Why Gen Z Will Turn Everything Into a Market | Threadguy

David:
[0:02] ThreadGuy, welcome to Bankless.

Threadguy:
[0:04] Thanks, man. I'm excited to be here. How are you?

David:
[0:07] Really good. Really, really good. I'm excited for this conversation, mainly because I think you have probably the largest audience that is also the most non-overlapping with ours, with mine here at Bankless. And I want to learn a little bit more about what's going on over there. Maybe to get that started, ThreadGuy is what you are known as. That's your pseudonym. I don't even know if people know your actual name.

Threadguy:
[0:30] Michael at Stocks, if you want to call him Michael.

David:
[0:32] Okay, it's Michael. Nice to meet you, Michael. Likewise. I've only ever known you as Thread Guy. Would.

Threadguy:
[0:36] It be fair to call

David:
[0:37] You the Gen Z face of crypto?

Threadguy:
[0:40] I will take it with a smile on my face. I will absolutely take it. Yeah.

David:
[0:45] Something that I watched slowly happened in 2021 was there was a lot of people

David:
[0:51] that came into the industry that like cared about different things than like what we were expecting. We as being like, there was really only like Bitcoin and Ethereum back then. And that kind of has slowly manifested into its own like pillar of the whole entire crypto industry. And it's really centered around like a new generation of crypto entrance, crypto market participants that have like a very strong like Gen Z. It's like very Gen Z coded. Very, very, I'm guessing that's when you more or less came into the industry around 2020 and 2021. So I have.

Threadguy:
[1:25] A lot of perspective on this that I, as time goes on, I realize not everyone came in at the same, you know, people here for different reasons. Not everyone understands my side of the world the way I understand it. But I came here in 2020 for Topshop to trade Topshop NFTs on the Flow blockchain because I was in the internet reselling game. And the hottest game in town was sports cards. For all, basically the whole summer into early fall of 2020, sports cards were the game. Hottest game in town. I should have been buying Bitcoin, trading crypto. I didn't even know it existed. Yeah. And the sports cards community was up in arms over these fucking top shots. NFTs are stupid. They're not real. They're not real cardboard. They're real connoisseurs.

Threadguy:
[2:13] And I'm like, man, everyone's so angry and upset about these top shots. I should go buy a couple. And, you know, one thing leads to the next, and next thing you know, you're buying Bored Apes, and you're in the NFT scene full-fledged. But I wasn't here in 2017. I wasn't here in the early, early days of crypto. But I think 2021 with NFTs, And then 2024 with Solana meme coins were the two periods of hyper growth on chain of people that were coming like exclusively to trade. They weren't really necessarily here for the cypherpunk ethos or for stable coins or decentralization. They were here to trade. And it's kind of like an interesting development, I think, that's happened amongst crypto.

David:
[2:57] Yeah, I think maybe listeners are like gearing up. It's like, oh, okay, this is going to be a conversation, a cultural conversation about how crypto is leaning into just like the casino and like the financial lives. And I don't really think that's what the conversation is I want to have. I want to have the conversation about like what Gen Z is like naturally disposed to and what parts of crypto that resonates with the most. And I think part of this might be every single generation is more online than the previous, but also the important factor here is COVID. Like COVID happened to Gen Z at an earlier stage in their life. I think it was like 25 or 26 or something. Yeah, you were in high school.

Threadguy:
[3:36] Yeah, high school. I was 18, yeah, in 2020.

David:
[3:39] To what degree do you think like COVID –, like shepherded it in gen z into like the online trading culture.

Threadguy:
[3:46] So i think covid accelerated timelines significantly yeah but to understand there is this i this is kind of the internet i grew up on there's this group of now it probably skews younger but this like zoomer cohort people who are like 18 to 25 now in the heyday of what I call like sneaker reselling Twitter.

Threadguy:
[4:13] 2015, 2016, 2017 into like all of the Yeezy Kanye hype into all of the like off-white Virgil hype and then blow off the top of the COVID is I think this is one of the first generations around my general age demographic that has grown up trading things on the internet that has grown up like in in your like i'm 14 going home from high school early my freshman year high school to like bought supreme and flip supreme right during like study hall and so there's this whole generation of of kids that for the first time were exposed to these like niche cultural markets in a way to make money out of the system, right? Like when I was, sneaker Twitter was the first time you find, you know, there's a 15 year old kid that like coded some sneaker bot is making a hundred K a month. And it's like, whoa, you can make a hundred K a month. I mean, you can make 10, you can make five K a month on the internet, right? I remember the first time I bought a Supreme Box logo, CDG Supreme Box logo

Threadguy:
[5:14] t-shirt for $59 retail and sold it for $4.50. And it was like my world shattered. And so I think a foundational, level setting concept is that

Threadguy:
[5:26] My generation and then everyone that comes after us grows up in a world where it is standard to make money out of the system in weird niche ways that your parents don't understand, that your aunts, your uncles, your family doesn't understand on the internet amongst these Discord, Twitter, like niche communities. And so I think that prior experience set the stage to be able to see something like NFTs and be like, oh, I get this. Or to be able to see meme coins in 2024 and be like, oh, I get this. And then you can work backwards on crypto ideology and why blockchain, decentralization, self-sovereignty, why all of this matters. And so I think there's this whole generation that's working backwards to what you probably have to work forwards to on some of the cultural NFT meme coin stuff.

David:
[6:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of what you said is like the learning to make money on like the margins of society on the internet, like not getting a job, not doing the standard thing, not going to college and like learning to make money on the internet. All of the examples that you say that you gave, I noticed were all like cultural stuff. Like, because like one of the classic early examples that is very similar that I was used to hearing is, oh, some kid just like coded up a trading bot or an MEV bot and made a bunch of money. Those are the stories I was used to hearing. But the stories you gave are like sneakers and other things of that. It's very like culturally relevant items. Am I reading into that too far or do you think that's accurate?

Threadguy:
[6:56] No, it's 100%. And one, just because I had this guy not washed, is his name. He's a pretty goaded on-chain trader on the stream the other day. And we spent the whole time talking. He was a big sneaker guy. So it's like fresh in my mind. One of the hottest games in town, 2020, when we were in lockdown was there's legitimate group of people that made seven, eight figures and retired off PS5s. Remember when you couldn't get a PS5 and it was selling for $1,200? Like that was the PS5s and Xbox consoles was the best game in town for like 12 months if you weren't trading crypto. And so 100%, it's same game reskinned. And I think it, you know, I don't know how deep we're going with the long degeneracy stuff. I have some takes on that, but I think on a baseline, basically looking at an entire world that is like conditioned to trade, that is conditioned to participate in speculation games, is conditioned to like make money on the internet. And it bodes really well for, you know, an open permissionless, borderless global capital market, i.e. crypto.

