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Off Chain 4/6/23: DOGE pumps 30%, Yuga Partners w/ Gucci, and the 3AC boys are back (sigh)
308 Plays1 year ago
In this week's episode we discuss the following stories:
- Dogecoin pumps over 30% in a single day after Elon changes the Twitter logo to a Shiba Inu
- 3AC founders open crypto exchange after bankrupting their first effort
- Yuga Labs partners with Gucci to sell 3,333 Otherside-branded Silver Pendants (KodaPendants)
Recommended![CBDCs: The [Dark] Future of Money (Part 2 of 2) image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=112,quality=85/image-files/61fc0461fb20e00040aeb09e/5b9f1396-2a8e-418d-82a0-30fd00969266.jpg)
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Web3 Stories
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the Decrypting Crypto Podcast. It's April 6th, and this is Off Chain, your weekly recap of the biggest stories in Web3. I'm Matthew Hausbarbe, and I'm here, as always, with Austin Knight.
Dogecoin Excitement and Wealth Jokes
00:00:24
Speaker
How you doing, Austin? Doing all right. Feeling very bullish on Doge this week. Oh.
00:00:32
Speaker
Aren't we always? Is it just too much that I can't tell my grandchildren that all of this wealth was created by arbitrage on a shit dog coin? That's all I want from my life. That's how I want people to remember me, and that's how I want to make a fortune. So yeah, dodge to the moon.
Ether Price Surge and Economic Impact
00:00:57
Speaker
and and eth, ether's just hit uh past 1900 bucks for the first time since august of last year i believe um okay we've had a little bit of a pullback now because
00:01:10
Speaker
Ugh, the INF with their downer news that apparently the global economy's not going to grow at all for years. Downer. Now I want to see shit coins go up and everyone just be a bit more positive for a while. That's what I think.
00:01:28
Speaker
Oh, goodness. IMF always bringing us the bad news. Just FUD. FUD. What is it that CZ would say? Four, I believe. Number four. Ah, yes. Well, we got a few different stories today. We're going to, of course, talk about Dogecoin. How could we not? Our favorite
00:01:48
Speaker
group of founders, Three Arrows Capital, we really hope, we really hope that they've landed on their feet and are just gearing up to launch something that's going to deliver a just real social good project. So we'll be talking about that very soon. We've got Yuga Labs, big partnership with Gucci, and a whole host of quick headlines that we can kind of dig into.
00:02:16
Speaker
as a bit of a wrap-up at the end. It's gonna be a bit of a quick fire episode this week, so we're gonna jump straight in.
Twitter's Shiba Inu Logo and Dogecoin Surge
00:02:30
Speaker
Dogecoin has pumped over 30% in a single day that was earlier this week.
00:02:38
Speaker
After Elon, everyone's favorite CEO, changes the Twitter logo to, you guessed it, a Shiba Inu. What's happening? I don't know. Are we gonna try and report on this story? I guess so. What I do know is it is very, very random. So the long and short of this is, I mean, I call this news. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it even gets into this category.
00:03:09
Speaker
But on desktop version of Twitter, if you hop in right now, you will see in the top left-hand corner, the Twitter logo is now Doge. I gathered this was an April Fool's joke, albeit I think it was on April 3rd that this was rolled out, but, you know, I'm not gonna read too much into that. It still hasn't changed back.
00:03:29
Speaker
We don't really have any kind of explanation behind why the Twitter team have decided that they would change it to the Doge logo. Does this surprise me a whole lot? Not really. The only somewhat inkling we have was last March, prior to Elon acquiring
00:03:48
Speaker
Twitter in a deal that apparently nobody wanted. He was tweeting with one of the guys from Wall Street Bets who kind of told him buy Twitter and then change the logo to Doge and Elon like responded at the time.
