The Breakdown #784: Crypto, Markets, AI, and the Meme Economy

I couldn't have done any of it without AI. If we had not had AI, we would be $8 billion less. Five IPOs, none of them would have happened because I used the AI to design the securities and solve all the tax problems and all the securities law issues.

So I'm a big believer in using AI to design new things. And look, I focus upon digital credit and security. But there's someone there thinking about how to make the car drive and cure cancer. And aren't there like 100 million problems that human race has to solve that you're like, well,

you're going to need 1,000 people with PhD to solve that? Well, guess what? Now every 16-year-old has 1,000 PhDs at their fingertips. And so I'm very bullish. The world's going to be a much better place. And we're going to see an age of empowerment

and abundance because of digital technology. And we can see a resumption of the primary trends in gold and Bitcoin, meaning gold resuming the uptrend and Bitcoin resuming the downtrend. And I think it's also interesting that the main driver of the Bitcoin enthusiasm now

and the buying is coming from strategy selling 11.5% preferred in basically the equivalent of a Ponzi scheme but creating a lot of demand by people who either don't know it's a Ponzi or don't care. They want 11.5% yield. And so by offering people 11.5% yield,

Sailor has raised billions of dollars, which he has then used to buy Bitcoin. But had he not bribed people with 11.5% yield, he would not have had the money to buy all that Bitcoin. So that's interesting that the demand for Bitcoin is not because people want Bitcoin,

it's because people want 11.5% yield. Now, they're not going to get it in the long run because the whole thing is going to collapse. But that's what's driving Bitcoin, not demand for the Bitcoin itself. People aren't buying strategy or stretch

because they want Bitcoin. If they wanted Bitcoin, they'd just buy it. They're buying stretch because they'd rather have 11.5% return than Bitcoin. Plus, there's a lot of unique technology in Midnight that's going to make the use of Cardano safer.

Like Midnight Passport will be the fastest state that's using pretty much Cardano. So we gain all the usability enhancements and so on. Plus, I'd argue Midnight is an essential point of the business that if you look at that side of it, you're like, OK, Bitcoin users, they want privacy.

So Cardano could do a lot of heavy lifting on the programming side. But we're just a private coordination layer, which is all that. So we're actually working on the token, our Bitcoin DeFi setup, what we call it, the circle.

So you start with Bitcoin and Caproot. I'm going to put 50 Bitcoins in my own money and it's going to be three Bitcoins. It works. So you start with Caproot and Bitcoin. You lend it to stablecoin.

So that'll occur on Cardano. I'm sure it's just like hand-to-action through these local bridge. And then that stablecoin would then be deployed into a yield-bearing instrument. And then as you make yield,

the yield is converted to Bitcoin and then it's sent to your Caproot. And then midnight coordinates all of it takes practice. So you have all three networks working together and you have this circle. And then from the Bitcoin user's perspective,

you just give them a button, make money, click the button. And then it locks their Bitcoin. If you start generating a yield, the security essence enters with Caproot on the Bitcoin network.

So it meets my three rules that I have for Bitcoin DeFi. One, there's only Bitcoin. The other's no Bitcoin. Bitcoin is better money than DeFi, obviously. It's also better money than gold.

I think it's, I believe it's the best form of money that humans have ever come across. Money being good, being that it's inflation poop. No one, no single person in the company or a government can print more money and pay the way the money they're holding your story.

That's kind of one of the key things about money is if you work hard to make money, you don't want that to kind of disappear over time. Nothing you're going to do. So that's key in Bitcoin and Bitcoin. Most critical things, it is able to do that.

If I could have the argument that real estate's better than Bitcoin. For a number of reasons, by the way, depending on who you are, your audience will probably disagree because they're probably a bunch of Bitcoin maximalists

that don't have as much Bitcoin as the real estate guy, by the way. No, I'll tell you right now. Hold on one second. See, that's the funny thing, dude. That me and my brother were talking about this yesterday.

The guys that know the most seem to have the least. 100%, that I can probably agree with you on. I think it should be a bigger issue within the crypto system and the ecosystem. What do you think? I think it will be.

Privacy is going to be the new, if you want, in my view, and this is what I'm tasking the investment professionals at Maelstrom to sort of figure out, I think that the standout shit coin or a few shit coins of 2026 to 2028

will be related to similar shaped form to privacy. We already saw the amazing move of Zcash over the last few months. Yes, it's down 50% from the 780 high, but I think, again, my goal was, my mental model is 10 to 20% to value the Bitcoin.

That's what Zcash ends up, so much higher than where it is today. But taking away Zcash, what is the token project protocol that's going to utilize some privacy technology, probably something related to ZKs or knowledge proofs

to do something, whether that's quantum resistance, overlords can't k-anonymize their data or see what they're doing. Whatever it is, right? These are the things that we are really afraid of, of what bad things that could happen

is a proliferation of big tech, big government. While Trump getting elected and knowing that we share friends in the White House, that all the populist parties of Europe who are under attack, every single populist leader, if you look at the leaders,

and my last documentary was called Silence, I've got 18 months in prison for my last documentary. The reason I aired it is because the documentary was so bigger than me. It's exactly what they're doing. Lawfare has been weighed against,

if you go through, I'll pick anyone. Pick Hurt Vildes, the leader of the Dutch party. Pick Marie Le Pen, any politician in Europe. Anyone who has stood up and tried to speak against immigration and you'll see a history.

Matteo Salvini, I was with him two days ago, the deputy prime minister of Italy, was prosecuted in 2020. They said he collapsed because he stopped the vote. He was prosecuted in 2021. He's in charge of other crimes.

The process is to punish them. Every people who's tried to step up was charged. You saw a gun to ban them. You saw a gun to hack Jones. You saw a crime to do to Trump. That's happening across the board.

There's just three of them. The terrarium state, I think it's public, I think it's intellectual. I'm very optimistic about the future. More is not because we're not in charge. I'm going to take the ground and assimilate.

I want the public ready. The public will wait. So the other thing about it is there's a lot of political power still inside the system. You know, it's going to have a meaningful impact on the 24th century election.

And certain races that were just actually going to be lost are still in place because the civil rights government has these things that are already at the line which has been seen a lot and had many conversations to try to get it into a better state.

And hopefully September 15th you'll actually be able to get it online and have a lot of problems. I've been here for over 300 pages of the justice and the modifications and other things. I don't think anybody realizes how much work's going to do it.

I was talking to Sarah Scott. I said, is there anything comparable? He said, you know, we worked on this three times longer than Obama worked on the CFC. And that was the response 2008 by Andrew Bryton. I've talked about Solana and how I've talked about Solana.

They started to win the over a little bit with all, you know, Goldman Sachs talking about how much money they have on Solana now. You know, like all these major companies coming out and talking about how much they have in Solana or what they're building on Solana

and using Solana as rails. I mean, when you started hearing that, at some point you have to reinvent yourself or you have to adapt to the current situation in the landscape. There is no traffic on it. So projects like Bobo and others have no other choice

but to win. Well, there's more to the United States. I think the assessment is on point for the most part. But it's also, it's a double-edged sword because it's a fucking stomping ground for people to manipulate and take advantage as well.

And as you've seen that on full display. And that may just be a process of, you know, kind of letting that play out and figuring out where the sweet spot is or being, you know, so accessible and so commercially viable, et cetera. If I had a genie in Three Wishes

and I could make gold better, my first wish would be shrink the supply to 21 million coins and make it illegal to make any more. And my second wish is make it invisible and teleportable and indestructible and let me carry as much gold, you know,

in my pocket as I possibly can. And my third wish would be make it programmable so a billion AIs can teleport it and transform it a million times a minute so that I can put it on, you know, a billion computers and have it get traded back and forth

37,000 times while I'm sleeping, right? And I would think digital gold, as I just described, it's got to be better and more valuable. What first got you excited about blockchains? Think about it. Oh wait, I bet it was in multi-million dollar hacks,

exposed data or finding somewhere safe to store your seed phrase, was it? Maybe it was the idea of decentralizing a broken financial system. Maybe it was imagining a world where people own their own data and get to sharing the value it creates.

Or maybe it was a promise of a fundamentally better way of connecting, communicating and transactive, the next phase of the internet that empowers us instead of exploiting us. So why hasn't that happened yet? Why are we still living with the same broken system

that blockchains promise to fix? It's because blockchains can't keep a secret. Enabling open transparent systems was only the first half of the challenge. For blockchains to really change the world, they also have to be able to protect our sensitive data

when it matters. And that's where we build midnight. To bring down the final barrier to mass adoption and unlock the full potential of the decentralized web. Let's build the internet we deserve, together. Ladies and gentlemen, we all know this in crypto.

Ownership matters. That's why Cake Wallet. Cake Wallet gives you full control of your digital assets, all in one easy to use application. You can store Bitcoin, Litecoin, Zcash, Monaro, and many more with just one secure backup.

