ATC: All Things Crypto w/Lombard & Van Eck Segmint

# ATC: All Things Crypto w/Lombard & Van Eck Segmint | 2025-02-17 | https://x.com/i/spaces/1vAGRDndojjxl | status: approved
# Speaker names are voice-match candidates, unconfirmed unless marked confirmed.

[0:00:08] Dave @DCBK2LA: Let's go, Matt. On time and ready. Who? What's he got?
[0:00:21] Dave @DCBK2LA: We're gonna play a little music. I'm gonna get everybody to get this room filled up, Matt. We're we're gonna get started in, like, two minutes. Alright? Good stuff.
[0:00:50] Dave @DCBK2LA: Let's go. My... That's a prop. I love it, man. I gotta start sending out email invites more often. Amazing. Let's go. Sheila, what's good, bro?
[0:01:04] Dave @DCBK2LA: Jacob's in the building already. Cool. Let's go, baby.
[0:01:11] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Hey. What's up, sir? Thanks for having me.
[0:01:12] Dave @DCBK2LA: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We're get started. Just a minute, Jacob. Give me a sec. We're gonna get cooking. Flynn, what up? GP, what up? Let's go.
[0:01:49] Dave @DCBK2LA: Like this. I like this. I like it. Maybe what's good? Riot, what up?
[0:02:17] Dave @DCBK2LA: Guys, like, share, repeat this out if you can, please. I'm just finishing sharing it up in a few different communities. Build up. What's up, my boy?
[0:02:30] Dave @DCBK2LA: This. Oh, sorry. I got my my bad j. That's it.
[0:03:02] Dave @DCBK2LA: What's up, everybody? Happy Monday. Welcome to another episode of ATC. Ladies and gents, we got a good one today. Boy, we got some special guests in the house. You guys know how we start this off every single time really quick before we're gonna make some introductions. I'm a let Junie try and kick us off and tell us exactly what's what. So hold up. Let's see. Junie, wake up. Junie. Junie, can you read us the opening monologue to ATC, please?
[0:03:31] Voice F: Sure thing. Here it is. Welcome to all things crypto. What's up crypto Twitter? It's another massive edition of ATC. And this week, we're diving into a Kaito AI and Yap's theme takeover. But before we get into it, look who's coming tomorrow. We have not one, but two powerhouse guests joining us. Projects that are pushing boundaries, breaking records, and bringing serious innovation to the crypto space. First up, we have Jacob Phillips, cofounder of Lombard Finance, coming through to talk about their record breaking 20,000 BTC staking party. Yeah. You heard that right. 20,000 Bitcoin staked. This is absolutely huge, and we're going to break down what it means for the ecosystem and why it's making waves. Then we welcome at Matt Bartlett, v e, a true pioneer in the RWA space. He's coming in to connect the dots between VanEck US, Segment IO portals, and those super exclusive RWA hats. Yep. The ones embedded with NFC chips that you can actually win via auction and redeem IRL. This is next level integration between digital assets and physical utility. And, of course, we've got the all star crew in the building. Cool Crypto VC, Matt Nat o o seven, Crypto Landy, the Thi Samara, Build O Verd, Alpha Gamer Sats. We're breaking down the hottest projects, the latest news, and the latest meta happening right now on CT. So strap in, grab your coffee, your Red Bull, or your favorite degen fuel, and let's get into it. Let me know if there's anything else you Let's go, Judy.
[0:04:59] Dave @DCBK2LA: Judy started reading the Twitter handle. I was like, god damn. Judy, what happened to people's names? But, yeah, let's get intros. What's good? Cool. What's good, my brother? How are doing, man?
[0:05:08] Landy @CryptoLandy: Oh, yes. How you guys doing?
[0:05:09] Kool @koolcryptovc: You guys doing? Great day today. Happy Monday, everyone. Welcome to the show. We're ready to go, man. Let's go. Let's do it.
[0:05:15] Dave @DCBK2LA: Let's go, baby. Let's go. Let's go. Landy, what's good? How are doing?
[0:05:20] Landy @CryptoLandy: Doing well. Doing well. I did wanna say to everybody in the audience here, go ahead and like and retweet this space. Get this out there. Let's pack this room up, and let's get this on the road.
[0:05:30] Dave @DCBK2LA: Let's go, boy. Love it. Bildo, what's good, my bro? How are you?
[0:05:35] Bildo Verde @BildoVerde: Happy Monday. It feels so good to be back. I'm so glad I got to drop this shitty PFP and get back to the OG. Really excited for today's conversation. Hopefully, we can open back up that claim for fluff. You know what I'm saying, Matt? But, yeah, happy to be here. Let me know. Build a... Build O Verd is the first time I've ever heard it pronounced like that, so shout out to shout out to Junie.
[0:06:02] Dave @DCBK2LA: Yeah. Build over. Yeah. Good good stuff. And, guys, we got our two special guests here, Matt and Jacob. Matt, what's going on, man? How are doing, brother?
[0:06:10] Voice D: Good. GM, guys. Love the energy. Thanks for the invite.
[0:06:14] Dave @DCBK2LA: Of course, bro. Of course. Thank you so much for making the time. You were in NFT Paris. Are you still in Paris?
[0:06:19] Voice D: No. I got back yesterday. Still on their time zone, though, for sure.
[0:06:24] Dave @DCBK2LA: How was it? Good times?
[0:06:25] Voice D: Awesome. Yeah. Really good conference. Vibes twice as as good as they were last year, so I think we're headed in the right direction.
[0:06:34] Dave @DCBK2LA: I love it, man. Good stuff. I appreciate you obviously making the time to be here. Guys, listen. They're not... Like, some of these guys might not be here for the full ninety minutes. Some of them might be here for forty five, thirty. So I wanna make, obviously, the most of the time, but let me just say what's up to Jacob. Jacob, what's up, man? It's good to chat with you again, bro.
[0:06:49] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Yeah. Definitely. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate getting to meet you last week, and here we are again. And I'm actually out in in Hong Kong right now for consensus. And so, yeah, totally agree. This energy has been great. So keeping me away.
[0:07:01] Dave @DCBK2LA: Let's go, bro. I appreciate it, man. I appreciate it. For those of you... Y'all... If it's your first time obviously tuning in to to ATC, we do literally, like, a ninety minute program. We kinda go down the list of really, like, what some of the top stories, what's happening in the market, but we give, like, full evaluations in terms of, like, what's happening on our timeline. We even have, like, a page six segment. We try and go through the drama a little bit. That's maybe towards the end, though. You know what I mean? Like, we save all that fancy... All that nonsense to the end. But I think the biggest story pretty much on everybody's right... And, guys, like, I want us to obviously highlight, like, the projects and what you guys are currently doing, and I feel like we're gonna weave them into essentially, like, what we're gonna talk about as well because I think this yaps and cool. Yaps, Kaito, like, this air... Like, you had the monster monster space yesterday. Kaito announces this morning. The air... The the snapshot has been taken. Jacob, I saw Lombard obviously up there. You know, I was trying to figure out... Like, I just started doing this. So cool. Had a monster space. That's cool. That space was, like, tops, tops, tops yesterday, man. Tell us where we're at right now in terms of Yaps, Kaito, and kinda, like, what happened after that space and what they... What we got in store for the snapshot.
[0:08:09] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Yeah. Definitely. I may have missed Yeah. I may I may have missed the exact space you're referring to unless you're referring to the one that we did last week or...
[0:08:16] Dave @DCBK2LA: Oh, no. No. No. No. I'm I'm actually talking about my cohost, Cool, right here, Jacob. Like, so Cool actually ran a space yesterday. Like, we have...
[0:08:22] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Oh, I see.
[0:08:23] Dave @DCBK2LA: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted him to kinda to kinda update us, and then I want you to go right after him and kinda give... You give us an update on what you got cooking, obviously, like, with the Kaito team as well.
[0:08:31] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Of course. Got it.
[0:08:33] Dave @DCBK2LA: Go for it, Cool.
[0:08:35] Kool @koolcryptovc: Oh, no. It was it was it was it was... The the hype the hype is real. Like, you know, on Sunday space, absolutely massive. Probably cover thousand people. It was unbelievable. You know? It was good, man. I think
[0:08:49] Dave @DCBK2LA: it was good. A lot of people... A lot a lot of questions. I'm happy for the
[0:08:53] Kool @koolcryptovc: people that have earned their Yaps. Unfortunately, I think, you know, taking a snap...
[0:09:02] Kool @koolcryptovc: It it was good.
[0:09:07] Dave @DCBK2LA: I lost cool. Yeah.
[0:09:08] Landy @CryptoLandy: Yeah. He said it was good.
[0:09:10] Dave @DCBK2LA: Like, it was great. I heard. We got you. We got you now again, cool. We got you. We got you. Alright. We'll come back to cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. Go ahead, cool. Ever ever ever... Ticket. Ticket. Ticket. We want... Alright. Cool. Get yourself some better service, and he's gonna come back. But, Lindy, I don't know if you I don't know if you were able to I don't know if you were able to join yesterday to cool space, but it was, like... I mean, we had, like... I mean, In N Out probably had over, like, 2,000 people, like, at the end of the day. It was something absolutely crazy. And this Yaps thing is absolutely, like, taking over, like, crazy. So I'm not sure, Lindy. Have you been exposed to this? And then I kinda wanna, like, chat, like like, with Jacob and see kinda, like, how they're kind of, like, approaching this whole thing because the snapshot was taken today. Lindy, are you yapping or what?
[0:09:58] Landy @CryptoLandy: I mean, I'm late to the yap party. I don't... I... You know, I think, you know, I know that the the snapshot was taken. I I did catch a little bit of cool space yesterday. And, you know, for me, I'm late to the party, but there's still opportunity in the ecosystem, for other projects that are utilizing the platform. So I think it's it's a cool thing. I'd like to see how everything plays out and if it can keep up the momentum after the snapshot and after, TGE and all that kind of stuff. So it's gonna be interesting to see all of that play out, especially because, you know, timing right now could turn out to be alright if, if, you know, the market can hang on the lows. You know, we saw traditional markets, you know, hanging around the highs for Nasdaq and SPY last week, and we'll see if if there's any kind of follow through once market opens this week and then kinda go from there. But, yeah, you know, I'm I'm excited to learn more and actually, like, learn to use the platform. So I'm interested to hear what everybody else has to say because I'm I'm a little behind the game on this one.
[0:11:11] Dave @DCBK2LA: Yeah. And and, Jacob, I kinda want you to kinda just tell us. First of if you can, like, introduce yourself to, like, like, all of our listeners that are gonna... That are here now and, obviously, they're gonna listen back. Tell us a little bit about, like, Lombard Finance, you, your role, and then we can maybe kinda jump into the whole, you know, Kaito thing and and kinda go from there.