David:
[7:56] Why conditioned? What can, because like, I don't know if I ever,

David:
[8:00] as I'm like a younger millennial, so I see a little bit of Gen Z in me. Ryan, my co-host, he's like older millennial. He's like where there's a little bit of Gen X in hand. But I don't think I ever would feel like I got conditioned to trade anything. I'm also a shit trader, so there's that. But what do you mean about why was Gen Z conditioned?

Threadguy:
[8:20] Maybe a better word than conditioned is familiar. I think familiar is a better way to phrase it where, you know, well, We always talk about onboarding and crypto. How do you onboard the masses? How do you onboard retail? Is it flipping listing prices on OpenSea to US dollars instead of ETH? Is that going to onboard? What's going to onboard the people? And at least in my head, the greatest onboarding story that's ever happened is some friend of yours that's dumber than you, got a worse score on his SAT and makes less than you at his job, just made like $10,000 on crypto or just flipped a pair of sneakers for $1,000 or just sold some NFT whitelist mint for $25,000 and you're like, I can do that. That to me is the greatest story you could ever tell to onboard someone into a financial market. It's like, why did everyone start trading stocks for the first time? It's probably because you heard some friend of yours or your dad or your uncle was making money. And so I think,

Threadguy:
[9:19] As time has gone on,

Threadguy:
[9:20] Like, I don't know about most, but many people have now had like a touch point with someone they know well making money outside of the system in some obscure way on the internet. And so the story starts to become familiar. Like, okay, this is a thing that happens. It's not crazy. And as time goes on, I'm hearing more of similar situations than I'm hearing less.

David:
[9:46] Hmm there's a take that i heard from we used to work with her kyla scanlon she's now kind of like pretty famous in just like kind of like gen z tiktok finance econ like pretty like well researched, yeah yeah yeah yeah her broad strokes of just like what gen z's relationship with finances is that like they tend to bifurcate into two camps one uh it looks at like ai and how bad of a deal college is and is like I don't know what to invest my career into so I'm going to do something that's timeless I'm going to become like a mechanic and an electrician a plumber no college no debt professions that are just super safe and they are they're the stability seeking Gen Z and then there's a flip side of things which is like the Gen Z is going after the lottery ticket like the hyper gambling in hopes of like escaping the permanent underclass and I wonder to what degree like some of the fact that just like the normal ways feel so much like a bad deal is really encouraging of people of Gen Z like looking elsewhere to make money. And that's just the opportunities elsewhere are just like way greener pastures than doing the normal thing, which is take that and go to college.

Threadguy:
[11:00] What I'll say on this is I, again, the long degeneracy stuff, we can go as deep as we want. I reject doomerism at all costs. And I'm really...

Threadguy:
[11:11] Almost refusing to accept this. Like, I hate this narrative that gets pushed on make it in finite amount of time or be stuck in a permanent class for the rest of your life. The reason I hate that is because one, I haven't made it in finite amount of time. And two is like, man, I'm young. I want to have kids one day, right? I would like to think that, I don't know if you have kids, but I'm sure if you don't or you do, you would like to have kids someday. I'm sure you would want a future for your child that is like, okay, he can get to 18. She can get to 18, live a good life, make money, get a career, be excited to live in this world. And so from that perspective, I reject the one year, this cycle, the last cycle, the last leg up. But I will say, that I fall into the ladder camp a little bit, which is like, I was a hustler in high school and middle school. I always had some weird little, not grift, but some little like hustle and selling friendship bracelets in elementary school. Like I had some little scheme to make money.

David:
[12:10] Yeah, you're entrepreneurial.

Threadguy:
[12:11] Exactly. And I went to college for a year and I was just like, it was very much, holy shit, I need to figure something out because I'm here, it was COVID year, I'm on campus. Everything's online. You can't even go to the food hall, put a mask on and sit next to one of your homies. And I'm like, this is miserable. I'm getting terrible grades. I don't want to be here. And this shit's expensive. And I need to really find some alternative solution because I'm not going to make it four years. So if I got to make it four years to get, I knew I wanted to be in finance at that capacity. If I got to make it four years to get a job in this niche, it's not going to happen. So I got to figure out a better way. And so I do think that these sort of ideology while rejecting the doomerism side does seep through into people's psyche where they're like,

Threadguy:
[13:02] okay, it's not going to be this way. I got to figure something out. And when you start looking at alternative ways to figure something out, I think a lot of people end up here. I also think this is why the long degeneracy is pushed so hard amongst crypto. It's just a little bit of like survivorship lies. Like the type of people that do well in crypto is this, you pick from a very unique crowd, if you will, that seems to

Threadguy:
[13:27] Align with those ideals

David:
[13:29] Yeah yeah like for like maybe both optimistic and pessimistic reasons like i think what is cool about gen z and again kind of in the same way that like every generation is online more than the generation prior and i think gen z is like both online and also most willing to kind of like choose its own way carve its own path but one one part of the reason It's like, well, the normal path, the normal way is so saturated. And it's like, well, there's just not really any spoils there. But then also simultaneously, like as I understand it, I'm speaking as like an armchair millennial here. Like if you like ask the average person in like school right now, like elementary school through high school, like what do you want to be when you grow up? They'll say like, I want to be like a streamer. I want to be a streamer.

Threadguy:
[14:15] I want to be a streamer. I want to be a YouTuber.

David:
[14:17] Yeah. Which is like almost by definition, carving your own path because there's no way anyone can just become a YouTuber. There's no job application for a YouTuber. Like you just have to do it yourself. And there's something inherent about like the permissionless finance side of things that works really well with that whole arc of people who want to carve their own ways, build their own businesses, be their own entrepreneur and enter in the world of like permissionless, you know, gatekeeping-less, intermediary-less finance.

Threadguy:
[14:43] I have a couple of things on this. The first, I was just pulling it up. There was this article that went, Bucket has 2.5 million views from Ben Roy, Notes on Internet Addiction.

David:
[14:52] Do you see this?

Threadguy:
[14:53] So is this I don't know is this super viral article and it basically was just I like Ben Roy, by the way.

David:
[15:00] Who's Ben Roy?

Threadguy:
[15:01] He's a, let's see, let's get in a bio.

David:
[15:03] He's got Squiggle on it.

