 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Market Talks. I'm Ray Salmond, head of markets here at Coin Telegraph. And on the show, we discuss the latest market trends, along with valuable insights from industry leaders, traders, and analysts. Today's guest is Ryan, the author of the Average Joe's crypto substack. And he's also a research analyst at Misari. Ryan focuses on due diligence reports at Misari, and he also writes his own substack where he outlines his views on all things related to DeFi, NFTs, and emerging market trends. So let's take a quick look at a video about Ryan. Hello, good sir, how are you? Hello, Ray, how are you? Doing good? Doing good, excited to be here. Good, good, thanks for coming on. Oh, thank you for having me. So you're excited to be here? Yeah, I'm super thrilled. I love all things crypto, and just chatting with you for an hour or about, it's gonna be great just we can get into the deep dives and stuff like that. So super excited about this. Yeah, I agree. This week is like every Thursday, it's kind of like taking your vitamins or having your weekly beer, or I don't know, at the end of the day, you know, you have like a quick swig of whiskey or something like that. So each week getting to talk to someone about crypto is always, I look forward to it, it's engaging for me. My wife, like she could care less about crypto after six years of hearing about it every day. She's like, whatever, I don't care. It's all gibberish to me. All of my friends are kind of like, ah, it's too volatile, we don't care about it. We'll ask you about it when Bitcoin price hits a new all time high and, you know, get you to convince us to buy it and then be mad at you the whole year while we sit on losses. So it's always nice to like sit down with someone who's actually in the space and chop it up in depth. Absolutely, absolutely. What are you doing this Sunday? Obviously this Sunday, Super Bowl Sunday, I'm gonna have a couple of friends over. One of my hobbies is smoking meat. So I'm gonna smoke a pork butt, make some pork with it. But yeah, I look forward to watching the Chiefs beat the Eagles. I am a Giants fan, so definitely don't want the Eagles to win. What about you, Ray? Yeah, I'm going for the Chiefs. I actually got married in White House, Texas. That's where my home is from. So, you know, always like pool for the Chiefs because he's a Texas boy. And that way, I'm a three year Chiefs fan. But then Jalen Hertz is from Channelview, a part of Houston where I live. So it's kind of like, oh man, they're both like from Texas. So I'm pulling for the Chiefs. I don't like Philadelphia fans for the Sixers, for the Phillies or for the Eagles, even though I think the Eagles are a fantastic team. And I love to see like a quarterback who didn't do so great in their first year, just develop and do well and go the whole way. So a part of me is pulling for the Eagles too, but a longtime Chiefs fan here. Yeah, I mean, it is tough to hate the Eagles just because of how Hertz has grown and stuff. He seems like a great player and a great person off the field. So he's definitely not tough. He's definitely not a hard person to root for. So I definitely agree with you on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he's about to get the bag too. God knows what sort of money he's gonna get signed to when the time comes for that. So I'm happy for him. Definitely. Last question, I guess, before we talk markets, you mentioned smoking pellet grill or a stick burner. How are you making that? So I have a stick burner and this is a hobby I picked up last October. So I'm still pretty new. I have a electric master bill, just kind of learning my way through YouTube videos and stuff. Once I get it down, I'm gonna go out and get a much nicer smoker than what I have now. But yeah, I like smoking. Couple of things I've done so far is ribs. I did a beef brisket two weeks ago. That was like 20 hours, but it came out good. My favorite thing actually is chicken wings. They're not too hard and they come out good. So, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you can do chicken wings fast and hot. I'm a pretty serious smoker. I got a stick burner in my backyard. It was like 700 pounds and I've got all the wood, cherry, alder, pecan, post-oak, hickory, maple, red oak, mesquite. All right, I'm sure you're gonna have to share me some recipes. Apple, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's talk about it more later. I don't want to consume the audience's dedication to us by talking about smoking the whole time, but you sound like a man after my own heart. So let's go ahead and jump into markets. January was pretty hot. Bitcoin gained like 45%. Ethereum held up well in that kind of like 1700, $1800 resistance zone. Some altcoins did notable numbers, but now things are starting to cool off. And of course, that's expected, right? Like the market doesn't often give you a 40% move without some sort of retracement. So everyone expects things to cool off and maybe for Bitcoin to retest underlying support for those guys that do all the technical analysis. But on the flip side, I feel like maybe some analysts are starting to get worried. So aside from a technical correction, what other factors do you think are influencing this recent downside? Yeah, well, I mean, other than obviously, like you mentioned the technical side of stuff, I definitely think the most recent stuff that is gonna have big effects on the markets is kind of this hawkishness from regulatory agencies. I mean, yesterday we saw the Brian Armstrong rumors about the SEC might want to ban retail staking. That would be a huge hit to coin, which is an industry leader. And obviously the industry as a whole, it can open up avenues for the SEC to try to claim staking or ETH is a security. So that's obviously concerning. And then kind of along the same vein, the Nick Carter article about Operation Chokepoint 2.0 where the Fed through its various wings and arms is basically gonna try to cut off crypto from the banking system, which obviously I mean, it's not like a concerted, like definite 100%, that's what they're doing, but Nick Carter puts together a very convincing argument that they're definitely reevaluating how they're approaching the industry. So I definitely think part of the downside we've seen in the beginning of February could be related to that. Hmm. How realistic do you think it would be? And do you think that like the whole FTX thing is the primary reason why regulators are kind of like, we need to do something about crypto now? Yeah, I mean, definitely. I've touched about it before in some of my