Welcome to the Chain Stories podcast, the podcast that celebrates disruptors who defy convention. Here we dive into the bold stories of trailblazers who turned audacious ideas into billion dollar ventures. Hey everyone! Today we are with Jenite from Trireme Trading. How are you doing, Jenite? I'm doing fantastic. How about you? Doing great. Thanks for accepting for the podcast. It was great to meet you this past weekend at Crypto AI Con in Lisbon. It was definitely a good event. What were your thoughts on it? I quite liked it. I was a speaker there, managed to actually build some meaningful relationships. Sometimes these smaller conferences are much better compared to the big ones, for example a token 2049. Sometimes I feel like a lot of BDs, they come and just say, Hey, Can I get your telegram and then next one and no one really build a relationship and I'm like, oh man, come on at least entertain me right entertain me before I give him my telegram. But the AI conference was a smaller one managed to speak with people actually understand what they're building. Overall, I think was great. It's actually pretty cool that we have such a strong city as our home country that has so many Web3 events, and you see so many people coming here from all over Europe. I was for a certain period thinking about living in Eastern Europe, like Estonia and even in Lithuania, but the crypto scene, they're just non existent almost. And I was like, no, let me go back to Portugal. Cause since there's a community, there's people out there and so much we can do network and learn. Do you think people go to Lisbon because of the taxes? Because let's just look at everything in Lisbon. One part you have the taxes, right? So for me and you, we have a program called return to home. And I think we need to pay somewhere close to 20%. Doesn't matter if you earn 50,000 to a million, it will be taxed 20%. But let's say someone from Australia or UK, if they move to Lisbon, I don't think they normally pay taxes, at least for crypto. I'm not sure. Don't quote me on that. That's one part. So you have the taxes, right? Then you have the weather. You have better prices compared, for example, I'm based, in UK, in London. But the prices here are quite high, right? And the taxes are quite high, like around 45%, for example. But then in Lisbon, you have good food, good taxes, good weather, great people. And I think anyone that is working in crypto definitely would look at Lisbon as a great hub. I think Balancer is there, there's some people from ICP, there's some people from CoreDAO as well, from Banker. So I think it's quite interesting to see how Portugal, in terms economically, was just a normal country, now to see most of remote workers, especially in crypto decided to move to Lisbon, right? Even us, where I work for Trireme, me and the CEO, Nick, we were thinking of should we move to Lisbon? Yeah, so some food for thought, right? Yeah, for sure. So I'll give you my opinion. And for those listening to podcasts, I'm not a lawyer or a tax expert, but I do know a lot and I'm very comfortable. So for those listening, if you're Portuguese, and you've been away of Portugal for more than five years, and your residence was changed in the IRS, you have the right to come back. And for five years, you don't pay taxes on foreign source income or up to 20%, but also crypto if you're not a US citizen or a citizen of Eritrea and you're a citizen of anywhere else in the world, you can come here and set up your home base and you don't pay taxes if you hold crypto more than a year than if it's less than a year, you're going to pay 28% is going to trigger capital gains. So I think that was one of the reasons, but also before this year, Portugal had a very appealing law, which was the non habitual residence. Cause you could come here, set up your residency. You only pay 20% if you have income from Portugal. If you don't have income from Portugal is at 0% and no capital gains. If you're not a US citizen and you'd have a bunch of other privileges in terms of buying real estate, selling, etc. And this was a law that came out in 2009. And many people don't know. It only picked up later in the last bull run, like in 2021, when a lot of crypto people saw Lisbon as a great place to go for events. It's cheap to throw an event. There's good margins. So we saw an influx of companies and where the tier 1 companies like Solana, Near, etc. coming in because I want to host my event in this city is good margins. People love it, it's nice, and it's abroad. Plus on top of that, we saw a max exodus of the United States from talent and capital because people are like, the SEC is terrible. There's terrible laws. And why are we all here? Why don't we just go over to a country in Europe where the average salary it's 20K or 30K. We have a way higher center of living. And we all move there. We all build what we're building from there. And that's what we saw in Lisbon. And this brought a lot of problems to the local Portuguese people that I don't want to get into, but it was very interesting also how the Portuguese government did not capitalize on this because you'd have this massive influx of brain talent. Also on top of this, we had the war in Ukraine. A lot of talented people from Ukraine came over. And still to this day is rare to see any companies in this space, they're incorporated in Portugal. Sure. Me as a person, I'm incorporated here and I can come here for those resident benefits, but I think they missed out on a lot of things that they could have captured from the brain talent coming in. But to your question, it was the taxes. It was the weather. It was the lifestyle, right? It we're in November and it's last weekend, I was here by the beach. It was still sunny and you could see so many people from Germany, France, etc. just coming over a year and just trying to escape those countries. Plus, if you're a European, you can come here and set a base and you don't pay taxes. I know Germans they have a very high tax on crypto or France. So that was very appealing. I keep seeing people over all over Europe move the year for that. And also the prices, it's one of the cheapest countries in Europe to live. I think if we go to Paris or Berlin or London, what is the average lunch in a restaurant and what is the average food quality? But then there's that question. Would you go to Dubai or would you go to Lisbon? There's a lot of people trying to decide, should I go to Lisbon or should I go to Dubai. No, not in income tax. So you just there and apparently don't quote me on this again, please check with the lawyer, but I think if you create an entity there as long as you make less than a million dollars you don't need to pay a corporate tax, right? I have some friends living in Dubai. And I think in terms of network Dubai, it's great, but it's quite expensive. But then you compensate because you don't pay any income tax or corporate tax to a million dollars. So it's interesting mix and it's interesting how crypto is slowly moving the world, where people start to look at these countries, these cities, for a different perspective, a different hub. For people that don't know much about Lisbon, people just go for Lisbon because of holidays. It's cheap, it's great people, good food, and that's it, nothing else. But now people are looking at Lisbon, as a financial hub. I'm not sure if you know this, but I think there is a part of Lisbon, they just building just buildings after buildings. And I think CV Pad, they are on that area as well. And I think slowly is growing. According to the Portuguese government, 70% of the revenue comes from tourism. So this country