Threadguy:
[15:04] Yeah, Squiggle, Blue Squiggle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Writes a lot. There's just basically this long article about how the internet has generally been, or is generally like net negative. It's making people's lives worse. And also how like the internet is getting worse and sort of this thought that everybody's on, everyone's consuming the same viral content. And so if everyone's consuming the same viral content, there's less unique niches, there's less sort of just proliferating spot, like little utopias on the internet, like it's getting harder to find, everyone's consuming the same feed. My thought on this is like, man, I think it's the greatest time in history to be on the internet right now,

Threadguy:
[15:45] Especially as somebody trying to make money, find opportunity, like do escape the system. It's the greatest time in history and I think some of the things that have like bootstrapped this is the creation of crypto and as time goes on and we can talk about crypto a lot like markets in a weird place things are slow on chain volume is dead I think the thesis for why somebody would join crypto why somebody would trade crypto assets and why somebody would stay here has never been more clear and more obvious. I think as time goes on in this new generation, gets older, has more money, has more access, has more assets, the place that you end up 10 out of 10 times is just, it's internet capital markets. It's open permissionless, global, border, capital market where anyone can go public on the internet at any price. You want to bootstrap funding, just launch a coin. You want attention, launch a coin. Like you want to participate in the market, trade these assets. Like, I continue to believe deeply that,

Threadguy:
[16:50] This trend, however we want to label it or frame it or call it, the biggest beneficiary of flows of users of attention, it's just going to be crypto. Like 10 out of 10 times. And I think, you know what's funny? Like as time goes on, I've had experiences twice in my life.

Threadguy:
[17:09] The first time was in mid-2024 when it was like the celebrity meme coin meta, right? Which is, you know, most people look down, they fucked the celebrity meme coin meta. But it was good for me, even though it was bad for the market, right? Like I interviewed Iggy Azalea and I'm interviewing Andrew Tate. I'm in Romania.

David:
[17:26] Was that in person? Did you interview Iggy in person?

Threadguy:
[17:29] Iggy in person, Andrew Tate in Romania in person.

David:
[17:32] Yeah. And look, you went to Romania to interview Andrew Tate.

Threadguy:
[17:34] I went to Romania to interview Andrew Tate. Regardless of what anyone thinks about it, I'm not here to like endorse Andrew Tate. But what I'm going to say is it was the first time where all these really smart people were hitting me up. And they're like, congratulations. You can finally leave crypto. you got a billion and a half views on a YouTube video of Andrew Tate like go take this newfound motion you can leave crypto like leave go be a celebrity go interview famous

David:
[17:59] People a real world celebrity you got out of the sandbox like.

Threadguy:
[18:01] Congratulations you broke out and I'm like Broke out. I feel like I just broke in. I feel like I'm in now. I'm in the game. I'm fighting five years to be in. And right after that, we get Solana season, 2024, AI season, MemeCoin Mania, like it, hate it, whatever. We were back. And then the second time that I've really gotten this, and I know I'm rambling a little bit, I'll wrap it here. The second time I really have gotten this is right now. And people are like, all right, dude, you had a good run. It's time, though. You run a fucking media company. You are pegged to crypto price. It's time to start covering other stuff, go to other markets, talk about other stuff.

David:
[18:44] Who's telling you this? Is it cynical? Some people in crypto.

Threadguy:
[18:46] This time it's a cynical crypto crowd. And my thought

David:
[18:49] Process- The cynical crypto crowd are saying, congrats to our guy on your success. It's time to go. Now point yourself outwards rather than stay here. Yeah, get out while you can. Why are you staying here?

Threadguy:
[18:58] And pull the ladder up. And my thought process is like, man, I came in here 2020, 2021 to be a new entrant in a bull market. First of all, you have, you have everything against you. You have no idea what's going on and nobody knows who you are. So to, to be like a media voice in a bull market for the first time, it's like good, good luck. It's not, it's, it's really difficult. You get through the bear market. We come out 2024, things are hot again. And now I'm like, okay, I have like a place and I have like a place, like I belong here. These people are my peers now and then we go you know Forik again come back down and now we're somewhere like at the low stage and I'm like man I In 2025, 2026, I'm like, I really have an opportunity to sort of put my sauce on this, like to make an impact, to really like do what I want to do, play the game my way, like look at it through my lens, like make an impact, not just be like an observer. And it's like the thought of leaving crypto right now is blasphemous to me. So I don't even know where I started that rant, but that's where I got to and that's where I ended it.

David:
[20:02] So one thing, this will be a little bit of media inside baseball. I pay attention to basically more or less every media company's traction out there. Just kind of understand the market, right? Understand price our sponsors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Understand who's growing, who's shrinking. And no one in the last three years has really grown. BlockWorks' views, they haven't grown. Bankless' views are flat after being

David:
[20:28] down all throughout 2022, for example. Obviously, 2022 is a bad year. No one's really growing, except for ThreadGuy. ThreadGuy's like the only guy. And granted, you put in the work, but I'm wondering if also, like millennials, my generation, if you're a millennial and you're not already in crypto, you are not coming to crypto anymore. You would be an anomaly. Same thing with Gen X. If you're not already in crypto, you're not coming. I don't know if that's true with Gen Z. I feel like Gen Z, there might actually be a slow trickle of people in Gen Z actually coming into crypto. I don't know, actually. Maybe you could inform me.

Threadguy:
[21:05] I think this is one of those, okay, this is one of those things. I basically run around the house all day, every day, and I just say, whenever I talk to Malcolm, this is the sentence I've said more than any sentence in my life, is I just think we're right. I just think we're right. And You know, as it relates to the market, I say now, like I'm not, I don't want to be in the game of predictions. I will just wait for the flows and then I'll follow them. You don't have to be first to meme coins. You don't have to be first to NFTs. You don't have to be first to Bitcoin, right? You could have bought it 33K and caught a 3X, an infinite size. This is one of those things that I'm down to be in a game of predictions on, is where attention and flows are going to come in the future. And I am a like deep believer. It's almost like if this doesn't happen, my framework in which I view the world, my worldview is shattered is that the TAM for people, particularly skewed younger, Gen Z, whatever we want to label them as, that will trade internet assets is infinite. I think it's infinite.

