🎙 100 - How to Survive in Crypto | Cobie

because if you spent like the last 18 months um actively trading and investing and you could have just held ethereum it's like you just wasted they could have been outside having like a nice time with the sun welcome to bankless where we explore the frontier of Internet money and internet Finance this is how to get started how to get better and how to front run the opportunity this is Ryan Sean Adams and I'm here with David Hoffman and we're here to help you become more bankless guys fantastic

episode the title is understanding crypto we get inside the brain of a crypto Trader one of my favorites on crypto Twitter this is Kobe coming at you we talk about a few things watch out for them five what it takes to last in crypto not for the short run but for the long term Kobe's been at this for 10 years he goes through that second does decentralization really matter we get a conversation perhaps a bit of a debate on that topic third what does Kobe actually think about

and it's thesis he puts that to the test fourth we do a fun exercise like character alignment people in the crypto space are they lawful good are they chaotic evil are they neutral good uh we talk about a few folks there and number five we end with Outlook and predictions for 2022 is it going to be a bullish or bearish Year stay tuned for a fantastic episode David what do you think about this one yeah I think calling Kobe a trador is uh under selling him uh and I think if you ask Kobe what he is is he would also unell himself too I think

that's kind of part of his character uh he's definitely a part philosopher I think he's a he's a traiter he's a Traer philosopher type if you will uh and uh there's a dynamic a pendulum back and forth I think where like oh he's in Traer mode or philosopher mode uh and I think that's one of Kobe's great strengths is uh he can trade on he he he uses philosophy to trade and it's definitely worked out for him uh and and overall he just has um very long form answers in-depth answers

that pull in so many different bits of Knowledge from different corners of the crypto world to you know provide evidence for his his answer and it's just an impressive feat of brain power I think and so I just enjoyed picking Kobe's brain uh as somebody that uh is as somebody that a lot of people look up to in this space for just leadership and uh just an example of how to how to survive in crypto uh I think if there's anyone that's survived through the most SLO the biggest slog it's it's Kobe uh

and so and he's still around kicking um just kicking ass and maybe he's around for another decade after this who knows I believe that man that that look that's another good episode title how to how to survive in crypto because that's really what we went through and uh you you mentioned the word depth I think uh that was a key insight for me too Kobe does have a tremendous amount of depth and though um we called him Trader he's a Trader in the outset he definitely narrative trades in a way that and I don't but he also has a long-term thesis for this space and so it's really cool

to see him um push against our thesises and challenge some of our ideas and there's some fantastic back and forth there about the value of decentralization how much that really matters both from an investment perspective but also from the future of what we're really building in crypto so guys stay tuned to hear all of that of course as usual if you're a bankless premium member David and I will be talking doing a full episode debrief of all of our thoughts on the episode that is available on the uh premium podcast feed so if you're a premium member you

can tap into that as well all right guys this was a really fun conversation I think you guys are going to enjoy this one some people said that Kobe would never show up on Bank list yet here he is today on the show so let's go ahead and get right into that interview right after we talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible arbitrum is an ethereum scaling Solution that's going to completely change how we use Defi and nfts over 250 projects have already deployed on arbitrum and arbitrum dii and nft ecosystems are growing rapidly arbitrum increases ethereum speed by orders of magnitude for a fraction of the cost of

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Unis swap for sponsoring bankless bankless Nation we are super excited to introduce our next guest it's the guest you thought would never happen is now happening we've got Kobe on the podcast formerly known as crypto coane you probably know him from Twitter maybe you've read his substack maybe you listen to up only which is his podcast he's been in the game the crypto game that is since 2022 we're going to talk about what he's done since 2022 his philosophy on things any beefs with bankless he might have I don't know we're g to just blid out here not really

a strict agenda we're just going to talk about whatever comes to mind Kobe welcome to Bas how you doing man hello mate how you doing uh I trolled you on Twitter before I joined sorry I just like to create entertainment for people it's not B well it is entertaining yeah so Kobe before Twitter I was like hey hey uh we're having Kobe record on the podcast uh what questions you guys have and and Kobe's like uh I'm going to be at the beach guys was that was that actually today and for a split second I was like okay I don't know if he's coming or not David but it's just Kobe that's that's

