Ep 188: MALWARE. 1) Shark Tank for Crypto "CryptoKnights" 2) The Daily Covers Crypto 3) Polymarket and UMA drama 4) AI Plateau?

[00:00] Malware is a non-technical look at the tech news of the week. This is a podcast where we learn together about everything from crypto to AI to whatever comes next in tech. I'm Natasha Hoskins. I'm Dina Burke. And this is Boys Club. Wait, is it just Boys Club? It's just Boys Club. [00:18] The boys club podcast. No, no. [00:20] Just boy stuff. [00:21] Hi. Hey. This is Malware. This is where Dina and I talk about the tech... [00:26] news, crypto news, emerging news. [00:29] technology news from the week some of it's serious some of it's deeply unserious none of it is technical so know that going in um very deep deeply conversational is what we conversational so what do we talk about today uh okay we talked about crypto and ai with crypto we talked about um [00:52] a new [00:53] Reality show. I don't know what how you would what you call it a shark tank for crypto. Oh [00:58] called crypto nights that we just... [01:01] came across our desk this morning. We talked about the daily covered crypto and just sort of feelings on like mainstream media covering our industry and then polymarkets and polymarket drama. And then we looked at [01:16] some AI speculation. [01:19] Mm-hmm. [01:19] There it is. [01:20] Yeah, DM me anything and everything I got wrong. [01:25] in this episode. I can't wait to hear it. [01:27] Thank you. [01:28] Hey, Natasha. So a question we get asked a lot is, what do you look for in a crypto platform? So let's talk about it. Well, Dina, I look for a secure, no fuss platform that I can dive into right away. That's why I love today's sponsor, Kraken. If you're waiting for the right time to get into crypto, Kraken makes it super easy and intuitive to get started. Plus, if you get stuck, they have an award-winning client support team that's available 24-7, along with a bunch of educational guides, articles, and videos to help you along the way. If you're ready to check out

[01:58] go to kraken.com backslash boys club not investment advice crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to us customers through payward interactive inc [02:10] Adrian Grenier. Yeah. Let's start with Adrian Grenier. [02:15] I'm so excited to talk about this. Have you watched the full clip? [02:21] I watched. You need to watch the full clip. I did. I did. I did. I did watch the full clip. I didn't watch the last 20 seconds. That's I couldn't. I couldn't watch the last 20 seconds. I was just like, OK, so for those for everyone who's not seen this. [02:36] I think we're like the only people in crypto have seen it. I haven't seen any chat about it. It's crazy. [02:42] - Adrian, how do you say his last name? - Grenier. - Grenier. [02:48] Okay, he's of Entourage fame. You know him. You know of him. Piercing blue eyes. [02:52] Beautiful man. I woke up this morning to a DM and it was a video, a reel. [02:59] of Adrian's being the host of a Shark Tank style show. [03:07] show about crypto is that a fair way of describing it yeah yeah yeah [03:11] It was so cringe. I actually opened it and I started to watch it and I thought, I can't start my day this way. This can't be the first thing that I lay my eyes on. That's responsible. Thank you. That's a responsible decision around your media diet. Exactly. I was like, I'm out of here. I'm out of here till later. Yeah. And then when we talked about it, this in Dumb Bitch Hour, our morning standup, I...

[03:36] was just like... [03:38] It's so cringe. It's so cringe. It's the most cringe thing I think I've ever seen. [03:43] I think that I think I think you're right. It feels like it's kind of like his comeback, too, for Adrian. Wow, that's really having his like comeback in this moment. So yeah, so just for a play a little, should I play a little bit? Play a little bit of it? Yeah. But at the end of the day, this is the wild, wild west to be a host of Kryptonites. I have a responsibility and the opportunity to make sure that this technology is used for good. [04:09] I'm watching you. [04:10] Keep you in check, keep you honest. Okay, Knights. [04:13] Are you ready? [04:15] Yes. [04:16] Okay, so just a few things here. Yeah. It's called kryptonite. Yeah, and the knights are the sharks. The entrepreneurs. No. Oh. The investors. The investors. Yeah. The investors. [04:29] The thing that I have to say there's so many things that I have to say one I [04:32] I don't recognize a single soul. And like the woman was like woman of the year. Like literally that was like her credential. The one guy is Brock Pierce, who is a pretty famous Bitcoin guy, but the others are... [04:45] I do not know her. And then teams are coming in and they're pitching them on different stories. Honestly, some of them just were ideas. [04:55] Bedtime stories. And it's so bad. And I just... [04:59] Okay, he, Adrian, uh-huh. [05:03] In... [05:04] 2012. [05:06] He was at the height of... He was the hottest thing that existed. It was like Entourage was like...