Threadguy:
[22:11] And I think you can

Threadguy:
[22:12] See it in micro pockets of like, okay, I think there's this larger shift happening in the world where, how much attention people pay to like mainstream celebrities is winding down significantly. And there's sort of these like niche superheroes, if you will. One of the ones that is like particularly interesting to me is TJR. Because TJR, if you're familiar with him, like, yes, he kind of has this label as like, you know, Miami, Corsair, whatever. TJR is a stock trader. He trades stocks on market it open and he's like becoming like this like a spectacle he's massive he's getting really big he goes live on twitch in front of 20 30 000 people and he's a stock

Threadguy:
[22:55] Trader and you

Threadguy:
[22:56] Go on his tiktok comments and all of his comments are two things one i can't believe that's my mentor and two is he's just like us but he's rich he's just like us but he's rich And you look at the TJR type of archetype and the story of like, I was broke. I dropped out of college. My parents told me to stop. I made it in the markets. I made it in the markets. I learned how to trade. Trading is like, of the ways you can make money on the internet, trading is aspirational. It's this story. You're your own boss. You work for yourself. You don't have to answer to anybody. Like the idea of a day trader is very aspirational. The public...

Threadguy:
[23:40] Legacy figures that sort of, when you think of day trader, who do you think it's like trader Kramer? Like these people are sort of the goats, the goats of the industry, but there was kind of like a missing link in the middle. And there's this like newer class of TJR type characters.

Threadguy:
[23:56] And people see this and they're like, I want to be that. I want to be that. I don't want to be some, like there's all these weird grifts. I don't want to be an OnlyFans manager or something. I want to be a trader. I want to be a trader. And I think that this is ingrained in people's brains. I think it's a like positive, I keep using the word aspirational sort of like mission. And I think it connects to something deep in people's just like, almost like their DNA. And so I think as time goes on here, I don't think it's for everybody. I don't think everybody should be a trader. But I think that there is just this huge class of people that when given the opportunity are going to fall in love with it.

Threadguy:
[24:37] And once again, the place that you end up in is crypto. It's just the place you end up, especially as the rails are finally good enough. 2021, the rails were not good enough. You couldn't buy two NFTs in one transaction. I'm on open seat, right? You're on open seat, sweeping the floor, buying one at a time. The tech is there. The regulation is starting to get there. And I think it's simply at this point just a time game, a time game. Newer generation, get a little bit older, a little bit more experience, a little bit more capital to play with. And the prediction that I'm betting my career on, I don't know, is that more people will be trading internet assets than less in the coming decade. And yeah. I guess we're going to see what happens, but there's pockets. There's pockets. If you look in the right spots, it's happening.

Threadguy:
[25:23] It's just not happening. Maybe it's glorious and it's beautiful. I wish Bitcoin was 250K right now as well. And I wish meme coin season didn't blow up in everybody's face. And I wish a lot of things, but we kind of get what we get. And amidst the wipeouts, you get a couple pockets of like, oh yeah, Hyperliquid's beautiful. I did just like long Tesla yesterday with the profits that I sold from a Zcash trade. That is incredible technology that didn't exist in 2021. Like it's happening, just not as fast as maybe people wish.

David:
[25:52] So this is getting pretty close to the reason why I wanted to bring you on the show. Like kind of the center point of this episode is like this notion of like entertainment finance. Like the live stream perp trading that's happening in South Korea. There's like that going on out there. I think even in more spots, there's just like this concept out there of real-time prediction markets, like drama, the reality TV show around prediction markets. It's like an idea that people are thinking about. It's like, oh, prediction markets, you know, they're markets, but they're also content. And then also we already have PumpFun live streaming. Like that's also a real product. We have what you're doing on Twitch, which is, so maybe when I opened up the episode, I called you the face of Gen Z crypto, but maybe you're trying to be the face of just like the entertainment finance sector. What do you call this that you are doing?

Threadguy:
[26:45] I want to say two things. One, I like entertainment finance.

David:
[26:49] Entertainment finance.

Threadguy:
[26:49] Kyle Samani said that to me on the stream, and I was like, oh, yeah, that's lit. I'm going to steal that. The second is I have a quick parallel for you. I'm going to go deeper on it if you want. We can skip it. Is... Gaming is a really interesting parallel to what we're doing in markets, where gaming, at least as I remember, early 2000s, like I had my first Game Boy in like 2006, maybe I'm playing Pokemon, you know, FireRed, LeafGreen. Early 2010s, gaming is big, but like somewhere amidst like 2012, 13, 14, Twitch streaming and content starts out, as I remember, YouTube content for gaming, and it's like the pros, the best players in the world. What really took it to the next level was it wasn't the pros that blew up it was like the content creators like the entertaining not necessarily the best players in the world but the entertainment side of video games like took this thing into the fucking next stratosphere right gta role-playing servers and everything fortnight ninjas on fortnight with drake and juju smith-schuster and travis scott and you're yesterday there's a kim kardashian fortnight collab like it was the content that took gaming into this cultural phenomenon right like if When I was in middle school, if you're like, I'm a gamer, all I do is game. It's like, dude, you're lame. No, that's not cool. Now, gaming is cool, bro. Gaming is a staple. It's a spectacle. It's a staple in culture. Everybody games. It's not weird to say you're a gamer.

Threadguy:
[28:15] I think trading goes through a similar,

Threadguy:
[28:18] Not the same, but a similar type of trajectory where, like when I was in high school learning how to trade options, I wasn't like telling people I was trading. It wasn't like cool to trade.

David:
[28:28] Yeah, it wasn't a spectacle.

Threadguy:
[28:29] It's not like cool to trade. It's like, okay, dude, you're weird. Like I know some guy who like scammed Forex courses. Like you're weird. As time comes on here and people get more familiar, it's like, oh, trading. Yeah, I'm familiar with that. I have friends that trade. Oh, I have friends that game. and

Threadguy:
[28:44] Then the next

Threadguy:
[28:45] Layer of this i think is like the content side of it it's the guys like the tjrs of the world it's the people that take

Threadguy:
[28:52] This on the biggest stage

Threadguy:
[28:53] And it's like oh this thing is real oh you don't have to scam and oh there's like cool people that trade and so i don't you mentioned the korea esports high leverage trading i don't actually know how that's going to work but i'm obsessed with the concept i think it is like so i saw that video the same video you're probably referencing and I'm like oh my I have like a visceral reaction to this video I couldn't it's like an out of body experience like oh my god I want to host that right and so I think just

David:
[29:22] For the reference of listeners think just like a Starcraft or League of Legends except it's six people or something just.

Threadguy:
[29:29] Perpetrating on massive

Threadguy:
[29:31] Screens on a one second chart

David:
[29:32] Yeah uh huh one second chart with a hundred X leverage.

Threadguy:
[29:36] And a fucking Dana White as the MC Bill Buffer

David:
[29:41] As like a Friday night bar activity with the bros, that sounds like a great time. It's electric.

