatable. So I try, so I have a social life. That's like, but it's like, I don't get out during the day. Like by the time, I mean, it's something, you know, it's Texas. So like the sun's out till seven or something and even in the winter. So that's good. Um, and I am now that I've been here for a few years, I have like a friend group here and like I go out during the weekend, like once it hits five o'clock on Friday, I'm out all weekend hanging out with people.
00:28:22
Speaker
trying to like have a social life. Um, but during the week I'm just indoors all day getting on telegram and talking to people and DMing people on Twitter and trying to get stuff. Um, but the one perk about this job or any business job really is that you go to the conferences a lot. It's like part of your job. So like I'm going to eat Denver next week and I'm pretty excited. I'm pretty excited about that. That's cool. I went to the urban thing in Portugal. I want it to go so bad.
00:28:52
Speaker
Yeah, that was really fun. I had a good time. Um, that's where I, yeah, Lucas was there. That's where I met Lucas. I went to the New York conference. I think it was NFT New York city at that time. That's cool. I don't know. No, it wasn't that it was something else. It was, it was, I just went to New York in general, just to hang out. I feel like there will be like good stuff that I would want to go to more, but it's just not happening.
00:29:20
Speaker
right now, but there's a lot. I saw like a list. Oh, it's starting now. Like the, like the East Denver is probably usually the start of the, like the season, I guess, if you can call that. So like it'll be East Denver. Then there's like a New York event that is consensus, Bitcoin, Miami. And it's like one after another after that. Do you go to all, you see, you go to all those. I go to this year. I'm going to most of them. Um,
00:29:45
Speaker
I'm either going to Paris or Singapore and then the other person on our team is going to the other one. So we haven't figured out who's going to what yet. Um, then I'm going to consensus cause it's in Austin. We're both going to, we're all going to New York and I'm going to Denver. So yeah, when's the New York one? It's in March sometime. Oh no, it's the first week of April, I think. And that's NFT. Yeah. NFT, New York city.
00:30:10
Speaker
All right. That's a big one. Yeah, for sure. I went to Paris one a couple of years ago and it was kind of whatever, but it was fun. It was fun. What was I going to say? Yeah, I've been to ECC once in Paris. That was cool. That was a really fun one. That was where I like ended up meeting Malady people from like a group chat on Twitter. Oh yeah. Did they do the rave? That's the one they did the rave.
00:30:36
Speaker
I don't know. It was, it was like two years ago or whatever. I forget, but it was like Lawrence was there. And then like some other like British people that were malady PFP people, like just random people that were like just chilling at like a table on like a boat. It was like a redacted like boat party. And that was like fun. But, um, those parties are fun. Yeah. They are actually really fun. Um, there's definitely like a weird mix of people where you're like, kind of like,
00:31:05
Speaker
It's like you kind of like navigate and then you like kind of find who you're going to like chill with or something. It's not like an immediate for me. It was like an, like some people, I was like, whoa, this is like a crazy, it's like an intense kind of over here or something, you know? You never know who you're going to get. What? You never know who you're going to get. You never know who you're going to get. It's just, it's, that's the same thing as life basically, I think.
00:31:28
Speaker
Yeah, I like it though because it makes me want to know how otherwise wouldn't. And sometimes that has a cool benefit either down the road or you never know what connection leads to what. For sure. That's why I always love going to the conferences.
00:31:46
Speaker
That's true. Exactly. Yeah. At the Urbit thing, I met this dev that worked for Urbit. We ended up just becoming friends and just raging. It was like I wanted him to work for me and I realized that he was too
00:32:05
Speaker
unhinged that like we couldn't really work together, but like we'll just be friends, you know? Yeah, that definitely happens for sure. Oh yeah, quite a few of those experiences. It's kind of just like, I guess maybe someday like we'll do something, but like, I'll just see you later or something. Yeah. We'll run into each other again and have another good time. But working might not be in our cards. How long have you been into, how long have you been in like crypto since 2017?
00:32:36
Speaker
So did you do really well in 2017? No, not at all. I had no money then. I was broke right out of college. I had been out of college for a couple of years, but I had just moved back to New York City and I was looking for a job and I was a tutor or something. So I didn't do well then, but I learned a lot.
