Why Hyperliquid Is the "Gold Standard" | REKT Vision with @blocmates

Added: 2026-06-02

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[00:01:39]Happy Friday everyone and welcome to Wrecked Vision. I'm Bjan Mleki filling in for Mando and today we have a great conversation for you and we're joined by Grant from Blockmates to talk about just a bunch of things. Hyper liquid, we're going to talk privacy coins, AI agents, human longevity and just so much more.

[00:02:02]Grant, thanks for joining us. How you doing today?

[00:02:04]>> All good. All good. This is a great way to wrap up the Friday here in in Europe.

[00:02:08]So, uh yeah, thanks for having us on.

[00:02:10]>> Yeah. Well, thanks for joining us. So, I guess, you know, before we kind of get into it, um, let's talk a little bit about Blockmates, uh, because you guys are doing some pretty cool things, right? And you've been on Rect Vision before. So, why don't we just Where are you guys at these days? Any new cool updates? I think you were at Can Film Festival, if I'm not mistaken. So, tell us a little bit about what's going on with you guys.

[00:02:33]>> Yeah. Um well, first of all that I apologize to anyone who's looking at the sites because the new site should go live in a in a few weeks. But primarily just kicking on doing the same old stuff. We're covering what's happening at the forefront of this industry, what's happening in AI, and uh just trying to present the most interesting teams and opportunities for people. It's quite in the weeds, but it's all positioned to be understandable to the average person on the street, you know, but uh it would like to present as early opportunities as physically possible to people and then uh yeah, hopefully as I was mentioning before we went on air, we don't have to buy a drink every time we go to the bar at a conference.

[00:03:09]>> Yeah. No, absolutely. So, like one thing I wanted to just ask you about because you guys are so your tagline basically on BlockMates is you're the the basically the new frontier for for digital media, right? And what is like because you are you're just an operator in this space. You're someone who's been here early, you know, making just great giving great insights and just valuable information. So, how do you think about like media in this like crazy web 3 and social media landscape?

[00:03:36]Um, I think like so being completely candid, I I really started to panic when I started to see the early iterations of AI come around and then we had a few freelancers that were quite obviously using it and those articles never made it like the the light of day and then I things started like progressing and I started getting less and less worried about the kind of media landscape because I feel like anyone who's got a little bit of charisma, a little bit of personality, I think a little bit of taste, a little bit of opinion I think matters more now than ever. I think whilst everyone else is over there just trying to commoditize all content just becomes a race to the bottom. This AI slopfest just becomes so, you know, like repulsive to the average person. You can kind of spot it and have a six sense that you're reading something that slop. Someone said slop is um slop is when it's when it take less time to create the thing than it does to actually consume it. And I like really really prescribe to that. And I think the way that media is actually going is you're seeing a lot of media fall off a cliff at the minute. A lot of like media pivot. But I really really think now media couldn't be in a better position. Um particularly in this dawn of AI. Like you're looking at DBPN being acquired by Open AI. They know distribution. They know credibility.

[00:04:52]They know reputation can't just be immediately created by any AI model and they need to be able to purchase that and need to be able to buy into that. So um I was concerned. I'm increasingly bullish on media as a as a business vertical now. But uh you know things are changing every single day. But yeah, um just looking at the landscape, I'm I'm very very optimistic about where we're going. Yeah, that's a fascinating point because I remember I watched a podcast a while back with um Matt Ben Affleck and uh Matt Dame on the Joe Rogan podcast and they were talking literally about this and Ben Affleck's thesis was like basically actually it's a good I I think it's great for human creators because people are going to increasingly seek out things that are genuinely created by humans with that emotion and everything.

[00:05:34]So that's a great point you made there Graham.

[00:05:37]Yeah, I think I think events events as well in person events is going to be a people are going to long to touch grass and and go and see people. So yeah, uh quite optimistic.

[00:05:48]>> That's so true. Ral often talks about like hey you can either build a business in AI or build a business that's like the opposite where it's like based on human interaction and like increasing human experiences that people are going to seek out as we're like just living these digital lives, right? Uh crazy stuff. Um, so I want to talk about Hyperlid because this is like this is awesome. You I think you were talking about this before anyone was back in 2023. Our producer uh before we came on here joked that he didn't even know Hype was around back then. So can you just you had a great thesis and I think we're kind of seeing that play out like literally right now in real time which is crazy that you called this like three years ago at this point. So I wanted to kind of trace back to that moment like what did you see in that time? uh because Hyperlid was just so new and like I don't think it was on anyone's radar. So like what did you see and like where are you seeing uh that thesis right now?

[00:06:41]>> Uh so two two things that we look for like in early stage team. So we're very very selective of who we like to cover.

[00:06:49]It has to be new. It has to be novel. It has to be unique and people have to be thinking a little bit outside the box of how don't just do things because that's like the wellrodden path. Don't just like replicate the same old playbook.

