UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts
Brian Krogsgard, Jordan Fish
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Mark Cuban: Present & Future Opportunity of Crypto
UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts
04/01/21 • 47 min
Notes & Links
This episode is presented by Blockfolio. Trade on an awesome mobile interface fee-free, and still get all the great portfolio tracking features you know and love: https://uponly.tv/blockfolio
Music by GiovanniPickle
Michael Saylor: Bitcoin is the Best Property in the World
UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts
01/26/22 • 127 min
Links
Show Partner
This episode is presented by FTX. Trade on an awesome mobile interface fee-free, and still get all the great portfolio tracking features you know and love: https://uponly.tv/ftx
Show Notes
Bitcoin Journey
– First tweeted about Bitcoin in 2013, was skeptical
– Would comment on early tech, very unknown at the time
– Would tweet about Bitcoin and people find his old tweets
– Learned about Bitcoin through poker and online gambling
Diversifying
– DON’T DIVERSIFY
– Diversifying is selling the winners to buy the losers
– Amazon wins
– Walmart kinda treads water
– and 15,000 companies lose
– It’s nearly impossible to beat a digital monopoly
Banking Experience
– Lost $1M in a bank rug
– Lost $1M in an Argentina rug as well
– Banks wouldn’t let him move his money around
– He got crushed by Argentina inflation
– Kept getting smoked – “can we buy a yacht, float it to the US, then sell it here?”
– Couldn’t do that, eventually gave up
Current Bitcoin Experience
– Then had $1B company with $500M cash on balance sheet
– Knew it was gonna get inflated away
– Saylor: “It’s like losing half your body – like amputating your left arm and left leg”
– Now has like $5B worth of Bitcoin
– If you’re on main street you had the worst year of your life
– If you’re on Wall Street you had the best year of your life
– First Bitcoin buy in August was defensive
– Bought first amount at like $11k BTC ($250M buy)
– Then got $600M loan at 1% interest...and just bought Bitcoin lmao
– Saylor: “All time high is just the all time high to date”
Business and Bitcoin
– Cobie: “Given the cyclical nature of crypto, I’ve seen life ruining bear markets and pre up only euphoria bull markets. Will you keep buying bitcoin forever?”
– Saylor: “Yeah” LMAO
– Devaluing currency is crushing basically every small business
– Saylor: “It’s like you’re rowing 7 knots, but the current is moving against you at 7 knots”
– Michael Sailor! *credit to CryptoCred*
– Saylor: “It is true that if I deal you double aces, you have an advantage in the poker game. But if I put a gun to your head, you don’t have that advantage anymore!” think he’s saying zoom out, think bigger lol
– More war/ poker/ boating analogies
Bitcoin vs Other Cryptos
– The others are very complicated, there’s likely a crypto economy in the future
– Bitcoin is not like them it is simple
– Once a sovereign wealth fund owns $5B of it, then its OK for big companies to own $5B of it, and there’s a domino effect
– One regulator could wake up tomorrow and put out a press release that doubles the market
– There are 10,000 big institutions that can start to pour in and that tips everyone in
– Saylor: “If you’re Apple, you can take your market cap up $2 trillion. Do you want $2 trillion???”
– The real Bitcoin bond – borrow $1B at 1% interest and buy Bitcoin
Countries Buying Bitcoin
– Cobie: “So El Salvador did it and now there are rumors of Honduras doing it – I do think the second person to follow is a strong form of leadership”
– Ledger: “Your top job as a large holder of Bitcoin is to convince others to buy Bitcoin to increase the network effects”
Bitcoin Maximalism
– Ledger: basically asked if there is any chance Saylor buys anything besides Bitcoin?
– Satoshi disappeared, price was a penny, there’s no pre-mine, its PoW, there’s no yield
– Basically, it’s pure
– Saylor: “Every proof of stake coin is a security”
– If you are a person of any fame, you cannot endorse a security
– However, you can endorse property
– “Saylor Coin, Saylor Moon Coin, Son of Shiba Moon Coin”
– China could create China Coin (only legal to mine in China)
– There is risk in property, but its heavy and sound
– You want property to be heavy and durable
Crypto Future
– The first decade of crypto was off shore, entrepreneurial
– The second will be on shore, institutional
– We are in the middle, and will be there for 3-5 years
– Cobie (summarizing): “you buy Bitcoin because you know what Bitcoin will be in 50 years”
– Other coins not so much
Life Advice
– Saylor: “Stay in your lane”
– You start trying to express a nuanced opinion and next thing you know your debating a nobel prize winner in that field
– There are black swan tail risks that can crush everything so can’t worry about them much
– If you think there’s a 95% chance Bitcoin goes to 0 then alright ...