writings. I definitely think that regulators are gonna be very hawkish towards the industry post FTX, especially because the SEC's weird relationship with SBF, it was kind of one of their main contacts from the industry. So I think they're probably gonna overreact and try to wanna dispel any fears that they might have been working with the bad guys and stuff. So I think they're gonna rush to do actions that are gonna hurt the industry. I mean, hopefully these actions don't come through, but like you definitely already see their attempt again. I mean, I don't think there's inherently anything wrong with retail staking Ethereum. So they go after that, but FTX happened. They didn't really care too much about that. So yes, I think over this year, we're gonna see regulators kind of overreact to the whole FTX situation and try to take on good actors and maybe miss some bad actors. Hopefully they'll eventually figure it out. And I think it's gonna mostly be from the regulator viewpoint, SEC, CFTC. I don't think Congress is gonna be able to get too much done in terms of crypto regulation this year, but which is not good for us because obviously we're not gonna have much input as we can if it was legislative enforcement. So, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Why is staking so important? It's just one component of DeFi. Well, I mean- And only area we've kind of seen it work in really is with Ethereum. All the DeFi stuff was just kind of like leverage and rehab classification and all that. So why do you think it's so important to crypto itself? Well, I mean, staking especially for Ethereum is so important because, I mean, the SEC is looking at it from like a yield point of view. Like this is a way for investors to get yield and therefore it's a security and so forth and so forth. But what makes Ethereum staking so important is not the yield aspect, it's securing the network. You wanna have retail running their own nodes and stuff like that just because it's gonna increase the security and decentralization of Ethereum. And I mean, at the end of the day, Ethereum is not going anywhere if the US bands retail staking that all those nodes and stuff is just gonna go offshore to other countries and it's not going anywhere, it's just hurting US investors. So, but yeah, I mean, staking is so important not just from a financial point of view, it's just, it's from a security point of view essentially. So obviously, like for example, like when China banned Bitcoin mining back in 2021, I mean, they've done it multiple times but we saw the hash power leave China in drills but ultimately that's good for the security of the network because it's decentralizing the power base. Obviously, if you eliminate USA investors from staking, you're increasing centralization by getting rid of a major market that it could go into. Yeah, and see, like in my view, I think that you would see a lot of the ETH stakers go elsewhere, right? They'll go overseas, they'll go somewhere else. A lot of DeFi platforms and protocols aren't regulated anyway. A lot of them aren't domiciled or headquartered in the United States and people are still using them, right? And it's not regulated. Because there's no regulation, we have all these Ponzi's and scams but then because it's also not regulated, people do whatever they want. Like if you're in America, you can just turn your VPN on and go do whatever you want in DeFi. So making somehow is banned in America. Is it cataclysmic for the entire crypto market? Does it impact the next bull market will start? Does it impact the bullish momentum? Bitcoin, what sort of knock-on effect do you see it having on altcoins also? And I guess even NFTs that are ETH based. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I definitely think there will be a significant short-term effect, especially because I mean, if the SEC is going after retail staking they're not gonna stop there. So obviously I think it will definitely impact the broader market in the short-term for sure. I definitely think we'll see some additional downside across the board. In terms of the long-term, this is kind of a scenario where they're kind of overreacting to what happened with FTX. They wanna show that they care about protecting investors and they're gonna make foolish moves, but hopefully as the industry matures and they learn more about it, they can realize that something like Ethereum staking is not the right approach. Cause at the end of the day, if you go after Ethereum staking, it's not gonna stop these Ponzi schemes and stuff like that. So, but yeah, getting back to your original question about like downside of the markets. Yeah, I definitely think it could have profound downside effects on the markets, especially if it doesn't stop there in the short-term. But I think in the long-term, it doesn't negate the entire crypto thesis and why me and you find ourselves in this industry. Yeah, okay, so aside from the whole staking's gonna be banned news, what else is impacting the market this week? Why are prices down? Yeah, I mean, like you kind of said at the beginning of the segment, I'm sorry, what'd you say? No, no, go ahead. Did you say something? Oh, no worries. No worries, go ahead. I mean, like you said, at the beginning of the market we, January was a great month, we ran up like 45% on Bitcoin and you get, nothing goes up forever. We're gonna have to see some pullback eventually, obviously, especially when you take other factors outside of crypto, such as the macro. Although the CPI came at good, I mean, the jobs report came in much higher than expected. And so now there's obviously some current concerns that the Fed has the green light to keep raising rates, which obviously would not help the macro. But I mean, I think this is just kind of the market at work. Obviously you're not gonna expect something to go up forever. There has to be a pullback eventually and especially considering the macro fears, I think a lot of people are positioning themselves for that. So what's up with all these AI tokens? They went parabolic in the last month or two. I think FET has done, Fetch AI has done like 800%. There's one other one, I can't remember, AGIX has done Singularity or AGIX has done like 1100%. They just keep going up and up and up and up and I know chat GBT and there's other AI chat bots which are all the rage now. Like somehow people are connecting software, which is worth money in the real world and doesn't use have a token to AI tokens and AI blockchain projects, which haven't really done much in the last two or three years. There's some connection there that people are making leading to these