[05:11] the pinnacle. And if you were a young woman, [05:15] that [05:16] Hung out in downtown New York. [05:18] Especially were a waitress. [05:20] in any sort of restaurant. It was like facts, truth of life, that you could have sex with him. He was a man about town. I know... [05:30] five women who have had sex with this man and now i'm like he has fallen so far from the lord oh i i don't know that like avoiding around having sex with all these women is like i i guess maybe it's a high point it's it's for someone somewhere this is certainly a low point for someone somewhere [05:51] So I don't know. You can measure that however you want. But to see this man who was so, for the record, I never had sex with him, just to make that clear. [06:01] To see such a different version of... [06:06] this celebrity is... [06:09] It's upsetting. [06:10] to me personally yeah i think the celebrity of it is interesting i think also like it seems like they they spent some production budget [06:17] There's many cameras. The cameras look expensive. They had a set. They had a crew. You know, I there was hundreds of thousands of dollars that were spent on production of of this. [06:30] show. I don't know really even what we call it these days of this bit. Are you clear on where it's streaming? No. Okay. But... [06:38] So there's money in the production. There's money in, I'm presuming, they're paying Adrian and they're paying the Knights. And there's also... I certainly hope so. What they call a quarter million dollar investment to the...

[06:52] The teams. The teams, yeah. Yeah. [06:54] Which, of course, is $250,000. A quarter million is a great way to say it, though. And so I'm just like, that's quite a lot of money. I'm wondering who's putting the bill. I'm wondering where it's planning to be streamed. I'm wondering what they felt like the... [07:10] I mean, I think in terms of like identifying an opportunity, sounds like a fun show. I think they missed an execution. They missed an execution. And just like why in every... Why... [07:20] With crypto, does everything have to be just so cringe? I know. Like, it's just so cringe. I know. I'm just like, why is it like this? I know. [07:27] And then I'm like, is there any way for it not to be? [07:30] Like, is it? I think there is because part of what when I was watching the clip, I was like, they there's this bit in the clip where someone says a line that's like, you need to put rocket fuel onto your project or something. He makes some sort of reference about rocket fuel. And then everyone thinks that that is the most hilarious thing that a man has ever uttered. There's like four subsequent clips after that, where someone's like dying laughing at the idea that someone said rocket fuel as like, and so [08:00] - So weird. - What that says to me, [08:02] is... [08:04] It's just bad entertainment. [08:06] it's just bad humor. It's, [08:09] badly conceived the script writing is bad like they pulled clips that are super cringy there's a way to do that show [08:16] That is really probably quite funny or quite entertaining. Entertaining at least. Yeah. Yeah. Entertaining at least. Maybe not funny, but like them like pulling that as the thing to be like hilarious guy is just...

[08:28] - Cringe. - I think that also, [08:31] I'm really fixated on why [08:33] Adrian decided to do this. He's got a bad team around him. He's got a bad team around him because he certainly could have done a reboot of Entourage. [08:42] that would have, there's no question, even the worst reboot of Entourage would be better than this. [08:49] And I'm sure... [08:51] He would have gotten paid more to do that than this. I don't know. You don't know? The Adrian of it is not what catches my interest exactly, but I respect it for you. I just can't. I'm just like, he's just like a D-list celebrity. I'm like, he's reaching for straw, grasping at straws. I think that, yeah, I think you're right. I think that I have a different version. I had, he was such a presence. [09:21] Yeah. [09:30] Not in a good way, in my opinion. - Yeah, that was really quite the thing to wake up to. And then the other thing that happened today [09:37] just moving swiftly on, which is a weird contrast to the Adrian Grenier crypto night story is the daily covered crypto today. [09:46] and it sucked. I didn't have that experience of it actually. [09:51] Oh, really? I was just kind of like... [09:53] It doesn't seem inaccurate that the crypto industry has funded pro-crypto politicians. So I guess the main thing that they talked about is like why they were trying to, I think, make an argument around the...