Jump Crypto President Kanav Kariya on the Wormhole hack, market making, and crypto outlook
UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts
02/10/22 • 86 min
Introduction
Kanav is the President of Jump Crypto (@JumpCryptoHQ)
Jump Trading is one of the largest quant trading firms in the world and moved into crypto ~6 years ago
Grew into what Jump Crypto is today with 140 employees
Jump Crypto has been trading, building and investing in the space
Ledger: Who wins in a cage match, Alameda or Jump? Kanav: Depends on the rules!
Crypto was a trading problem to solve at first, sandbox environment for people to play with without messing up existing systems
As the space started to grow and as DeFi emerged there was a similarity to traditional environments and they got more involved
Own crypto on the their balance sheet not just when making plays
Intern to President
Jump is a very flat organisation usually three levels at most away from the top
A lot of freedom to work on things and push it further with more resources for what works
Kanav worked early on crypto projects that performed well and it led to getting his position and still building out the team
All in, all of the time. Always looking for engineers and ops people
Recently brought on a CMO
Sophisticated Competition
Jump and most traders are playing on different time horizons e.g. seconds to minutes
Smart contracts and aspects of DeFi are less competitive as firms are still apprehensive
Trading Systems
Some are highly automated others have more manual intervention. Alpha building process to build prediction models then plug it into an execution system
However there are things about the markets the models aren’t aware about that someone with pulse on the market would know
Mature risk management is in place taken from Jumps historical experience. A lot of it is hard coded in to prevent people putting on over sized positions
Not a lot going on with options markets, much smaller than everything else. Just because it hasn’t worked in the past doesn’t mean it won’t so will continue to watch
Narrative Surprises?
Built the first highly electronic OTC desk but the narrative didn’t play out to the expected extent. Institutional narrative was slower to play out - a lot of red tape to get through for institutions and waiting for regulatory clarity but believes it’s still going to happen
How long Uniswap V2 has continues to be incentivised continues to be surprising
Wormhole
CertusOne built the V1 and they were acquired by Jump. Wormhole connects 7 chains now transferring a lot of different information. Governed by 19 guardians, of which Jump Crypto is one
Wormhole had a 120K ETH hack recently
Developer noticed some discrepancies and they all jumped on a call to confirm the vulnerability then it was all hands on board to deal with it
Jump Crypto made the decision to backstop the funds
Hopes for the future
Phantom and Solana pay type stuff
You see the uses on twitter, looks great
No on knows what a seed phrase is! We need better UX
On the gaming and metaverse side - i just want to have fun and be able to play a game
On the research side - ZK seems promising would like stuff there
FINAL ALPHA
Harness the power of asymmetric upside
If you can see asymmetric upside and then place a lot of bets, you gmi
Arthur0x on Defi Conviction
UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts
03/11/21 • 92 min
This episode is presented by Blockfolio. Make your first trade on Blockfolio today at https://uponly.tv/blockfolio
Neeraj K. Agrawal on Crypto & Cooking
UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts
03/05/21 • 42 min
Follow Neeraj.
Check out Coin Center
This episode is presented by Blockfolio. Make a trade today on Blockfolio.