Threadguy:
[29:46] It's like completely electric. And so I... Trading is... Again, it's aspirational. Like the same, I think we're, there's this article I'm referencing inadvertently that I don't know the name off the top of my head, I'll send you. But like the same way you, you know, some kid goes to school and he's rocking a LeBron James Lakers jersey. This is like kind of how I treat my favorite traders on Twitter. It's like, oh, Jez just took a position. Like bet, how do I, I want to watch. Like, I think the best cop I have to this is the James Wynn saga, which ended in spectacular just you know epic failure basically but there was James

David:
[30:26] Wynn was this guy who was taking himself massive long positions on hyper liquid.

Threadguy:
[30:31] He basically turned like six figures into like deep nine on just like degenerate trades over the course of two weeks and there was like a 10-day period where James Wynn and that notification that he was either long short open a trade, close a trade was like the town square. It was a, it was a, there's no better word than spectacle.

Threadguy:
[30:54] It was like, must watch. You have to watch. Like, what's his liquidation? What's Bitcoin doing? And I have to see this. This is like, this, that was it. That was the only content for 10 days was what is James Wynn doing? And yeah, it blew up and it was, that was the end. But it's like, are we going to see?

David:
[31:09] It was just because of how much size this guy had in the moment.

Threadguy:
[31:12] How much size, how public it was.

Threadguy:
[31:15] Right.

Threadguy:
[31:15] The story of he's flipping his way up. It was just this like crazy, like Steph Curry's going for 75, turned the game on. It was just this like, This moment in time, everybody was like, knows about the James Wynn story if you were there. And it's like, okay, is there going to be more or less James Wynn type of, oh my God, this massive trade is open, I have to watch type of moments as time goes on. And it's like, I would like to bet that there would be more. And I almost can't even fathom an outcome where there's less.

David:
[31:47] So, okay. So like the one parallel that I can like maybe bring this up to explain this in my terms is I remember when, this is actually a really old school parallel, old school anecdote, but Ichiro Suzuki was like three hits away from breaking the hits record inside of a single season. And the Mariners games started to sell out around the games that he would break that record. And everyone in the MLB was like, oh, Ichiro is two hits away. He's one hit away. He's going to do it this game. And that's kind of like what you're saying, except it's with trading. The fact that it's with trading is this crazy new phenomenon here where something that you said that stuck out to me was, oh, there's this one trade that's on right now. Broadly, generally, there's a trade that's on. And the trading community is like, oh, there's a trade happening, let me go watch. And that I think is what you are saying is like the thing that you are betting your career and your content and your media company on. It's just like the cultural zeitgeist of trades that people are putting on in the moment.

Threadguy:
[32:49] It's just where we're headed. Look, I'm not, there's a darker like, you know, anecdote here, which is like, I'm not really here to speculate on what this means for society. But objectively, we're headed towards a future where the market is the economy and they are slapping a market on everything. Everything is financialized.

Threadguy:
[33:10] And the biggest winners from everything being financialized is the trade. Like the trade is the new athletes, man. I used to say, I used to have it wrong. I used to tweet this all the time. People get really upset. I would say crypto influencers are the new celebrities. And I I would say that crypto influencers are like the modern day gladiators, right? There's that, what's that Chamath tweet where he's like,

David:
[33:31] I'm the man in the arena. I'm the man in the arena. Yeah.

Threadguy:
[33:35] We, as a society and as like, okay, I'll even give you a step back. When I was just starting on CT, I didn't know what was going on, but I'm like, the social side of this is really cool. I wanted, I wanted to like do media. And so I'm hosting spaces. And we would go on these bases during the most glorious bull run that's like ever happened, 2021. And instead of trading the things, I would just talk about them. And I would always think to myself, like, why don't the traders respect me? I look at these guys, I'm like, you're so cool. Like, I want to talk to you. Why won't you let me interview you? Why don't the traders respect me? I didn't understand until I became a trader relatively recently in the last two years that risk takers respect risk takers. And the reason that the traders didn't respect me or respect in general, like content, pure content in crypto, is the same reason that LeBron James doesn't give a fuck what Stephen A. Smith has to say on his postgame. It's the same relationship. And so I think as time goes on, there's just going to be- Stephen A.

David:
[34:45] Smith is the commentator.

Threadguy:
[34:47] The commentator, ESPN.

David:
[34:48] He doesn't play.

Threadguy:
[34:49] Exactly, he doesn't play. He never played a varsity sport in his life. Couldn't make a layup.

Threadguy:
[34:53] I think we're,

Threadguy:
[34:54] As a society, headed towards a direction where if we're going to put a increased, focus on markets, on capital, on financializing everything, then we're also going to put an extra premium on risk takers. Like respect risk takers, I think is, this is an Apewoodism, born Apewood on Twitter, really smart guy. Respect risk takers. And I think society, as time goes on, is going to have like, you don't know how aggressive it is. I use the sports comp. Like I more so think of it in more or less. Will there be more focus on this or less? And there will definitely be more focus, praise, pedestal putting of people that take risk in financial markets in public. And more people will want to watch than less. And we're headed there fast. And I love, I mean, I get so excited about this. I love it.

David:
[35:45] I love it. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not just taking risk though, right? Because like I'm fully deployed. I have long positions expressed like left and right. Like I'm long Robin Hood, long Tesla, long ETH and Bitcoin. I don't think that is what you are talking about or what a trader would look towards when they say taking risk. Like, because I don't really consider myself, I'm not putting on a trade. Like, these things are just things that I hold. So it's not just about taking on risk, right? It's something a little bit more specific than that.

Threadguy:
[36:14] I think the risk, the take, like, respect to risk takers, it's sort of just like general, we're headed that direction. And then when I talk about, like, the spectacle athlete James Wynn type of moment, It's like specific traders, like CTE does this really well, by the way, like specific traders sort of like climb the ranks in the glory, right? You like climb into Mirad 2024. It's like you're untouchable for, you know, however long it lasts. It might be a day, de-gen ping, it might be a week. It doesn't, unclear, unknown amount of time, but they sort of like rise in like into glory the same way, you know, a starting pitcher throws a perfect game. And it's like you like you mirad was much must see tv for like three months at this point it's like okay spx is you know down a lot whatever we're gonna kind of you're uninterested in the tweets there was there was a time i was here for you were here for a lot of the viewers were here where mirad was must see tv in the list oh my god he's gonna add a coin to the list it was like this crazy i mean i don't know the list was insane every day he adds a new coin to the list to this ripping five acts. It was like, you have to watch. You can't not pay attention, right? The way he was moving markets and the way he was getting 5,000 likes on a tweet. And so-

Threadguy:
[37:35] I think that that, you know, the respect risk takers, maybe like a general trend, and then these sort of like heroic rises through trading markets, like the Roaring Kitty is the probably the one, he's probably the model is, you know, the worst thing that ever happened to markets is that the Big Short is a more popular movie than the Roaring Kitty story, which Big Short is maybe the best movie ever, but it's more popular than Roaring Kitty and the GameStop movie and even Wolf of Wall Street minus the scam stuff different rabbit hole but even the Michael Michael Berry thing is like this I mean he's like a hero dude he's like a right he's like an American hero one

David:
[38:17] Profitable trade and now everyone's like oh the Michael Michael Berry is doing this Michael Berry is doing.