crazy rallies on these AI tokens. What's your take on that whole thing? Yeah, so I mean, the biggest, my take on it is it's basically just like kind of a rerun of the whole Facebook rebranding as Meta back in like October, November of 2021. And then once they did that, there was a huge run in all Metaverse related coins. I think we're seeing kind of the same thing play out. Obviously chat GBT came out and was widely successful. It's already like over a hundred million users or whatever. And the technology is cool, it's exciting. It's definitely like a new frontier but I think the issue is people take a look at all that cool and exciting stuff and they want to somehow get exposure to it. And they look to crypto and that's, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing because I mean, I saw an Andre Crote tweet yesterday kind of just explaining how blockchains and AI don't mix. And I mean, I kind of agree. I mean, it doesn't really make sense. AI is centralized, it needs very high computer cost which doesn't really work well with crypto. So I'm not really sure the actual value connection between the two, but I think it's just kind of result of people want to get in the next big thing. And crypto is there. There's these tokens that claim they're AI related and there you go, you buy that. And I think it's a narrative that will eventually run dry. I mean, Tron, Justin Sun announced yesterday that they're putting a hundred million dollars towards AI and Tron didn't really pop too much off that. So I think the narrative's probably gonna start to run out soon, especially once people realize that AI and blockchain related technologies is years out, if ever at all. But I mean, there's definitely some cool like niche use cases like I can see, like obviously AI has very high computer costs. I would imagine you can probably bootstrap like a decentralized network where you give tokens to people that provide this computing power and then people using the AI can use those tokens to buy it. But I mean, in terms of the actual connection between AI and blockchain, I don't think there's much there as of right now. Yeah, that kind of leads me to the question of your analysis approach. How do you take the temperature of the market? What are some of the like key indicators or signals that you use to kind of woofer you and give you a sense of direction in this market? So in the last week or two weeks, I've seen a lot of stuff on Twitter, something about Kanto, Cartel, various meme tokens are moving like bonk and shib and there's these other kind of like new meme coins which are doing some serious numbers. And all the pump and dump influencers have mysteriously returned from their shilling hiatus. Oh, and inundating us endlessly on Twitter with all these like random low cap coins that are doing triple digit numbers, which is interesting, right? So how do you interpret this newfound euphoria and all these green candles that we're seeing across the market? What does this mean to you? Yeah, so I mean, let's kind of start back in November when FTX blew up. I mean, there's a lot of people concerned about the industry going forward and saying that it might be years for us to recover. I think the first takeaway you can take from kind of this euphoria in January that is crypto is not dead. There's definitely still a substantial user base that is interested and wants to put their money into it. Obviously things might have got overheated in January just because obviously a little liquidity and there was a lot of people taking the opposite that that crypto is gonna die, well, not die, but going out in price. So I think it's kind of a mix of a short squeeze in the market and then people that crypto has actually generated a substantial user base post all the horrible things that happened in 2022 that are not going anywhere. And I think it's a lot more sizable than we truly understand yet. I think it's gonna grow. But I think this market run up has kind of been crypto native people. I don't think it's much so retail that is not really two dinner institutions. And then obviously, I mean, it's a new year, new tokens, new opportunities. So stuff like Canto, it's a L1 on Cosmos, EVM compatible and stuff like that. But obviously it has the smart contract revenue sharing which is a new feature that people are gonna wanna try out. And it's a testing ground. I personally have not bridged to Canto yet but like I understand the appeal, it's a new area. There's new ideas being tested there. And obviously crypto, one of the key things people always wanna be is they wanna be first the next big thing. So I think it's a lot of crypto natives are trying to find where that next big thing is and position themselves in the bear right now for the next bull run. Do you think that there's actually a use for L1s like Cosmos and Canto and then let's think about L2s with ETH fees being kind of, it's still convenient to use the Ethereum network. It's not gonna, it doesn't cost too much. So whenever I see all these new tokens like Canto, Cartel, Atmos, all this stuff come out from my point of view, I'm kind of like what do I need that for? There's like 12 different types of toilet paper, right? But you use it all for the same thing. So I'm just gonna buy the brand and stick with the brand that I'm accustomed to using. I don't need to venture out from whatever I use and try something new unless it's drastically cheaper or proven to be better. So is there like, is it wise in your opinion to invest in all these new L1 or L2 kind of like solutions with the expectation of getting some high ROI even though there's not necessarily a like product fit to market for those new blockchains? Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, let's start with kind of how I analyze, you know, these newer blockchains. And I operate under the belief that no blockchain is able to scale infinitely. And as we can tell, like, if the world eventually will go entirely on chain, I don't think there will ever be a single blockchain that can handle all that demand. So, plus I mean, there's so many different industries off chain, like in the real world that not every chain is gonna be suitable for them. So I definitely think there will be other L1s other than like Ethereum. Like I know a lot of people believe that with the development of L2s, like all odd chain activity is gonna go onto Ethereum or onto these various L2s. I mean, I think a significant amount will definitely gravitate towards Ethereum L2s, but I don't think that the end goal is everything's gonna be on one chain. I definitely think there is gonna be multiple L1s, L2s, different blockchains that people are gonna transact on based on what suits their needs best. I mean, crypto is not a one size fits all approach. I mean, the best example is kind of the app chain thesis with DOI DX. Obviously they wanna have a better handle of their network security and they're gonna rely on a shared network security with Cosmos and the reason why they're doing that is they'll get higher throughput and stuff like that. So I definitely think there is a need for multiple L1s. I mean, I don't know if the amount that we have today is too much, too little. It's too hard to tell until we actually see substantial real world adoption where people are gonna be putting entire industries on chain and then I think we'll have a better grasp of what L1s are needed. But in terms of going out and bridging to these new L1s, I think there are obviously, it's high risk, but at the same time, it could be rewarded. I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with let's say an L1 like crypto that it can't be successful at the end of the day. If people wanna use it, people will continue using it. So obviously, I'm personally like mostly a theory of an arbitram, but I can see why there is such an appeal for these other chains, especially Cosmos related because it is a different approach to blockchain security and how the blockchains work. So yeah. Do you think there's a need for arbitram to drop a token? There were a lot of rumors about that three, four months ago, it seemed like it was imminent and then everything's gone quiet. There's been no talk about Arby or any other like air drops on layer twos. So arbitram is nice. It's fast, it's rock solid, it's reliable. Everyone seems to wanna build on that one. Like it's attracted a lot of dApps and other DeFi protocols that are already. So do you think it needs a token? And if so, why? In this stage, like right now, I actually don't think it needs a token. It's one of the few networks that have been able to bootstrap such a sizable community without a token. And I don't see that slowing down. I mean, in fact, I think the innovation on arbitram is picking up. I mean, it seems like every other week there's some new protocol or dApp that's deploying on arbitram. So in this current stage, no, I don't think an arm token is needed. Eventually there probably will be a need for an arm token for governance purposes, kind of similar to how optimism operates. Especially, I mean, considering like arbitram, like it's not fully decentralized yet, like not anyone can run up a note or something like that. So I don't think necessarily in this stage an arm token is needed. The community seems to be there and it's not like it's joined in like that. I mean, in January, arbitram ecosystem related projects were popping off like crazy. So personally, I don't think the arm airdrop is imminent. It would make more sense to launch it once we see more of a return of like retail and institutional activity rather than just crypto natives. I agree. And I was talking to this guy the other day and he was like, it's necessary for the core purpose of decentralization and also for governance. And arbitram generates revenue, but that revenue is not shared back to people that provide liquidity. Is that necessary? In the long run, yes, it absolutely is necessary. I don't think it's necessary in this current stage just because I mean, arbitra has been out for what? Just slightly over a year now technically. So it's still early stage and I think off chain labs, what they're developing needs time to fully mature. And once they're ready to hand it off, I think that happens. But I mean, at this stage, I don't see why, I don't see the benefit right now. I'd rather revenue be reinvested into building out solutions for arbitram rather than being distributed to let's say arm token holders right now, especially because right now we're still in the very early stages of L2s and stuff. It's all about increasing your market share. Like if I did a traditional startup and I was generating some revenue, I don't think my investors would want them to distribute the revenue that they want me to reinvest the business and grow in another 10X. So I think long term, yes, eventually there will have to be an arm token or army token. And if they don't eventually do it, it will be a blunder. But as of right now, I don't see a need for it. While we're on the topic, we've just had a bit further. So up is decentralized and has a token. Sushi is decentralized and has a token for token holders of uni and sushi. It's not been great, right? So why, what's the benefit? Like when I think about Arbitrum, I'm using it because the fees are cheaper. And I like the dApps that are there and I like the decentralized exchanges. And I'm familiar with the props already from different chains. And it's just convenient for me to do that in a lower fee environment. I personally don't care about it having a token. I don't care about getting some of the fee share back. Uniswap gave one out and they have governance. It's relatively useless. Sushi, the exact same thing. So I guess again, why would it be a blunder to not decentralize and have governance? How essential is governance? How effective is governance? Does it really even matter? Well, I think in the long run, governance will absolutely matter. I mean, I think the issue like with tokens like UD for example, is there's no clear regulatory oversight as we were talking about earlier that everyone's kind of afraid to make these big changes. For example, turning on the fee switch. Would that turn UD into a security? I mean, there's nothing like inherently in the blockchain technology that prevents UD from sharing fees back to its token holders. But the second they do that, the SEC might come knocking on the door and say you're useless on registered security. So I don't think there's nothing like technologically wrong with tokens. In fact, they might be even a better model of distributing revenue back to investors rather than stocks because you can just code it in and make it automatically happen. You can reduce a lot of overhead. But I think it's more of a function of that there's just no clear way to go about it. And then if you do decide to share revenue, you're running into crosshairs on the SEC and that's obviously can make or break a project. I mean, Ripple, for example, has been in a battle with the SEC for years and it's definitely negatively hurt them. So I think the token model has its flaws right now, but I don't think it's because of something inherent about the token model. I think it's external factors that are definitely happening again. Right, yeah, I agree