Cobie
UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts
12/17/21 • 231 min
Links
Show Partner
This episode is presented by FTX. Trade on an awesome mobile interface fee-free, and still get all the great portfolio tracking features you know and love: https://uponly.tv/ftx
Show Notes
UpOnlyTV Notes
Introduction & Early Days
⁃ Bought Bitcoin first in 2012 but really down the rabbit-hole through 2013 onwards
⁃ Only other original CT person still active is Bob Laxative (formerly KingBTC)
⁃ Being early turned people into survivors. Cryptsy, MtGox etc hacked. Everything going to zero, only self custody BTC felt safe
⁃ Started with £200-300 ($500) and didn’t put any more fiat in other than one investment in 2020 (that went to zero)
⁃ Got shilled QuarkCoin by Bill Still on cryptsy and accidentally sold the top. Got a DM from Jebus911 about another coin that went 70x
⁃ Up significantly in BTC early but down in USD in bear market. Lost a lot of BTC on things like BTCBuilder
⁃ Sold Cryptsy listings via API for months while at uni for free multiples before the alpha got leaked
⁃ Saw BTC as the solution following the financial crisis and levels of corruption and incompetence
MtGox
⁃ Gox was the main exchange and allegedly had a bot to buy back BTC that had been lost
⁃ Constant buy pressure caused the price to run
⁃ Unsure what the outcome would have been on the state of the market if it hadn’t happened
⁃ Some friends got completely wiped by Gox
⁃ Psychologically put a lot of people off BTC having to consider the cost of buying the BTC they had lost
Trading & Making It
⁃ Wouldn’t consider ever having been a full time trader
⁃ It was more of a hobby or side hustle. Decisions mostly based on instinct and prior cycle behaviour
⁃ It’s become much harder to call cycle bottoms and tops
⁃ People create narratives to rationalise things it’s easier to learn from your own mistakes with time looking back
⁃ Above average at most things when actually trying, except League of Legends
⁃ Deep down believed he would eventually be a millionaire. Without crypto this would still have happened from acquisitions/startups
⁃ Opens you to being more risk tolerant in other areas of life e.g. taking stock vs salary
⁃ Easier to have conviction when you don’t sit through large drawdowns and can gauge risk. “HODL is for poor people” unless disciplined you’ll let your gains evaporate and might become a forced seller at the bottom
⁃ Tries to estimate probability of it being over on every dip. Wants to sell as close to the top as possible, can buy back higher if wrong. Won’t work if you do this on every dip
Supercycle
⁃ Idea of a Supercycle described by Su in earlier episode is probably right
⁃ If crypto becomes integrated into society and BTC becomes the store of value then it’s the only thing that makes sense
⁃ Thinks it’s not the right time for it to happen, integration is tertiary
⁃ If crypto disappears now how many lives are actually impacted
⁃ Unless you run ...say a crypto podcast? (pls sir my family)
⁃ Maybe it is now but maybe it needs another boom/bust first before it reaches that level
⁃ Top 10/20 assets on CoinGecko right now – are we really ready for a supercycle??
ETH
⁃ ETH DAO hack, ETC fork, ICOs put off. Didn’t buy more ETH because conviction was low with all of this. Still held original ETH but could have rotated into buying much more
⁃ Instead of focusing on ponzification it’s best to focus on change in products available e.g. genuine use case like lending on chain being built
⁃ Building blocks add value to the ecosystem because they enable future building blocks. OG DeFi protocols and things like MetaMask responsible for leading that change
Founding Lido & ETH 2.0
⁃ Co-founded Lido but says Konstantin and Vasily are the real brains behind everything along with the core teams. Fought to not call it dPool. (Fought with Ledger to not have UpOnly called TokenTalk)
⁃ When PoS was created there was no real concept of DeFi
⁃ Staking Ethereum is just a better form of wrapped Ethereum and risk free yield is the bottom brick of DeFi
⁃ Thinks merge will be Q2/Q3 or later. Beacon chains have been live for a whole
⁃ People will think it’s bullish but $35B on the beacon chain will become unlocked too
⁃ Wider ETH community attitude to scaling is bad in level of acknowledgement it’s atrociously bad right now. Optimistic roll ups have felt like a disappointment so far and ZK aren’t EVM compatible yet
⁃ Misaligned incentives between people who got rich holding ETH and the usab...
Trading wisdom from CryptoCred, DonAlt and CMSIntern
UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts
07/09/21 • 111 min
Links
Show Partner
This episode is presented by Blockfolio. Trade on an awesome mobile interface fee-free, and still get all the great portfolio tracking features you know and love: https://uponly.tv/blockfolio
Show Notes
cmsintern Intro
⁃ Cold called Dan (@cmsholdings) for 2 minutes during a break and got grilled by Bobby (@robertjcho) for a whole 20 minutes
⁃ Started a blockchain club in college
⁃ Didn't Study memes in college despite popular lore, STEM stuff
⁃ Got liquidated in November (ONE OF US) makes < 10 trades a day now.