00:04:06
Speaker
saying that was, I quote, that would be sick with lots of pays at the end. Is Elon too old to be saying sick? I think he is. I think he is. But that's the least of our worries in this one. So after changing the logo, Elon retweeted this thread from back in March to let everyone know that he has in fact done that. So
Speculation on Dogecoin's Role in Twitter
00:04:31
Speaker
very strange situation. Not quite sure what this means. And I think even reading into it too much is probably a fool's errand. What you can say though is, okay, everyone jumped in and caused Doge to pump in price. And it's worth noting. Like it's easy to kind of
00:04:54
Speaker
Dogecoin is a bit of a joke, blah, blah, blah. It's like, I think the seventh largest crypto by market cap, kind of a bit of me inside dies. When I say that, when I try to explain to people that cryptocurrency is really legit, and they're like, Oh, no, yeah, that that one with like the dog that's on the coin, it's like one of the biggest ones, right? And like,
00:05:17
Speaker
Yes. Well, I think there's like two reasons basically why this is pumped. I think option A is that people either like they believe this means Dogecoin will be integrated into Twitter, which Elon has kind of alluded to at some point. So they've aped into Dogecoin to say, okay, this is going to be huge for Doge and it's going to be used and we'll have real utility. Or B,
00:05:48
Speaker
People know that others will think that option A will come true when in reality it definitely won't.
00:05:56
Speaker
So they're going to buy up a ton of Dogecoin to then dump on those people. I think I'm going to go for option B here, Austin. I'm not sure what you think, but this is the beauty of cryptocurrency. It's why we all got into this space so that we could watch innocent bystanders get dumped on by whales. And I think that's largely what's at play here. But thanks, Eli.
00:06:22
Speaker
for at least giving us a chance to discuss this. What do you make of this Twitter kind of logo change?
00:06:28
Speaker
Oh, well, I mean, I guess that, uh, you know, Elon has done a really good job of keeping Twitter in the spotlight and in the news cycle. Um, I mean, the, that is, that is probably the most flattering description that you are framing that you could possibly put. And I can't disagree with you. Yeah. And I think that every time that, you know, that happens, that
00:06:57
Speaker
regardless of whether it's positive or negative, or it's a hype cycle, it's a positive thing. It's a net positive for Twitter, right? You saw that they just recently released the algorithm. They're, you know, they're all of the, which I did think was very interesting. And I kind of commend them for doing that, actually.
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah, there's some interesting stuff. They also made a lot of waves in the design community with the metadata, three times stacked on a single tweet. Some interesting UI changes have been made. That's the point that I'm trying to make, Matt.
00:07:40
Speaker
You know, some of them serve a hype cycle and a hype cycle is good for Twitter. And that to me feels like what this is. But of course, you know, Elon also does love Doge. I mean, every every time that he has the opportunity to mention it, it pumps. I remember when the whole FTX thing was going down, he popped into a Twitter spaces and he was like, Doge to the moon. That was his feedback on the FTX situation.
00:08:05
Speaker
And then Doge pumped. Remember when he went on Saturday Night Live and it was just insane? I think Doge nearly doubled. It was outrageous. He really doesn't care at all about getting destroyed by the SEC, does he? Because it's just so obvious that he would know
00:08:29
Speaker
that this would definitely pump doge price right this is like the most obvious thing ever if i was a twitter employee and i caught wind of this the thing i'd be thinking about is
00:08:42
Speaker
Can I get away with buying Dogecoin right now? Or will people know that I know about this thing happening and then I'm absolutely gonna get done for insider trading, right? Because it's like unquestionable that this would influence Doge price. The fact that he holds this like token, it doesn't even need to be in size. I actually don't think he has like this massive position and nor does he even care about making money from it. But
00:09:12
Speaker
Man, it's just the man loves drama and he loves getting himself in hot water, doesn't he? I mean, I kind of love the fact that like one day you just load up Twitter and it's a Doge logo, especially because like there's so many, to us, you know, we immediately get the reference, but think about how large Twitter's user base is and how many people like don't even understand what that is. It's just an absurd thing to do.
00:09:40
Speaker
And I think about how difficult it would be to accomplish something like that in any other corporate structure. It's so obvious that this had to be just a ridiculous top-down directive like, change the logo to a doge, don't question it. I can just imagine as someone who yourself leads large design teams, can you imagine?