with you totally. So if Bitcoin and Ethereum are correcting right now, do you think it's wise to be investing in altcoins and NFTs? So is it wise to be investing in altcoins and NFTs right now? I would say yes, but it depends. I mean, obviously, like personally, I behold the majority of my crypto holdings in Bitcoin and Ethereum, very small about an altcoins just because, you know, you can always catch a good pop it or a good narrative rotation. And obviously there is some altcoins that are gonna become successful. Like take GMX, for example, we mentioned earlier, like GMX, the strategy in 2022 is not to buy altcoins, but if you bought GMX, you would have performed very well over 2022. I think it might have been even the best performing crypto over the year. So obviously, I mean, there always will be some NFT play, some altcoin play to make that is will be beneficial to your portfolio. But the problem is when you're in a downtrend like you were over 2022, those opportunities are extremely limited and, you know, if you're not paying attention to the market essentially 24 seven and keeping up with the latest stuff, I would say it's probably not wise, to, you know, find some guy on Twitter that says to go buy this and then do exactly what they say. But I mean, it all depends on like what your market experience is if you have an edge or not, but I definitely don't think right now in the broader market, there will be some great alternative cryptocurrencies and entities that turn out to be great protocols in the future, similar to how back in like 2019 out of the ICO era, I mean, you had stuff like AVAMP here and like where other bunch of vaporware projects from ICO era went nowhere. So it's obviously extremely high risk, but there is reward if you are good at what you do. So with NFTs, I've been seeing a lot of stuff about ordinals. Have you been following that? I've been following a little bit. I have not bought any ordinals myself, but it's very interesting to see in the community dynamic there because a lot of like a hardcore Bitcoin maxis are like, no, this is not good. It's gonna drive up cost for people that are actually using Bitcoin as like a settlement layer. And then there's other people that are not necessarily the Bitcoin maxis that are coming out and like, hey, Bitcoin has a fee issue where security at the end of the day is related to how much fee revenue you can bring in and ordinals are a great way to increase your fee revenue. So it is interesting to see how much ordinals have popped off in the past couple of weeks, especially in terms of like taproot adoption. Like taproot adoption was nowhere. And now we just taproot enables these ordinals. People are like, yeah, taproot's cool. NFTs on Bitcoin and stuff like that. So it's definitely an interesting to dynamic to watch for, especially as it relates to how Bitcoiners and the Bitcoin community wants to go forward with this whole ordinal idea. Yeah. So what's your take, think it or a bad thing? I personally am happy to see a little bit more kind of like experimentation and development on the Bitcoin blockchain. I think that's great, you know, everyone's just kind of like, Bitcoin's gonna be worth six figures one day. Bitcoin is a store of value. No, Bitcoin's a medium of exchange. Bitcoin's too slow. Bitcoin's too expensive to be used in everyday purchases, right? Like it has many labels of use, but it's still being debated. Like what is this asset for? And for me, it seems the consensus is, it is a store of value. It is a long-term investment. It's something that's a commodity similar to gold, but it's more portable. It's not something that you should be using every day. It's something that we hope more infrastructure builds around to where you can tap into the equity of Bitcoin. You can use it as collateral. That way you can hold it, but then still have a little bit more utility as kind of like an asset that's a store of value. So I'm happy to see just more experimentation on the network. I think ordinals are, what's your take on it? And do you think we'll have like a Bitcoin NFT bull market kind of like we had with NFTs last year, I guess 2020 and 2021, you know, Ethereum just went to the moon primarily based off DeFi and NFT stuff. So do you think we'll have like a Bitcoin NFT renaissance? Yeah, so started with the first question. I definitely think ordinals is good for Bitcoin. I'm very pro experimentation. I think that crypto is at the forefront of innovation and experimentation. And it's the place to try out new ideas and stuff like that. And NFTs on Bitcoin, I mean, for most people, yeah, it's just a funny image, but it could potentially and it can take away from some of the security weaknesses in the long-term idea of Bitcoin that some people are worried about. So I definitely think experimentation is good. I'm pro-ordinal. And in terms of could it like there be an NFT renaissance on Bitcoin, I would say as of right now, probably not obviously the infrastructure to support NFT trading. We need like an open sea of Bitcoin, but obviously that stuff is a lot harder to do because you know, Bitcoin doesn't really enable smart contract support. So I don't know if we're gonna see like a full-fledged like kind of NFT bull run on Bitcoin that we saw for Ethereum, but it's definitely possible. I hope that the industry creates some interesting solutions to trade these NFTs. I mean, I saw something earlier today. I think it wasn't like it's basically right now it's just like kind of tracked on like a Google sheet or something like that. So the industry for NFTs on Bitcoin is just beginning. I hope that people will continue experimenting, continue building up solutions and make these NFTs more accessible to, you know, people that are not crypto-native because I'm sure that if you had no idea really too much about crypto and you wanted to buy a Bitcoin NFT you would not be able to figure it out right now. So yeah, I was talking about that because I saw that spreadsheet. I heard about ordinal's price in the floor being tracked of whatever it is, ordinal punks or something like that on a spreadsheet. So it got me thinking. I wonder how you buy those things. Is it a website that you log into and how do you connect your wallet? How do you mint this, you know, NFT? Is it a carbon copy of what you do on the Ethereum network? Or is it a completely different process? Is it user-friendly? So I had the same sort of questions that you just outlined. Yeah, I mean, like personally I have not even, I know very little about ordinal's as of right now, like other than kind of what's been in the news cycle, like personally, like