[00:07:00]teams that I think just try and replicate things that came before it. It just it just never fails and it's this kind of euphasia roller coaster law of diminishing returns like every single like one thereafter. So the team were very very very very good. it was a lot easier to get in touch with them then and um >> the whole the product in of itself took a few early iterations if I'm being completely honest and thinking back but we at the time were we had an idea that we think general purpose block space has a space in in the industry but I I also thought that we felt like the demand for that general purpose block space was kind of hitting like a plateau, a s saturation and we thought well what's the again what's the equal and opposite reaction to that so purpose-built like um tech in mind built for a specific use case and we thought well there's a lot of stuff happening on cosmos at the time none of that necessarily took off um and then once we spoke to this team and we kind of got a picture of like where the heads are from a more like a fundamental and I wouldn't I don't know if philosophical is too strong of a word, but how are they going to go to market and how like the core ethos of like crypto ideals had relatively been abandoned and how how do you galvanize a community and like what does it actually mean to have a token and all those things just started like ticking a lot of boxes in our heads for us and like obviously the product's killer. It's like it's best-in-class product, but then that also has to match up with how you go to market and the way that you kind of conduct yourself because seen a lot of good products come market, but sometimes teams get too high on their own supply and you're also betting on founders at that point from early stage startups. Um, and I think it's played out and I I wish we could see more of that. Like I wish we could see more of teams backing themselves to give a ridiculous amount of the token supply into the market, backing themselves with taking zero or limited funding and then building from a base as opposed to defending a ridiculously highly inflated price. And I think that I think if you look at that in deal and look at that in in a like in microcosm, it's teams truly backing and believe in what they're actually building as opposed to just trying to get a quick payday. And a lot of things just were lining up. So, we were just like, "Right, we just need to need to get this thing covered." And yeah, the uh we actually got the post wrong. We we said it was a we said we'd given people early access to test net, but it actually gone mainet by the time we posted it. So, Jeff shouted at us on the timeline for that. But, um yeah, the rest is history really. And I think we've I'd say from any media company, we probably covered Hyper Good apart from probably Hyper Collective if they classify themselves as a as a media company. But we've we've been championing what those guys have been doing and will continue to do so in the future.

[00:09:54]>> Yeah, I think you guys are make have a pretty clear case of being the early champions of that. I think most people heard about it first from your guys's uh you know thesis laid out and I want to ask you about that because you know we talked about kind of the launch right and the ethos and the kind of the the the philosophy I guess if you will behind crypto and I think it is I think it's kind of a a a referendum if you will on like kind of the VC token model because the hype is like completely different than that and like we always hear about fair launches in crypto and I think that's what we like kind of expect in this space, but like that rarely happens. So, what do you think like Hyperlid did that like addressed that in the market that made it like catch on so quickly with people?

[00:10:39]I I think it's I I know we've brought it up a couple of times and touched upon it, but I think with anything similar to what Ra was saying, if if we're hurtling towards this like near future or currently living in it where everyone is totally occupied by AI and we're starting to turn into the matrix, there's always an equal and opposite reaction to be played out.

[00:11:01]think about um I don't know even down to like vegetarian movement and vegan movement there was a carnival movement like equal and opposite reactions are always kind of what were what I don't know why I'm tuned to like think about stuff like that but like what's the counterculture like where will where will the book go where will the pendulum swing and I think at the time what you seen was VCs had figured out that they could keep tokens like the the token um price discovery was happening in the private markets and the average person on the street was not invited to partake in that unless you had influence, you had access, and you had capital, right? So, what would happen there is you'd get a token come to market with, I don't know, three to maybe 10% float supply if you were lucky. Um, price discovery had already happened. You' defending this ridiculously high FTV that token was never going to amount to. And then everyone got jaded because when they were buying stuff, stuff was just sat at astronomical values and wondering why tokens were consistently going down. And everyone was referring to it at the time as like like VC coins and just you know people people were just getting battered and bruised. People got sick of it. So immediately it's like well what's the like equal and opposite reaction? What I will say is it probably went too far the other way. So I think there was two reactions.

[00:12:13]>> One of them was pumped up fun because what's because what's the what's the antithesis of like VC lowflow high FTV? It's launch a token for $2 and anyone can do it in an instant. That is the complete antithesis of it. And the and the more ethical and more like pragmatic response to it was something like hyperlquid. Build a really really good product that people want that has product market fit which is a lot harder. It's it's a lot easier said than done. But then also don't gatekeep.

[00:12:41]Allow the average person on the street to participate in the upside and allow fair and equal access. Allow to be as close to a fair launch as physically possible. like the early days of DeFi and even like the early days of I wouldn't I'd say Bitcoin's a bit too strong to be comparing it to um or quite a lot too strong to be comparing it to but the core crypto ideals with that and I think that's what is kind of like just captured a lot of people's imagination and it's like yeah this is what it's supposed to be like and like I got fair and equal access I didn't have to have influence I didn't have to be part of a fund you know so I think I think those are the two opposite reactions and I think that's played out now and I would like to see a little bit more of it. I'm starting to see a few teas with the idea. It obviously helps if you're kind of gigar- rich before doing something like this because building these things are quite expensive. Um, and I think the Hyperlid team had a very very successful market making business before this. So, um, I've seen a few try and take the fair launch route. Um, which we may get into a little bit later, but I think what Mega Reef did was pretty interesting where it was like KPI based vesting. So, nobody's going to eat unless we hit like actual tangible milestones. I think that was a step in the right direction. But, I just wish we seen a little bit more of that in the industry at times. But, you know, when it when it goes right, it it really really goes right as we can see on the Hype Liquid chart in front of us.

[00:14:01]>> Yeah, absolutely. Like just breaking through alltime highs seemingly um you know, and like Hype is Hype is what I like about them too is they're like continuing to innovate, right? So we obviously you know they're decentralized exchange so we know what that is but then they added pers right and you could start trading oil gold silver and you know doing all that we just saw them blow up and then obviously recently they came they have that deal with Coinbase and Circle which you know just essentially adds a third revenue stream to them was like super bullish in general. Now Matt Hogan of Bitwise is also really uh really liking hype right now and I just want to bring this comment to your attention. So he said, "Hyperlquid is not a crypto app. It's a super app. It's not targeting the $3 trillion crypto economy. It's targeting the $600 trillion global asset market."

[00:14:53]Now, in your thesis, is that like something you envisioned happening with like Hyperlid is like cuz that that's just so crazy to me that we can see a relatively unknown def like decentralized exchange all of a sudden become like a global player. uh you know and then we're also seeing them compete with Binance's daily volume. They're surpassing Coinbase's volume which is just absolutely wild. So I just wanted to get your your take on that.