sold itself to the tourists, but going to your point about Dubai, and it's my personal opinion, I have lived there. I've been there. I feel it's very fake. Yes. And it was something I didn't resonate with the lifestyle, but also I'm a US citizen and US citizens, there's no benefit per se, right? Still pay taxes. Because we're taxing the worldwide income. And if I don't pay taxes in a company in Dubai, I don't need to be there in person. And if I have set up a structure where I can just live in a major European city, I think it's so much more appealing as Lisbon can offer you a more organic lifestyle, then in Dubai. Another very interesting point is recently Galaxy Digital launched a report and the report outlined the outflow of venture capital into the crypto ecosystem. And the United States still takes the lead on this. So I think this also is important as we see a lot of American expats coming here. And yeah, I'm still a VC. I'm still investing in this space. But there's no interest in either going to Dubai or other jurisdictions as I don't benefit from not paying taxes. So I might as well just do Lisbon because as a city, it's still way cheaper to live versus Dubai on average Dubai just starting salary for you to get a residence, it's about 5,000 5,400 a month. And Lisbon is much lower than that, especially if you go outside of the city you can have a very affordable cost of living. I think with 2,000 euros, you can do really great. The other thing I want to talk with you is have you realized that there is more LPs doing OTC deals compared to before? I had a conversation with my friend at Galaxy and he mentioned that most of what's coming through the desk now is dormant Bitcoin addresses and there's a lot of OTC deals. It's possible. There is a lot of demand for that, especially we're in a market that's quite saturated with a lot of altcoins and they've been around for some time. So people might want to liquidate, which I don't think they probably want to liquidate their altcoins as it's still not even altcoin season, but we did see the trend with Bitcoin, especially in a lot of trading desks. Yeah. We currently have some OTC offers on the table, and I think it's quite interesting compared to a couple of years ago, but not just that, also I've seen some deals where they want to do OTC deal, let's say with the 25% discount or 50% discount, where you would come in, put the capital, but on top of that, you also have a consulting view on the project. So you help them. Refine the product, understand what the community really feels, what can be improved or not. And then you see, okay, there is that delta, I understand, but there is money there, right? Another point I also see, just moving a bit, is I see Spartan doing mergers and acquisitions lately. Which I think is interesting. It's okay, so we now bring more to try to find structure and what are your opinion on that? I think it was something that didn't exist in 2016 or 2021, but we spoke early about this actually, there's someone called Max Keiser. I think a lot of early Bitcoiners know him. Max, he worked in TradeFi and he always said, it's just a matter of time until the markets mature and they start mimicking what happens in traditional markets. And things will keep moving in that direction as Bitcoin's market cap goes over a trillion dollars, two trillion, which by the way, is still a fraction, like just the US alone, the NASDAQ is 55 trillion. So we're still in very early days, but as the market matures, you'll see more capital inflows, more merger and acquisitions, more behavior from traditional markets, which can be good and also can be really bad as this industry was founded on the principle of the equal right for everyone to come in and have access to xyz. We're starting to see the first monopolies and oligopolies I would say in this space, which is quite interesting, but also frustrating in a way. And I think that's also part of why we have this meme coin mania going on. That's what I wanted to touch. So often meme coin represents crypto, the crypto space really well, because sometimes you look at some projects, there is no real value there. You probably don't need a token. Let's look for the past 12 months. So we know that around 1,2 billion dollars were lost from retail trading meme coins. But then there is no new users coming to the crypto space and then we see the money being recycled. And trading meme coins if you really look at it's a zero sum game. Some people win, some people lose, right? If you are selling and you are in profit, probably someone is your exit liquidity, right? But the reality is I think meme coins probably can, now touching a bit here on VCs, especially also with Berachain, we'll start to see more DEX launches. Forget about the centralized exchanges. Let's do a fair launch on the DEX and that's it. What is your opinion on that? How do you think like exchanges should adapt? I've seen some projects and some moves from a couple of exchanges, but I want to pick your brain on this. I actually spoke about this on LinkedIn. I'm going to pull up here, the posts. This was a report from Binance. So they did the research and they said there's about 155 billion worth of unlocks coming in the next five years. So what does this mean that VCs are still waiting on these unlocks to come into the markets? And how does retail feel about this? Because we had retail coming in really hard in 2017. And a lot of people sold their houses and cars and completely lost, got burned last run, I think quite the same. And a lot of what failed in this industry was, where is the actual utility? It feels like sometimes it's just vapor. Sure, a lot of altcoins have utility. I'm not picking in general, but we are at over what, 30,000 on CoinMarketCap, and a lot are just vapor. And this is the market self regulating and creating itself is just capitalism in its way. The weak players or the demand and supply. But what is interesting is meme coins have a fair lunch. And what we saw this narrative or the cycle was a lot of retail got in. And even today, there was a kid in high school that traded a meme coin and erupts, while you're doing a live stream, right? He made over$29,000 and there's a video out there and that's when you see that retail comes in and then they post these screenshots that go viral. I made 29K or 2 million dollars. And then, Oh, this is seen as a fair lunch. And in crypto, that was the same thing that started ICO mania back in 2017. Was the fact I couldn't get in on early deals and I could just come in and buy directly or invest directly in a project. And then the SEC came in and cracked down on that and meme coins it's a Trojan horse in a way that allows attention and projects to come in and ensure it's fair, but at the end of the day, I think it's just not going to last very long. It's fun and it captured a lot of attention and it seems fair, but there's no utility, no really intrinsic value. What is it producing for society? Sure. Nothing, not really anything. There's the counter argument by some people in this space that meme coins are a cult. People want to be part of a cult in a time of a digital age where everyone is separated and away. Sure, but can this last for decades? Probably not. Bitcoin has been around for a decade and it's censorship resistant money and these are store value. It's very clear. And Ethereum also has a very clear value proposition. But meme coins, when you're doing it, it's very high risk. But I guess that's what retail has demand for. It's being part of something, this community that's fun and it's a frog, or it's a cat. And this is actually something that, it's a very good