what you do I feel like entirety of crypto Twitter has got a handshake agreement that we all continually being mean to each other as a joke but I've recently realized some people don't realize it's a joke they're not even joking themselves sliff and serious some people are really mean yeah some people just don't just don't see they see the Twitter and then it's oh that's just them being toxic God damn why are they always so toxic all the time and then they don't realize that like oh we're just [ __ ] posting having a good time I do think it though it's it's um look

it's it's a rough game out there I mean surviving in crypto takes a lot right and you've been at this game for like what is it like 10 years now Kobe yeah like a little bit less I think but it's getting to the point where you may as well just say 10 okay so a decade in crypto what does it take to survive in crypto how have you made it so long I'm talking volatility I'm talking about like crypto Twitter you know pain I'm talking about you know very everything everything that comes with in this industry dealing with idiots dealing

with everything you have to deal with the information uh like flood into your mind every single day you go you miss an hour in crypto and it feels like you missed an entire week all of that how'd you last so long what's your secret yeah I mean the the idiots thing that was not a problem 5 years ago I think that like uh the politicization of everything over last decade has 10 xed probably three times um like Twitter used to be I'd never thought about using the block button but like now the experience is

virtually unusable unless you press it a few times a day um but crypto specifically um I think when when people ask this question it's very easy to um to like use this like sort of hindsight bias and we're like oh well I did this and I thought this about the world and blah blah blah but it's it's sort of similar to that you know that photo of a plane an old war plane that they used to like try and figure out where they should reinforce the armor so that the planes would survive longer and then

they were putting the armor in the wrong place because the only the only planes that came back were the ones that survived and they go well we need to reinforce where they're getting hit and really plan that didn't yeah exactly and you can like think about like I can think all these things like oh what did I do differently to other people um or like what did like I have in my character that meant I could survive and and I don't know if it matters too much I think it's more useful to observe all the people I know from that time that didn't um like get to this point in the

market and went and did other things some of them very successful other things and um some just left the markets entirely um and then the people that did from uh from my my like cohort or um graduation class or whatever and I think the first thing was that most people that uh survived through the markets have or hard is like a healthy balance of skepticism and like curiosity because it's really easy to poke holes and everything right you can I can tell you a million reasons why Bitcoin could

probably fail ethereum's not going to do well why salana is like [ __ ] and stuff it's really easy to come up with those things and I understand that mindset it's also really easy to turn something into uh like a religious sort of group and be like I'm so convicted on this thing I'll you know this is going and and then you disregard everything or criticism as like f or you know whatever and I think the people that did really well and and made it through um multiple cycles of it going to infinity and then

going to zero over and over um were somewhere in the middle where they were able to think really skeptically and say okay what could go wrong here what other things um uh uh might invalidate why I believe in this thing but at the same time they were able to be optimistically curious enough to go okay maybe I'm a natural skeptic and these things might happen and that's all bad and yeah like um these are the things that could go wrong but also on the other hand if the

world changes in these ways how can it be different in the future um and I think those people were the ones that saw past mount g dying and centralized exchanges blowing up and seeing um okay does this matter in the bigger picture like maybe it matters today maybe it matter for the next two years but maybe not in 10 years and they saw ethereum's ecosystem change from the 2017 area of like people just doing like felonious Kickstarter projects into being okay

that's actually a type of product built on ethereum yeah maybe it's an illegal fundraising platform at the moment but that is one product that you can build on ethereum and then they saw other products start to get built on ethereum through 2019 and sometimes the new products look like the old one but they were curious enough to understand the differences um so I think that's like one thing that like a lot of people that were able to make it through the markets had and the second one is like people don't like to talk about it so much CU they like to think that they're smart and stuff but it's just like luck and

not like won the lottery flip to coin lock but it's a a sort of like Cosmic right place right time right life circumstances kind of lock where they didn't have to become a forced seller of this thing they believed in because they had a kid or because they had um a health issue or or something instead they were you know um the right age so that they didn't need to you know rely on their Investments to pay for a house um or they had it like for in my case I