[00:15:18]>> Yeah, I I'd love to say yeah I seen the grand vision and the thought it was going to displace all of modern finance but yeah I I don't even think I mean maybe the team had in the back of their mind that they could achieve this. you have to be kind of like delusionally bullish on what you're building, I think, at times. But yeah, like seeing it break through the break through the kind of like bubble that we're sometimes in is it's just amazing to see, you know, like the I suppose the the the head of New York Stock Exchange basically saying it's bigger than the NASDAQ and it's running on like 12 to 15 people. It's just just it's just hilarious at the same time.

[00:15:53]But um yeah, definitely didn't envision it to be this big this quickly maybe, but uh maybe some people did. I don't know.

[00:16:00]Yeah. No, definitely an a truly impressive story. Just kind of to to wrap a bow on this insane Hyperlid uh just I mean it's $65 right now. Uh and and your awesome call like where do you like what do you see the future for Hyperlid? Where do you see them going?

[00:16:17]Like do you think do you think they can compete with like you know the the big players or what what's your take on them in the next I don't know few years? Um I think so just looking at like FDV it's at what's it 62 billion FDV. I think you've got only USDC higher XRP which is 2x from here. Um yeah it's closing in on BMB which is you know like these these things can be self-fulfilling prophecies. I know they've kind of gone headto-head and um Jeff was in one of the early Binance Accelerator cohorts and the closer that gets the more that likely becomes a what what is it comes out raise are the most entertaining outcome is is the most likely I think those things become a self-fulfilling prophecy prophecy and people will probably have take profit targets as those >> uh market caps and FDVS converge. So, I don't know, man. It's it's it's one of the well, if not the most profitable business on the planet per revenue per per employee. And >> yeah, >> you know, when when sometimes in the industry is a little bit of revenue problem and you know, you've just got things that have stuck around for no apparent reason, then on paper you would expect to see it in top five, top maybe even three. But, you know, thinking too logically sometimes can get you killed, particularly in the markets. Yeah.

[00:17:43]Yeah. The way I think about it unlogically is I think like what if Bass was just an L1 and they said, you know what, uh, you know, you're buying on Coinbase, we're going to take 97% of our fees and buy back and burn base. Like, how bullish would people be on that token? Like, that's literally hype. Uh, so what better kind of how I view it.

[00:18:06]So, another thing that you've been talking about and I want to kind of get your take on the privacy stuff, right?

[00:18:13]Zcash has been blowing up. We're seeing some of the old Bitcoin like cipher funks, uh, you know, kind of moving from Bitcoin into Zcash. Maybe not all of it, but they're definitely buying a lot of Zcash, right? Winkle VI, Bellagi, all of them. Uh, Monero is obviously been in the news. What's your take on kind of this privacy narrative going on?

[00:18:32]Yeah, I I think I don't think it's too dissimilar to what we've just been talking about, right? And I think it's it's it's a few things like coming in and out at once. So, um, one I I really think the battle was won for Bitcoin. Um, and I think a lot of OGs will also subscribe to that idea that, right, what did we all used to say in 2016, 2017? It was like, oh, the the institutions are coming, they're going to buy our backs, right? All right, they're here and they've done it. So like what is the next what is the next battle? What's the next conquest? Is it is it nation states? Like cuz after that you start getting into territory that I don't really subscribe to that it becomes just like the the global currency which I think's a little bit little bit wild for my for my liking. But I think the next battle which I think is going to be much larger than anything that's came before it is privacy. And I think it's privacy of your own transactions. I do subscribe to it being a human right. And I know a lot of people say, "Well, if you got nothing to hide, like, why should privacy matter?" I don't subscribe to that whatsoever. I feel like that's a like a stupid a stupid kind of phrase and I think stupid way to think about things.

[00:19:43]Um, I think it's probably the last asset class that people could really buy into from an ideological and philosophical pursuit. And I think that harks back to very very very early days of what the industry was once about. So, so there's a few things there. Um, I think as the industry is slowly starting to get more intertwined with the traditional rails, there's going to be equal opposite push back again. Um, not to continue to look at everything through that lens, but I think that plays into it as well. And, you know, there's also a [ __ ] ton of geopolitical tension in the world and people might want to be looking for an escape patch as well. So couple of different things culminating to a point of where um yeah you're starting to see this like privacy narrative really begin to pick up and there's a few more technical but like ZK is becoming very very good now. FH is becoming very very good now. Um TE's are becoming very very good now. So like narrative is starting to align up and converge with the practicality of the underlying tech as well. So there's just a big wash of a lot of positive tailwinds I think. So and I think that's why we're seeing price respond to it as well.

[00:20:52]>> Do you see one particular privacy coin being better than another? Like for example like a Zcash like a better use to hold than like a Monero or like how do you how do you view like the I guess the the hierarchy within the privacy sector?

[00:21:09]Yeah, I think I think there was a pretty big unlock like last year maybe talking of November time with with Zcash and share the transactions and um the mobile first wallet which is really really good. Um you I'm going to say here if I say one or the other I'm going to get blasted for both sides, right?

[00:21:27]I'm not dogmatic enough to have have a a dog in any fight. um from like put my investor head on, I'd probably like to see Zcash do a little bit better, but that's only because I've got a bias because I've got a position in it. Um I think there's a lot of other like really really interesting stuff happening like midcaps and lower caps that are slowly coming online. Um so yeah, I I don't really have an opinion on the actual tech stock in and of itself and what I think price will tell you which the best tech stock is, if that makes any sense at all. Um, even even if it isn't, you're going to have people arguing in the comments all day long about uh any any opinion based on that. So, um, but yeah, we'll just have to see how it plays out. No, >> I'm with you. I'm with you. Price is the best tech stack. Just like if price lets me know which art looks the best, you know, uh, I'm there with you, man. So, one thing I wanted to ask you though, is it are you seeing kind of like or do you think like retail or like just kind of the average person average crypto holder is kind of moving into privacy? Are we mostly seeing like the big players speculators because right it's like they're moving first and then like the actual users and retail arrive later like are you seeing that happening now or is it like still kind of like an early type of adoption curve on that?