[0:11:28] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Sure. Sounds great. Hey, everyone. My name is Jacob Phillips, one of the cofounders at Lombard. Before this, I was working on a decentralized purpose protocol built on Arbitrum. And then before that, I spent three years at Polychain as a partner of the ventures team, and I did a little bit of governance work there and some other stuff. Lombard, you can think of Lombard as the gateway to Bitcoin utilization. We built permissionless money, but didn't give it a permissionless environment to interact in. So now if you wanna do anything practical with your BTC, you take it to a centralized exchange or some other intermediary. What a what a beautiful match it would be if you could use permissionless money in a permissionless programmable environment. We have those environments today, but don't have primitives to sort of bring Bitcoin across, and so that's what Lombard's building. So we started off building sort of two different primitives, the liquidity primitive and a security primitive. The liquidity primitive is LBTC, a liquid staked Bitcoin, which I'm sure we'll get into, staked into Babylon, sort of the catalyst for onboarding, you know, now a couple billion dollars in net new liquidity to to DeFi. And, the second is a security primitive, and this is a decentralized group of independent validators, sort of, united by a a blockchain that allows for the coordination of of, message passing to notarize deposits, allow for the minting of LBTC and other Bitcoin assets, cross chain, access the foundation for securing the BTC, etcetera. So anything you wanna do with your BTC, you can kinda do so through Lombard. Yeah. Kaido has been a really interesting story. I'm just amazed at the speed at which this all happened. Like, Yaps only started back in December, if I'm recalling correctly, and now this has gone zero to a 100. I think in past cycles, we've seen things like Nansen pop up that started to sort of track activity within the ecosystem, but never fully at the social layer. So when Kaido caught... Popped up with, like, a curated feed of third party distribution, which is, you know, tweeting, like, activity on crypto Twitter. This just, you know, tremendously gamified, such an important aspect of the industry. And, I mean, everything went zero to a 100. Two months later, now the snapshot's taken. I feel like the apps were just getting started. It's amazing to see that, you know, maybe the the airdrop has been called and and the token's right around the corner. So it's been crazy. For Lombard, Kaido's been a a huge boost. We've been sort of working with them in a couple of different ways. One is they have these Kaido, Yapper leaderboards. So they have one for all of Crypto Twitter that just shows, like, who are the the the top influencers throughout the space. And it's a really curated feed, so it's based on... It's it's sort of like a stack ranking algorithm. So you see, you know, who the top people are paying attention to most. So if you get likes from a a top influencer, you get more, you get more sort of cred. You you go to the top lead of the board. If you get a ton of, like, low quality likes from from bots and whatnot, it sort of deprioritizes you, which is pretty cool. So you really see, like, who is capturing the most attention on crypto Twitter. And they also have project specific or, like, sort of industry specific leaderboards. So Lombard has a dashboard. And I will say since Lombard got that dashboard last week or the week before, I think our activity... I I feel like the engagement on Twitter has, like, multiplied. Just... You know, people now have an incentive to tweet about us. They're always they're always sort of talking about us. There's a lot of, like, independent content creators that we just never would have interacted with, I think, or never would have found out about Lombard that are now checking us out, making content. So it's been awesome. Really, really cool platform. And I haven't done enough research to fully understand, you know, what the what the token's for, but, pretty cool platform.
[0:15:14] Dave @DCBK2LA: Yeah. I'm so curious. And, Matt, I kinda wanna bring you in too. Like, I'm curious. Right? Like, how has your experience been, like, if at all? Because, like, I started... Like, when I was looking at, like, some of the stuff I was passionate about, when I started first learning about, like, segment and I started mining for gold and I was DMing you, and I was just like, dude, how do I get more gold? Like, I don't know how to win these auctions, man. I I felt like... And then that's right when I discovered, like, all this, like, the, like, the yapping and everything. And just hearing Jacob, it's like, this has to be a game changer. I feel like they kinda cracked the code a little bit. Are you utilizing this at all, Matt, like, Segment or VanEck? Or... I mean I mean, like, any part of the entities that you're a part of?
[0:15:48] Voice D: Really not. I mean, I... You know, between between the Van Eck responsibilities and segment and travel, like, just no bandwidth. But I get it. I I I like it. Apologize for some of the bots in the gold mine. I'm trying to lead them into the the skeletons to get killed, but, you know, I'm I'm doing everything I can. But... Yeah. No. I haven't been doing any of the the yapping. So
[0:16:09] Dave @DCBK2LA: So tell tell us a little bit about, like, segment... Like, tell us what you got cooking. Right? I put out a whole thread, and I'm gonna pin the the thread to the top so people could follow along as well. But, yeah, please tell us what you got going on, man.
[0:16:19] Voice D: Yeah. Sure. So just a quick background on maybe VanEck and segment, and then we could we could touch on the GoldMind stuff. So just in case people don't know, I I work as head of Web three at VanEck, which is a a trad five firm that's been around since '55. So mostly known for ETFs and mutual funds, being early to gold, international, like, you know, emerging market investing. We were the first to file for a Bitcoin linked ETF back in '17. Of course, that dream came true early part of last year with the Bitcoin ETF, then the Ethereum one as well to follow. My main responsibility is to help build out our crypto native capabilities. And so started building out Segment on behalf of of VanEck a couple years back. We launched it out of VanEck Europe last year out of Frankfurt, Germany, but it's a wholly owned entity. It's a collectibles platform. So it has a general marketplace, so you could buy, sell, trade NFTs, whether they're backed by physical collectibles or your digitally native ones, like your your Pudgy Penguins, you know, any PFP, whatever you want. We aggregate listings, so we pull in any RWA listings that are tokenized on other platforms. So think like Courtyard, watches.io, and others. We we fractionalize, which is why we launched that a year because you can't really do that in The US just yet, but we're working on that. And then soon, we're we're looking to help users tokenize their own collectibles. So more to come, but, you know, we're really just trying to be this sort of eBay needs Sotheby's powered by the blockchain. And, you know, it's gonna take some time, but that's really the focus.
[0:17:49] Dave @DCBK2LA: I love it, man. I got a million questions, but I thought... Yeah. Dude, I mean, so many questions because, like, the fur... And the first thing I thought about was Buildo. Right? And I was just like, yo, Buildo, like, you're heavy in this whole future verse thing. He was like, oh, like, Matt? Yeah. Like, he's been around, like, he's been, like, future verse junkie like me, like, for, like, for the longest, and I was just like, no shit. So I'm looking at, like, all the XP points and everything else that, like, you can use and, like, how you kinda, like... How does all of that kinda tie into, like like, the the the the segment piece and really what you guys got cooking?
[0:18:19] Voice D: Sure. So so, actually, we have an upcoming mint on on abstract. So by the way, we're deployed on ETH based Polygon and now abstract. So we have this mint coming up at the end of the week. It's free, but you gotta be on the white list. So I'll tell you what, whoever's on now, if wanna sign up for segment and jump into our Discord, if you just write g and Matt, I'll change your role. We'll get you on the white list. But it's for a... An adventure NFT, and the adventure NFT sort of forms the base of what what what will be a collector score that will unveil in a few months. And so, you know, just think about it. Since we have this collectibles management platform, it's really centered around the collector. And so you... You'll have that that item, of course, that gives you a score.
[0:19:14] Voice D: Product market at TGE. But, again, you know, we we gotta find product market fit. And, really, if we're gonna have a token, I want it to have true utility, not just issue token for token sake. So if if it's not that, it'll be used for some other incentive. But that's sort of the idea as of right now, trying to have this, this NFT collection. It'll have its own, And then we're actually gonna bring out a a pudgy fishing game, in maybe mid April where users could take that XP, and they could either choose to level up their adventure, which will apply to the collector score, or you could redeem it for bait and go fishing. And then depending on the fish you catch, you'll get a Vibes TCG card that's been tokenized by us along with other collectibles.
[0:19:56] Dave @DCBK2LA: How do y'all come up with this shit? Like, how do you guys actually... Like, do you sit around the table and are like, look. We're seeing what's out there. Like, is it just you that's coming up with this off the top of your head? Like, how do you actually come up A lot of it...
[0:20:08] Voice D: Yeah. I channel my inner teary, and I just drink a lot of wine, and I think about really creative stuff. Yeah. It it is that, and the hard part is having my team, you know, tell me what's stupid and what's... What will work. And and so they're they're helping me filter. But, yeah, that's the idea. I I kinda have this dream job. You know? It's like the whole reason I got into crypto was back in '17. I was trying to build a digital wire in central land so I could sort of connect real life brands. That did not work out, but I'm able to sort of kinda follow through on on a similar idea now with VanEck, which is quite fun.
[0:20:43] Dave @DCBK2LA: I mean, it sounds pretty flipping cool to me. Cool. What are you making of all this, bro? Yo, guys, get in the Discord. Like, go right now. Hit g... Like, type GM Matt. Go get verified and get on this white list, man. I'm telling you right now. Like, do not miss these opportunities. Like, for real for real. Cool. Have you been paying attention to any of this stuff? Like, yeah. You really do have the cool job in the world. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's a that's a that's
[0:21:07] Kool @koolcryptovc: a real cool job, man. Definitely. Because you're you're you're in the middle of web two, web three. That's pretty cool. So So I... But I do have a question, Domain. Where where do you where do you see where where we are now? I mean, because we we hear all web two guys are coming. They're coming. They're gonna come in. Where do you see the future of web two, web three becoming fully aligned? We... Is is this gonna happen within within this, you know, Trump presidency, or it might it might even take a little longer than that? What do you think?
[0:21:38] Voice D: Well, I I think the regime change re... Really help... Is gonna help us turn the corner. I mean, you know... Listen. The fact that he the fact that he launched his own meme coin, that... That's helpful. Right? Because now we know the table stakes. No. But I think when it comes to adoption, you know, it's... VanX... Out for a second. VanX and asset manager, their their client base is, you know, retail clients, institutional clients, building products that they're willing to buy. And so when you think about what that means, alright. We're we're looking to tokenize certain securities. And so that's something that that we'll have a focus on. But the sort of fact of the matter is that right now, there's no real demand and liquidity for these different tokenized securities. They sound cool, and it sounds like the institutions are really involved, but who's gonna buy them? Right? So, you know, it's not like it's not like you're probably buying a tokenized fixed income fund. You... You're not, is my guess. And and my dad's not asking me for that either. Right? So that day will come. The current demand liquidity is, right now, is coming from your existing web three users who have liquidity and have demand for things like luxury and investment grade goods. And so when you think about that, that's why we are sort of, like, targeting that persona right now. But like I said earlier, you know, I wanna be the eBay meets Sotheby's Web three. Eventually, we'll have to turn the corner to be able to capture that Web two market, which in this case might be, like, the traditional collector. And so what... Like, what's really helpful, you think about some of the unlocks last year, like, Privy was a great unlock. And, of course, the abstract global wall is sort of built around Privy, but, you know, email, social login. Okay. That's cool. That gets the WebT... The WebTU consumer in. But, you know, there's still gonna have to be some additional unlocks, which is a big reason why we we decided to deploy on abstract. So my point being, I don't think abstract is the end all be all, or I don't think they had everything figured out. But what's kinda nice is when you have that whole consumer crypto theme in place, we're all sort of building towards that, and one of us will figure it out. And then one of... And then we could all steal from that one that one project in a good way, right, to help to help, you know, ease onboarding. But that... That's a couple thoughts around it.
[0:23:55] Dave @DCBK2LA: Good stuff. Yeah. Landy, Buildo, I don't know if y'all wanna chime in if you have questions for Matt, then I wanna kinda bring Jacob into this conversation. But, like, looking at, like, this segment stuff. So... Wait. So... And, actually, maybe before we bring... Yeah. Bildo, go for it. And then I I I just have so many questions. You know, like, the mining gold, the hat, the RWA, the NFC chips. But, yeah, go ahead, Bildo.
[0:24:15] Bildo Verde @BildoVerde: No. I'm just mad at Shiller down there in the audience. I know he's hosted Matt and done numerous shows. I try to support most of what Shiller does as he's one of the best content creators out here. Obviously, Matt, you know, a ton of stuff's going on for Futureverse, And somehow, I missed it, and I didn't get the extra nudge from Shiller to say, hey. Make sure you go claim your XP. So I'm on the site. It's all grayed out. I'm looking at, like, 2,000,000 XP that I could probably claim, if not more. So I'm just pretty bummed out about that. But, yeah, looking forward to the new mint and how to get involved from this point forward.