Threadguy:
[38:21] That he's an American hero like he is known by more people like he's a yeah it's it's this there's just gonna be more of this I mean he's bigger than

David:
[38:30] Some of it's gotta be some of That's got to be why it's such a big spectacle is because no one really cares about the long-term investors who I'm going to call the PVE people, like the player versus environment. It's really the PVP people, the player versus player, the traders who are trading against other traders. That's got to be where the spectacle lies because no one really cares if you're up on Bitcoin over five years of time like you and a million other people too.

Threadguy:
[38:57] It's definitely, I haven't thought about that as much. It's a good take. It's definitely this J-curve of like the now. the internet pile it hits the snowball and everybody piles in also there's some aspect of

Threadguy:
[39:11] Influence amongst financial markets where people,

Threadguy:
[39:15] Just as much as they love to come up, they love to come down. The come down is almost, you could almost argue the come down is more glorious. It's like, you could almost argue it's like, without the come down, what is it? You know, it's like, all right, dude, write the whole fucking cycle.

David:
[39:31] The story's not finished.

Threadguy:
[39:32] Blow up in spectacular fashion, right? I mean, I've been on the receiving end of it, Not spectacularly, not mine, but, you know, the D-Gen ping, the Ansem crash outs, like, there's definitely this level of, like,

Threadguy:
[39:46] People want to see Icarus fall, you know, as well. And then do it again. People want, it's like, yeah, they're definitely, crypto Twitter, I think, has this way of every three months, every six months, it feels like there's a trader that's just like chosen, just like the chosen one that can't miss for six months, right? We've had a lot of these. I wasn't there for some of the early days, but the Ansem, the DGENPINGS, the Mirads, the whoever at any given time. I don't really think we have one right now. Weird market, to be fair. the capo story right like ct likes to do this where there's someone who can't miss for six months and then we like try to ruin their life and then pick a new one

David:
[40:25] Something i was watching your stream earlier today oh yeah.

Threadguy:
[40:30] And something something

David:
[40:30] You said stuck out to me as like as like why i think gen z and traders are like tuned into this activity is we are experts at memetics is something you said. We can just trade memetics. And I was reading some article blog posts about how like the early young Gen Z and also like Gen Alpha, they like communicate with each other on TikTok. They like TikTok and they record their TikToks and post their TikToks and their friends watch their TikToks and they like gossip on TikTok. They yap on TikTok. Like, oh, are you going to go to like Sarah's party later today?

Threadguy:
[41:05] Like, here's what

David:
[41:05] I'm thinking about Sarah's party. Like, I don't think I'm going to go to Sarah's party because she's like a loser and I don't want to go. And that gets like pushed around the intra-psychic layer of Gen A and like young Gen Zs on TikTok and like they communicate and I don't know if you use TikTok or if I don't use TikTok but like you communicate at this like, internet through the internet tell like almost for what the boomers would feel like is like almost like telepathy yep it's like the gen z is just so in sync with each other and like gen a is doing the six seven meme where the fuck did those six seven meme come from oh they're just so connected in the brains that they just made up this meme that's so surreal and abstract that doesn't mean anything and there's like that cultural dna of like the younger generations that i think actually works out really, really well when you are trying to trade zeitgeist because that's like the fluency that you need in order to have the edge in the market. That's kind of like my read on the situation. Am I onto something?

Threadguy:
[42:01] Two things. One, set the stage. People don't, for whatever reason, people don't want to accept this, but...

Threadguy:
[42:08] Twitter X is to politics and finance.

Threadguy:
[42:11] I would argue like undisputedly the town hall where everything starts, political, financial. TikTok is to culture. It just is. It just is. And people will be like, oh, I'm on Instagram Reels. Fuck your Instagram Reels. They're late.

David:
[42:24] I love Instagram Reels.

Threadguy:
[42:25] I saw it last week. Instagram Reels are good, but I saw it last week. TikTok is that to culture. I think for better or for worse, crypto and trading crypto has basically conditioned the people that are here to believe, and maybe rightfully so, that the way you trade is attention, flows, momentum, memetics. Because, I mean, I did this, I hosted this debate, hosted, I listened on my stream to this debate between Santiago and Hasib, talk about how to value L1s. And I'm sure you have a take, just like I have a take, just like they have a take. The real take is that nobody fucking knows.

Threadguy:
[43:07] And no one has any clue, okay? At least in equities, we like pretend to have a clue. In crypto, we have no clue. And it's a memetics flows momentum game. And then you start to look at, I've been doing this recently because I'm bored, but you start to look at other markets, particularly equities through the same lens. And you're like, oh, okay. Like, yeah, Tesla makes sense. And like, oh yeah, okay. Some of these things start to make sense. And I, you know, people like to say that crypto, there's this thesis going around that crypto is like the easiest market ever to trade. And I maybe I'm going to just talk out of my ass, but I make content. That's what I do. So I don't have a ton of experience trading stocks and trading, you know, bonds and other markets.

Threadguy:
[43:56] Explaining to someone who's never traded crypto, what it's like trading crypto. It's like, imagine a basket of a thousand assets that have basically no fundamentals. There's no way to value them. Is it cash flows? Is it revenue? Is it sales? No one has any clue how to value them whatsoever. And then every second coin is a landmine that will just like blow up in your face. And even the green ones that aren't landmines will probably randomly become a landmine in a week. Like, and it's like convinced me that that's easy to trade. Like, I understand that, you know, Bitcoin has gone up only and generally Ether has gone up only. But, you know, show me a spy chart, right? Show me a chart of Amazon. And so I think that there's this group of people that are come from crypto native that are conditioned to see markets through this lens. I actually think it gives people an advantage that you're able to sort of step out and be like, OK, I get I get viral. I get memetics, I get flows.

Threadguy:
[44:58] And I mean,

Threadguy:
[44:59] I have this one quote. I talk about it all day on stream. I'll just read it. Base 16Z, if you're familiar with him, wrote this article. That's the only thing I thought about for two weeks. It's called Mega Church Time. I won't read the whole article, but there's this footnote at the end. And it reads, not just American Eagle, referencing American Eagle, Sidney Sweeney trade, not just American Eagle, but all my best trades this year. And I believe an underexploited edge in today's memetic financial markets is growth investing in some narrative that will become, quote, the one note of the internet that day.