[10:06] uptick in prices and specifically Bitcoin is because of a pro-crypto government in the United States. Both Trump and Congress and basically we're building a case around that and how that happened. [10:22] Is that a fair read? [10:24] Yeah. [10:25] I think that what sucked about it, totally, the Superfax stuff, $130 million that was put towards pro-crypto candidates... [10:34] Fundraised by the crypto industry like that's true and that's real and that's totally true [10:39] Yeah, fair and fine. And I also think should be interrogated because I do think that there's weird outcomes that can happen from that type of having your thumb on the scale in that way as an industry. So I think that that's fair game. I don't know. I just felt like the whole thing was kind of tinged with a but this is a joke, right? [10:56] Like the tone of the host is, [10:59] and the tone of the journalist was kind of like, [11:02] This is bullshit. [11:03] Now they've whipped it into something. [11:06] Trump's behind it. So then, you know, it's a scam and also World Liberty Financial and his like dumb sons are into it. World Liberty Financial is Trump's crypto project. Yeah. And I kind of felt like Gary Gensler was painted as like this hero who's trying to protect the innocent American people from. That's true. They did paint him that way. [11:28] And I don't know. I thought it was a bad faith read of the situation. I listened to it on 1.5 speed, so I think I was missing some of the... [11:35] Tone. The tone. The nuance. I also think, yeah, the Trump stuff, definitely. They mentioned a few times around how Bitcoin came out of nowhere and it is made from nothing. And now it's here and it has all these people who are incentivized for it to be successful and they have financial upside in that. And I'm like, yeah, that's literally fucking everything. Everything.

[12:05] the Strategic Reserve stuff, the US government holding Bitcoin and [12:10] why they would do that and what the arguments for it are. And the main one being that it's a investment in an asset that could 10x over the next 10 years. They also had a snarky line at the end of that, which was the guy was like, yeah, that can 10x, like you said, 10x an investment for the U.S. government. And that could chip away at the national debt without having to raise taxes for crypto millionaires is what he said. [12:36] Which is like, that's not that's bad faith. That's a bad faith read on that situation, in my opinion. And like he's just looking for evidence of crypto people being. [12:46] yeah scammers and like there's another way to position that idea you don't need to dunk on people who've made money off of crypto in that moment yeah there was also another one where he was talking about the sec and how about how the sec is this big powerful regulator and that how the crypto industry wants to move regulation to the cftc because it's less powerful and less aggressive and that's also a bad faith read on what's happening as well so i don't know i thought [13:16] I was just so relieved to be listening to a podcast that wasn't saying Bitcoin used to be $69,000 and now it's 24 and all those. I was like, fair. It was nice to hear like, oh, Bitcoin's ripping. Like, why is it? [13:30] wire numbers up and to the right and all these people they had all these like [13:35] quotes of people who were like regretted that they hadn't bought Bitcoin and

[13:39] at least [13:40] It wasn't the same story that I've been listening to the past two years, I guess. I think that's what it is. The other thing that I felt is like, I don't know, kind of excited to be in a regulatory position. [13:54] environment that is going to be friendly to the industry that we work in. And they painted a very [14:00] compelling case that that is what will be [14:03] what happens. And so that was my those were my main two takeaways. Nice. It's like [14:08] I'm glad to be hearing a different story around crypto. It's not positive, but it's different. And... [14:14] Wow, someone spent a lot of money. [14:17] Somewhere to maybe make... [14:19] my business a little bit easier. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Totally. So I do think the one argument that they made that I do think is legitimately something to examine is talking about the fundamental values of crypto being like decentralization and this subversive act against traditional financial systems. [14:49] repeated a lot of the same structures that existed for traditional financial systems. And that's a totally legitimate call out because for the most part, it's true. [14:59] And that's concerning if you have real belief in if you're coming at it from like you're a libertarian. And like part of what you love about crypto is the idea that self-sovereignty and decentralization and all of these values. And then you're looking at all the things that have happened to make the U.S. a more friendly environment for crypto. It's a little bit like.