point because a couple of days ago, we had Coinbase listing a frog meme coin. And then you go on Robinhood, one of the largest retail apps in North America with Axals where most millennials have access to capital markets. They also are doing the same thing versus listing maybe a project that has a true solution to a problem or use case. So this is quite oring because it's really fueling speculation, which at the end of the day, these exchanges want. And that's what they're looking for is they're incentivized by making money on trading fees. You mentioned ICO and I have a good friend of mine called Amzur. They come up with a new term called IMEO, initial meme offering. I think it's just great. It's just genius. And I hope people start to pick up this. Just think about it. Initial meme offering. It's like the ICO. Now touching on the Binance listing to be honest if you look at the statistics now, most of the Binance listings are meme coins. And I understand why because there is that bid there is that volume because Binance makes money on the maker and taker fee. And anyone that is in the industry, they know, to get listed on Binance is not that easy. So on Binance, you either like a first mover, you have a really strong cap table, really strong community, really strong on chain activity. You need to be a tier 1, right? Like LayerZero, EigenLayer you need to be like a project that everyone is talking about and if you are that project then great. You're probably going to get listed on Binance. If not, best case scenario ByBit, OKX, then you have MEXC, Gate.io, or KuCoin. I think KuCoin is quite great. But then let's look back. What are the famous model in the previous cycle? Low FTV, low float. Because then the token will perform. Apparently we assume that the token will perform. VCs ended up making money, advisors, KOLs, all of those guys start to make money. Perfect. They have the multiple. And then slowly you start to open the flow, right? But now we start to see that, look, Hey, let's stop with that. Let's just do fair launch. Supply is in the market and that's it. Probably that's the retail say, look, let's stop this. Let's just be fair value. To a certain degree. Yes, I agree. But then I think there's should be a middle term here. The reality is like a lot of projects look at the token as an only source of revenue. Which is super wrong, right? You shouldn't just look at your token as a source of revenue, you should look at your token as utility, but also to build a community. And then you also have great business and I think like the best business in crypto is B2B. Let's say Consensus. Consensus doesn't have a token. And they really don't need to have a token, honestly. Although everyone is waiting for the airdrop. But Consensus is great, right? Tell me who doesn't have a MetaMask account. Then you have, let's say, Token Terminal, Messari. Everyone uses those platforms. Why? Because Crypto2Crypto, DeFi Llama, great as well. Another thing we should talk about is valuations. So I was working with the client and the client was like, I really don't know what should be my valuation. I look at this, I see, Pump.fund, charity X amount of revenue, but the valuation does not make sense. Then sometimes people just say, look, whatever revenue you're making, multiply that by 50. And that's your valuation. I actually don't agree because that's just inflated. Then there is people that keep saying, look, if your project is valued at 15 million, probably your real valuation is 1.5 million. And I'm already being optimistic. So what is your idea and opinion? Because you're a VC, right? I used to be a VC. Now I'm incubator and a celebrator. What is your opinion on the valuation that you see in crypto? First of all, there's something you mentioned about token being the product. And I think this is something that actually was forced to happen because of the SEC and really forced the market to be where it is today. And touching on that, what I mean is, so in a traditional company, you're entitled to, to receive dividends, or there is an effort by the board to give you dividends, and in order for a company give you dividends, as an investor, you need to produce, you need to create revenue. You need to do a value add service for society in some shape or form. And then every crypto was trying to avoid becoming a security, becoming, threatened by the US and being chased by the SEC. And the only way was the token is the dividend in a way. So there is that obsession. There is that point, there's a lot of pressure because you cannot create another mechanism of distribution. So this sort of forced the industry to be into a funnel where, how can we inflate and make the token price as high as possible. Sure, VCs wanna ROI in their investment, like any traditional company, but then the founders, then the community, everything was just so forced there. And it was so interesting because only the cycle and still in the previous one. We saw the KOLs becoming a thing and being so important and everyone's just so focused on the token price. KOLs are a community. Think about it. KOLs, if you really look at the KOL, it has so much power because you actually cannot advertise on Google, on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok about crypto, right? At least you couldn't. So then you are reliant on KOLs. And it's fun because KOLs are right in the middle, right? So projects normally reach out to those guys, but then also you have the stakeholders here, right? So you have projects, you have VCs, market makers, marketing agencies, everyone that really cares wants to work with projects. At the same time, and everyone depends on the KOLs because if a KOL likes your project, then there's a higher chances of you're building a strong community, right? It's a business at the end of the day is really a business. So I think KOLs itself, they become a really important part of crypto and definitely is a commodity, that people sometimes don't respect, but I think slowly, but surely everyone understands that. I work with VCs, market makers, founders, marketing agencies. Anything that you can think of and everyone respects KOLs. And the KOLs now, they've also become VCs. They ended up invested. That's the way the famous KOL round. You don't have that in traditional markets. Why you do it here? Because they are so important. And most of the time, if you look at the KOL round, it's two months cliff to unlock at TGE, and then two months to six months investing. That's the best terms. Way better than any VC, basically. They do get the best terms and the most access to liquidity. And I think at the end of the day, it's actually not the VC, the bad actor. It's probably more towards the KOL as I keep seeing more stories. And at the day, the VC is vested along with the founders in the same terms and conditions. And there is the fact that you want to try to do the best possible tokenomics, the best possible revenue, the best possible XYZ, so the project actually performs. So we get access to the unlocks. And it does take a lot of work and it's sad to see projects where even sometimes I know stories where the VC becomes the actual director of operations, the actual BD, etc., trying to do the work in the trenches and you have to give away token to the KOLs and on the first day, on the first hour, on the first candle, they immediately come in and drop millions of dollars worth of tokens. And it's extremely hard to see these charts going back up as the token was just completely dumped, the liquidity was taken, and this really hurts the project. Especially the investment as well, because as a VC, let's say we used to write