[00:22:41]>> Yeah, I think I think it's like you you tend to get a lot of flash in the pan type narratives. I think this is something bigger than that. Um this has kind of been ticking over since Q late Q3 2025 and is continuing to be one of the main stairs. So it's not kind of like flash in the pan hasn't just been ignited by one catalyst. There's a multitude of things that are contributing to this being relatively top of mind share in the industry. Um I think it's the same same old same old.

[00:23:09]It's people who stuck around in a bare market. They get the early opportunity to buy things at the lowest price possible. People will inherently buy buy in when it starts hitting the headlines and stuff like that. It's it's it's just how it always happens. like not a lot of wealth is made in bio market when you do actually stick around and figure out where the narrows and where the kind of potential industries are actually heading start trend forecasting yourself and start picking stuff up really like at the lows thinking about maybe Salana last cycle 8 to10 and things like that that's where the true meat is actually made it's not when you start seeing it all on CNN CNBC and like all these major headlines and the FD picks it up and stuff like that so um people will inherently come in do I think people care about it as much as they should?

[00:23:56]No. Um, and I think if we get onto Ethereum, I think there's probably some close parallels there as well. Um, I think it's one of those things where people don't care about it until it's too late and then they wish it did. Um, and I think because we're so close to it, we probably assume that people give more of a [ __ ] about it than But I think we just live in this echo chamber our time. spend too much time online and we're all kind of like ideologically aligned in the sense so you kind of all have the same opinions, but you take a step outside and you go and ask the average person on the street, they they have absolutely no idea. They're submitting all their data to Facebook quizzes telling them which Disney character they're going to be and like Cambridge Analytica breeding down the neck and know absolutely everything about you. So, uh yeah, it's one of those things where the average person has absolutely no idea what they're giving over day to day and they probably don't care. So, let's do that.

[00:24:47]>> Yeah. I mean, I think even like the average person within crypto barely cares about their security until like they get a scare. So, like I can't imagine they would care about their privacy until like it actually directly impacts them. Uh yeah. Uh so you touched on it. I want to move to ETH, right? ETH has just been real. They've really been in the news, right? From the brain drain narrative to uh Vitalic sci-fi novel.

[00:25:10]Like what's going on in ETH right now?

[00:25:13]Grant, talk to me here.

[00:25:15]This one, this one pains me more than anything because um I hate being overly critical about it because I've I really wanted it to succeed. I think it could have been like one of the greatest public goods to humanity ever invented and I think I truly really stand by that. Um I just think um I think it's been a long time in existence now. I think there's been a lot of ideas around where they want to go and it's fine to pivot. it's completely fine to pivot.

[00:25:44]But if you're gonna execute at speed as at the same rate as which you're pivoting, that's completely fine. I think they've been dragged into a throughput conversation with Salana and other highly performing pragmatic chains which which they're never going to win.

[00:25:58]Unfortunately, they're never going to win. They should be stuck to single hydological pursuit. They maximally decentralized chain. Don't get drawn into other kind of situations. people would be actually I I I I think people would actually subscribe to the fact that if it was just going to stay as it was for the longest period of time and they knew what was actually coming without without this flip-flopping of ideas and change in leadership and just lack of overall direction. This isn't 2016 2017 where people are just having a go anymore. They've got the likes of Tempo which is backed by Stripe and has been porting some of the Ethereum like lead Ethereum researchers and it's got all the distribution of stripe and it's got $500 million behind it and paradigm involved and you got Salana which is hyper hyper hyper organized and hyper competitor then likes a hyper liquid. So the industry's like thought well it's good but it's not pragmatic for the use cases that there is actually demand for.

[00:26:54]So it creates a situation where it's all well and good having a road map to 2030, but are you going to be relevant relevant enough into that time where people actually give a [ __ ] And and if I'm being really critical, if you got a road map to 2030 and if you keep selling your treasury at the rate you're going to go, you're going to run out of funds by 2027, right? So how does that work? I know there's a lot more people that contribute to like the enablement and the financing of to maintain the network, but I don't know. you're sending mixed signals to the market there. So, you can't expect to be able to keep people interested for a long enough time to see your ide ideological pursuit actually become a reality. And I also don't like the fact that they've they've basically done everything they can not to promote what happened in the DeFi sector, which basically put them on the map. Um there's been a lot of kind of anything that hasn't been financed is has relatively been pursued, but like if we're talking about it correctly, they I don't think people give a [ __ ] Like what are these what are these what are these networks good for? They're good for financial primitives. They're good for new new opportunities on chain.

[00:28:02]They're good for giving the average person on the street, no matter where they're from, permissionless access to financial instruments that they've never ever ever in their wildest dreams thought they could get access to. That is the bread and butter of the industry.

[00:28:13]Everything else can be built from that as a base. That's fine. But get that [ __ ] sorted first and lean into that and use that as your distribution mechanism and then go and do all the artistic pursuits and the social and everything else. That can be like that's downstream of that. But I think I think you need to get like the house in order with the finance >> um in D5 first and then build from there. But it re it just annoys me because I wanted to see I want to do well more than anything really in the industry. It's kind of what got me really really interested in DeFi. It's what made me kind of leave what I was supposed to do from a regular career perspective to go and pursue what was happening in DeFi. And then just seeing how they've kind of like dropped the ball and lack of leadership is uh yeah just just frustrating more than anything else I think.