00:32:59
Speaker
start to understand the situation, what was going on. And then I started to go to events and stuff and meet people in the bear market in 2018.
00:33:09
Speaker
And a lot of those, I mean, weirdly enough, almost all the people I became friends with then are really big accounts now, like Ansem. We hung out at his birthday when he had 3,000 followers and we were just hanging out, whatever, in 2018. Things like weird connections then. I guess that would've been 2019, whatever, it doesn't really matter. Connections then kind of...
00:33:33
Speaker
became something later. A lot of the big accounts now were small accounts back then. And we just
Influence in Crypto and Market Speculations
00:33:40
Speaker
were like... God of crypto Twitter now. Yeah. That's really strange to see. He was always popular because he's a cool dude. But it's strange to see that he's moving markets just by tweeting.
00:33:51
Speaker
It's really insane. It's cool, though. I mean, it's it's it's good that that's what happened or something. I guess it's just like it's just funny. It's like a natural thing. Like, I mean, he just it's just crazy to me, though, because it's like it's interesting because I guess I'm following it because if you follow it, like you can make money. You know what I mean? That's that's how it goes down. But like he's like
00:34:19
Speaker
It's, it's really crazy. I feel like he, um, would just posted his trades or whatever. Is that how he like started off? You know, he would just post trades. He would just like interact with people on Twitter, just like meme joke. Same thing he does now, honestly, where he gets like drunk and just like posting all his, his parties at night and just drunk tweeting. So he was doing that back then too. And like posting his trades and his charts in between stuff. And then just over the years going to all the events and just like being in the mix, he just became massive.
00:34:49
Speaker
It's insane.
00:34:52
Speaker
Oh, actually, he wrote an article. I remember now how he got big. He wrote this sub-stack about his thesis for the different quarters financially. And he was talking about how Luna was going to be big and Avalanche. And then he wrote another one about DeFi kingdoms and that got really big. And having those two articles that were really, really thorough, like 20,000 word type of thing.
00:35:20
Speaker
Cause he's a super smart guy. And then like they got really popular. Then they got P up on up only. And once he was on up only his account, like like 10 X and then Oh yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. And then from there, he was talking about Solana and the Solana phone all through the bear, this last bear market. So he just, he has a good, when he's like convicted about something, it turned out pretty well. So that's that cloud, that credibility kind of propelled him. Did, do you think the lover do up only again?
00:35:50
Speaker
Um, so like they were talking about it and then like people just start being weird to Kobe and Kobe's at the point where he doesn't even need to do it because he has enough, so much money that it's like, he's only doing it just because he likes the community. But when people start being weird and like, uh, they were harassing him or something, I don't know. And he's just like, this is not really worth my time. You know, I'm just going to be a rich guy. I don't need to be like harassed in my social life, my real life messed with.
00:36:18
Speaker
And the other dude though, the other dude needs like a job though. Ledger. Yeah, I guess so. Maybe they had a falling out. I'm not really sure what the deal with that was. I don't know ledger. Well, I don't really know Kobe either, but Kobe, I don't know. I've interacted with Kobe at least a few times. We have like friends. We're like one degree of separation. We were like a lot of mutual friends, but I've never met him. You know the dude that runs soft house in New York. Yeah.
00:36:47
Speaker
I've met him a few times. We were going to do a live recording there. We still want to do it. It's just hard to get us both in the same in New York City at the same time. He's cool. I was hanging out with him a little bit in New York. He he said that you and Lucas did a I don't know. No, we were going to we were planning on it. We still kind of want to do it. OK, but him and Lucas did a.