Swap between coins in seconds, no copying addresses, no complicated steps, and even includes Bitcoin Lightning for faster payments. And with Cake Wallet built in, you can use crypto in real life through debit cards or gift cards,

simple secure, self custody, download Cake Wallet and take control of your crypto. There is an astronaut conducting an emergency repair on a global communication satellite that could go dark at any moment. We have a second angle of this.

Is that guy on FOMO? Oh, he's just looking for a crazy trick. Yeah, let's get back to it, everybody. The position you're in is the highest in the room. The satellite has been restored. Crisis appears.

There we go, United States of America, representing social and economic communism does not work. Digital assets, is it better to move money at the speed of light? People are greedy when they also try to acquire gold. I am here providing electricity

and that energy that is necessary. I am the modern day Tony Smith. Mike Check 1, 2, Mike Check 1, 2, welcome to the break episode 784. Wherever you're tuning in, welcome. My name is David Gocci,

and I am the host of the breakdown. This breakdown is sponsored by Midnight. Midnight is the title sponsor of the breakdown. Speaking of Midnight, we'll have the president of Midnight on today. Femi will be on today, that's right.

Femi will be on here today. Joining me to talk about midnight, privacy, crypto, markets, traditional. We'll get into it. Also Polymarket. Polymarket is the official prediction market sponsor

of the breakdown. Also Cake Wallet, Cake Wallet, one of the most secure wallets in the crypto space. If you're looking for a secure wallet to store your Monero,

your ZCash, your Bitcoin, your Litecoin, download Cake Wallet on your App Store, Google Play, CakeWallet.com, and if you have a phone that you don't use no more, you can factory reset that son of a gun, okay, download Cupcake,

download Cupcake, download Cupcake, download Cupcake, download Cupcake, download Cupcake from CakeWallet.com, and maybe just maybe use that

as a cold storage device, all right? We know what's happening with cold storage, I ain't gonna get into it. I've already expressed, let me go ahead and, let me go ahead and look cute. Cute, let me look hot, look hot right now.

And FOMO. Guys, I'm gonna give you guys a week to follow me on FOMO. I'm doing a giveaway. So if you follow me on FOMO by using my link and follow me on FOMO,

go ahead and get entered into the contest, all right? All right? Child to FOMO, FOMO is, I could probably say they are the number one social-fi media, I mean, now social media,

social-fi app on, fuck it, on the planet, bro. Really, people are going to FOMO. People are going to FOMO for to try to figure out what's popping. What are people buying?

What are they doing? Nobody ain't going anywhere else. I promise you that. I promise you that, they ain't going nowhere else. I'm gonna put that American flag on there. All right, welcome, welcome, welcome.

And enough of me talking. Landy won't join us today. Landy, no, it has nothing to do with any of, it has nothing to do with the heated conversation that me and them had. Has nothing to do with, look at me, I'm getting set up

as I'm talking here. But no, it has nothing to do with our heated conversation. Y'all might think that that has nothing to do with it. Landy apparently has a job, a second job because sometimes you just don't get the charts right and you gotta go to IHOP and flip pancakes.

Nothing wrong with IHOP and flipping pancakes. I'm just saying nothing wrong with that, ladies and gentlemen, nothing wrong with that at all. It's perfectly fine to do that. I have questions today. Obviously I have questions today.

You know, who is it? Robin Hood of Solana, who wins Clarity Act? What is happening there? We'll break that down. I wrote an article, if you go to goxstein.com, I wrote an article about the entire situation

with the Clarity Act. And I think it's time as, if you live in America, I think it's time that we hold our politicians accountable because this is absolutely unacceptable where you have a bill that has been corrected

over 124 times. Concessions have been made by the Republican Party because obviously the Republican Party is really the party that is pushing this big time to go ahead and have this pass. Now the Clarity Act gets passed, we'll get trillions of dollars

that comes rushing into the crypto space. I'm not talking about rushing into your particular meme or some shit like that. I'm just talking about it will come into the crypto industry and the Democrats for the most part.

And there are some Republicans too. Let's, you know, I wrote that as well. There are some Republicans that just don't want to see this pass. I don't know why, but they just don't want it to be passed.

They're holding it up and then late at night, the Democrats gathered. Senator Warren and her anti-crypto army, they gather, everybody's gathering and they're trying to rewrite the rules. They keep on moving the goalposts

and it's just like, what is happening? What is going on here? We got to hold these people accountable, man. We can't reelect these people. If you're a one issue voter, which most crypto heads are,

you got to look at Democrat and Republican and say like, yo, who is working in our best interest? Who is working to see this industry thrive? Like who is working for us? You know, if the Clarity Act bill gets passed, right? That means that we can go ahead and keep jobs here.

There will be more jobs for Americans here. More jobs for American citizens. Why are we, so this two-party system is obviously not working. We need a three-party, four-party system because you just can't have two parties squabbling constantly.

You know, Democrats don't want to pass this bill because of Trump. We hate Trump. Trump has given, like Trump has literally given all the concessions that the Democrats wanted. Everything that the Democrats wanted, he said, okay,

go ahead. And where are we now? Now, again, they're moving the goalposts. They want more. The ethics community doesn't think it's enough. It's ridiculous, man.

It is absolutely ridiculous, man. Well, hold on. I gotta do my time, man. So this is becoming ridiculous. It really is. For crypto to grow, for us to go ahead

and make sure that we are the ones who dominate this space, we just need this shit to pass. It's like plain and simple, man. Like we need our politicians to work for us. So if they're not working for us, then we need to, when the midterms come around in November

and when it's time to reelect some people in 2028, we should remember who is out there campaigning for crypto. That's it, bottom line. We need to remember who is out there campaigning to keep jobs here, crypto here, innovation here in the United States of America.

That's it. So today's the day. At 2.15 p.m., we will see if this bill moves forward. If the Democrats decide, you know what? And some of the Republicans. There are a few Republicans that have voted against this.

So we will see who wants to be on crypto's bad side. And you know what, crypto is a big ass industry. Okay, there's a reason. Everybody wants to come into crypto. There's a reason for it. There's a fucking reason for it.

It's a shame. It's a really, really a shame. Because this is something that should have been a slam dunk. We're talking about something that should have been absolutely a slam dunk. And yet here we are.

And I don't think any, and they're also talking about, by the way, there's also conversations being had about there's a bill that they're trying to pass for crypto taxes, which is much needed. Like we need all these things so we can become the crypto capital of the world.

It's not, it just doesn't end with the clarity act. We need to understand, everybody needs to understand what the fuck is going on. You know, I respect Trump and his administration when they say we want to be the crypto capital of the world, but like you can't be the crypto capital of the

world if you don't have clarity. When you have the SEC and the CFTC writing the regulations and you're not the crypto capital of the world. When the IRS is deeming crypto to be a property, and then you have others that are deeming it to be a commodity, I mean like, and then virtual currency.

We are absolutely confused here. Everybody else outside of America got a right. Everybody else outside of America, they got a right. They got a right. And it's frustrating. It is absolutely frustrating, man.

It is frustrating. These are people that work for us. You know, like these people work for us. If you're an American citizen, the politicians work for us. We don't work for them. Okay, we elected you to go into Congress to work for us

to make our lives better. How many entry level jobs the clarity act can bring? How many people are looking for work? I talked about this with Landy last time too. People are looking for work. Do you understand what we can have happened here

in the United States of America? We can have more jobs in the private sector and people can get entry level jobs. Like, why is it so difficult with crypto? But why is it not difficult with AI? AI, man, holy shit.

AI got no regulation essentially, like go. Crypto is like Jesus Christ. The way crypto is treated in the United States of America, I mean, obviously it's a lot better now, but the way it's been treated, it's been horrific. And you don't gotta wonder why either.

Like, you can understand why it's been treated the way it's been treated. You know, centralized components do not wanna see main street win. They don't wanna see you with money. They don't wanna see you have an opportunity once.

They wanna see you working for them, and I always say this. I'm repetitive when I say this too, that the centralized world wants you to continue to work the nine to seven job because no longer nine to five, they want you to work either the nine to seven

or the two jobs or three jobs that you're already working and you don't even have enough to go ahead and provide for, or not provide, forget about providing, to even pay the bills in terms of like, you're probably six months behind on rent.

A lot of people are. I'm pissed off. I'm be honest, man. I'm pissed the fuck off, man. 100% pissed. Because this shouldn't have,

it shouldn't be like this in America, man. It should not be like this in America. There's no way that in America we should be fighting over a clarity act that can take our, that can take,

literally, it can take America to the next level. Like everybody else is winning the war on tech, if you think about it. Everybody else is winning, every country, China. China is like absolutely wiping the floor with us. I can't blame this on the Trump administration.

I can't because they've worked hard to go ahead and get crypto, all these crypto policies done. They just, you know, Trump can sign an executive order on everything. Things have to go through the House and the Senate.