checks of hundred K to hundred K, sometimes half of a million, sometimes more depends. So at Crypto.com capital, they have a half a billion dollar fund where they focus on AI, the intersection between AI and blockchain, DeFi and gamify. The reason of that is because Crypto.com really focus on the user base. The user base of Crypto.com is so strong, when it comes to gaming. Before you deep dive into that, do you want to just do a super brief intro for the listeners? So my background slash experience is really similar to yours to a certain degree. So when I was in Portugal, I always wanted to go to US or London, just because I believe that there's a lot of opportunities, so what I decided to do is, we have the A levels in Portugal, which is really hard, you really need to study. Managed to get the A levels I want, I went to London, studied economics, applied to maths, and by the time, when I was finishing university, I bought Ethereum at$7. I looked at Bitcoin at 800 or something. Thank God I bought a bunch. I still have some of my Ethereum. Bitcoin, I sold a good percentage of that. Which I regret massively. Honestly, I regret a lot. But then going back to the point, I used to work at Tradefi, work in a family office around real estate with commercial and residential real estate, work in some trading firms, mainly on the FX side. But the part is, we realized the volatility of crypto is so high, so we started to build some models. And it was fun because we built some models in the market that it's not really professional, doesn't have that, talent yet. This is back in the day, right? So you would just do normally arbitrage position, right? So you would buy Bitcoin in one exchange, sell in another exchange. That is always a massive delta. And we just leveraged that to a point that, I actually become quite bored. And I decided to join PionX. PionX is basically an exchange in APEC region is one of the biggest exchange. And the model they have is they build algorithm trading, features for their users. So let's say if you want to trade the momentum strategy, you can do that. If you want to trade the grid strategy, you can do that. I remember so well, for example, Chainlink normally trades in the range. So if you apply a grid strategy, you possibly would do really well. Then I worked there was a actually great time because I was building product, but at the same time working as a BD to a certain extent. Then I joined Cronos, where, I worked at the incubation and to be honest, I really loved it because you work with pre seed and seed stage projects. I worked with the project called Innerworks. We raised from A16z, Google Ventures, Tim Draper. Tim Draper said that Innerworks could possibly solve the bot problem on Twitter. And I was like, this is amazing, right? Then we went to raise with Katango Digital as well. Great VC, they tend to focus on AI, also work with Lilius. Just to give you an idea, Lilius, they had partnerships with Samsung. So if you had the Samsung watch or the Samsung TV, you actually could go and use Lilius, which is like a fitness app, similar to Nike. And the best part is these guys managed to close every single major Olympic athlete to build their content. It's good to see what the founder goes through. You are a founder, right? And I've built some projects as well. Being a founder is not easy at all. So you go through a lot of pain. Sacrifices hopefully to build something that you believe and I have the most respect to any founder. I was close to build my own incubator, but then I managed to get introduced to Nicholas focused on building treasuries. He worked at DAO Maker. One of the best traders I've seen. And we use a model that is really sustainable. And that's what kind of made me decide to go to Trireme. So as a result of that, I told Nick, look, if I come to Trireme, I want to build incubator the way that I believe, right? The way that is, look, let's do the workshops, the demo days, but let's be really hands on. Let's not do a really light support. Let's be super hands on. Let's build a tokenomics. Let's build a go to market. Let's help them for a race, right? Let's do the TGE strategy. Let's help on the negotiation with exchanges. And he really liked that, plus his model, which is really sustainable focus on be fair in the market. So as a result of that, I'm the head of incubation at Trireme and it's been great. I'm working with Moonberg, which is an amazing project. Contracts, Paddle Finance, we closed a couple of projects, Olivia AI that won a couple hackathons and competitions. But my approach is I like to work with not too much projects, like around 8 to 10 maximum. So I really can dive deep with that, provide that support. So we incubate slash accelerate those projects, and then we take them to market. And my goal personally is always focused on product, than go to market. So how can I make these projects great? And I need to be in a fun, right? I really love it. Cool. I wanted to say, or ask you, what is something you think on this journey and particularly into the micro level of things that you think you really learned that you can leverage in your day to day in analyzing the market, in analyzing a project, as an investor. You're like, okay, is it the team? Is it the valuation? Is it xyz? This they're going to do well, or is it where they built? Because you were working at a place Scripts.com that is probably all the infrastructure and the resources, especially with so many retail users that they could deploy their project to. What is it there in the secret sauce that you feel like they must have this to do well? I think it's all down to the founder. It really is. If the founder is a great founder, I'm telling you that project will succeed. So that's interesting because you said founders and you respect them a lot. And I was writing about this on my blog. There's a book from Ben Horowitz from A16z. And if you guys are listening to this podcast, this is a really good book. The hard thing about hard things. And Ben says for you to be a founder, you're like the 1% and founders are completely crazy. Why would you start a company? You know how hard this is. It's a lot because I don't think people really understand. Fundraising is hard. You probably jump on, I don't know, many goals, try to raise, try to convince people, you are wearing so many hats. You need to build product. You need to be able to go to market. You need to fundraise. You need to be able to negotiate. You need to be able to build relationships because the reality is relationships are really important. But more important, I would say, look, I would say founder, product. Product is really important. I've seen some founders, they build projects and no one really asks. But they just want to be a founder because Elon Musk is cool. And I don't want to work with that. I had an interesting interview with someone actually did that he just likes to solve that problem so much that he just simply says, Hey, this is going to take 10 years, but I don't care. I'm out of here. I'm building, I'm having fun. I'm not for the money. And I was like, Oh, this is inspiring and fascinating. Yeah, you believe in your ideas so much that you're willing to sacrifice a job at a fortune 500 company, potentially sacrificing a marriage, relationships, and even the quality of life to just go on and pursue this endeavor. It's quite something It's something. But again, I think the secret sauce is, he is a great founder that is passionate about the product, but also realistic, right? And the personality, you can feel it. I'm telling we wrote so many checks, and still I write checks for founders that I believe that