Why Crypto Changed Forever | Roundup

**Mike** (0:00)
What does it mean for crypto to win? Are we, I think it's all of the above. It is businesses adopting crypto rails, the adoption of non-sovereign money and L1s as bona fide financial assets. But also, I think when it comes to tokens, people have a really difficult idea, like what does it mean for token? You know, they know what it feels like when tokens on CoinGecko rip, but what are we describing here? I think that what tokens enable are an earlier, less regulated stage of the stock market.
Hey, everyone, quick disclaimer before we get into today's episode. Nothing said on Bell Curve is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Our guests and I may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed.
All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of Bell Curve. You got me, Myles and Xavier, fellas. How are we all doing?

**Myles** (0:56)
What's up, guys?

**Xavier** (0:58)
Hi, guys.

**Myles** (0:59)
It's game day, baby. I got my USA gear on.

**Mike** (1:05)
I was the big one.

**Myles** (1:06)
My towel shirt.

**Mike** (1:07)
I've seen you wear it in the years I've known you.

**Myles** (1:11)
I rely on my little sister to get me my cool guy outfits.

**Mike** (1:16)
I thought you were going to say you're a fiance, but yeah. What she made of honesty I didn't know was going to come across on the podcast.

**Myles** (1:23)
She hopes to. She hopes to.
It takes a village.

**Mike** (1:28)
It takes a village to, yeah. Why are we good at soccer out of the gates here? I mean, I have not been following this.

**Myles** (1:37)
I thought we are trash. We have an amazing coach that Ken Griffiths paid for out of pocket himself. And he's like a top 10 coach in the world. Normally would have no interest in coaching the United States. But yeah, he drained the swamp of bad US men's national team politics.
And got the boys going.

**Mike** (2:08)
Well, speaking of structural changes.

**Myles** (2:11)
Yeah, there you go.

**Mike** (2:12)
That's what we're going to be talking about today. And so basically what we want to this is a this episode is on the game on the field in crypto and how it's changed over the last five years. And what we want to be working back from is this question of what does it look like and what does it mean for crypto to succeed? Does that mean that tokens go up? Does it mean that people companies adopt crypto tech and build on those rails? What does the future look like of quote crypto succeeding? And the way that we're going to get there is we're going to talk about what's changed in the last five years. Like what are the big market forces that have changed how crypto has played out?
What are the mental models that need to get updated in the industry of which there are a lot? And then who are the companies, protocols, tokens, whatever, that benefit from this and who's going to do well? And that's how we're going to back our way into this question.
But I guess maybe Myles and Pokit, you first here. What's changed in the last five years? And five years ago is 2021 So this was peak. This was right in the teeth of a bull market, post very dire 2019, 2020 COVID era. Everything was ripping up into the right, every coin you could possibly think of, millions of different ideas. What's changed in between now and then?

**Myles** (3:36)
The biggest thing is that I think the way that people interact with crypto products or products that are built on chain is just largely through like regular companies now.
And it is much more invisible on the back end. Like I remember five years ago, all of our friends from outside of crypto were like, what should I buy? What should I try? And like even a few of them were like, you know, like trying to buy near, right? Like are like trying, trying new protocols, trying like actually like onboarding to random like Cosmos chains. And that doesn't really like, that's not how the primary mode of interaction anymore. And thus, you know, there's like far fewer, let's say like investible opportunities for tokens. But yeah, I saw like the Air Wallachs founder post the other day, who was Air Wallachs is like a, you know, a massive FinTech payments processor.
Historically has been extremely anti-crypto, anti-stable coins and everything. And has done like a total 180 over the past, let's say a year. And last week they announced that they're launching a chain. And founders like posting on Twitter and doing like mental gymnastics around how he still sees absolutely no use case for crypto. But blockchain, oh, very useful, right? Stable coins, very, very useful. And it's like, what, what are we, what are we talking about here? And so I think there is just like a weird repeat of this. Let's say, you know, the old like debate was Bitcoin or like Bitcoin, not blockchain, right? When that was like the private chain era and people were actually saying like these things need to be neutral, credibly neutral and decentralized in order to be, you know, valuable and like public and open, open access, right? And now we're kind of, we kind of have sped, speed run back to that debate. And it's now looking more and more like, you know, the consensus is around the stupid like, you know, blockchain, not Bitcoin. And so, yeah, I think like there's now a weird delineation between like crypto and blockchain, which people peg to like tokens. And if tokens are doing well. Yes. And it just seems kind of silly to me, right? Like if you were, you know, unfortunately not everybody can do this, but if you were like a good investor over the past five years, it shouldn't really matter that tokens are down because if you were investing well, you were investing across like equities and tokens, like, you know, just say like startups that don't have a token.