[0:24:52] Voice D: Well, yeah, I'll I'll I'll raise that issue with Sheila. I don't know what to tell you, but but thank you for the support. And I have been changing some roles as well. So, you know, as soon as I get off this, I'll make sure I I correct any others.
[0:25:06] Dave @DCBK2LA: Bill looks like I appreciate it. F you, Shiller. That's messed up. Bill, though, it's your responsibility, bro. I tried to put this on your radar ASAP, man. You had that first day. I think you missed it by, like, a day, bro.
[0:25:17] Bildo Verde @BildoVerde: No. This was, like, months ago. When did the claim for, like, fluff x p go up? It was it was quite a while ago.
[0:25:23] Voice D: Yeah. I wanna say it was maybe October, November.
[0:25:27] Dave @DCBK2LA: Yeah. Oh,
[0:25:28] Bildo Verde @BildoVerde: Yeah. Yeah. Been following this for a while, Dave.
[0:25:31] Dave @DCBK2LA: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, buildup. It is what it is.
[0:25:38] Dave @DCBK2LA: Matt, tell us... Okay. So can you tell us a little bit more about, like, these hats and kinda, like, how you kinda get, like, this whole idea, like, mining the goals and then Sure. Everything else?
[0:25:45] Voice D: Sure. So so we had... So we actually did an open supply and Feet venture contract when we first launched. And it was to incentivize people to join, but to complete KYC, which you had to do if you wanted to trade fractions. You guys see now for just using the general marketplace and such. But to sort of build, like, onto the lore of the adventure, we partnered with portals on the salon on the salon chain and and basically built these two worlds called Isles Of Kryptonian. There's sort of two seasons of it. So they have these, you know, these avatars you could run around. You could talk to, you know, other NPCs or... That are AI enabled, complete quests, and and grab XP that you could sort... You know, like, just for farming. And so it's people that maybe couldn't afford to buy and sell and trade stuff. They could just farm XP by playing the game. And so that was really successful. We did some, like, scavenger hunts with that and such. And then we had this idea in talking to both portals and, of course, my my team at VanEck. VanEck has a... Has this deep history in gold. They actually launched the first ever gold mutual fund and gold ETF. So so it kinda ties back to the firm's... The firm's own lore. Right? And so we created this this mine with portals, or I should say they did really. And then to sort of help drive user acquisition for Segment, if you went into the mine and you signed up for Segment, you would get this sick key sword that kinda has a queen of heart style weapon that you that you could then equip and get... Basically, you double damage and and... For attacking when you attack the the enemies and also for mining. And so bottom line, it would help you mine twice as fast, and the the the the prize is basically this digital wearable. It's a Vanette Gold Digger hat that, was minted. The actual token itself was minted by Collector Crypt on Solana. They gave the NFTs to to portals to to basically help sell for when people want bids. And then if you have one of these digital wearables, you could redeem it with collector crypt and get the physical item. And what's cool about the physical item, it is embedded with an NFC chip. These hats were put together by NFTreasure, another company that we partnered with. So the whole reason to do that is so that if the Vanac intern wants to do future activations, future claims, we we could just constantly reward the community members who hold those hats. And, I'm not speaking to value. I'm not putting the price on the hats or value on the hats, but, you know, there... There's some there's some fun things that we could do, whether it's, like, invites to events. This... The... Last April, we had a a a takeover of the stock exchange. So I had a web three event at the stock exchange during the week of NFT NYC was packed. People were there for the closing bell. We can invite people to things like that. Like... So there's just a lot more fun activations we could use the hats for. But, if anything, it it was just kind of a marketing idea, and and it kind of now turned into other projects asking portals if they can do similar activations to to have other items that are connected to real world assets. So it's... It was really a a cool idea looking back, and people are still obviously grinding daily and to to get enough gold to buy one of the hats.
[0:29:00] Dave @DCBK2LA: Yeah. I mean, the the auctions were going for crazy prices, and I was messaging you. Was like, how am I supposed to get this? I was like, let me just go buy it.
[0:29:06] Voice D: I know. And I know. And I and I wasn't kidding. I went in today because, you know, again, I've been in Paris at the conference, and and I started following this one character around. It was basically going around mining the nodes of gold and avoiding the characters, and it is definitely a bot that somebody made. So I was trying to to run through the characters to get them to chase me so that they would kill the bot character. You know, it it... Doing my small part to make things fair, but, you know, there... There's a lot of smart people on web three.
[0:29:36] Dave @DCBK2LA: Yeah. That's a fact. A lot of smart people and a lot of people that are looking to kinda skirt skirt skirt around everything. But, you know, for those of y'all that don't know, like, go to Collector Crib if you guys are looking to have one of these. And and, Matt, just to confirm, there was only ever gonna be 300 of these hats. Correct?
[0:29:54] Voice D: Yeah. So so, technically, there are 350 total physical hats, but we only had 300 minted as as digital wearables that you could redeem. Because I I had it... I had the extra 50 to give away some of those at r... RWA Paris last week.
[0:30:09] Dave @DCBK2LA: Got it. And then when we wanna redeem them, where do we redeem them through? Like, we redeem through CollectorCrypt?
[0:30:14] Voice D: Yeah. You... Yeah. You'll do it through CollectorCrypt, and we just did it with them because they've got a great platform. I don't kind of view CollectorCrypt as a competitor. We're on EVM. They're Solana. It's all good. And and and you'll get the hat. And so when you get the hat, there's a claim for additional XP. You'll get a a a digital cert... Certificate of authenticity. There's actually another claim, for the NFT. It's almost like a proof that that you have the real hat. It's another NFT on Avalanche, actually, because that's the chain that NFTreasurer uses. But, yeah, again, more more to come with it, but so far, so good.
[0:30:49] Dave @DCBK2LA: Amazing. Good stuff. Dude, this is this... When I saw this, I was like, this is crazy. I bought the first. I was like, there's no way I'm gonna be able to get 34,000 gold pieces. I was like, you know what? Was I like, let me figure out how to go out and, like, find how to buy one of these things. So I bought my first one, and I was
[0:31:02] Kool @koolcryptovc: like, wait a minute.
[0:31:02] Dave @DCBK2LA: I was like, I've learned my lesson. I'm like in a long... Like, I've been in the VV community for a long time. So, like, I know these these collector rules. Like, you gotta have one. You gotta own one to buy and, like, to own, another one to sell, another one to trade, another one to collect. So I'm out there trying to scoop up a few more, man.
[0:31:17] Voice D: Well, like, I'd I'd still... You know, don't get discouraged because the amount of gold that you need because you could still only ever bid or... And win one hat. So some of these people farming crazy amounts of gold, they can't just get, you know, all the hats that are left. So, you know, maybe we see some some of the prices come down. It's a ten day activation. So maybe towards the end, you you could afford one.
[0:31:40] Dave @DCBK2LA: Alright. Let's go. I like it. I like it. I'm gonna still go out and buy them on Magic Eden anyway, so it doesn't really matter.
[0:31:47] Kool @koolcryptovc: Jake Hey. Can I Yeah?
[0:31:48] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Can I help in with a quick question for Matt?
[0:31:49] Dave @DCBK2LA: Of course.
[0:31:50] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Matt, I'm learning about some of this in real time. Obviously, I'd seen VanEck do a lot of very crypto native stuff from the Twitter account and start launching new products. The fact that there's this whole, like, you know, NFT marketplace you guys have built out and VanEck Gold, and you guys are collaborating with abstract and, and portals, some of these, like, more crypto native projects. How did this all come about? Like, it seems like a lot of traditional financial institutions are are sort of waiting into crypto, but, like, just kinda dipping their toes in, being, like, very careful. Mhmm. You guys are going out making big bets on, you know, brand new... I mean, exciting, but brand new projects like Abstract. Know those guys pretty well. Yeah. Awesome awesome chain. I mean, it's it's very different the approach you guys have taken than I think most others have. I mean, what does that look like internally? Is that you, you know, being a sort of advocate internally going to bat for these folks? Or, obviously, a lot of opportunity for you, which is which is awesome. And, I mean, I think this... I think the approach is resonating with the community time, but also a lot of risk in in kinda taking these bets.
[0:32:52] Voice D: Sure. I I mean, you know, so so when I when I got this role of of head of Web three, before that, I was head of, internal sales. And, you know, I've been... Again, I've been in TradFi now for twenty years, if if you still call me TradFi. But when when I got this job, Jan Van Eck, the CEO, basically said, I'm gonna put you in this role. I said,
[0:33:14] Dave @DCBK2LA: well, what do you want
[0:33:15] Voice D: me to do? I don't really know yet. Do what you think you should do, and then come back to me in two months. So for two months, I was writing content. We were hosting events. We did do this NFT collection, called the Vanette Community NFT. And and right there to your one point about taking risk, like, we had the p... We had to have people sign their... You know, web two form that said they wouldn't sell it because we didn't wanna accidentally issue an unregistered security. So there's a lot of concerns. But long story short, he he said build whatever you want. I want you to build something. Build whatever you want. I'm an NFT guy, so I I I just started thinking about, you know, issues related to shared ownership. In fact, going back to Buildo, like, I was early into altered state machine, and I was like, how can I share a boss character that at the time were, like, 50 Eth with friends? How do you do it? Who who would hold the boss, and how would you contribute to that? So that's how I came up with our fractionalization model that we call the lock and key model. And then from there, it just grew. And so, like, a lot of the the web three native stuff that you see is a combination between the stuff that I bring and our VanEck intern person who who... You know, we keep their identity anonymous. The rest of the team is very, like, investment solution oriented. So we've got a great digital assets team, but they're they're, you know, they're building private private products, private investment solutions, or they're they're running private funds. So, yeah, it's it's certainly a a a different a different role. I don't know if there's many Matt Bartlett's at a, let's say, a BlackRock and a... And definitely not Fidelity, not a Franklin Templeton. I'm definitely in a in a in a unique position where I could kinda speak both languages, which is nice.
[0:34:53] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Yeah. That's amazing. Build whatever you want is an incredible mandate to be, to have within, an institution as grand as, an act.
[0:35:01] Dave @DCBK2LA: Hell yeah. Hey. Cool. Cool. Maybe we... Cool. Landy, build up. Maybe we all need... The four of us need to apply for jobs, like, at all the different ones. Like, you know, maybe you apply Fidelity. I'll apply at State Street. Lady, you apply at Citi. Let's do this, bro.
[0:35:14] Landy @CryptoLandy: No. I'm not getting back into TradFi. I retired from TradFi because I am done with TradFi for now. If if there were opportunities at the time when I was still in TradFi back in 2014, 2015 time frame, when I was still working there, if there was opportunities to work with guys like Matt and VanEck and that kind of stuff, I would have been all over it. But, you know, the... I I retired to go full time crypto, and, and I haven't been, I I I haven't been looking back fondly on any of that time. I've been having a lot of fun ever since. So I'll stay I'll stay in web three.
