The Chopping Block: Crypto's Rebound, Reg Crypto, and AI Router Wars

**Tom Schmidt** (0:00)
We had lunch with the King of Bhutan. He's actually very excited about AI. He told me he uses Cloud Code and Obsidian, but he's been playing around with Kimi, and he was impressed with Kimi D3. What?

**Robert Leshner** (0:09)
Not a dividend.

**Tom Schmidt** (0:11)
It's a tale of two quants.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (0:12)
Now, your losses are on someone else's balance sheet.

**Tom Schmidt** (0:14)
Generally speaking, air drops are kind of pointless anyways.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (0:17)
I named trading firms who were very involved.

**Tom Schmidt** (0:20)
I like that ETH is the ultimate problem.

**Robert Leshner** (0:22)
DeFi protocol is part of the antidote to this problem.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (0:26)
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Chopping Block. Every couple of weeks, the four of us get together and give the industry insider's perspective on the crypto topics of the day.
So first up, we've got Tom, the DeFi Maven and master of memes.

**Tom Schmidt** (0:37)
Hello, everybody.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (0:39)
Next, we've got Tarun, the Giga Brain and Grand Puba at Gauntlet.

**Tom Schmidt** (0:43)
Yo.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (0:45)
Then we've got Robert, the Crypto Connoisseur and Tsar of Superstate.

**Robert Leshner** (0:48)
Hello, everybody.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (0:50)
And finally, I'm Haseeb, the head hype man at Dragonfly. We are early stage investors in crypto. I want to caveat that nothing we say here is investment advice, legal advice or even life advice. Please see ChoppingBlock.xyz for more disclosures. So for those wondering, Tarun and Tom are not having a spa day. Actually, they're joining us from Bhutan.
Thank you. Well, yeah, that's very, very exciting. Tell us what you guys are doing in Bhutan and how are things over there?

**Tom Schmidt** (1:22)
Things are lovely. We're here for a variety of reasons. There's a demo day here. We met with the King. We had lunch with the King of Bhutan. Learned a lot about Bitcoin mining. He's actually very excited about AI. He told me he uses Cloud Code and Obsidian, but he's been playing around with Kimi. What? He's impressed with Kimi P3. Yes. The King of Bhutan is one of the most amazing stories of how he decided to mine Bitcoin when Bitcoin was $4.
I mean, the guy is extraordinarily eloquent. I was definitely blown away.
My problem is the British monarchy, where everyone's a moron, like Prince Harry or whatever. I just expect everyone to be a moron. This King is the opposite. He's clearly a genius.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (2:05)
Wow. I did meet the King of Bhutan once at an event that Binance was hosting, and I remember him being very suave, just like a super cool guy.
He had these little glasses, and he seemed incredibly gentle. I don't know, he seemed like a character from a movie. It was like, the first King I've ever met, and very good introduction to the world of kings, I will say.

**Tom Schmidt** (2:35)
Yeah, for sure.
My impression was just like, again, reality TV shows with the British royals, and I'm like, wow, they're all morons. But clearly, that's not true.

**Robert Leshner** (2:45)
Are you a monarchist now?

**Tom Schmidt** (2:47)
No, I don't think so. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe for a good one. Yeah. If you can get the King of Bhutan, it won't be so bad. Well, I mean, they also have a prime minister. Like it is a democracy. It's constitutional monarchy.

**Robert Leshner** (2:59)
But England has the legacy of a monarchy.

**Tom Schmidt** (3:02)
England has that, the people kind of, yeah, the vibe around it feels kind of bad. I don't know. The vibe here around it is like, everyone loves the king. It seems like kind of chill. And he seems much more involved. He's working on this GMC project, which is kind of like their own SAR, SCZ kind of thing. So they want to get more entrepreneurs over to Bhutan. And you know what he's saying? And he was right. Like, I feel like there's this Central Asia focus, like the orb is kind of shifting from Southeast Asia to Central Asia and well positioned.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (3:31)
What is the King of Bhutan vibe coding?

**Tom Schmidt** (3:35)
We didn't get that far. It was a 12, 14 person lunch, so I can't really go deep.
But you use obsidian, so I think that's another kind of deep cut.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (3:45)
All right. I feel like before you leave Bhutan, you got to get the word of what he's, is he like vibe coding government services for the country of Bhutan? Or like what's going on?

**Tom Schmidt** (3:53)
What is he working on? National ID system on AWS. We did make the folly mistake of not asking him if he wanted to be a chopping block guest. I apologize.