CryptoDonAlt Intro
⁃ Brother worked in IT, told him to look into it but couldnt figure out how to buy it. Moms credit card was a gating factor here
⁃ Watched the run up to $1k in BTC & the bear market and was interested, felt expensive at $200 so bought DOGE
⁃ Held until 16/17 because he loved the community, 16-17, sold it to buy BTC and started swapping around
⁃ Became a bear on Twitter and farmed all the clout
CryptoCred Intro
⁃ Got lucky to be in crypto before 2017 and survived and now he is where he is
WAGMI?
⁃ Don: Thinks we have another crash before we go up and will eventually in future make it. 24K -> 40K -> 20K -> MOON
⁃ There are still people left to panic sell even though leverage is lower. Fine buying back in higher if the market turns but doesn’t feel great about it here
⁃ Cred – Asked to disagree but he doesn't, reinforces Don’s points. Zoom out, trend is broken
⁃ Retail free money trades are rekt TikTok / Doge / BSV? , predatory markets BARTS!
⁃ Cred: Trend followers say lower MAs, no opportunity cost to be out of market here
⁃ cmsintern: Blind optimism and asks for more bullish sentiment
⁃ Don: Long term fine just dont want to be panic selling
⁃ Ledger: Drawing tonnes of lines seems like too many lines now
⁃ Cred: Despite all of the bad news BTC is still over 30K which means someone is buying & news effects are more muted now. Not high conviction bearish, not high conviction anything – hanging in stables, not even farming, lending, or short
CMS Alpha & Axie Infinity
⁃ cmsintern: CMS have a couple of different thesis being worked on but cant talk about them or will get fired. Believe in a future MultiChain universe
⁃ Personally waiting for the Axie fork on SOL to go all in. First report he ever did as an intern was for Joe on Axie
⁃ Don: Axie is a pretty good game compared to most other blockchain games which are terrible
Trading
⁃ Ledger: Charlie Lee on UpOnly was the pico top for LTC this cycle
⁃ cmsintern: brought up TA and charting at CMS 2 weeks in and got laughed at for what he said
⁃ Cred: would not only trade charts long term, will look for fundamentals for conviction
⁃ Don: Making judgement based on what the Bitfinex whale is doing isn’t going to be beneficial. People will use it to confirm their pre-existing position
⁃ Worth watching if a pump is led by spot or by futures
⁃ cmsintern: Dan says funding rates isn’t part of the game, it *is* the game
The Flippening
⁃ Don: you can make an infinite amount of alt-coins and even if you pick right even your choice can be overtaken too, it’s just the way it is for emerging tech
⁃ Cred: Considering it counter-factual, what would Bitcoin need to not be doing for something to catch up, something gnarly would need to happen to BTC and that might be net negative and bring down everything else with it
⁃ Ledger: BTC has the primary network effects in crypto. POW negative narratives is maybe most likely to cause ETH to have a chance to take over. Agree with Don, BTC flip likely drags down the whole market
⁃ Don: Market is way too immature for it right now and BTC won’t go to second place but maybe that changes in future, who knows
Fundamentals
⁃ Cred: The decentralisation of hash-rate is long term bullish as well as the loss of less environmentally friendly miners in China
⁃ Don’t be caught on the wrong side, be it up or down. Don’t manage a bad position, wait for the right one and take it from a position of strength
Final Alpha
⁃ Cred: “Conformation is for Christians”. If you wait for confirmation you have to be right, if you trade at the extremes you can be wrong and still make money or at least lose less
⁃ Don: When you’re making excuses for losing trades you are taking away an opportunity to grow. The o...
Big Brain Crypto Club
UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts
04/08/21 • 151 min
It's just an overload of alpha. This episode is presented by Blockfolio. Make your first trade today: https://uponly.tv/blockfolio
Creating NFTs with Shams Meccea, Messi, & Rob Swire
UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts
02/18/21 • 124 min
Presented by Blockfolio. Trade on Blockfolio today at: https://ledgerstatus.com/blockfolio
Shams' website: https://smeccea.com/INFO
APE ONLY NFT: https://superrare.co/artwork-v2/ape-o...
Rob Swire on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2SNg8...
Also joined by Udi and Box Lax.