was at University and the amount of money I put into crypto was so small that when I got job it didn't matter I didn't need to ever cash it out to like do something I could increase my lifestyle and I could have that lifestyle bloat by getting a promotion and getting a new job and I was lucky enough to have a few like well-paying jobs in in Tech um which meant I didn't need to ever sell my crypto in order to fund some part of my life and I think most people that didn't make it that back then believed became forced sellers

somehow um either overleveraging life circumstances or something like that and I think a lot of it down to that um just the right age right place right time right like life circumstances right education or whatever um that people don't like to admit so much what about a like a North star or just guiding principle when you learned about crypto was there anything like you know distant in Theisen in in 2050 everything's going to be on crypto or was there any sort of like thing that really resonated with

you about crypto that you discovered early on yeah um not I never thought about 2050 and I still don't think about 2050 we probably all be underwater not just in crypto underwater I mean like the entire world's underwater but um I I was at University when I first got into crypto um and I went to like a a university in the UK called University of Bristol it's kind of like where you go if you don't get into Oxford or Cambridge it's like 50% or maybe more

than 50% like people with trust funds and they're like very parh and um they don't worry about money so much and they're having a nice time University and then the other half of people that I knew were all very deeply in debt the banks like hook you in by giving you the student overdraft which in the UK do you have overdraft in America yeah definitely yeah fine that's why you know Bank list we hate Banks yep yep yeah okay so like they give you the student overdraft which is just like free debt you they give you like three grand you

can do whatever you want with it you don't pay any interest while you're a student and the first two years after you stopped being a student and all the people that I knew at University or my friends that didn't have like family money they instantly said okay cool I've got £3,000 for free like that's my money now and like zero was no longer zero it was minus 3,000 they just went cool that's that's my money I can do what whatever I want with that and then they left University and all of a sudden you've got interest payments on this and everyone's like you know

I I met those two types of people at University and then in my family like people in my family they lost their pensions in the um like 2008 financial crisis and stuff like that so I was I had this sentiment around Banks but also just like the financial system which seemed to overlap with the political system in general uh and I was very like emotional about it and like maybe a little bit naive about it as well but I was sort of looking for a way out so

seeing crypto as seeing Bitcoin at least as this um impartial uh non-state money that there was there was no guy in a like an office tower Block in Canary Warf or wherever in New York I don't know the geography of New York well enough that was going to make decisions about their own p&l that would impact you know my family and they don't give a [ __ ] about that they just care about like unwinding their position cuz they [ __ ] it um if there

was a money where there wasn't a guy with that power I was more interested I was interested in that and I I wanted that to be um like how the world worked I wanted there to be a system where there wasn't someone um dictating you know how much of uh the how much rent they get to uh like cream off the um like normal um population um so I I felt emotionally like super invested in this idea at the very beginning um and that's like what was the initial spark for me

but yeah I didn't know how stuff was going to be in 2050 mate I'll be dead by them the I think this story resonates with a lot of people because this seems to be just the uh the system I'm in disenfranchise I'm not part of the system there's no way that I can get wealthy in the system therefore like I might as well look elsewhere um this this thing's not going to work for me and so there's this new thing that's going on and I'm going to just gravitate my my attention there I think a lot of people have that a similar story um just that the the old ways of gaining wealth

just not going to work so might as well just put wealth literally anywhere else yeah I think it's like twofold it's like partially that right like and I think that's why you've seen the rise of Robin Hood and option like retail options Traders and why Elon was so uh was able to resonate so well with Dogecoin because there that is the story of like normal people now they don't they think the system is uh is impossible for them to break out of it and they see house prices well they're up like four or 5x

in the last 30 years but wages are stagnant and they just see their goals slipping away and becoming unachievable um but the the part of it that um I think was more triggering for me was that it seemed intentional it wasn't just like oh this is the system and I can't like the the there's no lever I can pull to like win it was more like wait the people who seem to be responsible for the like financial crisis also seem to be the ones that did the best like what how