they can do really well. For example, you can imagine sometimes we have so many calls with so many founders, right? Sometimes we invest sometimes we don't, but for me, I have a couple of stages for me to give a check. If the founder is great, perfect. Second stage, let me look at the project. And this is where I feel a lot of founders fail. A lot of founders, they come with an idea and they expect us to just to deploy. Because we will deploy in my work. No, my friend, you need to have a product that is working at least as some small traction. You just generating some revenue. My capital will go there to make sure that we amplify that. And I think founders need to understand that. I see founders just raising with an idea. A founder can raise with an idea because you are a second time founder. Or third time founder and everyone respects you and the community, and the space know that what you are capable of doing, for example, let's say that Vitalik right now says I'll start a new project. I'm telling next minute, he probably have a hundred million dollars in his bank, just to people that want to be involved. That's quite fascinating. And I don't think many people listening know about this, but early days when Vitalik was pitching to investors at Miami at some events, the rooms were like half empty. Everyone was like, who is this weird kid that just ears speaking? I actually have a friend that has a video from back then from him pitching and he's just, he's awkward, he's weird. And sure, it's just another guy talking. But what are the odds or the chances you winning a million to create that reputation? And sure, once you make it, you can always raise or be a reputable voice and that's the society we live in and going back to your early question I think it's important to discuss this is valuations, according to the business book, how do you calculate a valuation? There is over five metrics, especially in traditional finance and venture capital. It goes from discounted cashflow analysis, market cap, enterprise value, price to earnings, asset based valuation. So how does this even occur in crypto? It doesn't. Many don't have even revenue. Many don't have assets or liabilities on the table. These are software companies, not even SaaS. There is not even revenue. What I have seen is here is the sort of average valuation in the market. Let's say AI at the moment, companies coming in at a valuation of 200 mil, 300 mil, or for example, ChatGPT raised, or is raising at the moment at a 49 billion valuation, I believe. And it's sort of by the market average, and we're raising X at this val. And then as soon as you see a name investor, tier one or tier two coming in, that valuation is confirmed on the table. And that's pretty much how the game works. Funny enough, today I was speaking about this with a product. His team has an amazing background. One of the best backgrounds I've ever seen. People from Binance, Kraken, Unilever, the best teams that you can think of, and he was like, Jenite, look, I look at these projects and the valuations does not make sense. And I said, look, I think one thing you need to understand about crypto is the perceived valuation. That's the real valuation. That is the perceived valuation by the crypto space. Okay? And I think that's super important to people understand the perceived valuation is the KOLs. The tier one VCs. The right narrative at the right time, the right moment. AI is booming now. So anyone that has an AI project, the chances of succeeding at the TGE or even raising, it's much higher compared to a project that has a dead narrative. I was speaking with a founder and this is a lesson for me. This was an AI project, and the founder was just pitching. And the guy said, the founder of Coinbase investing in us and he really believes in what we're doing, but I said, look, how involved is it? Yeah. Some calls here, some calls there. When I look at the project, I was like, I don't understand why you have a token. I don't understand what is the purpose here, but the narrative is so hot right now. And I look at the price. I was speaking with some of my colleagues and they said, look, I think we made a big mistake. We just lost in a massive game. And again, the perceived valuation, what people really think. And to be honest, I think meme coins is a great example of that. And I'll love to see someone running a case study where let's say you build a project. all of the biggest tier one VCs, you get checks, let's say half of a million for every single VC, all of the KOLs just that alone, you already built a narrative, an image that everyone wants to trust and invest. But what are you building? Don't know! Too complicated for you to explain. I think that's where we have judgment days and judgment days. I call it bear markets because everyone down to earth, but in financial markets is normal, right? We have the dotcom bubble with the insane valuations. Now we have the AI bubble with all these valuations going on. And sure. What are you building? Anything with AI agents, and there's a very good podcast actually, we brought on someone that spoke about the difference of an AI agent or a bot, and they're actually honest about them building that or not, because it's very easy to just put AI agent, but the amount of complexity that adds for you to do that, or does it even make sense to do that? But yeah, it's narrative fuel, these trends. And if you have the right resources, you can go to the market and raise and stay afloat for the next 10 years with, sort of a, we call it vampire projects that just, yeah, it's just there. There's the cash on the balance sheets from VCs or the raise from the community and there is just nothing else. And there's a lot of that going on in crypto too. People that raised in 2017, in ICOs that promised the next L1 that promised the next XYZ, I don't want to name any, anything specifically, but yeah, they just fade into oblivion. And only very few we see delivering, and I can name a project that I think it delivered something quite substantial with the amount they raised was Cosmos. Sure, the token did not do very well due to a flawed tokenomics. But for a 7 mil raise initially to create such an ecosystem of projects, it was really interesting compared to what others did at the time that raised a thousand times more probably, not picking names. I think I know some names, which I don't want to mention. Look, let's talk about airdrops, If you think about airdrops and the airdrop farmers, a lot of VCs got burned, because with the airdrop, and if you do the quest, one, you're going to get the social metrics that you need, right? Then you're gonna get the on chain activity you need. Probably the VC will be, I see some traction here. Perfect. Then you go to a centralized exchange and you look, Hey, I have the social metrics, I've the on chain activity, I have my VCs here. They're probably gonna list you. And then when you see a TGE boom, the price goes down. So even if you already come with a valuation of$10 million and the public is, I dunno,$25 million, or let's say$30 million, even your multiple are public. With the price going down and crashing, the VCs just lost so much money. Then we just had a conversation and we said, look, if the airdrop it's around 7% is something that we need to be careful. I think 3% is okay, on a token supply, but it's something that we need to be aware. I've seen some projects, where look, you have the airdrop, but if you wait longer you have a higher percentage of that drop allocation. If you just do it now, you lose 50 percent of your allocation. I think that's interesting, but you also need to understand, you