[15:25] I think so. I get what you're saying. I think what I find frustrating about coverage from... [15:31] people like the New York Times about that particular issue is that both sides are bad to them. Like there's no way to win in that situation because like they start the podcast and they're calling it fringe and they're calling it like radical and they're calling it anti-establishment. Anti-establishment and that's and they're saying that with negative connotations like it's fringy it's dangerous criminals whatever like kind of waving their hand at that side of it and then they're also criticizing the effort [16:00] to understand the regulation that could and should be applied to a new and emerging industry. And trying to play within the rules... [16:10] is something that the corporate industry has... [16:13] some parts of the crypto industry has tried to do over the past couple years and especially and you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't and i'm just like you you can't new york times like you can't have it both ways [16:23] You can't... [16:25] Criticize the crypto industry for playing the same way that the traditional financial industry does, which is the super PACs and the and the regulation, friendly regulation. And it's the getting people in Congress seats and doing all that. You can't criticize that if you're going to criticize it for being too. Like I just there's two two sides of that that I'm just like, where it's OK, where? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [16:45] Totally. [16:45] So the failing New York Times. Okay. The next thing just want to cover really quickly. You didn't even give that a laugh. It's a joke. It's a joke. Oh, I'm just like, I feel so I have a lot of feelings about the New York Times. So it's like a little close. You know that like Trump talks about the family. I know. Okay. Okay. I know. I know. And like,

[17:09] In moments like this, I'm like, I kind of believe it. [17:12] Hot take? [17:13] I'm just like, there's... [17:15] It's... [17:16] I kind of believe it. I don't know. Of course, not all New York Times is and not all liberal media is. But like there are things where I understand the... [17:27] The criticism. [17:29] Thank you. [17:31] we can cut this but that's true totally totally [17:35] I totally get it. [17:40] Polymarket drama, just really quickly, just want to touch on it. Have you seen any of it? I've not seen it. I saw someone post something in the Discord, but I specifically didn't look at it because I was like, I think Dana's going to talk about it. Okay, so there's a Polymarket market. [17:50] which [17:51] I don't want to spend too much time thinking about the idea of this market being created and people making money off of it. But like, [17:57] just we'll just say what the market is and then we can talk about like what's happened with it the market is will israel invade syria in 2024 [18:06] Thank you. [18:06] Wow. Has $10 million in volume on this bet. Okay. Okay. [18:10] and that's why we can't have nice things exactly exactly i'm like well maybe [18:17] Oh, [18:18] Maybe they're all right. Maybe we should just call it. So. [18:24] there has been a discrepancy [18:27] about [18:28] how this market can and should be resolved. And one of the most interesting things to me about the story is actually whether or not this market should be resolved in any particular way, I don't know. But Israel invaded Syria, but they invaded a specific region. And

[18:42] Okay. That in the fine print of this market was said to be not eligible for... Okay. [18:48] it to count as an invasion. It's called the Golan Heights. If you read the fine print, we said Golan Heights was Israel's, so it's not an invasion. [18:58] that was the territory that was invaded. Okay. [19:01] But I will set the geopolitics of that aside, also setting aside the ethics of people profiting off of war in this way. What's I think interesting about this is I learned how [19:12] these things are resolved. Okay. And it's resolved by this [19:16] company or this [19:17] organization, DAO, I don't know exactly how to describe it, called UMA. Okay. And UMA is an oracle, which is basically like verifies off-chain data for the blockchain. Mm-hmm. [19:30] And it mostly happens like it seems like kind of automatically, but there are moments if results get contested in a certain way, like they have a whole process. And if things get contested, then individual people vote on it. Whoa. Yeah. And then the results of the vote inform what happens with the resolution of the or. [19:50] Inform how the oracle is resolved or how the data is put on the blockchain and imagine getting that call [19:55] You're like making dinner and someone's like, hey, we have something we need you to weigh in on. Totally. Totally. But like the thinking of the voting, and I don't know how many people are voting, but the thinking is that there's a token associated with UMA and that the value of the token relies on the blockchain, the Oracle being accurate. And so there's like a financial, there's like a market incentive.

[20:17] for them to vote in a way that they feel like is most true because [20:22] if that starts to question the accuracy and verifiability of the oracle then like the whole thing is worthless yeah yeah so there's kind of like this interesting dynamic in it anyway there's been a lot of controversy over how [20:35] this [20:36] particular market is going to be resolved. Yeah. And people, and it's calling to question, like, kind of all of it. Wow. Yeah, that's crazy. It's bad. It doesn't feel really quite bad. The example that they give, I was like trying to understand, I was reading this explainer about how this Oracle works and [20:55] The example that they're giving is about a soccer game being resolved. And it's like Spain won the 2024 World Cup. And it shows the process of how it would be resolved or contested and then the votes and all that. And I'm like, yeah, that's a nice thing to bet on. Yeah, let's go to sports. Let's do that instead of this other awful thing. War, conflict. I'm assuming the people who lost the bet are the ones who are pushing back a lot. [21:19] The main kind of sentiment is that people who are on the losing side of the bet currently are saying that there's whales... [21:27] um a whales that are influencing oh interesting the voting of how to resolve this thing and uma is pushing back and being like look there are whales are people who have a lot of tokens but it's in the best interest to keep it accurate like because otherwise the value of goes down so it's just kind of interesting [21:46] Wow.