00:10:03
Speaker
like if you came into like one of your one of your like team meetings at block and jack was like to you okay we're gonna change the blog logo everywhere to a doge you'd be like okay great i am going to walk out of this room quite fast now and cry
00:10:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, imagine, you know, like the amount of time and effort that would be put into but well, what about this usability study? And, you know, this isn't exactly accessible. And then it's like, it just turns into a doge. On the one hand, I think that if Jack did come to me with something like that, I'd be like, this is so absurd. I'm like, totally on board.
00:10:43
Speaker
Like what? I just want to see what happens as a result of this. Well, we'll see how it all plays out. I'm interested to see like, the longer this goes on, the more it gets me thinking, is this just more of a stupid prank? And like, because if they did it for a day, I'd be like, Oh, okay.
00:11:04
Speaker
But are they actually going to do something with this? I'm not sure. And I think that's where I've been waiting for this big sell-off in Doge after this big pump, and it's not kind of coming yet. So we'll see. All I will say is the day that that logo drops and nothing happens, it's going to be the mother of all dumps that happens on it. So yeah, you're holding a big bag there. Not financial advice, but probably wouldn't want to be holding on to it for too long.
00:11:34
Speaker
Anyway, let's jump out from Doge into, uh, into one of our favorite topics that we haven't had the chance to dig into a while, uh, with the wonderful, the Stella team over at three hours capital. Let's find out what they're doing next.
Three Arrows Capital's New Exchange, OpenX
00:11:53
Speaker
The founders of Three Arrows Capital, that failed hedge fund that went down, gosh, it was probably over a year now ago that that happened, took down a huge portion of the market with it. Well, those disgraced founders of Three Arrows Capital have decided to open a crypto exchange
00:12:13
Speaker
after their first efforts went bankrupt. That is Suzu and Kyle Davies, two very big names that we have discussed on the podcast multiple times from their $52 million super yacht that never got delivered.
00:12:32
Speaker
I'm kidding obviously, but they did have a yacht on order They have opened a new this part is real. They have opened a new crypto exchange called open X Opn X they announced this on Tuesday and they also announced another thing which is that they have a native token surprise. Oh, yes Excellent
00:12:54
Speaker
Excellent. Can I lock that up as collateral and borrow against it to buy more Flex to then lock that up as collateral and borrow against it? That would be great. Yes. So here you go. This native token, yeah, it's called Flex. They're doing a giveaway. And they said in their announcement, quote, many of you may know that Flex will power OpenX as the native ecosystem token.
00:13:22
Speaker
As a token of our appreciation, we have included eligible waitlisted users in our Flexcoin giveaway. For example, no action is needed from your side. So yeah, interesting. Flex does appear to currently have a market cap.
00:13:42
Speaker
of $256 million, according to CoinMarketCap. But it's a pretty... Yeah, I know. Excellent. So, yeah, already, I guess, a good amount of money, at least represented to be tied up there, but it's pretty thinly traded with just $796,000 in 24-hour trading volume. So, yeah, interesting risk asset, I guess you could say. Yeah.
00:14:11
Speaker
Look, if you're not familiar with Suzu and Kyle Davies, the job that they did with Three Arrows Capital was one of the very initial dominoes to be pushed in this huge ecosystem, systemic-wide collapse that we've experienced.
00:14:33
Speaker
in the space and there has been very little if not zero effort to do any sort of self-reflection or take accountability for the decisions that were made on their part that led to that.
00:14:53
Speaker
I would say quite the opposite has happened, which is that they said that they were victims in all of this. So for whatever that's worth, you know, I think that would, that sort of background would, with that background, it would behoove you to approach things like OpenX and Flex with a good bit of skepticism.
00:15:15
Speaker
Yeah. So what actually is it? It's, is it just an exchange? I think I'm just looking at it right now. Oh yeah. It's just like a, okay. It does spot in futures. Yep. Yep. So it's an exchange. The, it's interesting. It's a bit of background on how they have structured OpenX. It turns out actually.
00:15:37
Speaker
Suzu and Kyle Davies teamed up with Mark Lamb, who was the CEO of CoinFlex, to launch OpenX, and they did that through a restructuring and a rebranding of CoinFlex.
