The Chopping Block: Zcash Infinite Mint Bug + AI Hackers vs Formal Verification + NEAR's Agent Vision

**Laura Shin** (0:00)
I think it was a lesson, I think the market taught him a lesson, I think he's internalized a lesson.
You do not get to sell. Selling, there's no sell button for you, you're buy only.

**Tom Schmidt** (0:08)
Not a dividend. It's a tale of two quants.

**Laura Shin** (0:10)
Now, your losses are on someone else's balance sheet.

**Tom Schmidt** (0:13)
Generally speaking, air drops are kind of pointless anyways.

**Laura Shin** (0:16)
I'm into trading firms who are very involved.

**Tom Schmidt** (0:19)
I like that each of the ultimate puns.

**Laura Shin** (0:21)
DeFi protocols are the antidote to this problem.
Hello everybody, welcome to The Chopping Block. Every couple weeks, four of us get together and give the industry insider's perspective on the crypto topics of the day. Quick intro, first we got Tom, the DeFi maven and master of memes.

**Tom Schmidt** (0:34)
Hello everyone.

**Laura Shin** (0:36)
Joining us today, we've got Illia, protocol pioneer and patron saint at NEAR.

**Illia Polosukhin** (0:41)
Hey, hey.

**Laura Shin** (0:43)
Good to see you, Illia. And joining us today, we've got another repeat guest, Mert, the main manlet at Helius. Welcome back, Mert.

**Mert Mumtaz** (0:51)
Hello.

**Laura Shin** (0:53)
We heard that you were five beers in. Is that when you started speaking Russian?

**Mert Mumtaz** (0:57)
That is actually generally when it starts, yes.

**Illia Polosukhin** (1:00)
That's how everyone starts to speak Russian. It's just everybody is five beers in, in Russia.

**Laura Shin** (1:07)
Beautiful, beautiful. Well, I am a seed that had made a dragonfly. We're early season investors in crypto, but 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 if you're all wondering the reason why Mert has been drinking is because there's been a market meltdown.
It's been an absolutely insane weekend. We saw massive amounts of liquidations coming in. Bitcoin going below 59K, which was kind of the... People kind of thought 60K, okay, this is like the mental guardrail that if Bitcoin goes below here, it's all over.
Now, since the weekend has transpired, there's been a lot of other stories, and we're going to talk about what happened with ZEC, which was one of the most tumultuous stories. But general market, there's been bloodshed across the board. And since then, it seems the market has rebounded. So Friday, I think a lot of this was initiated by both the combination of Saylor selling the 32 Bitcoin, which was a very small sale. It was like 3 point something million dollars of Bitcoin that he sold. That was enough to cause the market to go into a tailspin. And then that got exacerbated by Friday. Nasdaq was down massively because of a jobs report and anticipation that the Fed may end up cutting this year, or sorry, raising rates instead of cutting rates. So now it looks like polymarkets pricing roughly 50-50 that the Fed ends up raising rates this year. And if they don't raise rates, very unlikely that they cut, more likely they end up holding rates flat. So not a good environment for risk assets. It seems like AI is the only thing that can save us at this point. But the market on the whole, very jittery, although we're now bouncing back a little bit, the coin's back above 62K. It's been many people calling that, hey, maybe this is the beginning of the end, maybe the death spirals are beginning, maybe the reaper of DATs are finally coming for us and we're going to have to pay for all of our sins. Of course, there's now increasing worry about stretch. We've talked before about stretch on the show. Stretch are these preferred shares that Michael Saylor has issued.
Stretch, the thing that's notable about it is that it's designed to trade around $100.
So $100 is probably the ceiling where it should trade at, but you can think of it as an upward peg where the idea is that he's going to increase the dividends until this thing trades at $100.
This thing is trading below $100. It went all the way down to like $95, $94. Today it's trading somewhere around $97, $98.
The reason why it would trade there is either one, people don't believe he's going to pay the dividends, or two, they're worried that micro-strategy might go kaput. These are both very worrisome situations. Mert, Illia, both of you have been participants in different ways in the DAT mania that kind of beset the industry over the last couple years. What do you think? Is this a sign that this is the beginning of the end? Do you think DATs are going to be okay? What's your guys' read on the market?