does that make sense like they seem to some of them made a profit what like how come none of them lost their job how come they're just like doing the same [ __ ] like five years later so it it was more that if there are Central parties and there are people in charge that humanity is often corruptible in uh in search of private privatized profits um and just the fact that there was like yeah may like sure Satoshi the ghost of Satoshi or whatever maybe still around but um the lack of that was what was

attractive to me I think so is that is that still a big driver for you than Kobe kind of like f the system um I don't know man cuz like I was early 20s back then I'm getting old now so I I was just in I was just in my like you know uh wear eyeliner phase listening to rock music and stuff but um like I think a little bit but I think also I've capitulated a little bit on um uh how easy it is to fight back cuz like you've seen a lot of it it's like

very relevant now not just with like the financial system but um with everything like the dissemination of information and uh you know public trust in institution government big Tech corporations uh even game Publishers I've been in arguments with people on Twitter about games like for the last few days it's like it's alltime lows that people really really don't trust large centralized power and that sort of um f the system thing feels like it's

been bubbling I don't know since like the 60s or 70s or something and then it's reaching a point now where it their incompetence or um lack of respect from the people in power is so large that it just feels like they don't care they're like you can't do anything anyway like like everyone knows now that there is massive corruption in the UK we have like all these Tory peers the like um the government party the peers just like

giving themselves covid relief um contracts for like hundreds of millions of pounds and stuff it's like they just don't give a [ __ ] it's not like they're trying to hide it it's not like the you know they're like oh no if if they find out about the cryptocurrencies they'll take us down they're just like n we don't care we we'll just keep keep doing it no there's no like Forum of accountability anymore um so um I think in some ways it's like it I feel it feels still important to me but um I

feel like I've capitulated a little bit on uh or at least become complacent in um like fighting the fight it's like half the time you're figh against your own people these days so so yeah you talk a little bit about that that capitulation right cuz like I think what we really want to do in this in this episode too is like also understand how you think how kind of a Trader thinks right because I think um yeah somewhat David and I have discussed this before but we sort of see you know Kobe and uh yeah up only as kind of like um you know

a a Ying to bankless as yang right it's like it's like the crypto world needs both of these perspectives very much it's sort of like narrative Trader versus what we try to think of ourselves as like a bit more fundamentals investor right but we try to stay open-minded and realize that we also don't have the like end all thesis on this thing and like no one actually knows what fundamentals are um but like we really appreciate your perspective on this but so let's get into that into the the idea of um you cap capitulating a little bit on on that

ideal right so our philosophy or like the bank list thing would be like hey we acknowledge and we see denialism right like [ __ ] sucks man institutions totally failed us this is worldwide this is in the US right you know the banks baby boomer generation uh they've all screwed us and we might very well be underwater in 2050 and guess what they don't care they're going to be gone they don't give a [ __ ] about us They Don't Care About the Next Generation so we see that right

and that's like a existential uh you know existentially that's a hard place to be in because you're like okay well nothing matters none of this matters anymore and so then you go and you're like okay how is the game played let me go figure out the game and I'm going to play a game that I can actually win for a change right so maybe get into crypto maybe start figuring stuff out but like for Bank lists it's a bit more than that because we haven't yet I feel like capitulated on the thing that we are trying to build which is a new

disintermediated Financial system for the world right like we actually we we don't believe all of the hype around web 3 okay so like I mean I hope we're not naive I don't think we're naive like we know tons of ways this could go wrong but we hold out hope that we actually have a shot in our generation to actually get this right and rebuild the system from the ground up so I like to think like we haven't yet capitulated on that now there's days where like I'm like oh [ __ ] it's over like I fully capitulated like we're

never going to make it like this is not going to work uh what am I even doing here there's definitely days like that but I feel like we haven't given up are are you still there yet or do you feel like hey this crypto thing I don't know if it's going to work out or not whatever the institutions always win in the end so might as well play the game yeah I feel um sort of like crypto itself is uh inevitable and not so much a capitulation like I

don't care so much about what happens um it's all pointless but more than um the individual contributions um are much smaller than I previously calculated like I don't think the world revolves around me um I don't think the what like we put on up only um makes a difference in the world whatsoever I think it at best can entertain a bunch