[00:28:58]>> So a quick break in your regular programming. If you're serious about your future, grab my free report called Prepare for 2030. I think you've got 5 years to make as much money as possible and this guide will help you navigate what's coming. The link is in the description. Download it now. Do you think the decentraliz decentralized nature of ETH is actually hurting it in that aspect? Because you did mention like Salana and how they're like very organized. I feel like that's a product of Salana being like, you know, a centralized, right? They have a they have a clear board. They have a clear leadership hierarchy and that's driving the ship. Whereas ETH, yeah, like Vitalic there, but like how much is like that really impacting it? So I just curious on your thoughts on that. Yeah, that's that's a really good point because when when people say it's like when people say it's a distributed system and like there's there's nothing like Ethereum, right? When it comes to the the the bare metal hardware and people running Ethereum globally, right?

[00:29:59]Um I think the push back on Salana being uh insufficiently decentralized from a hardware perspective is is a bit poor to be honest. But then when you come down to like who's steering the ship, who has the grand vision, what is the north star, and who's actually making sure that it gets executed against. If you put them side by side, it's night and day. Like it it really is night and day.

[00:30:20]And not to say that some of the Ethereum researchers aren't doing great work.

[00:30:23]They're probably some of the smartest people on the planet working on some of the most technical concepts known to man. Um, but putting that to use is also equally as important and getting that to market is also equally as important and making sure people give a [ __ ] or making sure it actually just falls on people's radar is also equally important. So, it feels like um a battle of a team from yesterday year where the vast majority of people's mind and attention, the reason why they were in the industry was brought around from an ideological pursuit where we're now in this, oh, the tech actually works. what can it be used for? So, you've got this like ideology versus pragmatism battle going on and the market's shown you which one it prefers and it's a healthy ideological pursuit >> unfortunately.

[00:31:11]>> Yeah. I think a lot of us, you know, kind of want ETH to do well. I think there's a lot of us, especially those people that got in in 2017 or even like, you know, right around the COVID time. I think a lot of people were buying ETH over Bitcoin because they saw the the the ROI on ETH over Bitcoin. So, a lot of us hold it near and dear. So, yeah, I'm with you on that. Um, so I want to pivot to little AI talk, right? Because this is obviously like all the narrative. I feel like every every time on my timeline, I see like some post about uh Claude just made this job obsolete. Claude in YouTube this, you know, this and that, right? There's so many posts just going on. So, it's obviously everywhere. But before we do that, I just want to get your quick take on Near Protocol. Uh because Jamie Coots, uh Real Vision crypto an chief crypto analyst has been talking about Near a lot. They had a really big pump up and I feel like it might be I don't really know what they do to be completely honest with you, but I feel like they might be like the L1 that is I guess closely most closely related to the AI space, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on it.

[00:32:19]Yeah, I mean Nia's been around for a while and I'm just pulling up Coin Gecko to just check what I'm about to say is correct. So I think what's interesting about NIA is they've got they've got two products that are probably the most two underrated products in the full industry and one of them is Near Intents. So being able to basically be anywhere and tap into any asset and the the user experience is absolutely fantastic. And there's very very trust minimized security assumptions and it's just a fantastic product for like quite a big problem in the industry which is crypto UX and moving around on chain that that goes unnoticed and the revenue on that thing is absolutely nuts if that's a thing that got you going. Um then the confidential transactions which have just basically rolled out that just went under the radar. I don't know what happened that day but you know where there's like a quite a heavy news day and someone's went with an announcement and it just gets washed.

[00:33:14]>> Then I didn't say anything else from that but I was just like that is huge.

[00:33:16]like that's that's that's massive. But maybe at the same time it's like well the market's not really paying attention. It's probably opportunity.

[00:33:23]But I think that's why you're seeing this price appreciation in it. One other thing and I'd have to like 100% check this but um from what I'm seeing on the block explorer, it looks like it's fully fully vested.

[00:33:38]>> So no kind of got this big unlock coming. It's like who's who's where's it going? Who's who's going to get hold of it? like um so yeah, there's a few things there. There's there's obviously the strong continent with AI. They do a [ __ ] ton of work in that space and they're like really really really really really strong team. Um, so yeah, I think it's again it's one of those things where it's capturing a lot of different tailwinds at the same time. And anytime where you've got probably one tailwind, it's just like a little bit more difficult to purchase and you're kind of thinking, well, if that invalid in invalidation happens and it's like it's kind of dead in the water, but it's got a lot of good things going for it at the same time. And I think in a time where people are just sick of this supply overhang as well, it's, you know, looks quite appealing for a lot of people. And I think any liquid funds very very easily justifiable if you want to go and purchase some near in the open market I think.

[00:34:31]>> Yeah. So yeah, let's move on to AI, right? AI agents. Let's let's talk about first of all, are you using any agents in in what you do or like how how are you thinking about that?

[00:34:44]>> Yeah, I keep I keep flitting between codes. So, I'm basically run everything out my terminal and then it keeps getting like noticeably rubbish from time to time. Uh, and then they've obviously just pushed 4.8.

[00:34:57]>> Yeah.

[00:34:57]>> Um, Codeex I've been playing around with from OpenAI, which is really really good. Um, we joke internally that whenever Chad goes down, people might as well have a day off. So, no, no one knows how to send an email anymore. But, yeah. Yeah, very much in the weeds. We've got a few products coming out uh over the coming weeks where 12 months ago it would have been just way too costly to actually build or >> getting your idea across to someone who could actually build them would have just been like pulling teeth and you never get your actual vision down onto the page when it's kind of getting lost in translations to certain people. So I think it's one of the most exciting times to even just if you can think it you can build it now. I think it's you know it's just a amazing time for particularly if you just got a lot of ideas and you want to get them out to the world.

[00:35:40]>> Yeah absolutely. Ralph also jokes about like he knows when when Claude is about to push out a new model because absolutely nuke his uh the old like mess up the memory and everything. So >> So Anthropic also like they just I mean it feels like every day is like their their valuation ising. They're going to they're going to obviously they're going to break a trillion. It's just a matter of like when uh which is probably very soon. Open AI same thing. SpaceX like same thing. They're probably going to there's talks about them, you know, combining with Tesla and everything. So, lot just a lot going on. What do you think? Because I have this theory and I don't know like how how valid it is, but I have this theory that retail is going to get wrecked on these IPOs, but like I just wanted to hear like how you think about like all of these like insane valuations that are that are coming to market.