00:15:56
Speaker
Yeah. That is very strange and complicated. Okay. Yeah. And here's a kicker. They intend to support trading in bankruptcy claims tied to failed exchanges like FTX. So I heard about this where they were like, you can use your bankruptcy claim as like a collateral or something like that. I hadn't dug into it too much. Yeah. Yeah. That definitely won't go badly, will it?
00:16:24
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder if you can use claims against Three Arrows Capital. Oh yeah, 10x average on that.
00:16:32
Speaker
Here's another one. Leslie Lamb, who is Mark Lamb's wife, is the CEO of OpenX. And yeah, I don't know. Okay. Yeah. And then they also managed to raise about $25 million in funding for this. So, I mean, Matt, this is something that I think you and I have just consistently been surprised by that sort of disgraced
00:17:00
Speaker
founders and operators in the space can still manage even after huge collapses, huge losses of capital through irresponsible behavior at best, I would say.
Critique of OpenX's Legitimacy
00:17:17
Speaker
They're still able to raise huge amounts of capital, which I think is probably a bit of a commentary or an indictment on the space itself.
00:17:30
Speaker
that capital, if you were to take a cynical view, could potentially be thinking, hey, we know that this is going to be a scam or it's going to screw people out of money, but if we get in early and we get out early, we'll have a positive return. That's a very cynical view. I'm not saying that's what's going to happen here, but what I am saying is that it's surprising to me. I'll go out on a lame Austin. I'll go out on a lame and I'll say, that's exactly what's going to happen here.
00:17:56
Speaker
I'm sorry but if like fool me once you know shame on me but anyone that's getting involved in this project with quite literally known scammers
00:18:12
Speaker
like you are you are playing with fire here imagine just even looking at like it's like an order book decks it looks like there's like no volume just looking at maybe I'm reading this wrong but unlike the spot trade for BTC against USDT it was like
00:18:30
Speaker
Is that right? 30 bucks of volume in the past 24 hours? I'm just looking through it now. I'm looking through the order books. I'm like, there's nothing going on here. Uh, well, unless it's like a UI bug, but I don't know. Maybe it looks like that actually. So who knows? Uh, but yeah, this is just, uh, I, I just really hope that people don't succumb to like Stockholm syndrome here and just all of a sudden like there.
00:18:59
Speaker
the ills of their past are forgotten and now they can move on. From the looks of things on Twitter, that doesn't feel like it's playing out.
00:19:07
Speaker
Yeah, and maybe one positive guardrail that is in place here is that OpenX won't be available in a lot of regions, including the US, Canada, and several African countries. Looks like it's available to you, though, Matt, so. Oh, yeah. I am just loading up on some futures contracts. Just wait. Can't wait to visit.
00:19:33
Speaker
I have an amazing bonus for you, an add-on to this story that I was cracking up about this morning, which is that Mark Lamb, he was the CEO of Coin Collects, which now has been restructured into OpenX. He has offered Roger Ver two years of free trading on OpenX. Should Ver settle his $84 million debt
00:20:00
Speaker
Is he still trying to get this debt required? Yes! Yes! Lee wants to give Roger Ver two years of free trading on OpenX where there's no trading activity happening. So maybe Roger can get margin called on OpenX again. What is going on? It's just such a... This is such a weird space, isn't it? Just the strangest of spots. Why would Roger take that?
00:20:29
Speaker
Why would he why would he do that when literally there's like no reason why he would I mean Yeah, hit me out Roger give me 84 million dollars that I believe you owe me in in debt and we'll give you two years of No trading fees on open X
00:20:52
Speaker
How much volume is he going to be doing on OpenX for that to pay off? I have no idea. But yeah, this is really strange. Just in case you're not familiar with the sort of feud between Mark Lamb and Roger Ver, this $84 million debt, it's pretty dubious. It's a pretty dubious debt and it's likely that it's not actually a real debt that's owed. So that's why this is such an absurd debt.