00:37:10
Speaker
some sort of like live Twitter chat from like a cab in Lisbon. Yes. Where it was like the mics were feeding back and it was like, it was just feedback really. And nobody could hear what they were saying for like an hour. And there was like a hundred people in there. Yeah. They wanted like a cab and then they went to like a house and then everyone was on the Twitter space at the same time. And it was just feedback and people just listened to, yeah, while they were partying. Um, yeah, I mean, what's what like, you have any like,
00:37:41
Speaker
What's your like kind of plan? Like you, like in, in a certain way of like you just holding your, your positions. Do you have like some solid positions that you're holding? I know this is like so funny to talk about this, but I'm wondering if you're aware of that. No, I am. I mean, I've, I've actually, I've had a couple of like losers in a row. So I got to kind of wreck this last couple of weeks, but in theory, yes. I mean, I can tell you like one position that I don't hold that I,
00:38:06
Speaker
I strongly regret that I wish I didn't do my stupid bad positions in a row and pick this instead. Bitcoin puppets like the ordinals on Bitcoin are going to be huge. I've been watching those go up and leaving me behind because I should have just put all my money into buying as many as humanly possible.
00:38:28
Speaker
So I think those are going to be big if they're not already big, but they're going to be like massive. Beyond that, I mean, I'm just watching like, I mean, I think Solana is still going to like a thousand dollars at least. You know, I think we're like, we're definitely like, you know, not in the beginning of this bull market anymore, but like we have like time, like the entire year is going to be crazy probably. Everybody. Yeah. I mean, I, that's how I feel. It's like, so it's like, I'm kind of forcing myself
00:38:56
Speaker
to try to pay attention as much as possible to things. But then at the same time, it's like a weird balancing thing where I'm like, I feel pretty straight with what I'm holding and I don't want to move anything that much or jump around, because I feel like that's where you... That's where you mess up, yeah. I mean... Leaving, leaving... When you leave a trade, when you exit a position, it's so hard to get back in.
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah. Because you never... Yeah, it's 100%. Anytime I exit a trade, it's always like, I can guarantee that's the bottom of... I'm leaving the position way too early. It's like a local bottom. I mean, honestly, I think a lot of the things that are good, that are doing well right now are just going to do very, very well. I think WIFR is going to be really even bigger than we think. Puppets are going to be huge. Solana is going to be huge. The things that are doing well now are going to do massive.
00:39:50
Speaker
And then there'll be a few like, I mean, there'll probably be like more than a few, like a few dozen things that like come out of nowhere that get huge, but largely the things that are popular, like from every other cycle I've seen, the things that are popular right before that first all time high break are what propels all the way to the end.
00:40:11
Speaker
So that's good to know. That's what it feels like to me because it's like I haven't really like I got into crypto at the beginning of 2022 when everything was going down and I started releasing NFTs then and I just was like I'm just gonna like keep doing this or try to pay attention to this because I know that it's gonna come back, you know, yeah, and I feel like I missed I Didn't really miss but it's like you remember like last August
00:40:38
Speaker
of last year when like all these like eth coins were popping off, you know. Yeah. So it's like that. Peppe era. It was like, yeah, it was like Peppe Bitcoin. Rollbit. Rollbit. Yeah. Ox then was popping off.
00:40:57
Speaker
The Malady coin was, Fumo was then. I think I had like Fumo, RLB. Yeah. Well, Mog is going crazy. Mog's back now. I sold that. That was really... I should never have sold that either. That was really good. That made me really happy that that went up, even though I don't hold it at all. I just was like, this is good because it seemed really unbalanced to me that
00:41:22
Speaker
is a laggard or whatever, you know? So it's like, there was nothing really going on on ETH at all. And there's so many coins on ETH. Yeah. ETH is still kind of like... Oh, it's just because of the gas. And there's so many options to not have to deal with that. But it's like the infrastructure. So it's not going anywhere. There's always going to be another banger on ETH.
00:41:48
Speaker
I have my money locked up in the blast thing or whatever. That's what I think. I think that's going to be pretty big. I feel pretty confident about that. No, that's where I have that. It's like basically it's like soul and blast. Yes.
00:42:02
Speaker
And I just kept buying with whenever honestly, I feel like that's all I do is keep buying with because I feel like Liff with is not one of those things or sorry now with um the others shit like shit coins on on Solana are not doing as well like that Solana is not having like at the moment It's like Solana with is like the doge for that for that chain or the Shiba Inu and there's not like there's other
00:42:26
Speaker
crappy coins that kind of go up and then disappear. But Solana hasn't had anything sustaining other than that. So I feel like with it, just like the safe money, which is funny to say, but, you know, because I was, I feel like the people that made money off of Bonk put their money into with, and then they're holding it there. Cause they think at least that's what I'm doing. But I feel like that's what other people did too, or something, because Bonk already got listed on Coinbase.
