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...
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
Vitalik Buterin on Ethereum and immortality
UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts
01/20/22 • 102 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
Wdyd Besides Crypto?
– Vitalik reads a lot
– Fascinated in how languages have evolved
– Vitalik: Like you know how gate used to mean a structure that lets things in and out...now “gate” means a media scandal!
– Ledger: “Favorite high fantasy?”
– Vitalik: “Early Game of Thrones were great. Early high fantasy was very much good vs. evil, like in Lord of the Rings Elves and men are good, and Orcs are evil”
– It’s possible Vitalik would run a book club in the future given Cobie would want it
10 years ago what’d you see yourself doing?
– Wasn’t thinking too deeply
– Then Bitcoin came along and turned into something
– Vitalik was the first writer for Bitcoin magazine
– Cobie: “Did you at one point apply for a job at Ripple?”
– Vitalik: “Yes”
– Jed McCaleb said yes, but Visa trouble prevented him from joining
Ethereum Beginnings
– Too many co-founders at first (there are 8 for those of you who just pretend you like crypto)
– Some coding changes too
– Vitalik: “Sometimes I wonder how things would’ve turned out if Ethereum had different distribution”
– Cobie: “Do you see Ethereum now as your life’s work or is there a future where you don’t work on Ethereum?”
– Will be a large part of future
– Might do some writings and other stuff in the future
– Vitalik: “There’s a part of me that just wants to troll the market and repeat that stunt again [faking death lol]”
Family
– Vitalik’s dad is like a crypto influencer
– Mom getting involved in crypto, optimistic rollup
Proof-of-Stake
– When did PoS become obvious as the path forward?
– Vitalik: “2014” holy chad
– Eventually had a proper understanding of the tradeoffs and got convinced it was the way forward
– ZEC and DOGE also switching to PoS
NFTs
– Why are they so good at onboarding and what’s the future?
– There are huge desires for inclusion and collectibles
– Vitalik: “Even like 10 years ago privatejet.com was more valuable than a private jet”
– Virtual property is a thing
– NFTs could be the big first use cases for crypto besides currencies and DeFi
– Its an easy way for artists to get money
– Vitalik: “Sometimes there is certain value in trading of things being hard”
*Vitalik cuts out*
”He needs to pay more gas!”
Research
– Most research prob already done
– zk is really amazing technology but needs to be improved til we can use it
– MEV could use some more research
Wallet Improvements
– Wallet security and multisig
– Most wallets just have 1 password, can be dangerous
– Alternatives:
– Multisig – 3 keys, need at least 2 to transfer funds
– Social recovery – on Vitalik’s cold wallet there are 6 individuals who have power, 4 out of 6 needed to move funds
Most likely to be Satoshi?
– Craig Wright, Charles Hoskinson, Elon Musk, Loomdart
– Vitalik: Blueberry
– Cobie: “If you had to choose someone who’s your best guess?”
– Vitalik: “If I had to choose someone I’d guess Hal Finney... between 1-20% chance it’s Hal Finney”
Vitalik Memes
– Vitalik has replied to deranged vitalik memers hahaha
– Vitalik: “FTX – does that stand for FiTalik Exchange?”
Multi-chain but not Cross-Chain
– There are too many risks with bridging
– Can just create same assets and use on 1 chain
– In single chain, you can always revert chain and everyone gets assets back to at least initial state
– With multi-chain, if stuff breaks, the problem is way larger (double spending etc)
Ethereum Roadmap
– Goal is still to have $0.05 per transaction
– Hard to scale without sacrificing on security or centralization
– With Rollups and sharding Ethereum can scale immensely
– Within a couple of years Ethereum fees will be back under 5 cents
Future of Ethereum
– Progress on zk EVM is going very well
– Most nodes won’t store full chain
– There will be a few who do
*wifi cut out 5 min miss*
Privacy
– Blockchain isn’t “true privacy” just pseudonymous
– Regulators ok with that
– Once its on ETH... where do we go?
– Vitalik: “People are really underestimating the risks/ downsides of no privacy”
– Ledger: “I want to know the craziest thing Vitalik ever bought with crypto”
– Vitalik: “Metfo...
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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