And here we are. This is what happens when you have two parties that both hate each other, okay? They don't wanna work for the American people. Let's call it for what it is. If we had two parties that were willing to work

for the American people, this would have been passed a long time ago. But we have two parties. We have one party that hates Trump so they do not wanna give Trump a win. So they'll wait until 2030 until Trump is out of office

in order to go ahead and get this done. So that means the American people and the crypto industry suffers in America because people do not or one side does not want to pass anything that would be productive

because it would look good for Trump. Can you imagine where we are right now? Can you imagine? We are currently being held hostage. Our industry, if we're gonna talk about crypto, the crypto industry is being held hostage

by people who don't like Trump so they're gonna make the industry suffer and wait until 2028 to 2030 when there's a new president and new elected officials in office. This is insanity.

This is absolutely crazy. Everybody in crypto should be absolutely besides themselves. You should be angry. And like I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican or independent, Green Party, Yellow Party, Purple Party,

it doesn't matter to me. You should be looking at this and saying, you know what, I got my thoughts on certain topics. Okay, cool, but on this topic, I align with everybody. We need, I'm telling you right now,

in the current direction that we are going with the politicians that we have in office, and I'm not saying every politician's bad at all. Okay? I'm just saying, put this shit to the floor. Let's see who votes on it.

Let's see who votes for crypto and let's see who doesn't. And then the people who don't, we get the matter office. And by getting them out of office, you go to the ballot box and you make a vote for somebody that is super excited about the industry. I wrote about John Deaton.

John Deaton, he's running in Massachusetts. Malarkey is the sitting Senator there. He's been sitting in that chair for God knows how long. Maybe it's just time we go ahead and continue to put in blood people who not only love this country, but understand crypto, like John Deaton fought for crypto.

Okay? He fought for crypto. He was fighting for XRP. Y'all remember this, we need to elect individuals like him into office versus having these, not that they're old and age,

but these people that have been sitting there for 30, 40 years doing absolutely jack shit. It really, it's bothersome. It's really bothersome to think that we are the greatest country in the world. I believe that to be true.

We are the, and I'm sorry. I know a lot of people tune in internationally to watch the show, but I do believe that the United States of America is the greatest country of the world. And here we are.

We can't even pass a fucking bill. And we've had Perry and boring on who has worked in Congress, who has literally stated that like, maybe like 1%, not even 1% of all these bills that go in, they pass.

What kind of rate is that? I'm not saying every bill should pass. Of course you should look at these bills and see if they actually would work out for the country and stuff. I'm just saying like, the Clarity Act makes sense.

Crypto regulations make sense. Clarity for crypto makes sense. What are we talking about? It really, it is something, it is something, man. It is something special to see what's happening. This is why, you know, I ran for office in 2020.

Unfortunately, but COVID, COVID, I don't know. Listen, I don't want to say that I don't know if I would have won. Maybe I wouldn't have won, but I would have gave it a good shot, but COVID hit and that was a done deal, you know?

But one of the reasons why I ran for office is because of this. It's like, I remember the day. I remember watching Mark Zuckerberg sitting in front of Congress and they were, and then you had a bunch of Congress people

asking Mark Zuckerberg questions. You don't have to like Mark. You don't have to like Zuckerberg, but they're asking them the dumbest questions in the world. How would you log in? I don't know how to log.

I'm like, half of these people don't even know how to, they don't even go on the internet. They don't even use social media. They don't know how to log in. These are the people that represent us. Can you imagine?

If they can't log into Facebook, these are the people that are gonna represent us when it comes to crypto. They have no clue what the fuck crypto is. You got Senator Warren thinking that it's used for illegal activities.

Hello, have you heard of the US dollar? The US dollar literally, how many crimes are committed and how many people are caught? Less than 1%? You gotta be an idiot to go ahead and do anything on a public ledger.

There's no privacy. I mean, if we're not talking about midnight, Monaro, Zcash, Dash, I can name one more. Then there's no, you don't have a privacy component. It's just, it's crazy, mind-boggling what we are dealing with here

in the United States of America. But welcome to the breakdown episode 784. I'm just, I'm blown away, man. Because I mean, in the United States of America, I'm very surprised. I might sound repetitive right now,

but I'm just fucking, it is really, come on. What are we doing? What the hell are we doing here, man? What are we doing? At some point, man, at some point, man, we gotta wake the fuck up.

At some point, wake up. Vote for people that care. Vote for fucking individuals that give a shit about this space. But like I said, I wrote a tweet and I said that Hunter Biden,

there's some good in Hunter Biden. Relax, hold on, let me just say why. Because for all the shit that Trump has got with the Trump token, and me and Charles have gone over this and I've talked to others about the Trump token

and how we feel about that. But they kept on talking about Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump's family, Trump token, Melania, all this stuff, right? And here comes Hunter Biden. And I said this yesterday, Hunter Biden is the coolest dude in the world on Twitter, right?

Everybody wants to interview him and everybody wants to talk to him on X and stuff. And here he launches laptop. Now, now Democrat, like if you're a Democrat, you're like, well, we don't have a leg to stand on here. Now we need to bring clarity.

You talk about Trump and you can't, you know, it's unfair. You got a sitting president. He's dabbling in the financial space, da, da, da, da. Well, Biden, I know like Hunter Biden isn't a fucking elected official, but he's a part of, hey, that's Joe Biden's son,

former president, says he wants to run for president. You know, if I see the laptop token come out and I'm a Democratic official, I'm like, fuck. Because, you know, we're trying to stall off here, right? Because that's what's happening here. We're trying to stall off.

And now Hunter comes out with laptop. And that, and you know what, like I said yesterday, you could talk all you want about Trump's token, you could talk about Melania, you could talk about Libra, but all those things did better than laptop. And I'm not just saying that, like I'm just, for real,

the numbers, it's the numbers. Anyway, we'll be right back after this commercial break sponsored by midnight. What first got you excited about blockchains? Think about it. Oh wait, I bet it wasn't multi-million dollar hacks,

exposed data, or finding somewhere safe to store your seed phrase, was it? Maybe it was the idea of decentralizing a broken financial system. Maybe it was imagining a world where people own their own data and get to sharing the value it creates.

Or maybe it was the promise of a fundamentally better way of connecting, communicating and transacting the next phase of the internet that empowers us instead of exploiting us. So why hasn't that happened yet? Why are we still living with the same broken system

that blockchains promise to fix? It's because blockchains can't keep a secret. Enabling open transparent systems was only the first half of the challenge. For blockchains to really change the world, they also have to be able to protect our sensitive data

when it matters. And that's why we build midnight, to bring down the final barrier to mass adoption and unlock the full potential of the decentralized web. Let's build the internet we deserve together. Ladies and gentlemen,

we all know this encrypt of ownership matters. That's why Cake Wallet. Cake Wallet gives you full control of your digital assets, all in one easy to use application. You can store Bitcoin, Litecoin, ZCash, Monero and many more with just one secure backup.

Swap between coins in seconds, no copying addresses, no complicated steps and even includes Bitcoin Lightning for faster payments. And with Cake Wallet built in, you can use crypto in real life through debit cards or gift cards,

simple, secure, self-custody, download Cake Wallet and take control of your crypto. There is an astronaut conducting an emergency repair on a global communication satellite that could go dark at any moment. We have a second eagle on this.

Is that guy on FOMO? Probably, he's looking for a crazy trade. Yeah, let's get back to it everybody. The big issue is here. The astronaut's FOMO account by it's in the room. The satellite has been restored.

Peace. The crisis appears to be over. Good to. There we go, United States of America representing social and communism does not work. Digital assets is a better to move money

at the speed of light. People are greedy when they also try to acquire gold. I am here providing electricity and that energy that is necessary for the modern day. We're back on the show.

Episode 784 sponsored by Midnight. Midnight is the title sponsor of the show. It's right on Fridays. You can join me at Midnight City. You can watch me mine and then sit in my apartment for,

I don't know, 22 hours. That's the joke, right? I think Charles did that on purpose. I asked Charles to up my IQ in Midnight City for working on that. Because right now my IQ is lower than room temperature.

Okay, I just go and I mine and I go back to my room by myself in a suit. I don't even get undressed. I don't even put on my pajamas or something. Just in Midnight City, mining and go right back. Polymarket also, Polymarket is the official

prediction market sponsor of the breakdown. Also, Cake Wallet. Cake Wallet, one of the most secure wallets that we have in this space and also FOMO. Shout out to FOMO for bringing on social fire.

Like that is cool what FOMO is doing. Anyway, we are a minute away from bringing on the president of Midnight. That'll be fun to go ahead and chat it up with him. Okay, it'll be fun to go ahead and have a few minutes to go ahead

and talk about Midnight. I talk about Midnight, Charles talks about how many people have we had on here talking about Midnight? I just want to ask him what made him come into crypto? What made him come into crypto?