00:42:51
Speaker
You know, yeah, like I don't really I wouldn't really hold bunk now. I don't know. Oh, no, I would. I wouldn't touch funk with like a 10 foot pole, honestly. But why? I don't know. I feel like it just became like a I don't really know what the deal with that was. It kind of just got like over. I think they kept just adding more coins to the to the supply.
00:43:15
Speaker
If something happened with the distribution of the coins, I don't know what the deal is because I wasn't super into the tokenomics of that. So I don't know. But all of a sudden, it just kept dumping and it never stopped. Now, part of that is that the Solana phones all got bonked. And everyone who bought a Solana phone, they instantly dumped it. So that didn't help. But outside of that, it never came back. Yeah.
00:43:44
Speaker
It never came back. It's like kind of like I check it. I check it online. I have like a stupid little like it was just really funny to like replace my watch list from all these eth coins to just like a bunch of soul meme coins. And then I just edited that down to like it's basically like my watch list is like with Mog Blur.
00:44:07
Speaker
And then I have SPX on there and DMT like. Oh yeah. SPX. I see those memes. I think that that probably does well. Those memes are good. I mean, no, it did. It did well a while ago. I mean, who knows? Who knows? I'm not going to say anything bad about it because it's like I know the guy or whatever, but.
00:44:25
Speaker
I feel like blur after the blast thing will do well. I'm not in that at all. It's already doing well actually. Blur has just been going up more than doubled. But I feel like that is something, you know, cause the Pac-Man guy is like related did blast and he, yes.
Crypto Auditing Processes
00:44:44
Speaker
So I, I, we've been talking to him a lot for the auditing because obviously they're about to launch me in that or just launched it.
00:44:52
Speaker
Whatever there's like they had the blast the blast contest for daps on it So obviously like that's like me just going messaging every single blast Dap founder like hey you want to audit? So I'm hopefully meeting back back when I eat them for this, you know in next week. So that'd be kind of fun. That's awesome It's gonna be cool. Yeah
00:45:16
Speaker
What does auditing entail? I'm just curious. I really don't know. So usually what happens is you get a dev... So we do solo auditing. So it's like... Whatever. We do solo auditing. There's peer-to-peer stuff where we have an on-chain thing and we can match the different auditors to the different companies and they can interview everyone and figure out who they want. But effectively, the auditor is just a dev, right? And they go through your code line by line.
00:45:40
Speaker
First, they check for any mistakes. Typically, these people have a resume of finding security faults in other projects too. So they're looking for basic security things like precision errors, things where it's like, oh, you put a greater than sign here. But if you did a greater than... But it needs to be greater than equals because you can exploit it this way. So you just go through all the contracts and make sure there's no... And they run a bunch of tests on each contract.
00:46:08
Speaker
to see if there's any way to exploit it. And afterwards, they're like, they give you a little report. It looks like your protocol should be safe. It's been audited. Here's what we found. Here's where we think there might be errors, et cetera. Okay. So it's like, and you charge for that. It's like a business. Yeah, it's a business. Yeah.
00:46:29
Speaker
It's like, just do a question. You're like, yeah, it's business. But it's not like, yeah, it's not like... You're not doing this for free, are you? Because maybe I'm interested. No, I'm just kidding. But they do... So there's a lot of big firms that do it. But the problem with the big firms is they have so many clients and they charge massive amounts of money.
00:46:47
Speaker
People go to them because with security in really any industry, it's about reputation. So people will go to a big firm, pay more, get a worse product because of the name associated with it. So not to put our competition on the last, but there's a few companies that just kind of... If you know that they aren't good, they just kind of have the name, credit, name, whatever, value.
00:47:13
Speaker
So the idea is to try to actually provide correct audits because we keep seeing these companies, everyone get exploited from obvious things, I should have been caught. That's funny.