[0:35:58] Dave @DCBK2LA: He's like, I'm staying in my lane. Thank you very much. Yep. So, guys, I'm looking around, like, my timeline right now. And, course, Mario's running freaking space with Portnoy and Coffeezilla. Right? And I'm kinda curious what you guys think. Matt, let me... And and Matt Jacob, like, I'm so curious kinda how you guys genuinely look at the nonsense that goes out on this space when you see Libra token and everything else. Like, first, Matt, how do you explain this? Right? Like, somebody that... Like, the boss that gives you, like, do what you think you're supposed to do, and you come back and it's like this shit show out here. How do you actually... Like, do you even talk about this stuff with, like like, your higher ups? Like, how does that work?
[0:36:30] Voice D: No. It's it's not something I really get involved in. I understand MemeCoins and and the culture. Part part of the reason why I got into Featureverse... By the way, you know, right or wrong, part... But part of the reason why I went to them was, I think, utility. And, like, right now, like, the whole idea of the Readyverse and and Open and all these projects that they have that are building really cool stuff, I like projects that have some utility behind them. I've never even been, like, a... Hate to say it, like, just generative art guy or art guy in general. I I want something behind it. So I avoid it. I don't think... And I also don't think, like... Again, I don't wanna knock you guys if you're into it. I I I don't think it helps to grow the space. You know, if, literally, there's a guy in my office whose buddy just started trading meme coins a month ago. How do you think he's doing today? Completely wrecked. So it's... You know, you... We might get them in temporarily, and then they're like, one of these gone, and then they never come back or it takes them years to come back. So I I just don't think it's it's a sustainable way to to grow what we're trying to do. And, again, that's why my focus is on on things like collectible back to NFTs versus, you know, revenue sharing, you know, Ponzi scheme stuff. I I I just try to avoid it.
[0:37:45] Dave @DCBK2LA: Fair enough. Guys, we're putting together the AI vendors, essentially. It's gonna be a bunch of AIs that are gonna go around trying dismantling pump fund from the inside out. So, just so you know, because they're absolutely terrible for this entire space. You
[0:37:59] Landy @CryptoLandy: don't need you don't need AI. They're they're dismantling themselves right now. They don't... We... The people themselves are dismantling themselves as we speak.
[0:38:08] Dave @DCBK2LA: And You got it.
[0:38:09] Landy @CryptoLandy: Everything that we've talked about regarding this stuff is now just happening in real time. Like, all of the players in the game will expose themselves. Eventually, all the bad actors will expose themselves, and that's exactly what we're seeing. And they're not... They they they have been around just the really corrupt side of things that they can't even see that what they're doing is wrong. So it's really interesting to watch them just freely talk about this stuff. And then, of course, after the Coffeezilla interview, the complete chaos across the timeline with all of our favorite coals, and I'm using that a little disparagingly as I am not a call. But all of our favorite key opinion leaders in those types of, ecosystems and for those various, projects out there that have come to prominence very quickly since... You know? Well, I mean, VCs are what pumped up salon in the first place. So they saved it because they had to save their bags, from FTX. They got hurt real bad. I've talked about this at length, throughout the bear market as, Solano is picking itself up off the floor. But, you know, they've, there... There's an entire ecosystem of people that don't even understand that there is another way. And, now they're learning about it. And now they're going, hey. Maybe those Bitcoiners weren't such, such morons after all. It's gonna be weird.
[0:39:44] Dave @DCBK2LA: I feel like that's the perfect... You know, Jacob, I kinda want you to chime in here. When you look at all this, like, this massive money extraction, like... And they're not even making... Like, there's not even... Like, there's no hiding anything. Right? Like, it's just, like, they're selling their soul. They're literally sending it to Kraken and literally off ramping it, like, by the hundreds of thousands of Solana. You guys are out here racking up 20,000 state BTC, and, like... And everybody's yet is being like, Solana, Solana, Solana. So I'm kinda curious. Like, Jacob, kinda what's your take on maybe the Solana ecosystem? And then let's kinda maybe transition it to kinda really highlight what you guys are doing and kinda the incredible... I mean, the feet of almost 20,000 BTC. That's insane.
[0:40:27] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I'm bullish on Solana. I think they, I mean, I think it's one of maybe two or three ecosystems in crypto that have real innovation. And so, you know, you'll be able to Mintel BTC and use any of Bloomberg products here on, Solana within the next couple of weeks. So cool stuff happening there. What I'd say, just to follow-up on the discussion about all the craziness happening with MemeCoins, the whole space is built on hyperfinancialized incentives. This has led to extremely great things and some things that aren't always so great. But I will say every time some craze pops up where, you know, peer degeneracy has taken over, even DeFi somewhere back in 2020, that then transitions in the next cycle or in the course of some amount of time into productivity. It's like the incentives bring a ton of mindshare into the space, and then we weed out all the trash in favor of more high quality projects. So... And and I think, like, every every great thing to come out of crypto started with, like, crazy, crazy incentives that then led to something more fundamental. Bitcoin couldn't have been where it was today if prices weren't going up and down 50 or a 100%, to then create enough of a security, like, to to bootstrap the coin effectively then to become a a, like, the one true, decentralized permissionless money. Ethereum was kind of the same way. Block rewards in the early days were crazy, then DeFi Summer, and now Meme Coins. It's just driving more people into crypto, I think. So it's it's one of those things where it's like, at this point, I feel like I've just been around it for so long that I've I've become a little bit numb to it. You know? I kinda just let it happen in the back... In the background as I'm trying to build out, like, a very simple, usable, liquid staking primitive for Bitcoin. But... Yeah. But, but Solana is cool. Like I said, I think Ethereum, Solana, Base, a couple others have kind of the the home for, developers who are building really cool stuff, and Lombard wants to be wherever those guys are because those are the guys who are gonna build... You know, Lombard is the bridge for bringing Bitcoin into the ecosystem, but the real magic is the permissionless innovation that happens upon Bitcoin once l... Once Bitcoin is permissionally... Permissionlessly programmable. So, you know, I kind of do the easy job of bringing Bitcoin into the space, and then we let, you know, some of the killer teams like Drift, Camino, the Jupiter folks are doing really amazing things in the Solana ecosystem, and all the top devs in the in the ecosystem of a... The fluid folks are doing really cool stuff. Those are the guys who can then take Bitcoin as a primitive and build really cool financial applications around it. So, yeah, Lombard sort of started with liquid staking as this catalyst for onboarding that new Bitcoin into into DeFi. Bitcoin has been this... There... There's sort of... From DeFi start, there's been this idea. Even when I was back at, you know, Polychain, call it 2020, 2021, everybody was like, oh, there's, a trillion dollars in Bitcoin that can be onboarded to DeFi. And people tried and tried again and again and never really made it happen. Bitcoin's always been this obvious play, but there's not been enough momentum around the asset within DeFi to sort of make it a competitive asset to to ETH or Solana or any of the sort of native tokens that tend to be the the monies within these DeFi ecosystem. For the first time, with the introduction of Avalon Stake, sort of was enough of an ex... External kind of exogenous shock to the system that has allowed Bitcoin, you know, through something like LBTC to become deeply liquid within these ecosystems. You know, we just launched on Barachain and and a couple other, brand new chains. And now for the first time, Bitcoin is, like, the most liquid asset within these ecosystems. So new DeFi ecosystems built on Bitcoin from day one, I think is really cool. So you're sort of seeing a a bit of a renaissance in the Bitcoin community where it it, you know, used to be this kind of useless store of value. Now it's becoming the core sort of core collateral of on chain finance, or at least that's what we're trying to make happen.
[0:44:27] Dave @DCBK2LA: So can you... So, Jacob, can you maybe... Because a lot of us... I I have a lot... We have a lot of stacks maxis that are in here with us as well. I myself being one of them for sure.
[0:44:37] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Yeah.
[0:44:37] Dave @DCBK2LA: How do we go about raising 20,000 beats? I'm about to pitch... I'm literally about ready to pitch Matt and tell him to put me on a conference call with some of the bosses at the back to see if we can get some kinda... You know? Like, I'm I'm I'm at that point, but, like, like, how did you actually manage to, like, really, like, pull this off? Like, it's insanely impressive, dude.
[0:44:54] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Well, shout out to Stacks, one of the OGs in the Bitcoin DeFi space. Those guys were shouting on a rooftop about Bitcoin DeFi for years before anybody gave a shit. So, I mean, really excited to hopefully work with those guys at some point in the future and have, know know a few of the folks over there. They're great. And... Yeah. I mean, I think the core to Lombard's growth has been building... You know, we sort of identified the killer product, which was Bitcoin staking. This was this was gonna be the massive catalyst for onboarding. I... A good a good analog I like to use is LSTs, LRTs, and yield bearing tokens within the ecosystem. So everybody knew these were gonna be big for years and years. There's, like, this post from Dan Elser back in back in, like, 2018 or 2019 or something like that called super fluid collateral. And the whole idea is that, like, the way that DeFi wins is is, like, rehypothecation of collateral via yield bearing tokens. Like, that's really the magic. The fact that you can take a... You can have a yield bearing token or you can have a sort of a receipt token of activity within any any DeFi primitive and then take that to another DeFi primitive, use that as collateral, and then get another token, go do this again. The fact that you can do this permissionlessly and programmably meet... You know, opens up the opportunity for for DeFi to actually become more liquid than TradFi. Like, this is how DeFi wins. It's like the the hyper... Rehypothecation of collateral through yield bearing tokens. But even in spite of that thesis that we all thought was true, nobody ever used yield bearing tokens. Everyone just used naked eat... Naked eat and USDC. Nobody really cared about LSTs that much or certainly DeFi protocols did, but then EigenLayer came around. EigenLayer then created this massive incentive for people to use LSTs within protocols. But now these liquid staking tokens or, I guess, restaking tokens had... You know, in addition to earning some native form of yield, had this, like, massive incentive on top of it in the form of EigenLayer. So EigenLayer, this sort of, like, DeFi adjacent security marketplace, created the incentive for all of DeFi to adopt, you know, l r... LRT's and then, ultimately, I think was the catalyst for a wide adoption of all forms of yield bearing tokens within DeFi. I was working at a purpose protocol at that time, and if you were purpose protocol that was, like, looking to bootstrap, activity, the easiest, like, lowest cost of capital way to make this happen was to use yield bearing token. So every DeFi purpose protocol was trying to build upon yield bearing collateral. So this is pretty cool. The same thing's happening in in in Bitcoin. Right? So, like, Babylon came around, introduced, you know, the Bitcoin staking for the first time. We knew this this was gonna be one of the killer products within Bitcoin DeFi, maybe the killer product. And so we sort of architected the the initial Lombard system entirely around this killer use case. And, you know, I think this was the key starting point was, like, if we're gonna, you know, if we're gonna grow Bitcoin and DeFi, there needs to be some reason for people to get excited about it. Bitcoin staking was sort the first use case for this. And and so, yeah, I spent a lot of time, investing in and, and and pitching myself for projects I was building, very complex DeFi protocols, like protocols with permissionless market creation and very complex, very complex, like, leverage mechanisms and all this stuff. This is... This only gets us so far. Like, there's a very small user base for that. Bitcoin that you can take to Ethereum or to Solana or to Base or something like that. This is... Like, simplicity, I think, wins out in this case. Part of the reason we've been able to onboard so much Bitcoin is because we made it simple for users to understand. I can pitch Lombard in, like, five or ten seconds. It used to take me minutes to explain some of the other mechanisms that I was excited about. So, yeah, Lombard has been able to onboard a ton of, you know, call it, more crypto native institutions into, Bitcoin staking. And, I mean, you can bet we're having conversations with, just about all the biggest Bitcoin holders in the world. And at the very least, these guys are curious about what it would be like for them to, get involved in these mechanisms. So I think it's only a matter of time.