I got a lot of, hold on, where are all these questions? I got a lot of analogies off the top of the head. Anyway, it's 1.15 p.m. Let me just retweet it for the XX. You get mad at me when I don't retweet it. So I'm going to retweet it right now.

Here you go, hold on one second, I'll retweet it. Retweet it, relax. Relax, I already see the comments. Live, wait, look, I do this live, right? Live. Everybody's watching.

Okay, there we go. All right, without further ado, let's bring him right in. Hold on, there are, let me just see. There's, let me just add him right in. What's going on?

It is good to have you on the show. How's everything going, Femi? I'm really well, hey buddy, I'm well, how are you? I'm doing great. Glad to have you on here to talk about midnight, to talk about privacy.

I watched a lot of your stuff, definitely a lot of your stuff at the conferences, keynotes, you've killed it at consensus. Yeah, so let's start off, before we jump into midnight, what made you come into crypto?

I gotta ask you this, because you come from traditional. I do, I do. First of all, I feel unaddressed. You look sharp in your suit and tie. I haven't worn a suit and tie in a long time.

So even in my eight fun days. So I respect, you look sharp. What wore me in? I spent 70 years at a very innovative firm, Marshall Waste. They're a UK-based hedge fund that went global. And I worked with a lot of quant software engineers

and after 17 years, and they grew to be the scale of a Citadel millennium. So very well known in that space. Then I left and helped a former Citadel CIO in Europe spin out his hedge fund. And after a year and a half doing that,

I was like, I need something new, a new challenge. I was approached by Polkadot or Gavin Wood. And I was like, I don't do crypto. I do finance. But they were insistent and they kept asking me to look into it.

So I did find out who Gavin was, what they were doing. And I saw a new way of new form of technology, a new way of doing finance from different rails. There's no DeFi, C-Fi, trad-fi finance where you do equities, fix income, FX now,

blockchain just provides a different, cleaner, efficient way of doing that. So I jumped into a rabbit hole, learned huge amounts with Gavin and the team over at Parity. And then a year and a half into that journey,

Charles came calling and he told me he was interesting in developing midnight. And when he told me, it just made a lot of sense. And here I am. And I've been on the project two and a half years. I'm loving every moment of it.

Get to meet wonderful people like you, get to meet, work with amazing people in my team and across the ecosystem. So yeah, glad to be here. You got a hell of a team. They're like bodyguards.

They are very protective of me. Yes, not quite the way it tells his bodyguards up, but they're very protective of me and my space and looking after me. But look, I love what they do. They are great.

I always hire people better than me. They're all better than me. And they're all very passionate about what we do at midnight. Very humble of you to say that. And you mentioned Charles.

How is it like working with Charles? Awful, terrible. I don't know why I'm saying that. No, phenomenal. I mean, first of all, the guy never sleeps, never rests. So I came into blockchain to be challenged

and to learn new things and to innovate and to keep moving forward. So I am a rolling stone that gathers no moss in Charles's company. So he is very supportive, very encouraging, has ideas, but is also receptive to being challenged

and showing a different way of doing things. When I joined him as with the previous people I've worked with, I'm not a yes man. I'm not a no man. I'm a can do person. So if I like what you're doing,

I will try and deliver that for you. If I've got a different way of doing it, which might be better, then I will present that. And we work great together. But more importantly than everything that I've said, he's just genuinely a nice human being.

He cares passionately, not only for the space, but for the people around him, whether it's colleagues and friends, and I consider him a friend. Where does midnight stand now? Obviously it's been a few months now.

From the day of its launch to now, where does it stand and what are the biggest things that has happened with midnight since, again, launch date? Yeah, so I think when the cusp of doing some really interesting things, we've spoken about it. And I know in the crypto world,

people speak about things a lot and hype it up a lot and deliver a little. So I always say the best thing that can happen for midnight is we become invisible. People don't talk about us, but we talk about the partners.

Good technology is invisible when you use your Uber app or your banking app. You don't think about all the GPS calls, the credit card calls, the database calls, none of that. You just care that your driver turns up on time, delivers you safely to your destination,

or that your payments move in the way you expect them to be securely. So I'd want our partners to be successful and talk about it. We went mainnet live in March, but very guarded. So not a lot of activities happening.

So people are wondering what's happening. We've been purposely very protective about who we let in. Partly because with the advent of AI and the advances in AI, we're seeing a number of hacks. And we want to be making sure that when people go live on our network, we're as secure as we can be.

We carry a target because we're in the space and also because Charles is associated with us. So we're very thoughtful about how we do that. For some, it might be boring, it might be slow, but the old adages, the tortoise beat the hare. So we are cautious of that things.

We have a lot of interesting incoming. So we've spoken about Monument Bank a lot, but I'll keep repeating it. Monument Bank, a UK regulated bank, regulated by the Bank of England, one of the top tier central banks in the world.

The Bank of England is supporting banks located in the UK to tokenize their cash deposits. Monument Bank have decided to do that on midnight. And what midnight allows them, it is a permissionless private network. Permissionless that we don't control anything,

we don't see anything, we don't have any backdoor keys or anything like that. Monument decide what they see. They create a sovereign zone within our network. And the first step is to tokenize their clients' deposits. The clients will see on their banking app

an ability to tokenize the deposits with a little bit of extra yield. They don't even need to know it's from midnight. Phase two of that is we're working with a number of very large and small tokenization platforms to bring in real-world assets from treasury funds

up to fractionalized private equity and hedge funds. Because Monument Service mass affluent clients, people who are too big for high-street banks, maybe too wealthy, but also not wealthy enough for the private world banks like Morgan Stanley and Jake Morgan.

So service and niche market is one of the fastest-growing neobanks in the UK. And we wanna bring those fractionalized assets into that space so they can put $10,000, $20,000 sterling worth of investments in. And then phase three of that is to evolve that

into a private repository of their assets, whether it's traditional assets, digital assets, and get a better lending and borrowing against that. The wealthiest of the wealthiest, they manage their taxes and they manage their wealth by not selling anything.

They leverage what they own. Elon Musk, I've often said, didn't sell Tesla to go buy X. He went and leveraged those shares. So as Tesla goes up and X goes up, he's still benefiting from that.

The wealthiest leverage their wealth, whether it's houses, real estate, equities, whatever it may be, to borrow against that. So come their death, they pay very little in the way of taxes and inheritance tax.

It keeps passing down generation and they get wealthier and wealthier whereas the average Joe public don't have access to that. So we're kind of proceeding with that with Monument. The nice thing is that technology can be licensed and leased out to other banks,

whether it's in the US, whether it's other banks globally. And it's following the line with what the Clarity Act is trying to achieve for democratizing access for people through their banks. And maybe I'll ask you about the Clarity Act

as we end this segment. But I wanna ask you because this is a question that if you're like, I'm always on the timeline, I'm reading or I'll have people come on here or have callers call in and they'll ask, well, how does midnight benefit Cardano?

And I wanna ask you that question. How does midnight benefit Cardano with this entire structure? Yeah, well, first of all, last year we gave away midnight. We made it eligible for anybody across eight ecosystems in the first phase and then secondly,

in the next phase, the second phase, the scavenging mine phase, anybody from any other ecosystem come and claim access to midnight. And that they acquired the night token. So the night token is a Cardano native asset.

So Cardano hasn't seen much adoption of its native tokens in the way that ERC20 tokens have been adopted through Ethereum. So what we've shown is that Cardano native assets can launch successfully and widely, not only within the Cardano ecosystem,

but across multiple global exchanges by centrally changes indexes and beyond. So that's the first thing. It's shown that people building in Cardano can achieve that with the right strategy and the right conversations.

Plus, in the midnight foundation, as we think about how we evolve our ecosystem and the partners we wanna work with recognizing liquidity and infrastructure, core tenants of doing so, those conversations we've also brought into

the Cardano ecosystem through the Pentat, which is a group of five entities within the Cardano ecosystem, including IO, Input Output, Charles' Entity, and also the Cardano Foundation. So we brought those conversations in.

So things like the June Layer Zero conversation around USDX, a lot of those permeated and originated from within the midnight foundation, which we then brought into the Cardano ecosystem. So there are a couple of things that we've done. There's a lot more, but it's not for me

to pollute about those or speak about those. We wanna be able to help Cardano rise, but for me, the real focus is obviously around midnight and ensuring midnight succeeds and we succeed. And if we can take our friends and partners with us, that's also a benefit for us.

Do we take privacy for granted? Always, for sure. But has the crypto industry taken privacy for granted? Like you have the Monaro, you have Zcash, you have a few privacy protocols out there, right? They've always taken privacy seriously.

But for the most part I would say that being here for over a decade, I think that we have taken privacy for granted. Do you see it? Like you've walked in here and you've seen this, right? You're looking at it, it's just like,

I feel like, and I say this all the time, it is safer, I don't wanna say safer. I would say that I have more privacy with my bank accounts right now, with banking with, whether it's Bank of America, Chase, whoever.