00:21:20
Speaker
thing to offer two years of free trading volume on OpenX in exchange for repaying an $84 million debt that may not be a legitimate claim. And this debt is related to what Mark Lamb alleges is an outstanding loan from CoinFlex. The funny thing about this is that
00:21:40
Speaker
It was first claimed as a debt in June of last year, but the number was $47 million. That number has since risen to $84 million. I don't really know where it's coming from, but the quote from Mark Lamb was that, quote, this first estimate of $47 million, which we communicated, did not include the significant loss in liquidating his, this is Roger Verse,
00:22:06
Speaker
significant flex coin positions. So basically he was pissed that he liquidated a bunch of flex coin and, you know, hurt the market and everything like that. And what's so funny about that, if anyone wants, by the way, if anyone wants a.
00:22:21
Speaker
a recap of that whole coin flex debacle. We actually covered this on the podcast. I did a little bit of searching back to when it was, the 6th of July, 22. We covered this in one of our off-chain roundups. So if anyone needs some additional context, if this didn't whet the appetite enough, there we go.
00:22:47
Speaker
Yeah, you know, he also is alleging that Peter Smith, the CEO and founder of blockchain.com, owes him, in this case, Mark Lamb, $3 million. And the response from both Roger Ver and Peter Smith, who, by the way, was not offered any free trading volume on OpenX, what the hell?
00:23:07
Speaker
Poor Peter, what's he gonna do? You really got the short end of the stick there. So the response from both of them was, quote, completely meritless and a work of fiction, which I think is the general sort of consensus amongst the community. But yeah, OpenX, Suzu, Kyle Davies, Mark Lamb, what an interesting trio. Let's see how that goes. Dream Team, Dream Team. All right, let's move on to the next story of the day.
Yuga Labs and Gucci's NFT Collaboration
00:23:39
Speaker
Ugalabs have done it again. They've partnered with Gucci this time to sell 3,333 other side, that's their Metaverse, branded silver pendants. They'll be known as the Coda pendants.
00:23:57
Speaker
um and now that i read that out loud co-dependence i've just realized oh my gosh oh god how did i not realize this uh before i guess
00:24:10
Speaker
Sorry everyone that's listening to me ramble a moment. I've just had like a brief realization that isn't even that noteworthy. So these pendants, they literally go on sale today, 6pm Eastern time for 458 tokens.
00:24:30
Speaker
depending on where the market sits for that, around about $2,000. They're on a first-come, first-served basis, but you only can purchase the actual physical pendants if you own one of the other side coder or vessel NFTs. That's the Ugalabs.
00:24:51
Speaker
Men of us that is the other side so then you have like the coders which are like the little Alien creature things and then the vessels which I believe are like the the land plots that that you can purchase
00:25:06
Speaker
So they come with these silver pendants you get. And they also have a digital counterpart, which adds some additional metadata to your other side NFT and some cosmetic attributes and new utility within the other side metaverse. They're still in the testing phase of that other side metaverse. So that will probably come in the coming
00:25:35
Speaker
like six, 12 months, something like that. But what I thought was interesting here is, you know, this is the second major, like, jewelry partnership that Yuga has pulled off in in the past couple of years. The first one being the partnership with Tiffany, which we kind of covered at the time, where they partnered with CryptoPunks, which
00:25:56
Speaker
Obviously, Hugo owns now. That generated $12 million in revenue. Each of those pendants were sold for $50,000 each. So, you know, it's pretty impressive. And I think this partnership with Gucci, slightly smaller, it will no doubt sell out, is set to generate them about $6.5 million from a single drop.
00:26:22
Speaker
Pretty nice. So yeah, they continue throughout Bull and Bear and whatever the hell you can call what we're in right now to strike up these partnerships and they're clearly building a real focus around the other side metaverse. I know that they've just had their
00:26:42
Speaker
new CEO come in, I think, or is it CMO? Either CEO or CMO. I can't remember. I think it's CEO that came over from Activision Blizzard. So I'm sure things are kind of really
00:26:59
Speaker
getting emotion on that side, but it's cool to see. I don't love the look of this stuff, but then I don't think I'm exactly the target market for this, but I think that most people that own one of these will want to get their associated pendant.