can either penalize or you can incentivize. How can you really incentivize people to say, look, Hey, don't sell this token. Instead, just hold the token and you need to give the second conversion. Would be stake the token. There is a incentive here. Could be a return here and there access to specific features could be so many things, right? But I think it's some food for thought and I would like to know your opinion on this because you invest in projects that had like massive airdrops. I think airdrops from a business standpoint of view can be plugged into user acquisition cost, marketing. Makes sense. But then a lot of founders hit the metrics, all the check marks, and then they forget to ask this question, where does the buy pressure come in? Where does the buy demand come in? Cause sure, everyone wants free value and you see everything exploding on Twitter, Discord during airdrop. But then, how do you sustain this growth or how do you retain the users? Is there an actual utility for the token or something that can keep this afloat? And I think founders, when they're designing tokenomics and something that actually, I can quote Nick on from your firm saying is supply and demand. A lot of people forget about generating the demand. And that's very much true. And seeing all these massive airdrops. And there's airdrop hunters out there to just do this for a living. And then they just dump on the project and that's it. And then they leave. I think a way to combat that is look at projects that did it successfully without airdrop, like Bitcoin, let's say. Bitcoin is a cult. And there was no airdrop. I would normally like everyone, a lot of financial planners, advising to buy a percentage of Bitcoin of your overall portfolio. You have massive fund managers to start to deploy more. Today, that was not early days. Like when he came out, people that were in it was because of vision and mission. And it's sort of like creating a company. You want your employees to really see the vision and mission of what you're building. And Bitcoin was early anarchists, early open markets, people that were like, this is how we can purely transact without government interference. This is how I can store my funds and have proof of keys. And it was a cult. It was a very strong set of principles that I'm never going to sell. And these are my values and I believe in it, and I'm running a full node to back up the old network and you see these coming through. And if you as a project do an airdrop thinking, yeah, now I have all these users that are here for the run. I don't think those are the right users because they just come in to extract value from your project. Maybe it's better having 10,000 followers on my Twitter. But they engage, they comment, and they believe. Then this, and you can see that with meme coins, they are cults. On the sense of believing I'll become richer with this meme coin and selling it to the next person. But it builds that organically and through word of mouth or people just posting screenshots of their gains and showing that transparency, it builds that following that natural, organic way. I don't know of, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, if many successful meme coins done airdrops, but I only see mostly VC backed projects doing airdrops. And we had quite big ones over the last year. And I remember I lived through the Arbitrum airdrop. They dropped thousands of dollars and I'm actually not even a big airdrop fan. I haven't even done one. Just lack of time and just not very attractive. The demand needs to be there. And a lot of founders don't think about that on the tokenomics and then the reality reflects on the charts. I agree, honestly. The airdrop is a conversion mechanism, really. And then your goal would be to understand, okay, I brought a bunch of users here, how can I convert, think about the funnel, and then you only going to convert if your product is quite good. Then there is Cookie3, which I really want to test. I was listening to the CMO of Cookie3 and she said that they have a new feature. She said they launched a new feature that protects the projects from airdrop farmers by collecting the data from wallets and so on. Then we also run an on chain workshop today. And the reality is. You can fake an on chain activity. Only a real data analyst that someone really understands on chain activity can understand like, Hey, is this real or fake? What happened through the bear markets, a lot of the chain was just fake or a lot of duplicates. Like how could you keep all these tremendous volume on your exchange or in your wallet? There's no new users. There is extreme friction to onboard retail. Who's using these DeFi lending protocols or using these DEXs? Like even myself, I've been in this space for over 10 years. I don't even use a lot of the bridges or wallets. I don't have enough time and it's complex. A lot of friction. When you talk about complex of our friction, one of the teasers that I have, and I really look for projects that build AI agents that focus on improving the user experience in crypto. The reason of that is because if you look at Web2, the user experience it's just so much better. And if you look at user experience on Web3 is horrible, let's face it is horrible. Just go and tell a normal person that doesn't understand about crypto, go and create a wallet, then bridge here, then provide liquidity. You do this, do that. It's horrible, right? So if there is any project out there that is building something like an AI agent that collects the data from the wallet and based on that data, improve the user experience or refine the strategies or facilitate the interaction with Web3, please let me know, reach out to me. And I probably would write the ticket because think about it. You go to a L1 or L2 and you just say this, look, I'm looking for based on my activity, the best games in the platform, and they just gives you the best games based on your activity. Let's say that, look, I have a bunch of EQ in here or a bunch of a specific token, and I want to increase my yield here. Can you look based on the risk parameters that I set up, can you look and build a strategy that can get around 7, 10 percent and then the AI agent just look at all of the ecosystem. And build a strategy in one click you just have all of that transfer. Imagine. Not shilling, but one of the projects we brought here on the podcast was Axal. And they do that. They rebalance your yield portfolio. They put on a strategy on the table for you to have the AI agent, at least try to get your XYZ gains in a very simple UI UX. And A16z actually led the round coming out of Harvard accelerator. So I did thought that was interesting, but I wanted to also touch upon something that I taught on the airdrops. And I think a lot of founders should know this or see it this way is what was Bitcoin's first airdrop or how was the way that Satoshi designed it and not on Bitcoin, because I'm not a Bitcoin maxi, but I lived through this early days, so I think it's a good experience. The way that the airdrop worked was it should be a win-win relationship. So Bitcoin airdrops at the time was not called airdrops, it was called mining. You would run a node, do a full copy of the network, provide your energy, your internet at home and security, and in return, you get rewarded 5,000 Bitcoin. And that incentivize a lot of users to come in, run a node and protect the network. So it should be more something tangible where users can have a win-win relationship. Let's say I receive your tokens, but I run a node or I stake it, and I'm able to use it on XYZ. So it gives continuity. And that's how Bitcoin