Then I do own crypto. Like it's not that I don't want anybody to, like, yeah, you know what, I don't wanna be a target. I don't want anybody to know how much I have. I don't want anybody to know my network. So I think we have taken privacy for granted.

Would you agree with that? For sure. So look, I think the privacy for granted has been, has evolved through the digital age. Let's be honest, we are very happy even in the web two space to give away

the rights to our data. The big companies in the S&P 500 dominated by the tech companies, they made money off our data. The cookies that you, most people like convenience. Let's be honest, why have firms like Uber and Uber Eats and those kind of instant access sort of apps work

is because we like convenience. We all want convenience. Why have Apple succeeded with the iPhone because it makes things simple. But a result of that is we give away data and they made like bandits off the back of that.

They become trillion dollar companies whereas we the average again, public don't benefit for that. So we've given up our data for convenience. Now, I know I have 10 fingerprints on my hands. I can tell you exactly where they've been.

I know that basically nobody has a store of those. I've never been arrested by the police. They haven't got a copy of those. Apart from the, maybe when I go through US immigration or airports, they have copies of my fingerprints.

Beyond that, I'm pretty confident of where my fingerprints have been. You can't say the same of your digital fingerprints. You don't know how many versions of you are out there to be subject to a weak database that gets hacked and then your identity stolen, information stolen.

And privacy in the digital, in the crypto space has been hijacked to mean something nefarious. Whereas privacy in traditional spaces, both physical and digital means confidence and trust and security. So I like to think of it that way.

From my hedge fund days, I could go and find liquidity, trade it, settle it, move margin, get leverage of it. And that was between my firm, my broker, my custodian. That was it. The world didn't know. So my secret source was not in the portfolio

that I constructed, but how I traded it. How we at Marshall Ways or Fifth Delta or the Citadel and Millennium, how they trade into it, how they trade out. Today in crypto, you can't do that. Crypto for all its beauty around transparency and truth

is a surveillance tool. People confuse pseudo anonymity, cryptographic addresses as privacy is not. Because as we know, data analytical firms will expose the large wallets and the activities. Every time a Bitcoin world does something,

Michael Saylor does something, we all talk about it. Why can't he do that in a private way? Why can't he do that in a way that protects not only his assets, but the confidence of his clients? So that's what we are trying to do with Midnight. There are predecessors to us.

And we are in simple terms Zcash, but with smart contracts and more. And so if you like the story of narrative Zcash, really you should be looking at Midnight saying, okay, what more can I do? Not only as an individual builder,

as an individual, but as an institution. And that's what we're evolving with our story and our technology. Have you had a lot of Fortune 500 or Fortune 50 companies contact you and say, we wanna work together, wanna incorporate Midnight into,

because I can't see like, so the move to stablecoins, I get that, all that stuff. But like, you imagine if you do payroll and everybody can see all these transactions, I'm working same entry level job hypothetically with somebody else, but they're getting paid more than me.

And I've been there longer. It's chaos, you're gonna lose your entire company. So you need, you need a privacy factor to it. So have you had any Fortune 50, Fortune 500 companies reach out and say, hey, we wanna go ahead and incorporate Midnight into our system.

I have a question, Fortune 500 second, but I use that example a lot. You're an entrepreneur, I've only ever worked predominantly at startups. At the foundation, we have less than 40 people. Imagine I tell, I picked somebody up in the audience

last week who was supporting me at one of these conferences. I said, imagine I tell her every day, when I speak to her that I really value her, she's an asset to the foundation. I don't wanna go anywhere, but I pay the foundation stablecoins.

The first thing I would do if I was an employee of being paid in stablecoins, I would track the wallet it came from. I will make sure there's enough funding or linked accounts to that wallet to make sure that I can stay in this startup

for 12 months, 18 months without worrying about not being paid. Second thing I might do is then say, on that day that I got paid, who else got paid? Which other distributions happened? I create a curve and suddenly having been told

I'm really valuable, I find myself on the left hand side of the distribution curve in the bottom percentile, the bottom intent, desktop, whatever it may be. That ruins culture. It ruins everything you're trying to build. So I completely agree with you on that.

So it needs privacy and we have some of those solutions coming to us. Instead of Fortune 500 companies, we are doing everything with foundation on our own. We don't have VC backing. We don't have large investors

that are backing us beyond Charles. So we are achieving what we have achieved through our own network, through our own conversation and through the story and the tech that we build in. We are speaking to some of the largest banks in the world because they've recognized

that they've built private blockchains, which is great for internal use cases, but then you become siloed. How do you create connective tissue to other chains without leaking metadata? J.P. Morgan, for example, create J.P. Morgan coin,

a great internal ledger for tracking what's happening between J.P. Morgan Philippines, J.P. Morgan France and J.P. Morgan Brazil. But the day they put something onto Ondo Finance and they have done a deal and it's publicly announced, then it leaks metadata because now when people are going,

oh, look at what J.P. Morgan are doing with Ondo. And if they move money out of Ondo, then what does it do to Ondo and its token price and its behavior? So all of this is information for not only traders, but also analysts and others.

Wouldn't J.P. Morgan like to speak to other banks, other networks privately? So, and I give them example, I'm not saying I'm speaking to J.P. Morgan, but these are the conversations we're having with some of the large banks globally,

but also regional banks and also banks in Europe and beyond. How do you explain midnight to somebody who's not in crypto? Like that's a question I'm gonna hit you with. How do you really, because like,

I'll just leave it there. How do you explain that? How do you explain midnight? I'm gonna give an example. Some people like it, some people hate it, but I think it sells it in a very simple way.

So privacy is, imagine you left your front door and technologies like blockchains are adding privacy as a secondary thought. That is like leaving your front door naked and then getting dressed in your suit and tie. Once, that's like me leaving my front door naked.

Once you've seen this middle-aged man wrinkled body and all naked, doesn't matter how private I become by getting clothed, you can't get that image out your head. That's the problem with adding privacy as an afterthought. What we do, what other chains have done

is because some of these privacy chains have been hit with sanctions or taken delisted, is they think about how do you commit a private transaction by using a public token? Now that's like saying, I've got a camera on your front door.

You leave fully clothed and you go away for 15 minutes to come back, but that camera tells me in that 15 minutes, you did something. So that's a metadata leakage. What midnight does, it allows you to leave your front door

with an invisibility cloak, fully clothed. Ordinary kid, if you want to be under the cloak. When you get to your destination or the counterpart you speak to, you might reveal the cloak. If you're warm, you might roll up your sleeves.

That's what midnight does for privacy. It gives you full data metadata protection with the ability to disclose information. So you leave your front door, nobody knows, and you can do it. If you commit the activities you need,

with the partners you need, share the information you need, come back into your home and everybody else in the world doesn't need to know. And I think you guys have done a hell of a job. When Charles comes on every month

and we really touch on everything, including politics, we just jump into so many angles here. But I have said that you guys have done an extremely wonderful job. Like for me, I don't look at the charts. What I mean by that is I don't look at it every five seconds.

I'll look here and there, but I'm not looking at the chart. I wanna see how people are actually building out, right? Because we need privacy. I've been yelling about this for the last two, three years. I'm like, guys, you just said it like,

yeah, great, you think you're hiding behind an address. That all comes apart, man. Chain analysis, all these firms are out there. They can find you in two seconds. I don't wanna be a target. I just don't want people knowing what I have.

Like I have that right to having my privacy. And I like the way you guys have built out, even with, look, the bridge hack, it's not midnight and I came on here when it happened. Like it's not midnight's fault, it's bridge. It's the bridge we need to work on.

I guess the last component in crypto is fixing bridges because these bridges, the infrastructure, they need fixing. So, but otherwise, like you guys have done everything possible, midnight city, I think it's going to be a hit. When I've talked about that,

I talk about it every Friday as I go into midnight city and I wash myself in my one bedroom. That might be a one bedroom or a studio. I don't even know what it is, but I'm there and then I go out and it's fun. It's fun.

It's a pixelated game that is fun. If you're, I guess my age, we're used to pixelated games and you have a good time. And agentic trading, I think is going to be huge. We talk about AI, obviously AI and crypto, they fit together.

Like they just fit. One needs the other kind of thing. How are you going to make payments with AI? Like it just like crypto fits that narrative. So I think midnight has done a phenomenal job and I think for everybody who's out there

who continues to look at price, they say, look at what's being built out versus stop looking at price action. I think that's where everybody gets it wrong. Things take time to build out. You said to yourself, the slow build,

I love slow and steady versus up and then like, you know how you go right up and you go right down and then usually projects disappear. You talked about that also during our conversation here, but that leads me into speaking of up and down situations. The Clarity Act, it's been, there's 124 amendments,

all these things are being done. Trump has already given everything away. He's like, okay, whatever you guys want, I'm giving you the concessions here. Now the Democrats are moving the goalposts again and some Republicans, I'm going to include them also.