[00:36:32]>> Yeah, I I I kind of agree unfortunately.

[00:36:35]Um it's so why are these valuations happening and why are teams staying private for much longer and not having to go for the headache of having to go public. So there's more and more access to private capital than ever. Like Stripe Stripe have got it good, right? Stripe basically invite private investors in and they say to their employees and people on the board, do you want to sell any secondaries? So do you want to sell any of your options and shares? There's people lining up around the block to just buy that off them and get exposure.

[00:37:06]So, they don't necessarily need to go public because they've got infinite access to private cash. Now, anyone in the right mind who's got a mandate or a fund to actually allocate to anthropic, I seen a house listing in SF the other day that was willing to take exposure to anthropic instead of cash. Like, this is this is the state we're in. I think it was like 8 million or some [ __ ] And um same for Open AI. They've got infinite access to private cash and anyone I think Elon's just got an infinite money printer and could raise money in any situation. Doesn't really matter what's happening. So that's just driving private market valuations as high as possible until it becomes untenable for that private cash to actually picture actually getting a return on investment.

[00:37:46]You got to remember Nvidia is set at about 5 trillion. So there is still some upside if people think this going to play out. But the question is then is where are we in the cycle? So, do you really want to be going to allocate because you got to be putting minimill size in at a trillion dollar valuation if you wanted to decent return compared to I don't know going a little bit higher up the stack and looking at some consumer stuff and you know maybe defense tech or robotics and there's a couple of other shiny narratives that come in quantum like photonics like all this other stuff. Um I think I don't want to be uh I don't want to be a doomer about this. I think they're running out of people that are willing to give them money in the private markets and once once that does run dry, retailer stupid is the is the is the thought. And like who wouldn't want to get access to OpenAI um when all they do is create like dog pictures of themselves or know >> like using GBT image gen or they've created their first application on GLA and yeah and and Elon's got this kind of like cult like like religious like following behind him. So he can take anything public and people want exposure to it. So I think it might be quite scary when and I a huge liquidity suck when when these things start going live.

[00:39:07]I don't know and I don't know if you have any thoughts on this. Does it with OpenAI and Anthropic? Does it benefit you to go first or second?

[00:39:15]>> Like who's going to who's going to jump who's going to jump first cuz cuz um SpaceX are obviously going to go first and God knows what Elon's up to. out of those two, I I don't really know. Like, do you go first and if it turns [ __ ] then you've kind of put your competitor off going public. I I don't really know.

[00:39:32]There's a lot of game theory behind it.

[00:39:34]>> I see the pros and cons to it, right?

[00:39:35]Cuz like what if Open AI goes second, for example, and they don't match what Anthropic did, then they're going to look pretty bad. Uh and and vice versa.

[00:39:44]Uh so, I don't know, honestly. But I do have another theory that I think Elon Elon's a crazy guy, right? He is he's wild. He's unhinged. You cannot predict him at all. But I have a feeling, and again, it's just a theory, just, you know, a crazy tinfoil theory. But I have a my theory is that he's going to do whatever he can to spoil Open AI's IPO.

[00:40:05]Whether that's like time is SpaceX IPO around them, he might have spies like figuring out when they're going. I just have a feeling he's going to do that. So Open AI, I don't know. But uh if I were anthropic, I just think like I've got I'm clear like I'm doing my own thing. I think they are leading the space. So, I think for them to go first or second, I don't think they'd really care.

[00:40:26]>> Yeah. But it's going to be wild. It's going to be uh it' be worth doing a live stream as these things go live because it's uh it's it's literally it's lit literally history, isn't it? So, >> it truly is like we are literally at the precipice like we're at the beginning of history being created. Ralph often says like he just said something on his episode yesterday that kind of blew my mind. and he just said AI is the greatest technology that humanity will ever create and it's the last technology that humanity will ever create.

[00:40:52]>> And I'm just like, dude, that's so crazy.

[00:40:57]>> Equal parts excited and equal parts terrified.

[00:41:00]>> Yeah.

[00:41:01]>> Yeah. Cuz this whole thesis is like, you know, on the agentic economy, which I think is like is very valid, right? And I think it's I I can absolutely see happen, you know, just myself playing around with agents. I'm DCAing Salana with my through my open claw right now.

[00:41:15]I gave it a Phantom wallet and it's doing its thing. Um, how do you view like the agentic economy? Do you think like do you think it's actually going to happen? Do you think there's this other argument I'm sorry to go off on a tangent here, but I was just in a heated debate in our Discord earlier, but there's this argument that the AI agents are essentially going to just create their own chain so that the existing chains right now don't matter. But like my thing is like that's literally not what they do. like it's it's the human operator that's controlling it. Uh they're going to go the path of least resistance and with infrastructure already built. But anyway, I digress.

[00:41:48]What is like what's your take on the the overall agentic economy? Yeah, I think um I think payments in the early stages have been completely disrupted. And I think we're going to look back in maybe 5 to 10 years and and think about whenever you used to pay for something online and you have to pull out your card even if it's saved in Apple Pay or Google Pay and then you have to put a number in and what you want me to sign up for a year or a month. Well, I just want to use I just want to pay as a go for any subscription service and I and I think everything's going to be completely headless. So, everyone's going to be operating out of their chat interface of choice, whether that's Telegram, WhatsApp, CH GBT interface, cloud interface. Um, everything will be done via chat and it's just going to be pinging APIs. It's going to be pinging web hooks. Um, and I think the idea of paying for something per month or annually is going to be gone. I think it's going to be pay per use. It's going to be microtransactions. I think what you're seeing with X42 and MPPP from Tempo and things like that, that's only going to that's only going to continue to explode and and businesses that do um enable that and allow for that, the earlier the better. And I think it just hits an impaction point where everyone has to continue to cave. Maybe like the the mom and pop shops on the street never get there. But for things where it's a SAS product where you can effective like how how many subscriptions you pay for now where it's just like I can't remember the last time I opened that app. That is not a great business model where you're relying on people forgetting that they've got a subscription.

