The Chopping Block: SpaceX IPO Mania, Fable 5 Export Controls & The AI Privacy Fight

**Robert Leshner** (0:00)
So, what I love about The Chopping Block is we don't really have to prepare that much. Not a dividend.

**Tom Schmidt** (0:07)
It's a tale of two pawns.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (0:08)
Now, your losses are on someone else's balance sheet.

**Tarun Chitra** (0:11)
Generally speaking, air drops are kind of pointless anyways.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (0:14)
I'm into trading firms who are very involved.

**Tom Schmidt** (0:16)
I like that EAT is the ultimate model.

**Robert Leshner** (0:19)
DeFi protocols are the antidote to this problem.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (0:22)
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Chopping Block. Every couple of weeks, four of us get together and give the industry inside of perspective on the crypto topics of the day. A quick intro, this is Tom, the DeFi Maven and Master of Memes. Hello, everyone.
Joining us today, we've got special guest, Robert, the Crypto Connoisseur and Czar of Superstate.

**Robert Leshner** (0:39)
It's great to be here. Thank you for having me back on the show.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (0:41)
Yeah, it's really, we've been trying so hard to book you, but you are one of the hardest people to get in this industry.

**Robert Leshner** (0:47)
Sometimes you got to live life.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (0:48)
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But the people have been missing you. We've gotten a lot of people asking, where's Robert? What did you do to him? Is he still alive?
Do you wanna tell the people where you've been?

**Robert Leshner** (0:57)
Yeah, well, I was pre-recording a season of the Superstate podcast called The Pop. It has been recorded. We are releasing episodes. The second episode, by the time you hear this podcast, came out about two days ago on Tuesday. It's all about IPOs and capital market machinery and the things happening under the ground when things happen in finance.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (1:20)
Okay, beautiful. Good cross promotion. And of course, you've got Tarun, Gearbrain and Grandpubaha at the collar.
And I'm Steve, the head hype man at Dragonfly. We're early-stage investor in crypto, but I want to caveat that nothing we say here is investment advice, legal advice, or even life advice. We see Chopping Blocks at XYZ for more disclosures. So Robert, now that you have betrayed us with another podcast, how does it feel knowing the taste of another podcast and coming back to this one? What would you say you've learned about podcasting now that you've explored, you've had your salad days?

**Robert Leshner** (1:53)
Yeah, well, I'll say this from N equals two instead of N equals one. So what I love about The Chopping Block is we don't really have to prepare that much.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (2:03)
You don't have to prepare that much, I have to prepare.

**Robert Leshner** (2:05)
Haseeb has to prepare the monologue to open the show. But we talk about the news and the things that happened. It's always fresh, it's easy, it's fun versus an interview style podcast where you have to read somebody's book, you have to figure out what questions to ask, you have to prepare, you have to rehearse a little bit one-on-one. It's a little bit harder, it's a very different style, shameless plug, listen to The Pop, you'll get to hear me do a totally different style of podcast.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (2:32)
Yeah, and if you want to hear Robert do absolutely zero prep, listen to The Chopping Block.

**Robert Leshner** (2:36)
Exactly, just do it right now.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (2:38)
This is three guys doing absolutely nothing and one guy actually preparing.

**Tom Schmidt** (2:42)
Yeah, you go. We have staff.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (2:44)
We have staff. Staff, what do you think my staff is doing?

**Robert Leshner** (2:47)
The Dragonfly staff prepares Haseeb.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (2:50)
They basically have like an AI just kind of flop.

**Tom Schmidt** (2:54)
AI can't have a taste though. You have to filter those bullets.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (2:57)
That's true. That happens up here. That happens up here. That's the cognitive work.

**Robert Leshner** (3:01)
But this feels like home.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (3:02)
This feels like home. That's very sweet. Well, it feels like a homecoming. Well, speaking of home, we had the closest thing to a crypto ICO take place last week. Obviously, the news that everybody's heard is the SpaceX IPO, absolutely massive, largest IPO in history, and Crazy Pop obviously launched originally at price at $1.75 trillion. And Pop 20% on the first day, another 10% yesterday, and it's still going. It seems like... Or was it 20%?
10%?

**Robert Leshner** (3:34)
It closed today at $200 something.

**Haseeb Qureshi** (3:36)
Yeah, so now it's flipped Amazon, briefly flipped Microsoft, one of the most valuable companies in the world now. It's kind of insane. Obviously, this is unlike those companies, not profitable, very early kind of speculative story about whatever data centers in space and so on. But a company that's getting a lot of people very, very animated. Now, the other thing about it was the phenomenon of how the IPO was distributed was also extremely unique. So for one, the float of this IPO is 4.2% float. Okay, that means that this is a low float, or sorry, yeah, low float, high FTV IPO.