if you told me right now I'd go buy an ordinal, I have no idea what to do and that's coming from someone that is, you know, within crypto industry every day, you know, spending at least eight hours a day researching and stuff. So obviously the industry is like literally just starting for ordinal's and I'm very excited to see where it can go, especially once we get some, you know, applications that will make the trading on it much more smoother. Yeah, so you mentioned you spend eight hours per day researching stuff and I know you're an analyst at Masari, so what do you do there? Yeah, so I mean just kind of generally speaking, what I do is do diligence reports. So I just kind of report, I write reports on different tokens and I answer a whole bunch of different questions, mainly objective based on that. It's not like I'm giving my opinionated research and stuff like that. It's mostly just kind of objective laying down the facts and stuff like that. And the cool part about it is I basically get to research a different token every day. So that's always good. You get to learn more about the industry that way. Yeah, and you're doing what you would be doing anyway, but except now you're getting paid for it. So, exactly, exactly. Trading and help you with what you're gonna buy also. And of course, for all the listeners out there, this is not financial advice. Ryan's not giving you any financial advice. He's not suggesting that you go buy or selling. Neither am I, and Cointelegraph does not endorse whatever live stream as being financial advice. So now that our butts are protected. So I've read your sub-stack. The average jazz crypto, cool. I like the concept you have where you make predictions on what might happen in the market this year. And then your potential outcomes are kind of like classified by low, medium, and high. That's how you scale them. So let's talk about a few of those. First up. Yeah, which one do you want to talk about? Well, GMX for sure, it's a beast, right? It's paid for a minute. It's just had a lot of momentum and it's been just kind of like steamrolling all through the bear market also. I mean, the GMX token took a hit, but the protocol just continues to attract more liquidity, more LPs or whatever, more people that are using the DEX. So in your opinion, what makes this DEX and this DeFi protocol so sticky? And do you think it will continue to grow in terms of like daily active users and the impact that that may or may not have on GMX prices? Yeah, so in my article, one of my predictions is that the growth of GMX will actually probably slow down and it probably will lose market share. That's not a knock against GMX itself. I'm a GMX bull, I continue to be a GMX bull. I think it's the leader in derivatives, but as you can probably tell, over the past couple of months, the derivatives industry has really heated up. I mean, GAIDS network deployed on Arbitra that they have been getting a ton of liquidity, a ton of users and stuff like that. UIDX has obviously slated to launch its own app chain in the coming year. And that's really interesting because that's a completely different approach than GMX's to the derivatives market and if it's successful, it can definitely steal some market share. As for why GMX is so sticky, I think it has to do a lot with kind of the market conditions it found itself in. A lot of investors in the past year were looking kind of to park their assets in something that would generate yield and kind of a, not riskless, but risk minimized way. And GLP was a great source for doing that. So you had these risk averse investors that wanted some yield buying GLP and then you had a class of traders that realized liquidity on GMX is going up. It's a pretty intuitive UI, UX platform. It's very easy to go on and trade. Plus it's all on chain. So you eliminate a lot of that custodian risk that centralized exchanges like FTX had. Like for example, if you went back short in November on FTX, you didn't make any money because all your money's gone where that risk is obviously eliminated with GMX. So yeah, like a protocol like GMX, it's sticky because it's easy to use. There's a ton of liquidity, liquidity begets liquidity essentially. So, but yeah, I'm definitely, I think GMX will continue to, the protocol will continue to perform well. I just caution people to think that perhaps its growth prospects could slow down not necessarily because of anything wrong with GMX itself just because that whole sector as a whole is really heating up and market share is fickle. So GMX could definitely see a decrease in market share. I don't think necessarily we'll see a decrease in liquidity on it or users. It just, its growth might slow down compared to its competitors. Or competitors will be entering that space. And one thing with GMX on Avalanche and also on them, there's hardly any assets. What's that about? Like there's three or four tokens, that's it. There's not much that you can actually invest in there. Yeah, I mean, in one sense, it's kind of beneficial for the protocol to have only a couple of assets. It makes it very easy on the trader side. You only have a couple of options. So everyone's dealing the same stuff. It makes it easier for the protocol to handle, especially in terms of like GLP. Obviously like its competitors like Gains Network offer a bunch of different pairs, which is good if you're a more advanced trader want to train these other things. If you want to just hedge your Ethereum exposure, you're going to go to GMX. You're not going to necessarily go to Gains and deal with all their commodity pairs and even stocks that are offering it. Plus, I mean, you're also running into regulatory concerns with that. Like I know Synthetix for example, used to offer trading of synthetic stocks essentially and they had to stop that because of regulatory concerns. So I mean, at the end of the day, I think for GMX in its current stage, it is beneficial to only have a few pairs. Because at the end of the day, I don't think many people are going to be trading stuff other than Bitcoin and Ethereum. But I mean, over the long run, I would definitely expect to see a lot more pairs especially crypto related to appear on GMX. Yeah, GMX has to be L, right? And it's processed a lot of volume, but sometimes if you try to go to short Ethereum or go long on link, you'll get this message that says, contract exceeded or liquidity exceeded. Like it's like max ETH short already happened and you can't open a position. Have you dealt with that? And do you know what that is? Personally, I'm not, I don't really like to deal with leverage. So not my kind of four. I was definitely