[00:43:14]>> You should have actual demand and I and I think um agents just pinging APIs and then getting a microtransaction and that's how you pay for certain things. I think that's probably what the future look like.

[00:43:25]>> I think you're spot on, right? Sam Alman even just said said as much himself actually kind of recently. He like he was saying he envisions a world where um AI or intelligence is like electricity where you just pay for it on a on a meter based on what you're using. Uh that's absolutely going to happen because well first of all you like I use openclaw, right? So I can't connect it through my anthropic uh or my claude account. They they just they remove that. But I use the API like all the time. So and I'm paying for it. It racks up at cost. But like that is absolutely the world we're going to and hopefully they can get those costs down.

[00:44:01]>> Yeah, we I hope it's not just being I know it's being subsidized but I hope it's like not to the point where it's just completely unaffordable to to access them. But cuz that would be, you know, that'd be devastating until the cost of inference actually comes down and, you know, the GPU bottleneck is actually solved and, you know, the electricity bottleneck is also solved.

[00:44:23]Like where are you getting the power for these things? It's not just Nvidia, you know, priced out till 2028 to get their GPUs into people's hands. It's also where you get the electricity to actually, you know, fund these giga centers and stuff like that.

[00:44:36]>> Yeah. I know. It's kind of going going back to your your little joke about, you know, when it's down, you could just take a day off. Like that they don't solve that. People are even taking days off left and right. So, >> you're right.

[00:44:49]>> So, last question on this. Uh, this is a selfish question. Uh, what do you think I should should I switch to Hermes or should I stick with Open Claw? You are you like involved in that? Like what's your like have you have you d dove into those much if at all or are you like more focused on like kind of the claude and like how those like within anthropics claude how those agents are being used?

[00:45:11]>> Yeah. Um so it played around for a long the longest time with open claw and um quite amazing really like what got built and people kind of like um collaborating on this open source product to actually get it to market. I think Hermes is fantastic and I think the news team are some of the smartest people I've ever met and um I think what they're doing is like utterly brilliant and I'd love to find somewhere to get exposure to to what what they're actually doing. Um I don't necessarily have a preference. I think they're probably different horses for different courses. what I prefer um just having a little bit more configurability by just being able to run everything from my terminal and my command line and tapping into anything that I need to from there. Um, with the way that even the mobile interface for for claud is actually going now and for codex, anything that I was kind of wanting to use with open claw or anything I was kind of wanting to use like schedules scheduled updates like basically chron jobs and basically being able to have stuff run while I wasn't wasn't at the desk and anything I was really using open open core for was finding I was spending way more time trying to debug it and then as I said as I say OpenAI and Anthropic and just turn on features overnight and basically that was like the the core principles of why I was actually using it. So it became kind of like redundant to the point of am I spending more time trying to fix this than and what am I actually getting out of getting out of using it in this setup and then again I've just defaulted back to using kind of like chord from my phone connected into connected into cord or core work and run it that way really.

[00:46:57]Yeah, I think that's a great that's actually a great way to go about it because I I literally I haven't updated my open claw in like the la like from three updates ago because every time I update it because they release an update like every day and time to update it, it breaks. Uh and then like you said, I'm spending like 30 minutes like debugging it and you know troubleshooting things before I get actually get to my task and at that point I'm like I'm fired. I don't want to do this.

[00:47:20]>> You just wasted half the day.

[00:47:22]>> Yeah, exactly.

[00:47:24]Uh so let's pivot you know because uh AI right is obviously it it can help with a lot of things not just like your finances and you made uh you you made a statement that I've also made in the past and I want to talk to you about it cuz I want to see how like how like how much do you actually believe this is going to happen cuz I'm firmly of the opinion that this is going to happen in our lifetime. So for anyone that doesn't know what we're talking about uh it's that basically humans are going to live to 150 years old. Um, Brent, how serious, like how serious do you think that is and how soon do you think we could see that?

[00:47:59]>> Um, I think anyone under 40 should be taking their health and fitness as seriously as physically possible. And that's not to say um go full Brian Johnson because I think there's I think there is also some merit to being able to unwind and have really good social experiences and maybe some certain things that he tells you basically not to do. I still think there's some un probably unempirical evidence that would counteract basically what he's saying.

[00:48:33]Um, so I'm I'm I'm was supposed to actually go into cancer research and do a PhD and got drawn into blockmat and built that from built that from an academic standpoint. So everything that we were looking at back then was pushing towards personalized medicine. So can like carti therapy is a is a pretty interesting um cancer personalized cancer therapy where you're basically taking out um the cells the cancerous cells that are in your body and then um engineering antibodies that are specific to that type of cancer because it's completely different in in each individual case not just each individual cancer subset.

[00:49:13]expanding that up in a lab so you've got a infinite amount of antibodies against that specific cancer then reinjecting it back in. So um that's a we're going to probably look back in five 10 years time and think why are we doing one size fits all treatment >> because that's not the case. Um and I know you use different combinations of certain drugs to target certain diseases and it increases the uh brings down the mortality ratio and stuff like that but it's stupid. It's obviously something that needs to be solved at scale. Um there's a lot of bottleneck in manufacturing and safety issues. I I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but I think regulation in the next 5 10 years is going to cause more deaths than it's actually going to save people. Um the way that we're moving with these models and it's all it's all linear information like DNA and RNA are very well mapped. It's very easy. It's very predictable. You've got protein models and like mapping out basically any form of protein. It's basically a collection of four different uh nucleotides, right?