[0:49:07] Dave @DCBK2LA: So I I... You you you hit a keyword here. And, Landy, you and I have talked about this, at length and cool. We've talked about this here too as well. It's, like, rehypothecation. Right? And I know that there's a new protocol obviously out on stacks. It's called granite. It's like, don't rehypothecate, but it's like, tell me... Can you can you explain this maybe, like, to the users, like, and really under... So we can understand exactly what this genuinely means. If people want to genuinely take advantage of, like, these opportunities that are here in Bitcoin DeFi, what does re... Like, what does rehypothecation actually mean, Jacob? Like, how do you guys actually do this? Like... And when... Like, how are we supposed to look at Bitcoin as, like, like, a liquid staking token in a way? Right? Like, simplify it for us if you can. Yeah.
[0:49:48] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Yeah. Rehab publication is a concept in traditional finance that is... That that, like, the entire financial system is built upon. It's basically the idea that you know, a a user... Not every asset has to be in its naked form. You can use treasuries as collateral. You can use, you can use equities as collaterals. You can use structured products as collateral. So you basically take money, lock it up in some financial instrument, and then you can use that financial instrument to go do other things. So, like, most of traditional finance right now, I think, runs on, like, you know, repos, treasuries, and other assets as as collateral. Even though you're not, you know, using the underlying asset, it's basically like some other, some other protocol or, marketplace or institution is willing to take on some collateral risk. I think that's the that's the core here. And so, you know, a lot of times in, traditional finance, the sort of rehypothecation of assets, which really just, again, just sort of think of that as taking yield bearing token and putting it as, as collateral within for... You know, to to borrow again or do some other activity. This is this is all done in a nontransparent way. It's kind of hard to know what the full exposure of somebody's of somebody's collateral is like. Not everybody can trust everybody. I think this is, a a a pretty key key point. You're not gonna take collateral from everybody. Sometimes you have to... You either have to find, like, a a neutral party or, like, a prime brokerage who would sort of be the be the settlement layer, or you just can't work with certain parties because there's not, like, enough mutual trust to understand that, like, if you needed to go actually liquidate and grab the underlying collateral that you will be, that you'd be able to. Crypto lets us do this fully programmably in a trustless environment so we can actually build these mechanisms, that are, you know, sort of transparently, yeah, transparently expose the underlying risks and acts as, like, a neutral settlement layer for all of that collateral. So it is really cool. I... The only way... I I think that, like, the only way that DeFi is going to beat CeFi is if it starts to rival the capital efficiency, And this is this is kind of how it happens.
[0:52:03] Dave @DCBK2LA: Fair enough. Yeah. Landy, before I... I have a million more questions for Jacob because I find this fascinating stuff. I don't know if you wanted to maybe chime in, but I know I have a million more questions.
[0:52:13] Landy @CryptoLandy: You know, I'm I'm very, familiar with this, and not not necessarily what Lombard is doing in the products that they're building, but in Babylon. So I don't have too many questions. I know that I know that a lot might have questions, from the stack side of things because of the way that stacks operates and the protocols, and dApps in the stacks ecosystem works. You know, I'd I'd, maybe extend it back to some of your questions because there's there's things that I I take for granted that I already know, about Babylon and the way it works. Not necessarily about, Lombard and and, the the products that they're building. But
[0:53:00] Dave @DCBK2LA: Yeah.
[0:53:00] Landy @CryptoLandy: It's it's very different than than what many in the audience might know of or be... Or have exposure to.
[0:53:07] Dave @DCBK2LA: Yeah. And and and, Jacob, I'll ask you this because, like, I was in Singapore, right, at token twenty forty nine. And, like, you know, I I I was asked to work, like, a booth, like, for for stacks, and this was at, like, a Babylon staking event that was there. And I just remember talking to a lot of, like like, some of these huge, like, Bitcoin miners, like, Amp Pool and a bunch of these others were like, hey, man. Like, we got 2,000 BTC. We don't know what to do with. Like, tell me about, like, this chain or that chain. It's just like, you guys obviously seem to kinda crack that code at the end the day. Right? So the people that are staking, like, what are they actually getting? Are they... Who are they? Are they mostly, like, institutions? And tell us maybe a little bit about, like, how do I, like, right now, like... Because... Listen. Might I be a maxi in certain places, but, like, I know that the future is completely chain agnostic. Like, I am not trying to, like, isolate any... Like, I'm I'm open to all of it. Right? So at the end of the day, if there is something that Lombard is doing, I want to know, like, something that you guys are offering. Right? Whether it's an APY, like, with staking, like, what am I actually getting, like, you know, by working with you guys? Like... And and maybe kinda, like, tip us off there.
[0:54:10] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Yeah. Definitely. So, the people who are using Lombard right now, it's a it's a mix of people, for sure. The term institution in crypto is used a little bit too broadly. To break it down a little bit, I would say Lombard has cracked the code on crypto native and crypto adjacent institutions. A lot of, you know, family offices who have done, you know, e staking before who are now interested in Bitcoin staking. Same for crypto funds, Delta neutral funds. I mean, all of these guys are onboarded in a really big way. We're talking to almost every big, big person in that space. I think there's a group of more, like, traditional... You know, I think if you've done ETH staking before or you're at least familiar with the concept, Bitcoin staking is not that far removed. It's similar risk profile. The protocols are a little bit newer, so there's, you know, degree of comfortability that I think people have to get used to there, but, that'll that'll happen with time. Lombard is only about six months old and Babylon kind of right around that same time frame. So there's there's plenty of time to go on that front. I think where we are at right now is just dipping in. You know, a lot of these bigger institution, bigger traditional financial institutions, you sort of can't even have a conversation with these guys about, about onboarding capital if you can't do it at a certain size. So the fact that Lombard's now at, you know, $2,000,000,000 in TDL, allows us to have conversations that we previously weren't able to have. So like I said, you can bet we're talking all the biggest Bitcoin holders in the world. Ant Pool and f two Pool, some of the some of the biggest mining pools. I mean, those guys made a big bet on Babylon staking very early. They were validators on Testnet, now on Mainnet. It's cool to see the Bitcoin community. I mean, those those guys are, leaders for the whole mining community, in Asia. So I think for them to step up and kind of, you know, stamp their brand on, on this new primitive in Bitcoin staking, I think it's really, really powerful. And, yeah, you had a second question there.
[0:56:07] Dave @DCBK2LA: Loba... Yeah. Tell me, like, LBTC. Like like, what am I doing? Right? Because, like, all I know right now, like, on the on the on the l two side is SBTC. Right? So tell me a little bit about, like, LBTC. Yeah. Please.
[0:56:19] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Yeah. For... I guess for the Stacks Maxis, think of, think of LBTC as, like, a cross chain form of SBTC. So, I I am... It... I think I'm in the same, boat as you. Very, very excited about many different chains. My my general thought is, like, to build DeFi on Bitcoin, we don't necessarily need to go back and rebuild every primitive that we've built. Aave is amazing battle tested bar length protocol. Why would we need to rebuild that? Same with Uniswap, same with Curve, and all these other primitives. So LBDC allows you to use your Bitcoin within all the existing DeFi primitives that we've built. So you can use it on Ethereum, on Solana, on base. So, fundamentally, users deposit Bitcoin into the Lombard protocol. This is secured by the Lombard consortium. We just really announced this, actually earlier today. This is, like, Galaxy, Winter Mute, f two pool, ant two pool. Who else? Oh, OKX is a validator. So these are, some of the biggest institution in the crypto space collectively securing a a, a Bitcoin private. So your Bitcoin secured by that consortium, then you're able to mint LBTC on a number of chains. Most of it gets minted on ETH mainnet, but soon you'll be able to mint on Solana and SWE and BASE and be the, pick your favorite chain. We'll find a way for you to get that, LBTC there. And then, yeah, and then you can use... You know, LBTC is kind of this liquid Bitcoin primitive that you can use, within whatever DeFi ecosystem. I'd say our... You know, some of the cool stuff that we have in the pipeline is, I think there's a couple protocols that, you can use your LBTC as collateral, for right now, so on Drive and Satori, and I think there might be one other. But we're gonna, you know, kinda 10 x the the size of that. I think LBTC... You know, being able to run a basis trade in LBTC would be super exciting and then also working with centralized exchanges to get some, this kind of liquid liquid state Bitcoin as, as collateral there. But, yeah, all this goes back to just, like, Bitcoin should be usable in the same way you use your ETH or Solana or whatever other asset. There's kind of no no good thesis for why, you know, the one true permissionless decentralized money doesn't become the core collateral non chain finance. So we're, you know, we're just doing everything we can to, speed that up.
[0:58:29] Dave @DCBK2LA: Wag wag me down this being a hater. You threw a thumbs down. He's such a he's such a man.
[0:58:36] Landy @CryptoLandy: I I actually did have a question because I'm... I I am unable to go to the website from my current office PC as as I'm not set up in this particular location of the VPN. But the additional, like... Because, essentially, customer... Potential customer comes to you guys, gives you BTC. You're you're you're staking that on their behalf using the battle... Babylon protocol to then, get yield generation, provide them with the l... LBTC token on the other side. What additional yield opportunities outside of, like, utilizing... You know, I'm assuming lending, borrowing, and and provisioning. Is there any other types of, yield farming that can be done with that, LBTC token that you have as a as a product up and running yet? Or
[0:59:40] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Yeah. Great great question. And I think this ties into a question I was supposed to answer earlier around, you know, how Avalon works, particularly in in the form of the yield. So you can think of the yield... You know, when you deposit Bitcoin into Lombard or another liquid staking protocol, you can think of the yield in layers. So layer one is Babylon yield. So think of Babylon as very similar to EigenLayer in a sense that that Bitcoin then goes goes to be staked as collateral to validate, chains within within the Babylon ecosystem. So Babylon has concept of BSNs. It's very similar to delegating, collateral to APSs to, secure those protocols. So, you partner with a validator or or a group of validators who then, finalize blocks on a chain, and then you get, you know, yield for for doing so. If the validator faults, then you may get slashed. So that's kind of the base base one. Then you mint LBTC. So then what are your options to do with it? So you can you can do anything you can do in DeFi with your LBTC. So we... You know, LBTC is pretty widely integrated throughout DeFi at this point. You can use it on DEXs, Uniswap, Curve, Fluid. You can use it in borrow lend protocols, Aave, Pendle... Or sorry. Sorry. Morpho, Gearbox, ZeroLend, etcetera, many many more. You can use it on Pendle, which is sort of like a a yield trading protocol. What else? Euler. You can use it as as collateral for trading perks. As we discussed, you can trade on an order book. You can trade perpetual futures. You can trade options on drives. So the largest on chain options trade in history was collateralized in LBTC. That was pretty cool. And then there's a whole restaking layer. So Lombard is you can stake your LBTC on Symbiotic, Karak. You can stake it on EigenLayer. And then there is a restaking token, eBTC. This is built by the EtherFi team. This is exclusively backed by LBTC, and eBTC is representative of restaked Bitcoin. So Lombard, LBTC is Bitcoin staked into Babylon. Lumb... EBTC is LBTC staked into one of these restaking platforms. And, yeah, I mostly talked about ETH Mainnet here because this is sort of the bulk of the integrations. But... Well, actually... So let me let me actually step up one more. So I said layer one was BAT one yield. Layer two was DeFi yield. There's kind of this layer three and four that gets a little bit convoluted, but I would call this, like, chain yield. So one... I I did mention this earlier, but part of the reason that I think Lombard's had so much success in onboarding capital is because unlike many, many d five protocols and many, many things built in the crypto space. The... You know, we built at the intersection of a very pertinent need in a sense that, like, every chain and every DeFi protocol, their number one priority, which is which is sort of life or death for them, is can I onboard enough liquidity to survive? If they can't, the project is over. It doesn't matter, which means that they're willing to pay a lot for the... You know, they're offering a lot of incentives for this. They're, willing to go way out of their way to sort of make sure liquidity gets onboarded. We... Lombard has introduced a huge service to them. Our superpower is that we onboard, you know, millions of dollars to any protocol that comes and works with us effectively. Right? Or or at least we try to. So this has this has been pretty powerful. I spent a lot of time investing in and building protocols that were, like, kind of cool innovations, but just weren't targeting enough of the user need, at at this point in time. So that's why I think Lombard's kinda hit a stride. So, you know, Barichain went... Did this Barichain Boyco program. I think they paid something like $300,000,000 in incentives or something like that. Sonic, we just launched on Sonic. They're doing, like, a 150 or $200,000,000 incentive program over the course of this year. Movement's doing incentive program. Corin's doing an incentive program. Every new chain that launches is doing some sort of incentive program to onboard capital, and Lombard's been a a a, you know, one of the primary ways through which that collateral was able to come into new ecosystems. So new ecosystems are being built on LBTC predominantly. I think there was, like, in Bear Chain Boyco, there was, I think, $600,000,000 of LBTC that that made its way over to the chain.