00:27:16
Speaker
Yeah, what do you think of this whole thing? Is that basically the audience? I was chatting to my wife about this earlier today. The fact that Gucci had been involved in the conversation was probably the only way that she would
00:27:36
Speaker
allow me to sell some FTs. But yeah, she was like, I think her first comment was, you're not buying one of these, Matt, are you? And I was like, no, don't worry. But my kind of take on this actually is if with the CryptoPunk and Tiffany drop, at that time, I didn't own a CryptoPunk. If I had owned a CryptoPunk,
00:28:05
Speaker
I probably would have purchased the $50,000 Tiffany Pendant not for anything to do with the fact that I would love a Pendant or that I think that they look great or anything like that. I think that they were in a price range
00:28:29
Speaker
where they get into a collector status that you could see either holding their value or having some level of like price appreciation assuming that the Yuga brand continues to grow strong. I think when you look at this and you get into like the Gucci territory which
00:28:50
Speaker
Yeah, like we all look at Gucci as like a luxury brand, but they're not in the high end of luxury on the jewelry side of things. You kind of look at it and you're like, okay, about $2,000. That's kind of where you would say is still in the borders of like high street jewelry. It's probably not going to be something that retains and holds value as a collector's item, in my opinion. So I yeah, I'd kind of personally and this would be the thing where
00:29:18
Speaker
If you really love Yuga and you love like the other side, this is one of those things that you buy where you say, I just want it because I want this as like a collectible, like a moment in time that is kind of cool and fun. And at the end of the day, if you've purchased and hold a few,
00:29:38
Speaker
you got related NFTs, you can afford that. So yeah, that's kind of like my take in a nutshell. And that's why I was kind of like chatting through my wife. I think that's kind of the thesis on this one. I don't think this is an investment play. Yeah, I think the investment angle with Tiffany Pendant is really interesting. This particular piece from Gucci, first off, I think it's awesome.
00:30:02
Speaker
that this partnership is happening. I don't want to be overly negative, but I will say like, it's pretty ugly. It looks like something that you would get out of like a gumball machine or something like that, you know? I looked it in the first thing I thought was like, you know, like Pandora, like the, that thing, which like, it is fine if you like Pandora or whatever, but Pandora is not high-end luxury, right? Like, so when it kind of looked a bit like that, I was like, oh, this doesn't look
00:30:32
Speaker
like luxury, like the Tiffany crypto punk pendants were revoltingly ugly, but they were like, you know, it's Tiffany, they were studded with diamonds and like, it is what it is. And that's kind of what it should have been, to be honest. But this, I think, and also more importantly, with the Tiffany crypto punks, the pendant actually was the image of your crypto punk.
00:31:01
Speaker
all of these Gucci pendants are just generic. So there's no, it, yeah, it's like quote unquote linked to your personality, but you know, like it's, it's generic. They're all just a generic silver pendant. The thing I was thinking around with, in particular, the crypto punks, I think if someone purchases your crypto punk from you and you also have the Tiffany pendant,
00:31:28
Speaker
I think they want that. Assuming they're buying the punk because they actually want to hold the punk versus just flipping it. They probably also want the associated pen. And I think you've got leverage there where it's like, this is a one of one digital and physical collectible. You can probably get something there where you get additional upside. I don't see that with this.
00:31:49
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, still cool to see the partnership regardless. And yeah, we'll see. We'll see how they sell. I think you're on to the point about them selling out. I mean, it's a it's a big enough audience. Right. And the price point is like, yeah, I think, you know, for people that are holding, you know, holding eight coins and have seen some appreciation, probably the price point wouldn't matter much to them. They're probably going to think, I'll just take some of that and
00:32:17
Speaker
transfer it into this. There you go. And look, this is the play for Juga. I actually think, I'll be really quick on this, but I think it's a genius model that Juga have because they do these partnerships, right? And it's like we're adding huge value to our existing customers. And it's like, but they're paying for the pleasure of it.
00:32:41
Speaker
It's not. This isn't just like a giveaway. Like, Yuga, since their inception, have continuously given free money to their holders, right? If you earned a board ape from the beginning, you got mutant apes that you got for free, that you could then flip for... Yeah, where are they now? Probably somewhere in the...
00:33:00
Speaker
15, 20 eth range, you had boy, kennel club, like a whole host of other stuff. Right. And now there's like this additional piece where you can purchase, um, these items, but exclusively only for those that are existing holders of the NFTs in the Ugas ecosystem.
