What’s Circle’s End Game, Robinhood Launches A Chain & Venice Raises $65M

**Jason** (0:00)
Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Blockworks. Our hosts, guests, and the Blockworks team may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed.
All right, folks, welcome back, happy 4th, Rob, what's happening? How you doing?

**Rob** (0:30)
No, I'm just trying to, trying to relax a little bit before the 4th, and this market is not allowing it. It's not allowing it. No.
It just keeps going, keeps getting worse, although we've got a little bit of a reprieve today, it seems like.

**Jason** (0:43)
I don't know. I think we bottomed. I think we're it's up only from here.

**Rob** (0:48)
Thank you for watching.

**Jason** (0:50)
I actually don't think that, but Santiago is not with us today, so I feel the need to make this a very bullish episode.

**Rob** (0:56)
Can I tell you, I was talking to a very well known founder in the space.
I had drinks with him over the weekend, and he was saying, hey, I listen to the podcast sometimes. And I was like, oh, that's great. And he was saying, just a little bit of piece of feedback, for people who run a crypto podcast, Santi is so negative all the time, it sort of makes me not want to listen to it. And so maybe he was like, you guys could be a little bit more positive sometimes, since you run a podcast about the space that you're all working at and that you're vested in, that has made you money.

**Jason** (1:30)
Rob's like, people told me that you guys should probably just not show your faces on the episode, and I should be basically monologue, and I don't disagree with them.
I think Santi will listen to this, and my feedback for him would be to be more bullish because we're in crypto. But I will say, Santi is one of the best people I've ever met at not having emotional beliefs tied to priors. And I remember at the very bottom of the market after FTX, Santi went very long Solana, and this was after he was like a big investor and ETH person. And I remember how much crap he got for that, and he ended up being very right. And then I remember at the top of the market, he said, I'm selling a lot of my soul. And he ended up being right about that too. And I think he is too bearish on many things and this is a crypto podcast, but I do respect the ability to not be emotional with his lungs.

**Rob** (2:34)
Yeah. I mean, listen, even the memory trade, he was like a week early too, until everything blew up. Right.
He's obviously a very, very good trader. So let's figure out how to get him to be very positive and very good at trading this market going up.

**Jason** (2:49)
That's the goal.

**Rob** (2:50)
So how about that?

**Jason** (2:51)
All right. Let's, okay, here. So let's make this a fun episode. There's, this week is like the tech companies are actually doing really cool things in crypto week.
We had Robinhood, we had Stripe, well, Stripe and the Consortium building OUSD, I think it's called, which we'll talk about in detail.

**Rob** (3:11)
The Open Standard.

**Jason** (3:12)
The Open Standard. So Open Standard, which is many companies, Stripe, DoorDash, a bunch of folks, obviously, which we can talk about when we get there. We had Robinhood Chain, which is very interesting stuff around that, I'd say. And then actually Cloudflare is the announcement, I think many people probably would have missed, because it went a little bit more under the radar, but I thought it was a very interesting announcement, too. Maybe if we get to it, there's a whole conversation around Venice and Token vs Equity.
Maybe we could start, though, with MicroStrategy. You were at the, I think, Goldman Conference? Whose conference was it? You were at a conference.

**Rob** (3:51)
Yeah, Goldman Conference. They do it every year, did it this year. Biggest one ever, 1,300 people. It was great.

**Jason** (3:57)
Saylor presented. So I have two questions for you. One is, what is the reaction at a conference like that to Saylor and his Bitcoin is the hardest asset in the world, the perfect collateral? What is the reaction to Saylor in that room? And then two, what is the reaction to just crypto digital assets in that room in general right now?

**Rob** (4:18)
So the Goldman Conference has been going on, I think this was the fifth year, might have been the fourth or fifth year.