of people and allow them to remain interested in something but I definitely don't think we should be telling people you know what to care about or how to think um I think that bank like I think it's it's great that you're very principled about um what you care about and it's clear that you you know make content about what you're interested in but I think in that there's also an another uh like set of biases which is um like being in unequally critical

depending on what crypto project we're talking about right and in the grand scheme of things Bitcoin people would tell you by promoting ethereum you're um you're actually capitulating because ethereum has much more of a like a structural similarities to the old system than the new one and then bankless might tell you that by talking about Avalanche you're capitulating and you know like I think there's a big spectrum

and in general think at the moment for most crypto projects minus a subsection of you know the market that I think we could probably all agree on and identify pretty quickly I think most serious intelligent Builders have similar goals because it all stems from Bitcoin right they were all inspired by the same Mission uh Bitcoin was or ethereum was and they thought oh I can do this in a different way or I can do this better

and I think if I'm totally honest with myself I believe that most serious Builders are not just trying to enrich themselves and anyone in crypto is generally on a similar type of mission and I I think crypto is um probably inevitable I think it's inevitable that there is uh a permissionless and trustless system um that uh underpins how Society transacts um because the old system

worked so so poorly um and there's obviously groups of people and smarter um increasingly smarter people that uh can see a future that will work in this way um but I don't necessarily believe the chain that we all live on 100 years in the future even exists yet it might not I don't know if it will be uh etherium or salana or uh Bitcoin cash or whatever um so instead I've transitioned I think a little bit towards um like

what I like to call reality maximalism where instead of applying my personal politics and what I want to happen or what I think is the best thing to happen um to the market or to my investments instead I just like to observe what is happening and try and understand why that's happening and um and kind of take it from there because if you go back to my Twitter account not my Kobe one my normal one before like early 2017 I think like I

was early to ethereum because I was a bitcoiner they sold to all bitcoiners um we like bought the Ico and then by 2017 I was hugely disappointed with ethereum because I was a big believer in this decentralization and obviously we had the Dow hack we had the roll back the chain moment um and had the thk and then ethereum seemed to be becoming this platform for illegal fundraising um and no one seems to give a [ __ ] no one seem to care um so I had this personal and political antium stance and a personal

and political very Pro privacy coin privacy token privacy technology type stance um and if ID applied those things to my investment thesis more than I did it would have been a huge mistake because ethereum did really well and zcash went to zero slowly went to zero right it's on its way um but uh like from that point I tried to instead of applying like these personal um politics onto my investments instead

just go okay what is happening why is it happening and what are the underlying growth mechanisms behind what is happening and what can I learn from what is happening right and that's why though if people were um like incredibly politically motivated by the concepts of decentralization throughout the last year they got totally screwed versus Market participants because they owned Bitcoin and ethereum as the most decentralized Assets in the whole Space um I think Bitcoin maybe an ethereum too definitely

Bitcoin ether ethereum I think is gray area and you could argue and I think we'd probably agree on the argument but I think those are the two assets that only the only ones whereas if there was a massive State attack today on censorship they're the only two that would reasonably survive right like salana you have the memes the chain goes down I think it's down again today like there's a very Central core team who are very important if uh toi goes who knows what happens to salana right and the thing is that's the same place ethereum

was not so long ago like as crypto projects are born they start out very centralized Bitcoin did as well you remember that I don't know when you got into crypto but there was an inflation bug in in Bitcoin and a billion Bitcoin were uh released or something I don't remember when it was it was slightly before my time but I remember reading about it um and like they had to come together and fix that very quickly and then at some point Satoshi left and at some point it didn't matter so much anymore and at some point it became resilient and

ethereum is going through a similar thing in that vitalic still has a very important political role in ethereum but less so over time now he wrotes writes sort of you know these road maps for the future to inspire the people doing the real work and it's not so much him um you know sitting in a a bedroom in his pants anymore just doing um some blockchain coding but I think ethereum and Bitcoin are the only two that would survive a state attack today in 10 years that might not be that might not be the same that might not be true there might