more the risk, definitely more the risk minimized GLP side. That was more the attractive part of GMX for me. I mean, obviously there was some times where I opened up in each short, I kind of got burned on those, but it never happened to me where I was like max liquidity, but like that's obviously one of the drawbacks of GMX. Like, I remember, who was it? Jordy gave, I forget his name, but anyways, he was basically just kind of explaining how like GMX like longterm cannot compete with something like Uniswap, like Oracle base during the exchanges, like price discovery can't happen. So obviously there's scalability issues with that. Like it can only scale up to how much liquidity is deposited. So, I mean, like there's definitely like issues for GMX with that, but like I think GMX kind of understands what it is. It's not trying to be a Uniswap competitor. It's trying to be something else. Yeah, I agree. In your sub-stack, you also kind of gave your view on web three, the metaverse and Apecoin. What's going on there? Like web three, buzzword remains a buzzword today. You could ask 10 different people, what is web three? And they're gonna give you 10 different answers and like four of them are gonna be like, I have no clue. What's the difference between web and NFTs? Aren't they all web three? Like some people are gonna think the metaverse seems like bridges to nowhere in a way. Cure your thoughts on that. Apecoin, high emissions, massive airdrop to, you know, Apeholders and Mutant Apeholders and all that sort of stuff. They get some criticism, but they're like Nike. So maybe it's unwise to bet against them. So what are your takes on those three things? Web three, the metaverse, Apecoin. Yeah, so I had two predictions. The first one being that web three gaming specifically will experience some growing pains in 2023. That's just because I think the industry has to kind of realize what it is. I think a lot of the issues with like web three games in 2022 is that they're like basically yield farms masquerading as a gaming project. And obviously like the whole play to earn model is not really sustainable in the long run. So yeah, I definitely think the gaming industry for web three related purposes is probably a couple of years out. I don't expect anything too major to be happening on that side for the next year. Long term, I definitely think it is something to watch out for, especially as the industry realizes that they're not blockchain enabled games. They're games on the blockchain. So basically what I mean by that is like, first you have to develop a fun game. Like at the end of the day, gaming is something we do to have fun and relax. Gaming is not an exercise we're doing to make money off of. And I think that's kind of the first issue with the industry is it's like, how do we create this like token that people are gonna wanna buy rather than how do we create a fun game? So that's one of my predictions is that I don't see that kind of development happening where people are like, okay, let's first just focus on creating a game that people are gonna wanna play. We need like, before the industry really takes off, we need like a AAA level game that people are just gonna flock to play. And eventually I think that will also increase adoption of blockchain. And I think most people that play in this blockbuster game that will eventually come. I don't think this year, a couple of years out will be interacting with the blockchain and not even realize they are. Which I think is pretty cool. But I definitely think we're a couple of years out from that. And then my other prediction was, this is kind of one of my more bolder takes, was that Ape will eventually go top 10. I said in 2023, I didn't put it in high confidence because of the time constraint, but I definitely think that Ape will eventually catapult itself into the top 10. I'm not maybe not a mainstay, but I definitely think that Ape has something very attractive and that it's building basically like you mentioned, like it's like the Nike of on chain NFTs, which is really cool. And especially when you like, BoAC Apes like they're not going anywhere. They're always one or two for the most popular NFTs, but problem with that is pretty much everyone that would want to own one is priced out. There's only 10,000 plus, they're going for a couple hundred thousand eventually. So, if I'm a new participant to WEMP3, I'm not getting an Ape, it's not possible. But hey, here's this Ape coin I can buy this and get all the benefits of being in the Ape community. So, I definitely think Ape is something that's going to be very attractive once retail comes back. And I definitely think retail will come back at some point, especially they're going to center around NFTs and meat points because that's, if there was any big takeaway from 2021, it's retail doesn't necessarily care about the tech, they care more about the community and the community effects like Doge for example. Doge on a technical standpoint really didn't make much sense as an investment. It's a meat coin that doesn't really do anything, but what I personally also overlooked was the community effect of it. Buying Doge, you became a part of this community. It was so much something bigger than yourself and your money. People just really rallied around that. And I think something similar again happened in the NFT market, especially because NFTs is different than tokens, their pictures and stuff like that, which it's much better for community building. So I definitely think Yuga has the firepower. They raised what, $450 billion last year to continue building out the Ape ecosystem. And I just think that long-term Ape right now is the best bet for a community that's going to become strong through the next bull run. And I mean, also not to mention like, they are pretty like, they do have an active community. So like if you check their governance forms, like there's tons of people like still interested in Ape and board BAYC and stuff like that. So I do think Ape will eventually have a good day, good bull run. I definitely think the community effects of it is something very interesting. Yeah, it's going to be fun to watch. So last question, and then we wrap up. You kind of outlined a DeFi redemption arc and what it might take for DeFi to come back. And I agree with you. DeFi is still struggling to find a use case. And currently like, Treadfy rates on USTs and CDs are high. They're like 5%. If you want to go get a three month CD or a multi-year CD, it's safer. It's guaranteed yield, right? So what do you think will take to revive DeFi and pull people back into it? Yeah, so I mean, I can talk