00:47:29
Speaker
Yeah, but are the companies that are asking you to audit or the groups or whatever, are they pretty small or are they all different sizes? All different sizes. We're newer, right? So we try to go after... Obviously try to go after big ones too because of the money, right? But we try to aim at middle, medium size and brand new projects.
00:47:51
Speaker
who might, where we can do the supply demand thing. We're like, all right, we'll charge a little bit less. We'll give you a product. We have our niche in the market. So that's kind of what we go to. But there's every company, every single company who launches a new product needs an audit. Otherwise, sometimes they have their own internal auditors. So they don't need to go to external companies. But if you don't do it, you're going to get exploited and then you're going to lose all your money anyway.
00:48:22
Speaker
It's good to know. It's really good to know actually. So it's like you wake up. Is there a time period before you start your job? Like, is there like, do you like chill a little bit? Um, for me, I just.
00:48:43
Speaker
No, I wake up and get right onto it while I still have my coffee rush and you know, my zen was in his PK. Yeah.
Transition from Smoking to Vaping
00:48:52
Speaker
I'm on the elf bars. I don't know. So I do bars too, but I started, I got like the flu last week and it's like, it's like hell every time I inhale the bar. So I went to back to Zins. I can't get Zins cause I'm in Europe, but like I, I, I'm from New Jersey. So like, I like,
00:49:10
Speaker
bought like a shitload of like peach ice, and like came over here like the only thing that's like kind of dark about like that. I was smoking like, like, I was smoking like spliffs like weed and like tobacco, like, like kind of too much for like a really long period of time. And I was like, this is disgusting. Like I'm just this is gross. And I didn't want to be high anymore. So I like stopped.
00:49:35
Speaker
like doing that. I try not to like reveal this to like crypto Twitter because they're like super anti. Well, they, so it's like some of us like I'm anti weed, but like everyone smokes weed. They don't, they'll let them lie to you. I'm out there. I see what they're up to. No, for sure. And it's like, I just feel like it's like,
00:49:54
Speaker
I was like at the age where I was like, I can't be like high, like this is retarded. I'm like losing money. And like, I like it's like an excuse for like, it's like being like, we just like retarded because like, you're buying it first of all. Yeah, losing money. It's like, and then
00:50:10
Speaker
But you can't like focus and it's like focus that you're like eating food and then you like get paranoid and you're like scared for no reason. Yeah Like this is this is like super like high school shit. It's like insane So it's like when you're like an adult and you're like, why am I like?
00:50:27
Speaker
Why am I high in doing this? Why am I high? Why am I frightened for no reason? Focused on some minuscule thing. And then you're like, why am I also ordering fast KFC at 2 or 3 AM? Yeah. It becomes unsustainable. And then you're like, oh wait, nicotine kind of rocks. I see why people do this. Well, the thing is that what I've realized with vaping is like, OK.
00:50:55
Speaker
The downside, I brush my teeth in the morning and it's like my gums are kind of bloody in red and I'm like, what's this about? Am I like hitting this thing too much? Or far too much? This is kind of gross. But then it's like, if I exercise, I feel better. The fact that there's no actual smoke hitting my lungs, I feel like vapor is healthier.
00:51:19
Speaker
Yeah, it is definitely the tar from the cigarette. I find it like the, uh, the flavoring, if you, if I, if I go like a really, well right after I just obviously just had, I was just sick, right? So like my lungs are more sensitive than they normally are. So like the flavoring I can see, I can feel like the mucus build up, which I'm like, that's annoying and cringe. Like why am I hawking up mucus? But so that's why I've been on the Zins and the Zins I feel like almost no side effects for. So I'm like,
00:51:47
Speaker
I should just do this all the time, but there's a fixation of the smoking. It gives you something to do. I like doing it when I'm working or writing or reaching out to people. The actual vaping process gives me a nice little stimming situation. Yeah, it's a nice distraction. It's nice to have it by you. The only thing I don't like about it is that it's
00:52:13
Speaker
I'm like carrying like my laptop and phone and like this like fucking elf bar, like all over the place throughout my apartment. Yeah. That's literally same. Literally same. That's my life. I gotta put this in my pocket now. Like fuck like shit. But that's also why the zims are cool. Cause I have a little, I mean, you don't have them weird though. Actually, no, I know a lot of like, uh, all this it's in Scandinavia, not in other Europe. I know like the Scandinavians do a lot of like, uh, the pouches too.