00:33:20
Speaker
But what they've done, which is very clever, is they're pricing this and you can only purchase it using Apecoin. So this is going to create, yeah, around six and a half million USD of buy pressure on Apecoin, assuming like
00:33:36
Speaker
people are buying it fresh. It's not going to quite do that much because people already hold APE coin. But it's giving additional utility. It's creating a need for it and will likely pump the price up, even if it's short term. So I think it's a cool play. It's a great way of getting and onboarding more people into the APE wider ecosystem as well. So yeah, very smart. I mean, they're clearly a very smart team.
00:34:05
Speaker
All right, let's jump in for a few last minutes of quick headlines.
Do Kwon's Arrest and Legal Consequences
00:34:12
Speaker
Dokuan, one of our favorite characters, has been arrested in Montenegro. You may have seen this making the headlines last week. Awaiting extradition to either the US or Korea. This has been a long time coming. Dokuan is obviously a big character in the space, very controversial, and someone that I know both American and Korean authorities are
00:34:43
Speaker
jumping at the opportunity to prosecute. So perhaps some... I think they're keeping him there for 30 days or something like that in Montenegro. And then after that, it's kind of like fresh out of luck. It's probably now two weeks. He's probably got left of that. It's going to be interesting to see. That is going to be... Oh, man. I would love to see Dokuan in a court. I can't wait for it. I am so here for it. It's going to be excellent.
00:35:09
Speaker
Oh, yes. All right. In other news, NFT sales for the month of March nearly hit $2 billion in volume, which actually is just slightly down from February. You'll recall it spiked.
00:35:27
Speaker
in February. And then now in March, we went down just a little bit to $2 billion. That's still a huge volume. But the interesting aspect of this is that 69% of that volume was on blur. Yeah, so yeah, and following these numbers and
00:35:45
Speaker
They are just destroying OpenSea right now, which is interesting because one thing we haven't talked about is that we should probably cover maybe next week as we see those plays out. OpenSea have just launched OpenSea Pro, and they've done like a big
00:36:04
Speaker
revamp of gem, the NFT aggregator. And I'm just thinking now, I'm chatting off the top of my head, but I wonder if the revamp of gem is actually OpenSea Pro. Maybe it is. Either way, OpenSea are doing stuff. It's the TLDR of my update and contribution. Clearly to kind of scramble to regain some of this market share that Blair are eating up right now.
00:36:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yes, the great NFT marketplace war wages on. In other news, somebody else is doing a lot of stuff, doing a lot of court stuff. SPF has been charged. I love that guy.
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah, how about this? He's been charged with bribing Chinese government officials. This actually made it to mainstream. Are you telling me you've never bribed a Chinese government official? Come on. This is fun. This is fun.
00:36:59
Speaker
Yeah so you know this was really interesting it made its way into the mainstream media I had some family visiting over the weekend and they brought it up with me like hey you know your boy SPF bribing Chinese officials that's nice.
00:37:15
Speaker
You're the family on the podcast. What are we doing? We got free research assistance, it sounds like now, Austin. That's all I mean. Ah, yes. Yeah. So this is interesting. It's being alleged by the prosecution team that SPF bribed roughly $40 million in crypto to quote one or more Chinese government officials in order to influence them.
00:37:39
Speaker
to unfreeze accounts owned by FTX's sister trading firm, Alameda Research. Great company. Great company. Yeah. And so there were over a billion dollars in assets that he was looking to unfreeze. Now here's the thing, Matt. It worked. It did. Just goes to show.
00:38:00
Speaker
If at first you can't succeed, bribe a government official. And I think that's the takeaway here. That man is going to do...
00:38:11
Speaker
is entire stretch of life in prison, isn't he? I feel like this just every week is more and more bad news. At this point, he's probably just hoping for the longest trial ever because it's the closest thing he's gonna get to being out in fresh air for the rest of his life. I just don't see a way out here, but you know.
00:38:34
Speaker
I just love the layers of absurdity, the fact that he's directing a $40 million bribe to Chinese government officials so that they can unfreeze a billion dollars from Alameda research. And then they're like, okay, yeah, we'll do that.