took off with those early evangelists and build that cult around it because it was so tangible. It was pretty cool that you get that experience. What am I running this for? And Bitcoin as a protocol benefited from the security and you setting up a node, but at the same time will reward you. And sure, now it's super centralized and you have all these miners running it and benefiting it from these airdrops, we can call it mining rewards, but, I think it should be more of something projects can think of ways the user can keep interacting with your token than just holding it in a wallet after the airdrop and waiting for the price to go up or waiting on a DeFi protocol for the price to go up and then massively selling it. I think there's a lack of use case or cool functionality or utility that we could do with these tokens than just speculating. I completely agree with what you just mentioned. So what is your opinion on a node cell? Because I think node cells are becoming quite popular. Node cells? A node cell. So if you look at the data, a node cell, the valuation is more sustainable. The emissions is quite sustainable as well. It's not done in blocks. It's a linear, and the race sometimes tend to be much bigger compared to a token cell. And what you really doing is running a node, get some rewards, which are the tokens. You are incentivized based on the performance. You run the node, you have some, you are penalized if you sell too early, but the end of the day, as long as you run that node, you are generating some income, right? So I know people that are making around$3,500 every month for I think 18 nodes. They raise around 140 million dollars with impossible finance and a lot of partners that we work with. What is your opinion on that? Because the reality is this a lot of people are invested generating some capital. But they are incentivized to run that nodes that builds also that community there because Bitcoin is people believe in something. Yeah, I'm actually not very familiar with that model as I never really took a deep dive into it, but I'm familiar with running a node or validator. And I think as long as there is a win-win relationship there and the user actually could provide real value to the network, like Ethereum, you run a node or you validate the transactions, you provide security, it's a win-win, which to this day, since Ethereum was launched. It's extremely frustrating that we are not able to run nodes as an average user. And you have to use a cloud based node. I'm using Envato. Do you know Envato? Envato network? I bought one actually, and it still was hard for me to set it up and end up returning it. Other question. Do you think Ethereum is going to reach$10,000? Which is a psychological number. I actually always thought it was going to 15,000. Surprised it hasn't surpassed Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is a store of value, but seeing so much innovation and all these total value locks and everything has happened on Ethereum, I always wondered like, why hasn't it surpassed? There's just so much being built here. Whereas Bitcoin was always more conservative and sure store of value. It's a very tremendous use case. And it's pretty cool that you can run a node for Bitcoin on a Windows client. I think you could not anymore. I remember I still run one. Just download the executable file from the Bitcoin website and you run it. But something very interesting is if you do it on your Mac, Apple deletes the app automatically after a couple hours as is malware. And in your windows, you also run into problems, which to this day it's so fascinating to still see this happening, but you can, it just takes 600 gigs of space, which was pretty insane, but you download the transaction since 2009, which is really cool. And you have all the copy. I'm not sure if you remember this. I think when the new Mac was released, apparently there is like a specific file talking about Bitcoin. I saw on Twitter and I think it went quite viral. So apparently some of the guys from Apple, so you've bought, let's say, the MacBook, the M1 or M2 back in the day. If you go to a specific folder, then that folder and folder and here and there, you'd find something saying Bitcoin is great or something like that. I think you should go and check on Twitter. I am actually looking at right now, but nothing is coming up as I just type Mac Bitcoin file on folder. I don't think they'll be on the best interest of Apple to have that on the Macs and they probably took it down. Oh, I think it was a Bitcoin white paper. Oh, I found it. OS daily. So the Bitcoin white paper in there, even in macOS, this was July 4th, 2020, 2023. I can pull it up for those viewing on video. Let me see here. So there we go. Someone at Apple appears to be a Bitcoin enthusiast, or at least intrigued by the tech. Okay. This is a way of how you access. You're going to see some library image capture devices. I actually wonder if this is still on a Mac device. Should we give it a test just for the sake of this? Look, you have Apple doing this, but you also have Doge recently Elon Musk was assigned by Donald Trump, right? Then they created that Doge and the price of Doge just went ballistic. I'm actually trying to open up the directory right now, but, yeah, it's not pulling off anything. Really? Yeah. They removed it. They used to be there. They probably, yeah, they remove it, but I think a lot of people start to understand and catch up and then, yeah. But that will be hilarious actually to force every Mac with a Bitcoin white paper is like a hidden tip for those that are curious. I wanted to ask you a final question for those in Portugal that's never ventured outside, that have been touched with inspiration by other crypto people that have come to Lisbon with all their ideas and other raises and theories, etc. What would you tell them in terms of advice? Should they go on and quit their job and pursue a path in crypto? Should they go on and get a plane ticket and go to London or Asia or the US what is your advice? People that want to enter in crypto? Yeah. I'll say scary, right? If you like stability and you don't like to take risks and that's your way of living, that's completely okay. Probably crypto is not the best place because, everyone is nice. Great. Everyone talks about crypto because we are entering the bull market. But I'm sure when we enter in the bear market, a lot of people will get laid off. They were going to lose their jobs. I want to be realistic here. I'm not saying they will, as long as you are talented enough, you probably won't. But the reality is I want to really give a serious advice here. I don't want to just say, Oh, come to crypto. Everything is great. I would say is if you understand crypto, and let's look cycle here, right? Or road map or like something. People that join crypto, they interested about crypto. They ended up making some money out of crypto. They start to engage with the community, be part of a couple DAOs. And then slowly, either they are hired by the DAO, or they get a job in crypto, right? But this is someone that's been in crypto for a couple of years. You just don't jump from a normal position to crypto. I think that is a process of learning. I do see a lot of students out of university coming to a crypto firm. And I come from a traditional background. I feel that it's important to go to Tradefi or to a normal Web2 job to learn. Then go to crypto because crypto we still figure out. You don't have process. You don't have that structure yet. People are figuring it out and you see that and I think it's in my opinion, don't quote me here is I think you see really great