[1:04:01] Dave @DCBK2LA: Good stuff. Landy, any other follow ups?
[1:04:04] Landy @CryptoLandy: No. That's in... That's incredible stuff. You know, I am... I... I've I've been watching and seeing it around. I just wasn't as familiar with the tight integration and that kind of that kind of incentivization for people to, utilize you guys. So that's that's, really informative, and thank you for sharing that because I think it helps put things in perspective. Like, especially for those that maybe don't understand what's going on in other ecosystems and how things are being utilized. So I I think it's always good as we are all in. I I like to say on the Bitcoin side of things is, like, we all want the same things as, like, myself, a Bitcoiner. I want the utilization of capital, and I want the options to, either keep itself custodally or or or have it, you know, liquid staked. And, like, these options are are different product market fits for different people in various ecosystems and helps you to balance a risk profile. So something that I haven't talked about a lot, but we're gonna hopefully get into in our Monday spaces, in the future, Dave. But, yeah, really appreciate you, flushing that out for for us and the audience here.
[1:05:17] Dave @DCBK2LA: Yeah. And and, Jacob, I got I got a question for you. Right? Because, like, when I genuinely think about this, right, I'm saying to myself, like, where does somebody actually go to really understand what's possible for this? Like, is this actually... Because, like, I know you say we use the word institution, like, pretty loosely out here, but this isn't really geared toward, like, the retail investor at the end of the day, is it? Because, like like, I I wouldn't know... I I feel like I'm pretty well versed in, like, how to actually, like, take advantage of Bitcoin DeFi, but there's a lot of things that I feel like I'm not aware of. So, like, how does the average person actually take advantage of something like this?
[1:05:50] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: I kinda think of this product as being built for a little bit of everyone. That's the cool part about Bitcoin is everybody holds Bitcoin. You know? Certain meme coins, certain Altal 1 coins. There's, like, certain tribes of people who who specialize in one or the other. Bitcoin's the most widely adopted asset by both retail and institutions. And, so I think it's an easy pitch to get people on board across the entire spectrum or much easier than it would be anywhere else. So you're certainly right that, for an average person, there is a lot of DeFi complexity that is... You know, we kind of need to abstract. How... You know, I I mentioned some of the things I'm excited about the DeFi space, but, like, you know, using LBTC as collateral for perps isn't everybody. I hope not everybody's, you know, trading, trading on leverage with, with Bitcoin as collateral. There are... Like, Fluid, I think, is a really cool protocol, but I think many people just don't know how to provide DEX liquidity or wouldn't be comfortable kinda taking on those risks. And so one of the things we've done since the very beginning has been partner with Vault as an extraction layer. So so, you know, Lombard is is partnered with a couple different groups. Data is one. They built the EtherFi liquid vault. They've kind of been a core partner. Concrete is another. Upshift, another one. And, basically, what these vaults do is think of this as, like, an abstracted entry point to the ecosystem. So, like, the user experience that people want... And, I mean, this is part of the reason that I think Lombard, has hit a stride with Bitcoin stakers is is... Lombard itself is kind of like an abstracted fault for Bitcoin staking. Bitcoin staking has a lot of complexity that you just don't have to worry about if you stake through Lumpart. You know, we manage... Which which, we manage validated selection. We manage which, BSNs to delegate to. And more importantly, we manage the complexity of actually staking the Bitcoin. If you wanna stake Bitcoin right now, you have to, like, queue up a time walk, Taproot script. This is hard for a lot of people or or confusing at least. So we manage all that. Now imagine you're going to be five. Like, the killer product that people want is I wanna earn yield on my Bitcoin, and I wanna have to think about it. So this is where the vaults come in. So the main user flow that we have is users deposit Bitcoin into, into Lombard. They then mint LBTC, and then they can take that LBTC and just deploy to the Lombard DeFi vault or one of the one of the vaults we have. And what that vault does in the back end is it has a, basically, the equivalent of, like, a professional market maker who is running uni v uni v three strategies, you know, deploying liquidity to DEXs, deploying it to lending protocols, rebalancing when yields are higher, you know, one one place to the other. They manage all of the complexity. All you have to worry about is is the yield you're earning from that product. So this is... I mean, I think this has been huge for huge for users. I think we have, like, $200,000,000 in our in our core DeFi vault, another 300 in that bear chain vault, and then maybe a couple 100 in, in other ecosystem vaults or sonic vaults, and there's a vault on movement.
[1:08:44] Dave @DCBK2LA: Jacob, what kind of yield are they actually getting from? Like, if there is somebody out there that's actually, like, actively, like, managing, like, a uni v three strategy, what kind of yields are people seeing? Because, like, I love that idea. Like, I'm all about decentralization and blah blah blah. But, like, I feel like we get caught up and lost in all this bullshit where it's like, people don't give a shit about that. Like, I wanna put my money... My Bitcoin to work at the
[1:09:02] Voice D: end of
[1:09:02] Dave @DCBK2LA: the day. I'm not... Like Yes. Like, okay. Minimize, like, the trust and blah blah blah blah blah. Oh, great. But give me the best return possible. Like, what kind of returns are people seeing?
[1:09:12] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Yeah. Definitely. So in the Lumber DeFi vault, I think it's earning somewhere between 47% right now, which which is is is pretty solid. And and, certainly, if you wanna take on a little bit less risk, you can earn a little bit less rewards. So, know, if you just deploy to Aave or Uniswap, both extremely battle test DeFi mechanisms, I think you can earn another percent or two or something like that, couple percent. And then if you wanna take on a little bit more risk, Pendle is a really great yield opportunity. I think it... You know, that gets up into, like, seven to 10% range, maybe. Take on a little bit more risk there. But, yeah, I mean, there's a ton of really great opportunity, I'd say. Some of the best yield opportunity in all of crypto is being an early liquidity provider to what I would call as, like, forks of battle tested protocols in new ecosystems. So, for example, like, you know, when when a new chain launches, they need to see liquidity into, into a DEX and lending protocol as sort of as as the foundation for the whole DeFi ecosystem. A lot of times, they're just forking over existing code, battle tested code from Unity v three or Aave or something like that. A lot of times, there's, like, really great opportunity. You know, the the chain will, like, pay a ton of incentives to, bootstrap activity, onto, you know, into those protocols. So that ends up being a good opportunity. I I will say, I mean, even as I'm talking through this, like, it's pretty clear that a lot of this stuff is tough to navigate. Right? Like, trying to decide how much more contact risk a protocol has can be tough, and I think that's where these vaults come in. Like, you have professional curators like Gauntlet and Ari seven who do this professionally, kind of making some of those calls for you, as a user. So I think that'll be... Those will be powerful.
[1:10:53] Dave @DCBK2LA: Yeah. Like, this... That... That's literally what I'm thinking. You know what I mean? It's like, nope. Like, people at the end of day are genuinely not gonna care, like, about all this shit. Like, I feel like we get lost to, like... Or or or at least maybe me, but, like, per se, like, I don't wanna speak for anybody else, but, like, I get stuck in this echo chamber where I'm just like, is that really what's important to me right now? Like, what's important to me right now is like, okay. If I own Bitcoin, like, if I have a big... And I'm literally this close to owning one full Bitcoin. And I'm saying to myself, like, where am I gonna... Like, what do I do? Like, where do I go put it, like, to be able to gain that yield? Right? But, you know, let me ask you this question. Like, does... Like, are are are the are the stakers, like, happy with four to 7%? Like, are they asking for more? Are they looking for, like, more aggressive stuff? Like, what's, like, the profile of some of these guys that they're like, hey. Like, I mean, look. In this... I mean, in any environment, like, the TradFi world, like, 7% is, like like, that's unheard of. That... That's incredible.
[1:11:44] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: So Yeah.
[1:11:45] Dave @DCBK2LA: I'm kinda curious. Like like, are they happy? And, like, what's their kind of profile, like, risk profile?
[1:11:50] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Yeah. I don't know this to a 100% be the case, but my ongoing theory is that it's evolving into, like, a little bit of a barbell strategy where you have, people who don't wanna take on any risk. And so they're, like, just trying to minimize risk as much as possible. These folks will, like, only consider super battle tested protocols like off a and Uniswap, something that's been around for years with billions of dollars in it. And then there is everybody else, and everybody else is, like, seeking to maximize reward. They're willing to take on notable yield, and that's why all these, like, pre deposit campaigns and chain incentive programs have have hit a stride. And so it's like every DeFi protocol is trying to transition from being, like, you know, incentive driven kind of higher risk brand new protocol into one of these more established battle tested protocols. And, you know, that is that is sort of a a dance that I think every DeFi protocol has to go in has to go over time. Like, when these protocols become battle tested, something really magical happens, and that is, like like, you think about Uniswap or Aave. Like, these are safer than most banks at this point, probably. That is pretty crazy, but that can only happen through years and years of just struggle effectively, like trying to get people to take a little bit of a chance on the protocol. And then at some point over time, now, you know, unity three or Aave, there's been, like, a, I don't know, $5.10 plus billion dollar bounty on this protocol for for sufficient amount of time with fully open source code to the point where people will consider that, you know, pretty pretty damn safe. Eventually, all of DeFi will come this way. So we're definitely still in a bootstrapping phase where we're, like, you know, building protocols. I mean, even the oldest DeFi protocols are only a few years old at this point. So I think over time, as these mechanisms become more and more bootstrapped, you're gonna see more of the use cases that I was discussing go into the battle tested category of DeFi, in which case, you'll be able to, you know, you'll be able to do just about just about anything with your Bitcoin in, like, a really, really trust minimized context. Like, if you remove smart contract risk from the occasion, you can do incredible things in DeFi. That's always been the sort of looming impediment a little bit is that there is additional risk as we're bootstrapping these systems. Like, you're building an open source system, there's a little bit more risk than a closed source system. But over time, these systems become far more robust. You know, trusted code is way better decision long term than trusting humans.