Follow Cobie: https://twitter.com/cryptocobain
Follow Ledger: https://twitter.com/ledgerstatus
Avi Felman of Blocktower: Crypto is mid-cycle
UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts
08/05/21 • 93 min
Links
Show Partner
This episode is presented by FTX (formerly Blockfolio). Trade on an awesome mobile interface fee-free, and still get all the great portfolio tracking features you know and love: https://uponly.tv/ftx
Show Notes
*Cobie is coping HARD today, very hungover and may leave at any time to be sick
Intro
– Co-PM of BlockTower investment fund along with Ari Paul
– Anything in crypto they’ll touch it or flip it if it can make money
– Providing access to the crypto space for investors
– Cobie: “So you provide punks for institutions”
– Avi: “No comment.” lmao SER WE KNOW U DO
Avi Background
– Worked at a bank for 6 months before realizing he needed to get out. Brought up crypto to them, they literally said in a decade..
– Started out in 2017, then ran his own fund for a while, then another crypto company (check this again), then on to BlockTower
– Ari trades over longer periods with conviction. Avi changes his mind every few minutes. Was hard to find a balance for such different trading approaches
– Unlikely to trade meme coins over 5% of portfolio but they do trade them! Need to be willing to be flexible
– Currently watching Grayscale, thinks we need premium to go positive again for BTC to go to 6 figures
– Reasonable that it will go positive again, no shares created since it was locked down in March so should get pushed to at least par
Learning Options
– Cobie: “What learning tools or process would you recommend for learning options?”
– Avi: Gap between retail and professional options traders. Not really worth it for retail to learn, but get comfortable with the idea of implied and realized volatility. Beyond that in this market there’s not much needed because things are frequently mispriced
– A lot of people over-estimate the effects of gamma on the options market
– It exists but it takes a lot more money to move this market than most people imagine – you could buy $100M with only a few hundred dollars of slippage over an hour or two
– Right now the most edge on large moves is trying to monitor option flows
– Book rec: Option Volatility & Pricing by Sheldon Natenberg
NFT Boom
– Avi: “I’ll preface this as I know very little about NFTs in general”
– “This is the one area of crypto that all of my friends that aren’t in crypto are hitting me up about”
– Just super easy to understand
– CL was right!
– “I would assume that 98% of these collectibles go to zero at some point”
– Cobie: “NFTs are just like DOGE coin where its a meme and people just ponzi it up”
– Super illiquid but that also means they can just skyrocket
– Avi: “They’re probably not securities too”
Complacency Bounce?
– Avi: “I think they bottom has been printed”
– This is a completely different set of market participants
– There are $100M checks being written for crypto every week now
– Avi: “From my perspective $30k will be the bottom”
– “The patient buyers waiting to buy $35k will become very impatient if we don’t trade there for 2 weeks”
– No one knows where to park their money – Bitcoin and crypto is a great place to park your money
– You wanna bet asset prices are going up and you wanna bet on the fastest horse
BTC vs. Shitcoins
– Ethereum is gaining market share in peoples minds
– Once people are in, they start moving down the risk curve
COIN vs MSTR
– People are still trying to bet directly on BTC
– They (huge institutions) aren’t really trying to bet on other cryptos
– MSTR == BTC, so people use MSTR as equities crypto exposure
– People might start to park in COIN on a longer timeline
– Even based trading is the last horizon of alpha in the crypto industry
– Pick 15-20 DeFi assets, read their medium posts and just play their events
– Wow it really is that easy
New Retail
– Retail this time got onboarded through like TikTok straight to BSC
– If stuff comes back, do you think they choose value? or same as last time?
– Avi wants to make sure we know – he is the most bullest bull
– We are going to 144k
DeFi
– Avi: “I think it’ll outperform a little bit”
– The large caps likely won’t return huge huge multiples
– DeFi actually has cashflows... which is a detriment LOL
– You can actually value these things, prevents mega moon pumps
– There are other shitcoins which will 15-20x, DeFi just likely won’t
– DeFi will be a huge industry that will morph a ton in ways that we probably don’t understand yet
– But if you w...
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FAQ
How many episodes does UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts have?
UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts currently has 78 episodes available.
What topics does UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts cover?
The podcast is about Bitcoin, Defi, Investing, Ethereum, Crypto, Podcasts, Technology, Trading and Business.
What is the most popular episode on UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts?
The episode title 'Cobie' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts?
The average episode length on UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts is 116 minutes.
How often are episodes of UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts released?
Episodes of UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts are typically released every 5 days, 4 hours.
When was the first episode of UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts?
The first episode of UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts was released on Feb 18, 2021.
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