00:52:40
Speaker
Oh yeah. Like snus or whatever. Oh, they do stuff. Right. That's actually tobacco. When they put it in their lip. Yeah, they do the, so it's a similar thing to that with the Zins, but they're not, they're not snus. They're just like nicotine salts. I liked the idea of Zinn and I would probably like fuck with that. Like what are the, what is the downside of Zinn? Like I literally have yet to find one because it's just salt. So like, it's just like, it goes through your like salivary gland. It doesn't like tobacco. It's not tobacco at all. No.
00:53:08
Speaker
I didn't Zinn isn't tobacco. No, it's just flavored nicotine. It's like eating like nicotine gum, but it's just like in your, in your lip. It doesn't like, and it's, there's no like fiberglass or anything. It doesn't like cut up your gums either. So it's like, this is like, there's a reason why it's huge right now in the U S because like, there's like really, it's, it's also like $7 and that's insane. So everyone's just like, I don't know why I wouldn't do this. Cause I, I was in last year.
00:53:34
Speaker
Um, I don't take a lot of them. I have the highest dose though. I do the six milligrams. So it's like an hour per pouch and I maybe do like two or three day. So then by the end of the week, I need another one. Like in the work week, like five days, I can go to a, uh, a thing. That's chill. Yeah. And all it like, and it hits like you feel it and you're like, all right, I'm full. I'm locked in.
00:54:01
Speaker
Have you ever gotten to, I mean, this has probably happened to you, but like when you get to the end of the elf bar, it's like disgusting. Oh yeah, dude. It tastes really gnarly and you're like, Oh, I'm chief on battery. What is this? Oh, nasty. Actually. It's like, when you get to that point, it's like a fresh one is like amazing to be honest. Fresh one goes crazy. No, I usually find myself
00:54:21
Speaker
It's like when I'm at the bar and I'm drunk on like a Friday night and I'm like, and I realized someone else hits my vapor. They're like, what the fuck are you doing? This is like burnt ashtray. No, it's like I've given it to people and they've like taken a hit and they're like, that's strong. And I'm like, you're like, you're like smoking like rolled cigarettes. How is this strong in any way? Like you're just not used to it. It's like vapor.
00:54:49
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's that's true. Actually, you know what? I don't know actually. Cause sometimes it does. It does kind of hit. It's a different, I think it's just different because like the, um, the tall, like the tobacco, like it's like self-limiting, right? So like it's cause of how hot it is. I feel like people take smaller drags. Whereas like sometimes like they'll take a huge drag and it's like, they're like, Oh wow. Like it's like a lot going on.
00:55:17
Speaker
Cause you don't have to, you don't have to pull it as hard. So I've seen, so I've seen a few people just get like, like from their perspective, they're getting blasted. I've definitely like accidentally accidentally like inhaled like way too much. And like, it's just, it's been intense. Like it's like, what, what's just, what just happened to me? Like, this is gross. But if you're just like little, little, little hits, it's, it's fine. Like occasionally, um,
00:55:47
Speaker
No, that's cool, man. I mean, I don't want to take up too much of your time. We're almost hitting the hour mark. So I feel like this is kind of chill. Thanks for doing this. Oh, yeah, of course. I really appreciate it. I was going to. I was going to. Yeah, I was going to. When's the next pod that you guys are doing coming out? We haven't recorded yet, but likely Tuesday. And when you guys do it, you like talk for like how many hours do you talk for?
00:56:15
Speaker
So we at least two, we usually talk for like two hours and then we might, some of them might be boring and we might just delete some of it or we, and if we're like really feeling like we've been like both like so busy. So we've been doing like two hour maxes, but sometimes we go for like four hours. It kind of depends on how open our schedule is. That's cool. Well yeah, you're doing this a lot. So I don't want to take up any more of your time and I appreciate it. Yeah, no worries dude.