How bad do we need the Clarity Act to pass in for the crypto industry to go to the next level? Yeah, good question. I mean, I'm going to answer it as a European or as a European. Sure, sure.

So what the Clarity Act is trying to do is what we're achieving with Monument Bank and what the Bank of England are proposing here in the UK. What I'm seeing from the US is again, the bipartisan sort of politics that has dominated the US politics

for more than a decade now, almost 20 years. And I look, unfortunately in the macro situation and the worsening macro situation has weakened the position of the president and how he pushes this through because people are now focused on his actions

in his global actions and the impact is having to cost of living and energy pricing. And that's detracting from what he was trying to do there. Hence it weakens his position in negotiating against the Democrats and even his own people.

How valid do you need it? Well, crypto is surviving without it and it will continue to survive without it. It will open the doors to, what I said about a year and a half ago before we launched the foundation

was that the institutional adoption is coming and the crypto, the blockchain industry has a choice. It can either fight it and try and win or it can try and surf that wave. It can surf that wave and build the biggest, bestest surfboard ever.

But it means it needs some unity and for us to align as an industry and work together better together. We need to remove some of the tribalism we see within the industry. Otherwise the money in the banks

and the big corporation will wash us all out. That way we'll wash us all out. So what the Clarity Acts allows is, pardon the pun, Clarity, their direction around what the rules are and the people who are building for longevity

not only just retail, but focus on how adoption comes from mainstream, how they sort of impregnate them, impermeate into the institutional audiences of financial institutions, they will get to win. To think we were gonna beat that,

it's not gonna happen. Web three will survive. Web two will survive. Somewhere in the middle, Web 2.5 will be the convergence. It will convergence of blockchain data supporting existing institutions

that bridging legacy or new blockchain private databases to each other. But more importantly, it's taking advantage of what we're seeing in terms of 24 seven trading, tokenization, stable coins, everything like that.

So I would hope it passes. It will certainly help our lives improve in the US. I think you've already seen a lot of investment go back into the US crypto organization that I left and now come back or opening offices for the first time.

So we'd like to see it pass, but our strategy is not completely at midnight, completely dependent on that. We are, as I say, working with partners outside and beyond the US, so yes. Which it will be my last question, I promise.

I don't know. Cause I know, listen, I know you're a busy guy, as you should be. Do you find it easier to work within other countries than you do with the United States of America? So are there, being that there are so many firms

that did leave the United States of America during the time of Gary, scary Gary, as we call him, like he pushed everybody away. People fled to Spain, Portugal, the Baltic States, I mean, or the countries I should say, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,

like you have people that have moved away. And because obviously those countries said, come here, build here, we're blockchain friendly, we won't, there are no taxes here, don't worry about it, no capital gains. Do you find that midnight's doing well across the pond,

you're just waiting for the United States to get their stuff together? Oh, look, we do very well. We have some very good partners and strong partners within the US organizations who are supporting us not in their infrastructure level,

but also looking to build partnerships and applications. So I wouldn't say we weren't better in any particular jurisdiction above the others. The US is by far the biggest tech and capital market in the world. We would be arrogant if we were to ignore it

and we are very heavily invested. I am backed by and supported by Charles, who's very, you know, who's US based. So we have a lot of strong partners in the US. So the Clarity Act hasn't or the lack of it hasn't impacted how we look at things,

how we develop in that space. So, no, I think partnerships, innovation is about individuals as well. Governments help that, governments help that through regulation and clear direction, but innovators are people that we seek out globally.

Privacy advocates are people we seek out globally. So we don't have any one region. And the way I think about it is, if you like what we're doing at midnight, we're here to support you, regardless of what direction you want to take it,

whether you're institutional retail, whether you're focused on politics, healthcare, finance, our technology is there to collaborate and our foundation is here to collaborate with most people across many sectors.

So for us, I love the US, I love the energy and the vibe and I love the partners that we have there. So, and I'll keep going and traveling to the US because ultimately, governments come and go but they will get it right.

And I'm so more, I've always been bullish on midnight, way before midnight became the title sponsor for the show. Obviously I've always been bullish on Charles and I think like you are the right guy. And I'm not just saying that because anybody who knows me, I'm very blunt.

I think you definitely are with the demeanor and everything and what I've watched of your speeches and your keynotes, you're definitely the right guy to lead. I can't get you to, I can't get you to a buzz. You're like, nope, we're fine in the US.

We got part of it, we're doing it. You don't take no, excuse my language, you don't take no shit from anybody. I like that. And I think that's why midnight will ultimately succeed. The challenge gets me out of bed.

Otherwise, I have a wife and kids and I spend all my time with them. Somebody don't drag me away from them. It's gotta be worthwhile. It's gotta be challenging. It's gonna be meaningful.

And I have that in the foundation. I have that with the work we do midnight and we'll keep pushing, we'll keep striving. Next time I'm gonna wear a tie. I probably haven't worn a tie since I got married. It's been 16 years, but I wear a tie for you, buddy.

I feel bad because everybody who comes onto this show has the same response like, I didn't know I had to wear a suit. You don't have to wear a suit. You can come on, that's your style, man. I'm fine with it.

No, I got my previous demo that I look better in a suit or a jacket than I do in t-shirts. He says, you can't do smart casual. What's that saying? No, I will, but look, I appreciate your time.

You're very kind, very generous with your words. I just wanna make sure we do right by midnight and our partners and we'll keep pushing. I think everybody in the midnight ecosystem is rooting for obviously a big win. But I think most of us are really patient.

If it takes a year, if it takes two years to get a product that actually works, that people resonate with, that takes seriously, especially bitcoiners. Obviously, my first purchase was a bitcoin, so bitcoiners are looking at this like Bitcoin DeFi.

Everybody wants it to win. So it's not like people are hoping for it to fail. Most people want it to win out. You got the haters, but that's good. The haters are always the best campaigners out there. They get the message across, they're free marketing.

That's how I call it. Oscar Wilde once said, the only thing worse than being spoken about is not being spoken about. Exactly. Next time I come on, hopefully I can tell you

about how you can make Bitcoin private on midnight. I will have you on hopefully in the next month or two and because people want bitcoiners, want to have the conversation about how, and they've asked this multiple times already. I'm in those spaces.

Okay, David, how do we go ahead and align with midnight? What can they do for Bitcoin? I've asked Charles, but I would love to ask you particularly about that with midnight. So I'll hold that for the next month or two when I get you back on.

Anytime. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you, buddy. Just take care.

That's the president. That's the president of midnight. I would suggest following him. This guy, I tried. I couldn't budge him. I could not budge him.

I didn't want to do, you know me. I don't do no, I got you questions. I couldn't budge him. He has ice in those veins, bro. He has ice in those veins. I like him.

Cardano fam, midnight fam, bitcoiners. This guy's gonna lead, man. I'm telling you, he doesn't get flustered at all. Doesn't. That's what you need. Especially in crypto, where everybody's criticizing 24 seven.

Even when you make a right move, it's still wrong. He doesn't need the clarity act. He's like, okay, I don't need the clarity act. I'll get business done. I'll get it done. Midnight's gonna, you'll wake up

and midnight'll be on your cereal. I can see it. That's why I don't bed. Like I tell you guys this all the time. I don't bed against Charles and I know Charles in that entire organization.

They always make the right decisions. They always do when they put the right people in the right positions and they win. It's like, what team can I compare this to? Do I go football? For those, obviously I'm talking about not American football.

Do I go soccer here and try to compare like teams that are always good? They always bring in the right players that fit the system. Oh, next time he comes on, we're talking about Bitcoin DeFi.

Oh, we are, we are absolutely dedicating 35 to 40 minutes on. And I know all the Bitcoin, A, be nice because when I see you at the conferences, we're hands shaking, right? And you guys have asked, A, Dave,

you have midnight as a sponsor and you talk about midnight all the time. Yeah, Bitcoin DeFi is a real thing. It's a real thing and midnight provides a solution. Oh, but Charles is too aggressive. What does Charles have to do with anything?

You guys are, you guys sometimes, it's mind boggling. It is really mind boggling. So I was not supposed, wait, hold on. So I wasn't supposed to buy an iPhone because I thought Steve Jobs was rude or something. I don't know.

What are we saying in this space? But you know what, here's what I'll say. We've gotten more mature. We've grown. Delta coming into the room, he said it. They're the institute and what have I said for years?

You guys are champion for institutions. Well, they're here. I have bidwis on here. I've had people from BlackRock on here. They're here. They've been here.

They've just made it official. They're coming, whether you like it or not. And we have to figure out a way to sit at the same table. We need to figure out a way. And like, that's a guy who's worked in tri-fi. What do you think?