founders and really great decision makers in the crypto space that have amazing background from Web2. They've done really well on Web2 and then they went to crypto and they become leaders. The reason of that is because you just have a lot of experience in a work environment before coming to crypto, right? If your first job is in crypto, and crypto is still figuring it out. Depend on you, of course, if you love crypto and you are great, just come. I think it's important to have some experience. But if you want to join crypto, I'd say study, understand what you're going through, become valuable, and then join. Because the market goes through cycles. And you need to strategize how you're going to go through those cycles because everything is great at the bull market. Everyone is printing, but during the bear market, you really have need to have a strategy on, okay, this is will be my strategy here. How are you going to maneuver that part? And if you understand that, yes, please come to crypto. If that's too dangerous and too risky for you, probably keep studying, but crypto needs great people. As long as we have great people in crypto, we're going to do really well. And touching on what you mentioned about the bear market, was that something you experienced on the job you had at the time? Because I know on major exchanges at the time was quite hard because they laid off people at the hundreds. Especially after the FTX collapsed. I was lucky. Another advice, make sure you build a really good network. Don't be a dick, really provide value, build a really strong network and really build a relationship. Just don't go and ask me for the telegram. That's not the way you build a relationship. If you build a relationship and you really provide value, people will respect you and they won't have you on your team. Sometimes I have some offers just because of the work that I've done with some founders, or I am an advisor and then they want me to run the company. So I think that's important. I was lucky. And I didn't go through that, but I've seen a lot of people that were making so much money throughout the bull market, then the bear market, they would lay off and then was a problem. Some of them, they went back to Web2. Some of them found another job. Some of them just went to Web3 again. So I think it's important to be aware of this, be realistic. Just be great, don't be good. There is a great book, Good to Great. Don't be good, that's not enough. Be great. Go and study and try to become great. And, I think you need to love crypto. Because, personally, I do a lot of hours. But, I don't look as a job, I look at it because I love what I'm doing. so I think it's important to have this perspective. Because everyone say, come to crypto, we're doing this, we're doing that. But sometimes it's important to be realistic. What is your opinion, Tony? I think if you're in crypto or if you're thinking about it, be prepared. It's a very niche industry. It's completely out of this world. And if you have a stomach to get it, strong punches come in. I have seen in this industry, life's been completely changed. With financial returns, but also due to that, also life is being completely destroyed and even losing friends. Because I think people fantasize the fact of being part of this industry because of money or acquiring large sums of capital and changing their lives. And sure, that can unlock a lot of things and it's good, but also can unlock a lot of bad things. And I have seen that dark side of the story or the game and sometimes it's better to have a stable job, a nine to five and commute and be happy in the bubble of the Truman show. Let's put it that way. But if you really want to be on the verge and try something insane, join the space, quit everything. At the event that we've met, and I'm not sponsored by anyone or shilling anything, I actually saw a lot of students from a very talented university, which is technical is like top one school in Lisbon going on and building on ICP and it was pretty cool seeing some of the kids early on and if you are a student or in university, like that's when you should take these risks. Like it is not when you're my age or later on. Because you can afford to do so, try go into hackathons. Like for example, a lot of Web2 people at the hackathon from in Lisbon were like, whoa, I never seen such a large prizes. I never seen so much demand and Pantera Capital is raising their fifth fund and they come in with a report that says we only have 100,000 active developers. Over the next five years we need more 10 million. There's a tremendous demand for developers. There's a lot of opportunity to go on and build and you can just like free flow or think about what you want to do and apply for grants, apply on hackathons, have fun, meet friends. And disrupt traditional finance, which I think it could be really cool. And there's up in traditional finance is just one vertical, right? There's thousands. There's so many, I don't think anyone is really understanding the importance of real world assets, but believe me, if you look at the major institutions, they are there. Go to realworld, rwa.a16z, not xyz, and you really can look at the data and see that real world assets. It's a sector that is growing and will grow. And I agree with what you said, like crypto, if you have the stomach, definitely come to crypto. I know people will hate when I say this, but I love the bear market because that's where you find the right deals, as a VC, if you're a VC, if you have capital to deploy. The valuation, the terms are great. I have a funny story about that. I had founders pitching me a company and then they accidentally put the bull market valuation and they switched the deck on the call. And I'm sorry, this is wrong. This was the bull market value. I was like, what? You went from 100 million to 20. It was insane. I remember that today. The bear market is where I like to deploy most of our capital by deploying that capital, then you have better terms, real projects, better valuations. And by the time bull market starts, Oh my God, it's amazing. So that's some alpha here. And again, you need to understand before, if you come to crypto, you need to be able to navigate the bear market. And if you are able to do that, Oh my God, you're going to do really well in the space. Makes sense. All right, Jenite, if listeners want to follow you, stay in touch, where they can reach out to you or follow what you're doing slash building? Oh yeah. So any founders that they're looking for, an incubator accelerator can reach out to us at Trireme.com. I'm not really active on Twitter, but the guys from Lunar strategy, they told me like, Hey, you should probably be active on Twitter sometimes just give some alpha here and there. And I think you should share with the public. So I probably got to do that. Actually They can follow me on LinkedIn. Jenite Rajendra. All right, ladies and gentlemen, this was another episode. And if you're looking for a crypto job, not sponsored, but actually I've found a really good resource over time. Check out cryptojobslist.com. They have pretty good deals there and yeah, we will keep in touch and stay tuned for the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to the Chain Stories podcast, where disruptors become trailblazers. Don't forget to subscribe to hear more inspiring stories from those who are pushing boundaries in digital assets. Brought to you by Dropout Capital, where bold vision transforms into reality. Check out our social media links down below and visit us online at dropout. capital. And remember, the future belongs to those who dare to challenge the norm.