Threadguy:
[45:32] And I think

Threadguy:
[45:33] Things are heading towards this direction and crypto traders are the best positions to pivot and capitalize on it.

David:
[45:44] You think all financial markets might just be in the same way that we don't know how to value a layer one. Maybe this thing, this property that we have in crypto of just like unknowingness about the animal spirits who works backwards into like the rest of financial markets. And all of a sudden, like everything is a Sydney Sweeney trade, not an American Eagle price versus sales valuation.

Threadguy:
[46:03] I mean, you have to say the Sydney Sweeney thing is unreal. I mean, it's up like 75% on like a, you know, nine, mid nine billion dollar company since the Sydney Sweeney.

David:
[46:13] I mean, this is the same Animal Spirits that put GameStop on the map, right?

Threadguy:
[46:18] That put GameStop on the map, the same Animal Spirits

David:
[46:19] That- It all started with COVID and GameStop and really Gen Z entering the market.

Threadguy:
[46:24] The same Animal Spirits that dumped NVIDIA 10% on DeepSeek launch. You know, I'm not here to like, I'm not gonna pretend even for a second to be an equities expert, but it feels like, you know, I say internet markets all the time. It feels, because here's the thing, like I'm conditioned to trade this way. I came from sneakers. Sneakers is an attention game, right? It's like people would invest in sneakers. They wouldn't just buy and flip. It's like, okay, cool. Travis Scott is launching a Jordan 1. They're going to sell for $1,500 on the resale market. The Jordan 1 that isn't Travis Scott, that looks the closest to the Travis Scott, it's also going to 3X. Just attention, right? It's not supply shot. It's just purely attention. Sports cards work the same way. It's like insert random, you know, bull, bull. Insert, if you were there, if you know, you know. So random, Bronny James card. Does Bronny James trade like over his stats to PSA 10 value? Like, yeah, significantly, but it's just like memetic attention. So I come from like this framing of it's just follow the flows, follow the attention. And I tend to think that crypto traders that have been through it and like look at the world through this lens are, Maybe you're onto something a little bit.

David:
[47:36] Yeah. Part of it has to be because never before have we had so many people have access to make trades. Making a trade is easier today than it's ever been. And the app that you make trades in is right next to your Twitter app. And that is like, you know, prices are set on the margins. And so like the people who value something on a price to sales ratio, they're not connecting Twitter to Robinhood. But it doesn't really matter. So long as enough people are, then all of a sudden and enough people are connected with enough capital to make these sorts of moves and all of a sudden like you can trade Zeitgeist really really easily and Zeitgeist becomes a more dominant way of valuing something on the.

Threadguy:
[48:16] Market and I'll also say like very loud and clear that I'm not coming here and saying like oh fundamentals don't matter I'm more so saying I'm fascinated with the American Eagle City City trade fascinated and also to your point I have another I just I have these tweets because I was reading one stream Ryan Watkins who I think is a really smart from Secrecy Capital tweeted today or yesterday. He says, sometimes I wonder if the long degeneracy thesis is a reflection of societal forces pushing people to gamble and, And it's a more self-fulfilling prophecy fueled by tech bros making the casino ever more accessible. Like, what did you expect when we put zero-day options, meme coins, perps, and sports betting on everyone's phones? It's a good take. Interesting take at the very least. It's like, is society going in this direction? Or am I going to watch the Lakers tonight and see like 15 FanDuel ads, you know?

David:
[49:04] Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Tell me about ThreadGuy Media. What do you want it to be? What is it? What do you want it to be? Where's it going?

Threadguy:
[49:12] So we call it Counterparty.

David:
[49:14] Counterparty.

Threadguy:
[49:15] And man, it's awesome. It's fucking awesome. It's the most fun I've had.

David:
[49:19] Isn't owning a media company great?

Threadguy:
[49:20] It's unreal.

David:
[49:22] You get to talk to cool people all day.

Threadguy:
[49:23] It's a tough business. I didn't know it was such a tough business. It's a tough business. I have increased respect if I didn't already for you guys. But it's incredible. And I think it sits on the edge of exactly what I want to do, which is I want to trade and I want to talk to the traders. That's really what I'm the most interested in is I don't just want to trade because if I just wanted to be a P&L trader, then I probably wouldn't be like a public doxed figure putting my face on the internet and talking. I'll just be trading. And I don't want to just interview, but it's sort of the blend of both. It's beautiful. You have an incredible life, I imagine. And I really think of it like I'm a crypto guy through and through. I came here to trade digital sports cards and I stayed because the crypto ethos just deeply resonates with where I, again, where I see the world going, what I believe and what I think is important.

Threadguy:
[50:17] But I also

Threadguy:
[50:17] Think that crypto and like hard crypto is to like sneaker streetwear, is to prediction markets, is to La Boo Boo and collectibles, is to the stock market. Like it kind of all I think just becomes internet markets. CSGO skins, Counter-Strike. Like I think it sort of all encapsulates internet markets. And I think that crypto by far is the best positioned to, again, kind of just like engulf all of these people. Like, where do you go? You kind of just all end up in this place. And I always think of, you know, the Threadguy stream, the company counterparty as like the home for that. I, you know, 95% of what we do is crypto. but I want to, you know, interview the best Counter-Strike skin trader and the best sneaker flipper and the best prediction markets trader and kind of go like across the board. Because I think all of these things become one, like the market. And I think that's good. I think this is good. Like I, I mean, I'm fascinated by the fact that I opened a long on, a 5X long on Tesla on my hyperliquid account yesterday. It was like, oh my God, this is incredible. This is, these are the things that get lost

Threadguy:
[51:34] And God, we've been chopping for three weeks, but it's like the technology is like, I don't put a long in Tesla. It worked. It's crazy. I'm paying funding instead of an option. Like, is it better vehicle? Is it worse? I don't know. It could be a different conversation, but the tech works. And I'm seeing all these tweets about, you know, derivatives on the boo-boos and shit. Is it good for the world? I don't know, but it's really fascinating. Everything's sort of becoming the market and it exists. It's going to exist on blockchain rails. Like it just is. It's just a superior product to what's offered anywhere else. Robinhood knows it. Everybody knows it, right? JP Morgan, everyone knows it. Just maybe taking a little longer and maybe they're building their own walled gardens, you know, unfortunate, but I tend to imagine it's not black and white, right?