00:38:49
Speaker
Let's do that. And then here's the kicker. This brings him up to a total of 13 criminal charges that he's facing. So I think you're making a safe prediction there unless there is some amazing corruption that swoops in to save SPF. He really should be looking at spending the remainder of his days in prison. So we will see mother of all plot twists, wouldn't it?
00:39:16
Speaker
Yeah. It's going to be a blockbuster trial. It really is. Yeah. And no doubt we'll be very quickly very fed up of saying that three letter acronym SPF as that thing kicks off.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah. The Blockbuster trial followed by the Blockbuster Netflix series, something like that. And like every variation of it, where it's like, oh, you've seen the FTX documentary and people are like, which one? Is it the one that was on Prime Netflix? And you just say, it's kind of like... Was it on Peacock? No, Peacock. Oh yeah, they did their own spin-off one. The BBC will do one in like five years time when they get the right title as well. That'd be great. And relive it all.
00:39:59
Speaker
Anyway, one last thing to quickly cover here.
El Salvador's Tech Innovation Tax Bill
00:40:04
Speaker
You've probably heard the president of El Salvador, Naib Bukele, has been making some serious waves. Interesting figure if you're not familiar with him. He has a lot of takes on crypto and really economics in general that are interesting to take a look at. He has introduced a bill to eliminate all taxes on income, property and capital gains.
00:40:26
Speaker
for technology innovations. What does he mean by taxes? Can I be classed as a technology innovation? Oh my gosh, how wonderful would that be? Hey, you know, maybe someday, Matt, if you microchip yourself. Well, there we go. Chat GPT me. Get me in there. So what does he mean by taxes? Taxes include income, property, capital gains, and import tariffs.
00:40:51
Speaker
And what does he mean by technology it includes software programming coding apps and development as well as computing and communications hardware manufacturing so this is eliminating an entire class of taxes in el Salvador obviously a push
00:41:09
Speaker
to attract technology, innovation, entrepreneurs, et cetera, et cetera. I was visiting El Salvador probably at this point, it was maybe like five years ago. So it was way before Naib Bukele's time and it was dangerous. I felt like very unsafe when I was there. It was the murder capital of the world.
00:41:32
Speaker
MS-13 is, you know, obviously an infamous criminal organization based out of El Salvador. Separately, yeah, they've actually recently. Yeah, I hear that they've recently pivoted into a technology innovation company, though. Yes.
00:41:57
Speaker
Oh, man. So anyway, Matt, this brings the sort of perennial question that we have here on the podcast, which is, is this the new Portugal? Is El Salvador the new Portugal? We will find out. I hope so. Let me tell you that.
00:42:14
Speaker
We were actually, wife and I were figuring out where are we gonna go for summer vacation. Portugal came up and I thought, I better call up my buddy Austin and get the lowdown on what's going on in Portugal. Turns out, who knows, we're gonna be going to the murder capital of the world now, El Salvador. That's where we call all our information.
00:42:36
Speaker
Yeah, but hey, to that point, that's not the case anymore, actually. They're turning a lot of that around. All joking aside, El Salvador is a really interesting place to be paying attention to right now. I think that they're going to be shedding their reputation, which is a beautiful thing to see. It's beautiful to see a country on the upswing embracing innovation, embracing technology through whatever means they have, especially when it's
00:43:06
Speaker
happening to a population that for decades was being really, quite frankly, oppressed by organized crime within their own borders. And that's starting to come to an end for them, which is, it makes me happy. It is a beautiful country. And yeah, pay attention to what's going on there.
00:43:27
Speaker
Tax Haven, sure, that is an interesting component that ties it back to being potentially the new Portugal, but much more happening there as well. So yeah, wild times. Keep an eye on it.
00:43:40
Speaker
Yep. We're going to, uh, we'll have more El Salvador related updates. Uh, sorry to Portugal. Um, we still love you. We still do love you. All right, Austin, uh, another great week of updates and I will see you next week for what I'm sure will be an incredibly uneventful.
00:44:20
Speaker
The contents of the Decrypting Crypto podcast should not be used and are not intended as investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before making any investment, cryptocurrency or otherwise.