[1:14:18] Dave @DCBK2LA: That's facts. That is facts. Like, you couldn't have said anything more true to me, where it's just like some of these protocols are literally even more battle tested than... Like, I even trust them more than banks at the end of the day. So, yeah, I'm with you, man. Jacob, like, I'm sorry, guys, that I I hog this up, but, like, I just had so many questions. But, Jacob, thank you so much, man, for being so forthcoming and and really sharing all this, like, incredible, incredible knowledge with us, dude. This was fucking... This is amazing, man. Like, I love learning about this stuff. Like, me, Landy, cool. Like like, we're literally junkies for this stuff at the end of the day. So I really, really appreciate you coming through, man. I hope to see more of you. Like, I don't know if you guys have regular spaces, but, like, I I... We'd love to host you more or do something with you guys. Like, you know what I mean? Like, we're trying to earn some yaps out here. We're trying to push you guys forward, like, this whole ecosystem. You know what I mean? So anything that we could do to help, dude, let me know.
[1:15:08] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Appreciate it. Yeah. Hey. It was great to meet you last week. You you brought really great energy. Appreciate you kinda going going to bat for Lombard a little bit. All all, you know, all the kind words are not taken lightly. And, yeah, happy to happy to chat with you guys anytime. I may, I may drop off now after this, but thanks for, you know, giving me a platform to, share more about Lombard here. Appreciate it.
[1:15:26] Dave @DCBK2LA: 100%, man. Like, always always welcome on this stage, man. For real. Thank you so much for being here, Jacob. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jacob.
[1:15:31] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Cool. Thanks, everyone.
[1:15:34] Dave @DCBK2LA: Peace. Take care. Fucking crazy cool. Landy's filled like that. That was... Man, there's so much out here, guys. There's so much out here. It is wild what's out here and how different it is. And it's like, look. I'll never shut out any any new... Anything new. Like, I wanna learn about it, man. I'm sorry. I'm not gonna sit here and just be like, oh, it stacks all day all day all day all day. Landy, like, you can't tell me that that's not a that's not a super interesting, like, value add where it's just like, like, I don't give... I don't wanna be able to... If I don't have to manage my shit, like, I don't wanna manage it. Like, I'm good. You know what I'm saying? Like, four to 7%? Okay. SBTC gives me 5%. Alright. But I gotta be the one to go in there and do it. Sometimes maybe that convenience is worth one or 2%. I don't know. Like, what do you think?
[1:16:17] Landy @CryptoLandy: Well, look. I'm I'm I'm pretty heavily involved in Babylon and other ecosystems. Obviously, I'm I'm I'm very, involved in the Stacks ecosystem as well. I'm involved in Arch and, like, a whole bunch of Bitcoin, quote, unquote, layer twos or Bitcoin Adjacent. Bitcoin adjacent. Yeah. Whatever you kinda wanna call it. Yeah. I'm I'm involved in a lot of this stuff. Look. I I I've had a lot of this stuff, quote, unquote, come across my desk since mining years and years and years ago and and, you know, stacks being one of the OGs. There was others that have gone away since then. But, you know, all of the various, stuff that I've always wanted and have seen proposed, in the Bitcoin adjacent ecosystems has has come to fruition at this point. It's just not as widely known or understood, by many in, you know, many in these various ecosystems. Right? Because, you know, Web three is all over the place. Like, you have pockets of communities, then you have the entire TradFi, ecosystem side that is involved in crypto where they have their their thumb on the pulse of everything that's going on because they're kind of cross invested in everything. And then, you know, then you have all the different communities and builders within those communities and and the diehards within those communities across everything that we see surrounding Bitcoin. And I... You know, I've mentioned this before. This really sprung out of the DeFi summer stuff. Right? The the Ethereum DeFi stuff last cycle. Right? It was, okay. What we're gonna do is we're gonna prove this concept out here, and, you know, eventually, we're gonna take this and utilize it with Bitcoin, but we're we're essentially going to beta test everything and then bring all of that Bitcoin liquidity over later. And while that stuff was being built, of course, you know, we had, the the bear market eventually come. We saw all the different collapses for custodial holders of of various assets, including the bulk of the holdings with Bitcoin, right, in your BlockFi, your Celsius of the world. And then, of course, we had the the whole SPF situation, but there was a lot in between there. You had the Terra Luna and everything else. Right? So this kind of stuff kinda dampened that. And throughout the bear market, what did we see? Everyone hunkered down to focus on that next part of the DeFi plan, which was Bitcoin. Right? And now seeing this stuff really come to fruition, and start to be utilized. Like, a lot of people don't realize that you can utilize. A lot of people don't know that you can utilize Babylon and different protocols via, like, Lombard. A lot of people don't know that you can utilize Bitcoin, on stacks with SBTC right now. Like, the... These things are only just now getting that awareness. So if you look at, like, Lombard Lombard's, x account, they're 45, thousand subs. Right? You would think, okay. Well, that's that's pretty damn good, and it is. But you would... You gotta kind of maybe do a little bit of forward thinking. Right? Like, Stacks is pretty well known as well. Right? These things are only gonna become bigger and bigger. And I've talked about this months ago where I said, like, everyone is going to fight for a piece of Bitcoin. All the different, protocols are gonna wanna have at some point settlement on layer one or some sort of attachment or products surrounding, layer one or Bitcoin, in this respect. So this is, it's my dream seeing it come to fruition. You know, I always have lots of questions, and a lot of people in the stacks community might have, like, the kind of a aversion to these other protocols. But understand product market fit is is the key. You have to have options because there are people that don't wanna manage this stuff. They'd rather give up the custody, get the liquid stake token, utilize that liquid stake stake token, right, instead of having to manage that stuff, themselves and and go to the various protocols themselves. But we also see the parity in the... In in in the different ecosystems, but the ethos being a little bit different, like a decentralized Bitcoin peg versus... You know, where you are holding the custody of that. Well, technically, the Bitcoin is custody across the signers. Right? You do have the same, the same set of ethos over here with signers and stuff like that, but it's a different mechanism. You are giving up the custody at that point in receiving something in return. Obviously, you're doing the same on the Stacks network, but it is a closer layer to Bitcoin in in many respects. So different product market fits, different, applications for end users, those being, quote, unquote, institutions or retail. And I think that there's room for a lot more of this stuff. It's super tiny. Just go look at the TVL for Bitcoin stuff. It's, like, 65,000,000,000.
[1:21:41] Dave @DCBK2LA: That's what I'm saying, Landy. It's like, I I look at, like, the people that are in this room now. Right? Like... And as much as, like, you know, we're cracking jokes, like, with WagMe. It's all good fun or whatever, but, like, at least he's in here, like, listening, like, to see what's out there. Right? Like, to figure out, like, what is going on. And shout out to, like, Norbi and Trip. Right? Like like, the StaxMaxx that... And Riot, like, Kev, like, all the StaxMaxx that are in here. Right? Like, we're in these chats and everything else, but, like, you know that, like, whether you call it a competitor or not, it's like, there's so much to learn out here from, like, what some people are doing. You know what I'm saying? Like, at the end of the day, it's like, figure out what's going on and what's working because I learned a shit ton from this guy, like, that literally just being here for sixty minutes that I now know that, like, the conversation that I've been having with a few people from stacks in the background, specifically Diego and Dylan, and kinda, like, how we're gonna attack, like... And try and figure out, like, how to maybe, like, alleviate and put, like, alleviate some of this pressure and bring in some money into this ecosystem is the right way to go like that. Like, all those questions I was asking him was for perfectly... I had a plan going into this. Like, in case anybody didn't fucking notice, right, was, like, I wanna figure out, like, who are the people putting money in your platform, and how do I go get them? And I think he really clarified a lot of that for me, and I think I have a very clear plan of what I'm gonna do and how I'm gonna work with a few other key players in this ecosystem to try and go get it.
[1:22:58] Landy @CryptoLandy: So I'm gonna give everybody a little bit of perspective. You know, for Bitcoin's total, market cap, you know, and and you you gotta understand that only a very small fraction will always be... Will ever be utilized in this fashion. But it is so minuscule right now that if we were to look at, Bitcoin, what is it? Just shy of 2, or just shy of $2,000,000,000,000 market cap. Right? $1,900,000,000 or right around there, maybe a little bit less, right, throughout the day. The total value locked for Bitcoin is 6,560,000,000. Okay? That is nothing. That means that there is so much room for many different players in this game to offer many different types of solutions. Look. Babylon itself has a TVL of about 5.3 to 5,400,000,000, last numbers that I was checking. Lombard, I just checked while he was talking, is about 1.8 bill. These these are very small numbers in the grand scheme of things, which means that players in this game can catch up very quickly. And the more, the merrier because the more options means that there's going to be more ways in which Bitcoin yield opportunities can present themselves. And the beautiful part about that is, you know, there is, the ability for, you know, different LSTs and different products to work within different ecosystems. And if you can hone in on the ecosystem that they're partnered with, you can do that and effectively create very good yield opportunity for yourself while still utilizing all of the other ecosystems. That is the beauty of this. I mean, many are gonna be... For many in the stacks crowd, equate it to STSTX. Right? That is, you know, you're stacking Dow, liquid state stacks. Right? That's really what this is at the end of the day. And there's many other... You know, there's, I... I've had talks with other teams. I can't exactly say who I've been talking with. I almost said their name when I was just... Because I just looked over at the list to see where they were in TVL. But, look, there is a lot more of this stuff. They're capturing a lot of institutional investors, and it's all about product market fit. And there is going to be a lot of opportunity coming up. I think DeFi for Bitcoin is going to be a key narrative going forward. I think that, I think we're seeing maybe the implosion of the meme coins.
[1:25:48] Dave @DCBK2LA: What the hell? That wasn't me. I saw... I swear to god, Lindy, that was not... Cool. Was that me? Damn it. I'm sorry.
[1:25:54] Landy @CryptoLandy: It was all good. I was just gonna say, I think we're starting to see the the implosion of the meme coin super cycle narrative. Right? So, you know, that's... I think people are starting to wake up. They're starting to look around them and go like, wait. I've been try... I've been chasing the dragon over here when I could have made, like, incredible gains and all the... All of these other things that are way less risky. And, you know, meme coins are still gonna have their place, obviously. But the high risk, you know, five minutes to 1,000,000,000... You know, $4,000,000,000, and then it's tanked 90%, I think, is starting to even get the most hardened of Solana snipers out there irritated.
[1:26:32] Dave @DCBK2LA: Real quick. Yeah. Can we talk about that real quick? Like, because I know that Coffeezilla and Portnoy and Libra and blah blah blah. And, like, I I was just reading about this. I was busy doing a million other things. Cool. I know you gotta start your stream in in a couple minutes, but I'm kinda curious what you guys think about this whole madness, like, that was going on with, like, Portnoy and all this shit. Like, I didn't... Like like, where is all this money that they were talking about? Like, what's Portnoy in on it? Like, what's the deal? Like, y'all... Like, cool. Do you know?
[1:26:59] Kool @koolcryptovc: Yeah. No. So I'm not... You know, like I said, you ain't... Am, but I'm somebody in about three minutes. But just real quick. Yeah. So it's... I I watched a video of interview with that dude, and, I mean, it's a lot of on chain crime being committed live on TV recorded. It makes no sense. With no lawyers involved, nothing. You're committing inside trading, admitting to it on camera. No lawyers, guys. It's... I I don't know what's gonna happen here, but, guys, like, these people are going to prison, man. If they wanna put them in prison, they they recorded all their crimes on chain on video live. This is what SPF did. Or No worries.
[1:27:43] Dave @DCBK2LA: I'm talking about Portnoy or somebody else.