David:
[52:20] To your point about how streamers, content producers around video games made video games to be what they are. Content producers like you, you're not going to be on the walled gardens. So maybe like maybe we build all those the TradFi world builds all those walled gardens but like the pinnacle of crypto the spearhead of crypto like the frontier of crypto is all going to be on the public stuff and that's where like the content producers like you and the traders are always going to they're always going the PVP land is the wild west of crypto, which is where like none of that's going to be any of the walled gardens which.

Threadguy:
[52:52] I think is the beautiful part of crypto like I okay I'm going to read one more tweet just because I think it

David:
[52:56] Was so good I feel.

Threadguy:
[52:57] Like I'm on stream right now I'm just pulling tweets up Vibu from Solana made this tweet. This is my favorite vision for crypto. It reads, nobody will go public in 10 years. They will just launch a token. Finance is meeting the direct to consumer revolution that happened in every other category just 15 years late. And then he goes on to talk about a bunch of other stuff. But this idea that nobody will go public in 10 years, they will just launch a token. And that, you know, I was so mesmerized by this. The first time I heard internet capital markets and, you know, launch your startup on Solana. Like when this, it was a disaster and the Believe token ecosystem was a complete just mess. And there's a lot of problems, right? Is it equity? Is it not? What is it? Devs, whatever. But the, it's one of these things

Threadguy:
[53:46] Little brain like mice that once it pops into your head,

Threadguy:
[53:49] You really can't.

David:
[53:50] Yeah, you got incepted.

Threadguy:
[53:52] Thank you. You get incepted. And I was incepted by this. And the thought that crypto rails will just be this market where really cool tech just goes public, live, liquid token, tradable from day one, speculate how you want, is just an unstoppable force. And it's also a content machine. I mean, it's like the cool, what more do you want as someone that covers financial media, right? It's like, this is part of the problem. It's like, cool, SpaceX is going to IPO. Cool, it's at $1.5 trillion and nobody has any exposure. Like, fuck, man, it's IPO-ing it. It's going to go public liquid at a higher market cap than Bitcoin, the same market cap as Bitcoin. And so I think this vision of what internet capital markets and what crypto can become in its own right is a spectacle. And I think they all just end up here. They all come here. It might take a little while. My one concern is that being, and you probably know this, being early and being wrong are like very, you know, what's the difference? There is no difference. There's no difference, right? Being early and being wrong is the same thing until you're right. It's like being a contrarian is difficult because it's like you don't know if you're right or if you're wrong until it's at zero or at the fucking moon. And that's just going to be the crypto story probably is you don't know if you're right or you're wrong until it's way too late to do anything else.

Threadguy:
[55:12] And so I just better hope, you know, better get the best odds possible. And I tend to think that we just have them.

David:
[55:19] This has been great for the listeners out there. What year were you born?

Threadguy:
[55:24] 2002.

David:
[55:25] You were wearing a 2008 global financial crisis hoodie.

Threadguy:
[55:29] That's what the text is like. Also, if this is like offended anybody, I'm sorry. It was like this cool.

David:
[55:32] I just think it's hilarious. Like you don't even remember the financial crisis.

Threadguy:
[55:36] Honestly, bless that I don't. If this is like offensive, it wasn't supposed to be,

David:
[55:40] By the way. It's not offensive whatsoever. It'd be different if it's 9-11.

Threadguy:
[55:43] But no.

David:
[55:44] The 2008 global, the text on his hoodie just reads in Times New Roman font, 2008 global financial crisis with the charts going down. And is that cigarettes in the background?

Threadguy:
[55:55] I don't even know. I think they're books. I don't even know. I just put it on the first time for you, actually.

David:
[56:01] That is the perfect hoodie that you could wear for this interview. Threadguy, this is great. If people want to watch you and watch your streams, where should they go?

Threadguy:
[56:08] Twitch.tv slash Threadguy Monday through Friday at 1230 p.m. PST or at notthreadguy on Twitter with two T's. N-O-T-T-H-R-E-A-D-G-U-Y. Threadguy on YouTube. I'm not that, I'm around. I'm not that hard to find. But I, dude, I've been a fan for a while. I've been watching Bankless since fucking 2021. And you came on my stream, which was awesome. I really enjoyed it. And,

Threadguy:
[56:30] Yeah, man, I'm in the media game,

Threadguy:
[56:31] Crypto finance media. And you guys have.

David:
[56:34] I've always been saying we need more storytellers.

Threadguy:
[56:36] You guys have done. Look, you guys get a lot.

Threadguy:
[56:38] You get a lot of shit. People love you.

Threadguy:
[56:40] People hate you. But at least people have a take. At least people have a take. And I think you've done some of the coolest crypto adjacent media things. Interview some of the coolest people, Vitalik, Tom Lee, all these incredible people. And so I have a lot of respect for you just as a business man, as an entrepreneur, what you do. So congrats to you guys for keeping it going so strong. And like not burning out is commendable, by the way. I don't think, I didn't realize how hard this was until I started doing it. So I know this is more than just fucking flip a camera on and upload a YouTube video. I promise it is. So I respect you guys a lot for what you do.

David:
[57:15] I appreciate the words, man. Yeah, the content treadmill. We started speeding up the content treadmill in 2021 and we never really slowed it down until like this year is when we really slowed it down for the first time. And there's two of me. I don't know how you do it solo.

Threadguy:
[57:29] I got Malcolm. I'll give him a shout out as well. He's in the background. He's like shadowy, closing deals and shit. But man, doing a solo is impossible. You need somebody that you really trust and that can lock. You'll meet him when we come to New York. But he's a special talent. And we've been hiring. I have a fucking research team. We just brought Tulip King on from Asari. That guy's fucking my quant. The clipping team, YouTube uploading. It's a whole operation that goes on in the background. I don't think people really realize. Imagine it's the same for you. You have a venture arm. It's like not, it's no joke. And I have a, yeah, the counterparty team behind me is like, my job is to show up at 1230, be ready to fucking go. That's it. Everybody else in the background is like so dialed. So it's, yeah, it's awesome that we've gotten this far.

David:
[58:16] Well, we'll put your Twitch and everything else in the show notes. Thank you.

David:
[58:19] And just congratulations for all the success. I'm sure it's going to go way higher. I want it to go way higher because that means that your thesis is correct, which means crypto does kind of return back to being the epicenter of the internet where I want it to be.

Threadguy:
[58:30] I'll tell you what, man, I just think we're right, dude. I really do.

David:
[58:34] I just think we're right. I love that. All right. Thanks for coming on. Bankless Nation, you guys know the deal. Crypto is risky. You can lose what you put in. But nonetheless, we are head west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we are glad you were with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.