[21:47] Thank you. [21:48] It's time for a more open, inclusive, and transparent financial system. A system that serves nearly everyone, everywhere, all the time. That's why we love today's sponsor, Kraken. Kraken is a crypto platform that provides a super simple on-ramp to the world of crypto with a 24-7 support team. Crypto transcends physical and imaginary borders. No matter where you are, you can send funds easily and quickly to almost any part of the world. Plus, forget about waiting times and waiting lines. You can send, receive, and trade crypto anywhere near instantly. [22:18] kraken.com backslash boys club not investment advice crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to us customers through payward interactive inc no third-party transfers available [22:31] Okay, one last thing here. Two minutes on AI pre-training plateaus. Okay. I tried to get someone to come up with this. Unfortunately, you're stuck with me. Someone being your husband. [22:42] Ha ha ha. [22:43] who refused. I'm so sad. I'd love to have Dave on the pod. He's explained so many things to me. [22:49] He's such a smart guy. He was like, I'm not... [22:52] I'm not the guy for you. So it's too bad. I respect that. But I do think it's an interesting story just for you to have grounding on. [22:59] Great. A useful place to start is that part of what has created the AI boom [23:03] that's happened over the past couple years is this idea of scaling laws where let's just talk about llms the more data you put in they get exponentially better better better the models get bigger the outcomes get better more data in bigger bigger bigger models gives you these like exponentially greater returns like yeah hockey stick recently there has been chat about the

[23:33] trying to make them bigger, bigger, bigger, but we're not seeing that hockey stick. We're not seeing the exponential return on the performance of the AI models. There's also like data constraints where we've fed it a lot of the data, much all of the data, organic data, like human data. And so they're like, should we be moving into synthetic data? But that creates weird outcomes. What's synthetic data? All the stuff that we're putting on Reddit, and we're typing on Twitter, and we're all the data that's been on the internet before [24:02] 2022 or whenever chat GPT came out is human created. But as soon as AI generated data that's going into an AI model, [24:11] That just like starts to make it weird. Cannibalism. Exactly. So OpenAI has been talking about this model called Orion, which is the next one. And there's been delays on that. So there's just been this sentiment that the results are plateauing. And that has pretty big implications. There's like financial implications where NVIDIA has been like basically ripping because everyone's like this thing. It just gets exponentially better, better, better, better, better. And so NVIDIA has gone through the roof. And if this is a plateau, then... [24:38] Maybe it's priced into Nvidia and maybe Nvidia is fine, but we're no longer feeding these things in the same way that we have been and have been expecting that we will be where it's just like bigger and better AGI, all this stuff is coming next. And then there's also like. [24:53] what happens with just the focus of the ai industry it moves from creating these llms and creating these creating these data sets to like we actually need to figure out how to be implementing them and how to be like it's kind of similar to the crypto industry where it's like okay we just start thinking about like the application layer but there's controversy around whether or not there is a plateau sam altman tweeted there is no wall which is him saying this doesn't exist but also like he's not exactly the most trustworthy guy so where is this information coming from like

[25:23] chat about it but i've been hearing on tech podcast like bill girley's been talking about it he's talking about mostly from like an investment lens where it's like is nvidia fucked where their valuation is overblown and like that's dependent on like this thing growing crazy amounts year in year and so now like investors like especially his podcast is like an investment podcast they're like what's the next opportunity if it's not in this like pre-training thing basically it would be like there's some sort of ai winter where development of these llms aren't having the same exponential [25:53] So they're either working on [25:55] where they can find [25:57] more data whether that's synthetic data or organic data or working on the models to get smarter around the data they already have yeah yeah and or the application of like how we're actually integrating it or maybe there's no plateau and like it's all fake news but it feels like enough people are talking about it now that it feels real i have like this weird like schadenfreude thing [26:18] Where you're like, great? Where I'm just like, not great, not great, but like... [26:23] Yeah, you should... [26:25] You guys deal with some pain. Exactly. You guys get a piece of what we've been feeling. Who's going to stick around now? Okay. [26:33] Thank you. [26:33] Which is so dumb. Nice. Truly doesn't make any sense. [26:37] To feel that way. [26:39] oh man that's that okay