[00:50:15]So anthropic claude mythos all all these new insane models that are coming online very very very capable of figuring that [ __ ] out. Um so being hampered by regulation and over bureaucracy when there's personalized medicine getting performed probably without jurisdiction of certain governments uh and it's working. Um you seen the guy who he was out in Australia. his dog had this really really strong malignant cancer and he he sequenced the DNA of the cancer then grew up antibodies in the lab and then reinjected and the dog went into remission after being um like just just full remission you know it's available it just needs pursuing and there's a lot of money funding at thrown at it but so if you can kind of bring down all cause mortality by implementing personalized medicines and people just generally understanding how to look after themselves on a personal these kind of like blanket statements of you should do this, you shouldn't do this is totally stupid. It's everyone's body and everyone's genetic code is completely different and the way that it's being exposed to the environment over the course of their lifetime is also just completely throws everything off from an epigenetic standpoint. So I think people understanding what's going on inside their body from like a genetic level but also not giving too much of your information away to the likes of open AI and anthropic. Maybe some local models are probably probably a better use case for that.

[00:51:43]>> Um so yeah I think I genuinely think we'll get there. It's just entropy at the end of the day. It's it's a disease.

[00:51:49]It's just it's an inevitable disease but it can be slowed you know. Um, so yeah, I I genuinely think like just pay a little bit closer attention to your body and like look after yourself from a health and fitness standpoint and you never know what's going to like what the unlocks are around the corner. I think >> Yeah. Oh my god, that's like that is like so fascinating to think about. And like I love your DNA point too because um >> listen, if they were able to bring back the direwolf and like >> those are holy mammoth with like very limited DNA like they they can figure this out. I think that's that's that's my that's one of my base cases.

[00:52:31]You're literally bringing uh the direwolves and woolly mama spark.

[00:52:36]I'm sure pretty sure we can sequence some pet people's like inversive diseases and figure out like uh the right engineered antibodies against them, you know.

[00:52:44]>> Absolutely. We can add Yeah, we can add an extra 50 years to our lifespan or you know 75 like we've just brought back thousands of years old extinct animals.

[00:52:53]out.

[00:52:56]>> It doesn't it doesn't stop uh um bungee cord accidents or it doesn't stop jumping out of an airplane. Like those those are risk factors that it's probably never going to be able to out compete, >> right?

[00:53:08]Yeah. Yeah. Craziness can't uh can't be controlled. Uh so so Graham before I let you go here uh just want to just you know kind of get your your thoughts on where like kind of your future your future vision for the crypto market AI just like all this intersection that we're within because like crypto AI has so much crossover uh it seems like a natural fit. um want to throw in and bake in another question here because like some people are of the opinion that maybe AI and crypto isn't a natural adoption and that AI can just like you know use a PayPal or something like that. But anyway, I want to get your your take on just where we're going in this world.

[00:53:47]>> I think it's uh it's one of the most synergistic technologies and running in parallel that has ever been invented.

[00:53:56]And it kind of feels weird to say that the probably the next 100 million users that are operating particularly on chain are definitely going to be agents as opposed to the new cohort of humans. I think you're relatively close to the last seal and particularly from speculators perspective maybe payments changes that but I think the next wave of people is not actually people and I think it's you know I think it's agents and I think programmable money particularly at a stable coin level is very very very very interesting. Um, I think with what we were saying about X42 and MPPP and patient link payments, I think that's very very very interesting.

[00:54:30]Um, it goes hand in glove in my opinion.

[00:54:32]I don't get the I don't get the opposite opinion. Um, from what I I have seen them. I just I just don't subscribe to it.

[00:54:39]>> Yeah, I'm with you. Uh, so for those of you that was arguing within the Discord, Grant with me, you guys are wrong.

[00:54:47]>> So Grant, where uh where can we check out what you guys are doing next? I know you guys have a bunch of things coming.

[00:54:53]We we mentioned like a new website's coming as well. Like what's where can we find out more and follow along with uh some of the cool stuff you guys will be coming out with?

[00:55:03]>> Yeah, I' I'd really just if you want to see what's going on at the forefront of the industry like the earliest access to teams. I mean the hyperlid one has obviously been is obviously a gold standard of covering a team three years ago and then and then they blow up. But there's uh there's a lot more where that came from. Like we've got previous of covering some read really really early teams and they wouldn't be on there if we didn't like truly think they were legit, you know. So we're fully boot shop so we have all editorial control of what goes out. So there's no pressure from external investors to cover this, cover that. It's like if we don't think it's good, it's not going on now. Um so yeah, just I'd put notifications on the BlockMates account just for now until then and you'll see when the new site goes live and that's going to be a little bit more all sing and all dancing because the current one's horrible if I'm completely honest.

[00:55:48]Um, but yeah, that's probably the best like place to actually find everything that's going on because everything gets distributed for them.

[00:55:54]>> Absolutely. Well, thank you, Grant.

[00:55:56]Well, the block, look, the block mates PFP, we have it right here on the screen. The blockmates PFP is clean, though. So, we guys are doing something good there on the design standpoint. Uh, Grant, it's been an absolute pleasure.

[00:56:07]Thank you so much for joining us on Rec Vision. We hope to have you back again soon. You've been awesome.

[00:56:12]>> Anytime. Anytime. Thanks very much.

[00:56:14]>> Thanks everyone for joining us. This has been another episode of Rect Vision. And actually before we go, we've been talking about AI. Check out the RV website. We just released some new AI features, including RV Cipher, uh which is uh the former Ask AI co-pilot, and we released Pulse, which does an AI summary of everything that's going on on the website. And also Ralbot and Andreas Bot coming. Well, Robot's already out.

[00:56:42]Andreas Bot coming soon. Thanks again everyone for tuning in. We will catch you next week.

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