Does he speak the same language as your favorite traditional bro? Yeah, he does. That's why I keep telling you guys, like you get with it, understand the things that are going to work.

Midnight's gonna work. Like if you think, if you're sleep, Zcash, it's working, right? Minero's working. But like you have midnight respectfully that does more. I can say that.

But I can tell you that midnight does more. There's like more of an opportunity with midnight. And there's more. And I know my Zcash bros, they go, get on me. But sorry, Zcash. And Eli, Eli, who one of the creator,

like I'm just saying we've talked about this. Yeah, sometimes I don't play PC. You know me. Tell you what's on my mind. Maybe Eli now is not gonna come on after me saying that. But it's the truth.

And then Cardano people complained. Do you understand? I hope you watch this episode, or if you didn't rewind it, it'll be clipped up. I hope you watch the one when Charles comes on, we'll get more into DeFi, Bitcoin deep.

Because that's what Charles wants. He wants that. He wants you to see it too. Cardano people who constantly tell me in the DMs, this is bad. No, this is good.

Okay. This is good for Cardano. This shows that there is something that's connected to Cardano that works, that will drive more people into seeing Cardano. I swear, man.

I swear, they do the right job, man. They got a bunch of professionals, I like it. I like it. Not that I didn't know. When he said Gavin Wood though, I was like, oh man, polka dot.

Wow. I still hold polka dots. So I'm like, oh my God. Gavin, man. Gavin. All right, we'll be right back

after this commercial break, sponsored by Midnight. What first got you excited about blockchains? Think about it. Oh wait, I bet it was an multimillion dollar hacks, exposed data, or finding somewhere safe to store your seed phrase.

Was it? Maybe it was the idea of decentralizing a broken financial system. Maybe it was imagining a world where people own their own data and get to sharing the value it creates. Or maybe it was a promise of a fundamentally better way

of connecting, communicating, and transacting. The next phase of the internet that empowers us is that of exploiting us. So why hasn't that happened yet? Why are we still living with the same broken system that blockchains promise to fix?

It's because blockchains can't keep a secret. Enabling open transparent systems was only the first half of the challenge. For blockchains to really change the world, they also have to be able to protect our sensitive data when it matters.

And that's where we build midnight. To bring down the final barrier to mass adoption and unlock the full potential of the decentralized web. Let's build the internet we deserve together. Ladies and gentlemen, we all know this in crypto. Ownership matters.

That's why Cake Wallet. Cake Wallet gives you full control of your digital assets, all in one easy to use application. You can store Bitcoin, Litecoin, ZCash, Monero, and many more with just one secure backup.

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simple secure, self-custody, download Cake Wallet and take control of your crypto. It's an astronaut conducting an emergency repair on a global communication satellite that could go dark at any moment. We have a second eagle on this.

Is that guy on FOMO? Oh, he's just like playing for crazy credit. Yeah, let's get back to it, everybody. It's a big issue, you see. My instant room, the satellite has been restored. The crisis appears.

There we go, United States of America, representing social and economic communism does not work. Digital assets, is it better to move money at the speed of light? People are greedy when they also try to acquire gold.

I am here providing electricity and that energy that is necessary. I'm the modern day Tony Stiles. Welcome back. Welcome back to the breakdown episode 784. We were joined by Femi, the president of midnight,

the Midnight Foundation. It was great to have him on, just listening to him talk about midnight and what they're doing at midnight. Hopefully we can get him on in the next month or two so we could talk about Bitcoin DeFi

and dive a little bit deeper into the privacy conversation. You guys know how I feel about privacy. I think privacy is essential for every single person that walks this goddamn planet. You should own your privacy.

Also shout out to Poly Market, Poly Market is the official market sponsor of the breakdown, also Cake Wallet and FOMO. All right, and I'm doing a giveaway on FOMO. So if you're following me on FOMO, you're eligible. If you're not following me on FOMO, you're not.

Okay, bottom line. Bottom line, bottom line. That's right. I just read something reported by Jesus Christ. Just read something. God damn it.

Damn, where is this? Hold on. So this was breaking about 52 minutes ago. Two Robin Hood employees were charged with fraud by federal prosecutors for allegedly using confidential crypto listings information

to trade perps futures on hyperliquid, each making more than $50,000. Damn. Breaking also US oil prices surge above $105 per barrel to its highest level since May 4th, up 57% since July 2nd,

with the average US gas price now at $4,033 and 13% up 13% also from the Iran War High. And then you have US diesel prices hit a record $6,026 a gallon, up over 80% in 90, excuse me, in nine months as truck drivers pay nearly $3 more per gallon than in January.

And California gas exceeds $6 per gallon with rate hike expectations at a new high. And speaking of the Clarity Act, Coinbase's CEO, Brian Armstrong said, "'Senators must choose between promoting innovation "'and protecting consumers or letting other countries lead.'"

And I believe that. Also two hours ago, Bitcoin's price dropped below $76,000 as investors prepare for a Senate vote on the Clarity Act. And it's two o'clock, so we're 15 minutes away. We're 15 minutes away from that.

Yeah, the Robinhood situation is really, I can joke about that, but it's like the 50 grand. Let me read this again. Two Robinhood employees were charged with fraud by federal prosecutors for allegedly using confidential crypto listings information

to trade perps on hyper liquid, each making more than $50,000. Bro, like real, what the fuck, really? That's crazy, bro. That is absolutely crazy, man. Y'all are crazy.

That is wild. Anyway, welcome to the breakdown. Let's look at Polymarket real quick. I wanna see what's happening. I wanna see where the Clarity Act stands now on Polymarket.

That's what I wanna do. Let me jump into Polymarket real quick. Let's see where we stand now. I wanna look at two things. Let's go, it was 28% yesterday, when we checked yesterday, it was 28%.

Let's look at it now. We are at 17% chance of the Clarity Act passing. Like this is not normal. Like the Clarity Act should pass. You know what's funny though? Like we had, obviously, Femi on here.

Who's like, he said like, he kinda said like it doesn't matter because we're gonna get things done with midnight. And I respect that. But the Clarity Act would make it so much easier. So much easier, so much liquidity would flow

into the goddamn space. I get the SEC and the CFTC, they've done a great job. But it shouldn't be up to them to determine. So I think that we're not going to see a pass here, man. We're just not. Polymarket, again, it's down from the 20,

it was 28%, now it's down to 18%. 16% now, 16% chance of the Clarity Act passing. Let's also look at the Fed decision in September. Will there be a rake height? Will we go up 25 basis points? Trump said he'll support anything.

He'll support the decision that Kevin makes. Obviously the Fed share, he'll support it. 88% chance of a 25 basis point increase. 25% chance, excuse me, 88% chance that there's a 25 basis points increase. That's crazy.

That is crazy. That is crazy. Man, man, man, man. Listen, you're gonna start seeing, I feel like we're gonna start seeing a pullback. Let's look at the markets right now.

Here's the market, current condition of the market. Red, the markets are red. Do I wanna pullback? Absolutely, I wanna pullback. I wanna get cheaper, I wanna get cheaper assets. Wow, we are red, we are red, get prepared.

But this is, I posted that I'm bullish. I'm bullish either way, up or down, because here's my two choices. Here are my two choices right now. And this is what I said. The two choices are really simple.

One, if we go up, good, great, I'm excited. I'm more excited if we go backwards so I can pick up some more. Why not more Solana, why not more Ethereum? Why not more Midnight Wink? Obviously the show's sponsored by Midnight.

But all these things that are available, more Bitcoin for cheaper, that makes sense, more Monaro for me? This is easy. When you grow up in this environment, after some time, you embrace the red,

like you like red, because it's just, it's an opportunity for you to accumulate more, okay? You accumulate more, and then once we go, once we go, it is all good, baby. And if you can't buy the dip, by the way, we don't talk a lot about this,

but if you can't buy the dip, that's fine. If you've already run the market, then sit back and relax. You don't gotta buy the dips. If you don't got money to buy the dips, it's fine. It's no problem.

But if you have liquid on the sidelines, and there's a dip, well, that's what smart people do. They take profit, they put it to the side, and when there's a dip, they buy the dip. They don't, and I'm talking about on good assets. I'm not talking about some like,

bullshit that just came off of a launch pad, okay? I'm talking about some real good shit. By the way, can I tell you something? The one thing that I was thinking about the entire time, I've been thinking about this for fucking weeks now.

I can't wait to get my fucking haircut. I can't wait to shave this beard, and just leave, you know, the Italian beard, you know how I do, and I just can't wait. Binnany in New York in September, my hair is all freaking curly.

I'm trying to put it down, nothing's working. I look like Moverine, so Bobby said that. I'm smiling, Maxi, I'm smiling because I'm looking at myself. I'm like, look at this gorgeous bastard. That's why I'm smiling.

Now I'm growing out the hair, man. I want to grow out the hair, man. I love my hair, I want to grow it out. I don't know. We'll see what I'll do with it. We'll see.