[1:27:45] Kool @koolcryptovc: No. Not Portnoy. The the guy that... The big dude with the with the small head on. What's his name again? Dude with the small head. Dude
[1:27:54] Landy @CryptoLandy: looks like a modern day serial killer, but it's Hayden.
[1:27:58] Kool @koolcryptovc: Yes. Hayden Day. Hayden. He's the one talking about. He's admitting to crimes, man. I'm like, what what is going on? He... He's doing the same thing that SPF did. The court used his his statements on spaces in the courts. He's do... It's so crazy. I'm just watching it from from distance, and at the same time, it's not good for the space, man. It's horrible for crypto. What's happening right now, getting entire president involved, it's... Like I said, maybe Landy knows more about this, but I'm just... I'm I'm just mind blown, man.
[1:28:32] Landy @CryptoLandy: I can I can break it down? So, you know, the the main player that has come to light now is Hayden Davis.
[1:28:43] Dave @DCBK2LA: Who is
[1:28:43] Landy @CryptoLandy: His his father.
[1:28:44] Jacob Phillips @JacobPPhillips: Who is
[1:28:44] Dave @DCBK2LA: that? Who is that?
[1:28:45] Landy @CryptoLandy: Yeah. Hayden Davis, the... Kelsier Ventures. It's a... Basically, a venture capital firm. Their their father started, and it's a family firm, basically, with Hayden, Gideon, and and his brother, Thomas. So... And their and their dad, Tom. I'm assuming there's more players in the game.
[1:29:08] Dave @DCBK2LA: Thomas. That's their names?
[1:29:11] Landy @CryptoLandy: Yeah. Those... The... Those are the three brothers that are involved in that. But it seems as though Hayden was the tokenomics guy, the the the launch strategist guy for this Libra token, where essentially the pitch was is that Javier Mele wanted to... I'm assuming they went to him to pitch it. Right? He didn't go to them. At least that's the way that it sounds to me. He, you know, essentially wanted to create a a kinda SocialFi token, much in the way that Trump launched his token. And the, they then reached out to Dave Portnoy because he's been very... It it all seems very opportunistic is really what it seems like. Oh, we got this guy, Dave Portnoy. He's got a lot of money and a lot of reach, and he's got these coins, and he's here, and he's he's actually telling the truth and doing, like, cool stuff. And, like, he's got this jail stool thing, and he's adopting it. So let's... So they basically pitched him like, hey. How about you get involved in this? We'll, we'll give you some supply, and you... Well, we're gonna... You know, Javier Malay's on it. That was the hook for him. Was like, yeah. I'm... I... You know, cross promotion between the two, and this is a really cool thing. I'm into this SocialFi idea and stuff like that. Apparently, that fell apart before the launch of the token as he sent back his tokens. And when he basically vetted a post through Hayden where he was gonna say, like, hey. You know, I got allocation. Right? Like, you know, just, you know, FYI, which is, you know, the right thing to do is to let, you know, people know, like, if you're gonna promote this thing, you have been you have been compensated in the token to promote this thing. And and then... And he was told not to. So he was like, well, then I'm not gonna participate in that aspect of it. I'm gonna send it back. And then he bought into it, traded it. Obviously, it's a little unclear how Hayden ended up... See, everybody's looking the wrong way. They're going, oh, well, he's got the $100,000,000, and he's gotta do something. First of all, why is the $100,000,000 in his wallet in the first place? Right? Like, what what led to that, and why was the liquidity removed in in favor of putting it in his wallet? This seems like a hostage situation to me. Despite what he claims in his his interview with Melee and then his interview with, Portnoy, when Portnoy and everybody's idled, whose money is it, and why do you have it? Here, you're like the launch strategist. Why do you have it? You weren't even... You claimed in Coffeezilla's video that you weren't even supposed to be managing this aspect of it. So, clearly, something fishy is going on here. He's not telling the full story. He's even trying to throw the Trump token under the bus with his whole, like, well, you know, everybody, they were all insiders at this at this crypto dinner that was in Washington DC. Like, bro, you know exactly what that crypto dinner was called the crypto ball. Everyone knew what it was. And there's been tons of reports out of the event, including live streams that people were doing like, holy crap. He just launched a token. I'm not even in, and people trying to get in while they're there. So, no, they didn't have preknowledge of it. He kind of, you know, exposed the fact that he was involved in the Melania token in which they did team sniping of this. Now Dave Portnoy was not the only person that that they sent supply to of this Libra token, and, there's just a lot of lying going on. We know that the whole LA vape cabal is wrapped up in this as well. We know that there were a lot of KOLs that were surprised by this and then chased. Dave Portnoy got in, late because he wasn't gonna utilize the tokens that were sent to him and, wrecked himself on it, you know, under the guise of... Look. When you have serious players in the industry that are like, well, I launched this token. I launched that token that have billion dollar market caps still. You know, you you do tend to... Especially if you're new in this game, you tend to look around and be like, oh, okay. I'm gonna invest in that. So I'm like, I understand why Dave Portnoy invested his money. What is not cool is that, Hayden seems to have compensated himself, compensated Dave Portnoy for his loss. Well, nobody else in this game gets compensated for their losses. Anybody else in that token that got absolutely destroyed buying it after the fact like Dave did, that have, you know, a thousand, 3,000, you know, followers don't get their money back. Meanwhile, somehow, you have a $100,000,000 in liquidity. Like, hold on. This doesn't make a lot of sense because you'd... And he even admitted in Coffeezilla's video there that he did not have a lot of the token, which means that you were selling, which means that you definitely had the sniper wallets and you definitely sniped supply. And you definitely... You you also likely had a bunch allocated, which is why you had liquid supply that you sold out to get a... To rip a $100,000,000 out of liquidity pool because then he started mixing. Oh, well, I didn't take it out of the liquidity pool. I sold it. Like, dude, that's that's what that is. You're trading it with the liquidity pool for the actual liquid tokens on the other side, which in this case are either stable pairs or sole pairs. So this entire thing, I think this kid wrapped himself up, and and wants to try to... He's looking for somebody to hand it off to, and no one's gonna touch it because somebody there is dirty. And I'll be honest with you. I think he burned himself. It's very clear. He's he's, he's not that old. I don't remember
[1:35:03] Dave @DCBK2LA: how he is.
[1:35:04] Landy @CryptoLandy: He's been around... He... He's in his 20... I wanna say he's probably in his mid to late twenties. So, you know, these these players, by the way, are not new. Their father comes from the the, NGO world. Uh-huh. So they were... They had a children's fund in Africa. So if you really wanna look at the the
[1:35:25] Dave @DCBK2LA: You gotta Yeah.
[1:35:26] Landy @CryptoLandy: Go ahead and look into kidding me. Yeah. They've they've been around since 2021. They're not unknown, by the way. So there's people here who
[1:35:34] Dave @DCBK2LA: know who they are. Yeah. That's crazy, bro. This whole shit is wild. Yeah.
[1:35:39] Landy @CryptoLandy: So it... It's pretty wild in the tangled web that they've all weaved. You know, now what... What's happened because Dave Portnoy doesn't give two shits. He's a rich guy. Exactly. And he's like he's like, I'm just gonna say everything, including posting text messages. Like, you ain't fucking kidding
[1:35:57] Dave @DCBK2LA: me for
[1:35:57] Landy @CryptoLandy: this shit.
[1:35:57] Dave @DCBK2LA: You're not gonna put me on the hook for this nonsense. Like, don't send me tokens trying to set me up. Now he's sending them back to him because he knows he's trying to buy Portnoy back just to be like, no. No. Don't don't say this. Don't say that. Portnoy is not that guy.
[1:36:09] Landy @CryptoLandy: Yeah. I've I've heard rumors that he sent the... Because... So before the launch, it... I I was looking at Portnoy's wallet. He sent the tokens that that Hayden sent it back. Right? He then went and bought the token on... Basically, bought the tippy top and lost all his money. And then, I guess, while he was talking about this on stream, Hayden messaged him, like, please don't say anymore. I'll compensate you and panicked and then sent him $5,000,000 to compensate him for his loss on his trade.
[1:36:45] Dave @DCBK2LA: $5,000,000.
[1:36:45] Landy @CryptoLandy: Which, boy, I wish I had a bunch of... You know, I need $5,000,000 traded back to you
[1:36:51] Dave @DCBK2LA: for for
[1:36:52] Landy @CryptoLandy: my losses too. I didn't get in on the coin, by the way. I'm just joking. But the the fact of the matter is, at the end of the day, I I hope that Dave sends that back because by accepting that money, not knowing where it came from, you're potentially gonna tie yourself legally to this kid, and you don't wanna be tied up legally with this kid after he's running his mouth. And he he clearly is going rogue because it it... Now this has caused the entire KOL ecosystem of of grifters to absolutely shit their pants on the timeline. Yeah. And it's fucking glorious. Like, I love every eight bit of this. I'm relishing it. It is like... And it's funny because I've been in for... Dave, you know that I I go to these night shows, and they're all Solana based. Right? They're all Solana degens. And what do I talk about? Bitcoin. And they they give me a bunch of shit about it. Right? And I'm always talking about, like, you know what you probably buy some Bitcoin. You know? Like, it's always my pitch. And, yo, just wait for me to go in there in the next few nights. I'm gonna be such a piece of shit in Bitcoin, Maxi. It's gonna be glorious. J Dog knows what's up. He's been in those events too. Yeah. It's gonna be I love it.
[1:38:06] Dave @DCBK2LA: I love it. I love it. Guys, I know we're a little bit past, but I needed to hear the whole... That that whole shit. I'm gonna go listen to that Coffeezilla fucking... That Coffeezilla episode. I can't wait to go listen to it.
[1:38:15] Landy @CryptoLandy: Dude, you're you're gonna have your mind blown. He literally gives up the ghost on
[1:38:19] Dave @DCBK2LA: that shit.
[1:38:20] Landy @CryptoLandy: He fucking tells it. He says all the wrong shit, bro. Like, yo. You're giving away the secrets. People are probably freaking... They are they are punching the air. Like, you can't... Don't be saying that we snip our shit, bro. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, he goes into the liquidity pool side and, like, given this one-sided argument about how it's so tough, man.
[1:38:40] Bildo Verde @BildoVerde: Feel bad for us.
[1:38:41] Dave @DCBK2LA: I'm just trying to get in.
[1:38:43] Landy @CryptoLandy: Yeah. I
[1:38:44] Dave @DCBK2LA: know that shit is crazy. Wild. It's fucking insane. I... Guys, I appreciate you. We're ten minutes after seven right now, but, yo, this was a dope space. Guys, go check. Cool. Definitely live on his on his YouTube right now. Go check it out. Then neck, we had fucking lumbar out here. Yo. Even though the fucking snapshot for Yaps was taken, I still say round two... Like, phase two is still gonna be fucking huge. So keep cooking out here. Keep doing your thing. And, yeah, man. Lindy, I appreciate you. Cool. Thank you, Bildo. Excuse me. Appreciate you guys, man. Guys, happy Monday. Tune in tomorrow. We got another episode of ATC. I got a Hermetica Hangout tomorrow with Lior from stacking Dow as well as the adviser. These guys are cooking, man. But, yeah, appreciate all you guys coming through, and, hope everybody has a great night. Peace. Oh, don't forget to go support the YouTube and the livestream. And I... Yes. I have the hiccups right now. It is what it is. It fucking sucks, but it's fine. We did crypto magic hour today on TikTok. Now peace. For real this time.