about the subject for a whole nother hour. So we'll try to keep this short. DeFi is one of my passions. It's my favorite thing about crypto. And I'm a big believer in the DeFi thesis. I think eventually DeFi will win out long-term. So yeah, getting back to kind of the issues with DeFi like in its current stage is, I think at the end of the day, we're still very much in a proof of concept phase. DeFi is new. Like in the grand scheme of things, DeFi has really been around for what? Four years now, let's say. I mean, you can argue like obviously with the creation of Bitcoin, DeFi was created. But I would say it finds its roots more back in like 2018, 2019. So the industry is still like brand new and it's still testing a lot of ideas. And I think what 2022 was, was although like obviously DeFi tokens took a huge hit, like it proved that DeFi protocols can work. You know, you had this mass credit contagion amongst CeFi, BlockFi blew up, FTX blew up, Voyager, but all the DeFi applications continued working despite the extreme market volatility and like protocols like Ave or Maker or whatever, like when CeFi blew up, they had to pay them first and it was enforced on chain by code and there was just nothing like that a court could have said otherwise. So I definitely think DeFi in the past year has proven that it does work. But the next step is DeFi has to integrate more with the real world. Obviously it can't just be separated because then you're just playing speculation money games or money's just going in a circle. So eventually like DeFi, the path forward for DeFi, like I'll give you my like 10 year vision, like DeFi will eventually be kind of like the back end of the entire like financial infrastructure of the world. I mean, 10 years might be optimistic, but 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, people will be interacting with DeFi and not even realize, you know, you're gonna go to your bank to get a car loan or something like that, let's say and that money is gonna be sourced from some lending pool on DeFi, some DeFi protocol, AVE or whatever. So I definitely think like the long-term goal for DeFi is it has to integrate more with real world assets. Like one development that I find really cool, you mentioned like obviously like yields right now are very low on DeFi compared to traditional finance. Odno finance and flux finance are kind of solving that problem. So like Odno is a permissioned yield account, essentially where they're buying an ETF that tracks like a bonds and I think it yields at like 4.7% or something so very close to the risk-free rate and they're bringing that on chain and then flux finance says, hey, you know, that's permission, you have to be KYC, you have to be accredited investor or whatever, but hey, here's a permissionless lending market where you can deposit these tokenized ETFs as collateral and then borrow, die at USDC and pay a borrowing rate that I think it launched yesterday. I wanna say the borrowing rate was like 3.5%, which is like 2% higher than rates on Odno. So like DeFi is getting to that point where we're gonna be integrating more with the real world. It's definitely the path forward for DeFi and I definitely think it will get done. Obviously there's regulatory concerns with that, but like I think long-term we, DeFi is building something that can't be stopped. You know, eventually people learn about it, they will realize it's benefits and that's kind of what it takes off and then we're gonna get to a point where like I said early, I don't know how long could be 10 years, 2030, the entire world's financial infrastructure will probably be abstracted away on DeFi and people will be interacting with DeFi, I have no idea that's what they're doing. Yeah, that all makes sense. And possibly when more intangibles come on chain like your house, your car, art, collectibles in real life, come on chain and can be fractionalized and just kind of rolled into whole infrastructure of DeFi, that'll be helpful. And I also think that like NFTs are gonna play a role in DeFi revival also, like using NFTs as revival, sorry, as collateral, using them like fractionalizing them and the whole synthetics and perpetual contracts that we're starting to see with NFT-FI. So I agree, just more and more ideation and experimentation needs to happen within DeFi. Yes, one of my predictions was that NFT-FI is really gonna take off over the next year. NFTs are cool, they're, at the end of the day they're financial assets, they have some value, now we need to create some ways to use this value. And like you mentioned, like lending protocols like deposit and JPEG as collateral and take out an ETH loan is pretty cool. Obviously projects like NFT perp, that's like kind of basically GMX for NFTs is interesting. So I definitely think DeFi and especially like NFT related DeFi is really gonna flourish over the next couple of years. And I'm super excited to be in the industry learning about this stuff, helping build it. So it is a fascinating time. And like the bear is for building, the bull market is fun and euphoria, but like this is where we're gonna create the next developments that are gonna take the next zero to one developments that are really gonna take this industry to the forefront. Yeah, I agree totally, it's gonna be a nice journey. Well, that's pretty much it from me. You answered all of the questions in great depth and it was a pleasure having you on. So where can we find you? If we wanna know more about the average Joe's crypto and what you do and what your perspectives are, where's the best place for people to connect with you? Yeah, the best place to connect with me is on Twitter at AVG, J-O-E-S crypto. That's pretty much where you can always reach out to me, my DMs are always open. I like to talk to people and stuff like that. You can also obviously subscribe to my stop stack. I definitely, people can leave comments to that. I respond, but yeah, the best way to reach me is through Twitter. I'm always happy to talk to people about the market. I'm a crypto geek as I'm sure you are and most people watching this are and like just a great industry to be in. I love meeting new people and learning their perspectives on a lot of stuff. So yeah, you can always reach me out on Twitter, DM, tweet at me, I'll always reply. So yeah. All right, appreciate you. Thanks for coming on and thanks to all the listeners for tuning in. Subscribe, I'm here every Thursday at 12 E.T. You've been listening to Market Talks. So I'll catch you around, Ryan. Thanks for coming on. Yes, thank you, Ryan. It was a blast to be on here. I had a great conversation with you. Likewise.