I'm training, I'm back to training right now. So we'll see which direction I go. I don't know, I like, you know what, I've kind of, when I don't put, when I don't put product in my hair, I kind of like it when it's like curly and long.

I don't know, there's something to it. Something to it, man. Something to it. Anyway, the markets are red. For those who can't, for those who are color blind, I'm just letting you know the markets are red.

Pee-pee, where are you at, bro? Oh no, you did not just call me the T-Moo Hugh Jackman. Are you kidding me? First of all, yeah, I do kind of look. I do look like Wolverine, I ain't gonna front. I kind of do look like Wolverine.

Yo, you'll imagine, oh my goodness. If I had the fucking clothes, bro, that'd be crazy. Anyway, welcome to the breakdown. It is 2.08 p.m. on the East Coast. Nobody cares about the West. You tuned in to episode seven, 84.

I love my people. I love my people, man. I really do love my people. The markets, man, the markets, man. This is a time to take advantage of the markets. Shall we look at FOMO?

Let's look at FOMO. Let's share the screen here with FOMO. I'm looking at, what is this, dumb money. That's right, dumb money. Dumb money's making a comeback. I've never been so excited about something

that's 100, at 122K market cap. I've never been excited about something that's been at 122K. It went to 1.2 million and then dropped down all the way to like 60K or something. And then the people said, no.

The people said we will not let it die. We shall go ahead and see it thrive. So there you go on that. We have that dumb money. Because that's what we have in the meme economy. We have dumb money going into just random bullshit, man.

Like these are memes. Like a lot of these things that y'all are going into, they're not memes. They're not memes. They're not fucking memes. Not memes.

Not memes. Not memes. Man, now we got the resident fucking spammers coming in here to spam me some door. I am never buying, let me say something. I am never buying any of the stuff

that you guys are preaching anymore. By the way, you guys can go ahead and look at my article. Okay, I went ahead and posted up an article yesterday. Basically it was an opinion piece. Pass it or own it. The Clarity Act vote is tomorrow, which is today.

We shall see at 2.15 what decision is made here by our Congress people. Will they respect the industry or will they allow other countries to just run with it? Are we going to dominate? Are we going to be the crypto capital of the world?

Are we going to allow others to go ahead and take the ball and run with it? We need to ask these questions. And if, I'm telling you right now, if we can't pass the Clarity Act, then you can't talk about

that we're the crypto capital of the world. That comes to an end. And also mark down the people that vote no. I said this in the beginning of the show. I'm gonna say this again and then be repetitive. Mark down, write down the individuals that write no

and make sure we do not forget their names. Come midterms and come the election in 2028. Let us not forget who voted down the Clarity Act that would bring clarity to this goddamn space. Let us not forget. Let us not forget.

Because this is absurd. I'd vote for a Democrat that was, I'm telling you right now, I don't give a fuck what party it is at this point. If you're a Democrat who is pro-crypto, I'm voting for you. If we got a Republican in office that ain't pro-crypto,

but we got a Democrat who's pro-crypto, guess who I'm voting for? The Democrat. And you can clip this up and I don't give a shit what you do with it. Let him know.

I don't give a fuck anymore. I want, we need to vote for people regardless of party affiliation that are actually going to give a shit about the Clarity Act and clarity for the entire space and that want to propel and send crypto to the next level

and make sure that retail main street is included. So I'll vote for it independent, yellow party, green party, purple party, your mama's party, I don't care which party. If you're pro-crypto, come holler, come holler. You heard, you heard, you heard, you heard.

Yo, Mickey Mantle's pick sold for $3 million. A photograph of Mickey Mantle sold for $3 million. $3 million. $3 million. All right, guys, you know what I'm gonna do? So that's the end of the show, right?

So what I'm gonna do, it's 2.14 PM. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. Okay, I touched on topics. We had the president of Midnight On here. If you guys missed it, you can replay it. I'm sure people will clip it up.

Hopefully you got something out of it. Привет, привет, братан, как дела? Мне все хорошо, мне все прекрасно, я тут сижу. Я хочу уже, блядь, пойти прическу сделать. Ну, не прическу сделать, я хочу сказать, как сказать. I want to go to the barber already, уже.

Fuck, I don't know how to say it in Russian. Shit, fuck. I don't know how to say it in Russian. How do you say, не прическу? Потому что прическу я сделал сегодня, но я хочу сказать, я хочу пойти, блядь, как мне это сказать?

Как мне это, блядь, сказать? Я хочу пойти, я хочу пойти постричься. Хочу пойти уже постричься. Я думаю, я пойду, как, is Friday Patnitsa? Is Friday Patnitsa?

Is that how you say it? I think that's it, I don't know. But я уже хочу постричься. Я уже жду, и жду, и жду, и хочу уже пойти. Ну, блин, столько так ждать. God damn it, God damn it, man.

That's why I say, hey, listen, man, I'm bilingual, man. I know languages. I can go down to, I can end this war, by the way. If I was the president of the United States of America, or, you know what, President Trump can just bring me in, send me over, okay, let me talk to both Zelinsky and to Putin.

I'll break it down for them. I will literally break it down. What is this, poor, what the fuck is that? I can't even pronounce that, what is that? Oh, okay, I got it, got it, thank you very much. We got Russians in the building.

Yeah! We got Russians in the building. Privyatvam, Privyatvam Sim. Oh my God, Maxi's getting on, Maxi's really getting on my hair, Jesus Christ. Anyway, you guys are awful.

You guys are really awful, man. I look absolutely, I look absolutely drop dead gorgeous with, like, I can have, I can wear, you know what, let me not even start. Bratan, I like the word Bratan.

Look, I'm having, we're doing Russian lessons here, everybody, welcome to the show. Welcome to the breakdown, episode 789. Excuse me, 784, 889. Benaki, chill, mira. Well, I'll talk Spanish tomorrow, don't worry about it.

So anyone know what's going on, but we're waiting right now. It's 2.18, I still haven't had any sort of update. I'm waiting for the GMedia newsrooms to go ahead and tell me anything. Say it in Spanish.

You know I grew up in New York City, right? People speak Spanish there. By the way, you can check out my article. So anyway, thank you so much for joining the show. I appreciate you guys, I really do. Shout out to, again, the president of Midnight

for stopping by. Hope you guys give him a follow. Demi is definitely somebody, I feel like he's a guy, he's the guy that you want in that position to lead Midnight.

I think he'll do an excellent job. I think he's done an excellent job, not do. I think he's done an excellent job. I think he'll continue to do an excellent job and he understands both worlds. I think he understands,

I believe he understands both worlds. And Charles doesn't just pick random people. Like I don't see that in Charles. So, and Charles has surrounded himself with wonderful individuals, at least in my eyes,

especially the ones that I've talked with. Some of the best people in the world, Charles has around him. So that's dope. And we'll have Charles on this month. Well, I'll let you guys know when

and what time we'll have. Oh, that's the same time. 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Me and Charles chop it up, talk about what's happening in this industry. We'll talk about obviously politics and the Clarity Act.

But yeah, on that note, I wanna thank everybody for tuning in to the show, episode 784, sponsored by Midnight, Polly Market, Cake Wallet, FOMO, okay? And today I might go on. Today I might go on to YouTube.

I might go on to YouTube today and I might go ahead and chop it up, okay? I might go ahead and chop it up. So, we shall see. What is the next one?

Or maybe talk about the current ones. I don't know. We will see. YouTube has been great for me. The amount of viewers that have come on to my personal channel when I go live on YouTube

and nowhere else has been fucking remarkable. So, thank you so much and thank you to the new people that have tuned in and found my channel. On that note, shout out to everybody. I hope you have a great day.

If you have liquidity, start looking at the markets. Markets are red, but that's not when you get scared. That's when you get excited. When you see red markets like this, when you see things are down, these are opportunity plays, right?

$99 Solana, now 100. Okay, listen, there are people I know that are hoping for $80 Solana. I don't know if that happens, but we shall see, right? We shall see what happens. Let's go ahead and go back.

Kern, what we have, Bitcoin sitting at 76, eight. We got Bitcoin, excuse me, Ethereum of the 2,500, BNB is at 721.

We got Solana at 99. So it's going back and forth. Zcash is at $1,126. Imagine if Zcash is at 1126, what do you think midnight's gonna be at? I'm just saying, I'm putting it out there.

Think about that. Let that marinate a little bit. What else is out there that is look, you know what? I'm going to look at some of these things and then I'll talk about them tomorrow.

But hopefully the Clarity Act, listen, I don't know, maybe the Clarity Act moves forward. Maybe it doesn't, but it is what it is. Phi Phi, thank you for joining in. Thank you guys for coming on.

I appreciate you guys. And until next time, I need a slogan. I really need one of those slogans to end the show. But anyway, on that note, yeah, send done money to $1.

Send it to $1. I'm out.