Speaker 1: How change. I'm Stacy Marie Ishmael, Managing editor of Crypto
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg News, and this is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily
Speaker 1: Bloomberg I Heart podcast. It's Wednesday, July. If you want
Speaker 1: an example of the intense optimism of a certain kind
Speaker 1: of crypto investor, here's one. Some folks are still buying
Speaker 1: the token known as Luna Classic, which has flatline towards zero,
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the collapse of the terra USD
Speaker 1: stable coin. Why are people so willing to buy up
Speaker 1: zombie coins? I asked this question to Bloomberg Senior reports
Speaker 1: to Mike Reagan and Bloomberg Report to Mr Lena a
Speaker 1: gulf of Polo to discuss the motivations of these risk takas. Mike,
Speaker 1: Mr Lena, you're back. I got to talk to you again.
Speaker 1: Can't get rid of us for having us um such
Speaker 1: a pleasure. However, I do worry because when you're here,
Speaker 1: it means that chaotic things are happening that that we
Speaker 1: need to talk about. So today's chaotic thing or continuation
Speaker 1: really is what should we call them? Should we call
Speaker 1: them zombie coins? Should we call them revenance? Mike tell
Speaker 1: Us about the quest for value coming to get you, Barbara.
Speaker 1: What's happening with zombie coins? Well, my favorite is Luna Classic.
Speaker 1: As listeners probably have heard by now, the whole terraform
Speaker 1: blockchain imploded in the spring. Luna, the sort of flagship
Speaker 1: toking on that block chain, was trading at about hundred
Speaker 1: nineteen dollars per token in April, will say, weeks ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as you know, Stacy, I love the abuse of the
Speaker 1: decimal system in crypto. At its low, it was trading
Speaker 1: for zero decimal six zeros nine nine six seven. That's
Speaker 1: it's very low. So it's up nine two percent from
Speaker 1: it's low just last month. And at that price, one
Speaker 1: dollar bought you just over one million tokens of Lunar Classic.
Speaker 1: But to me, I'm fascinating with these uh super low
Speaker 1: priced coins um because like I said, I thought low
Speaker 1: you could buy one million of these tokens for that price,
Speaker 1: and to me, I think that's no coincidence. I think
Speaker 1: when someone realized I can, all right, maybe this thing
Speaker 1: is worthless, but if I can buy a million of
Speaker 1: them for one dollar, I'm in. I mean, who doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be a paper millionaire or a non fiat millionaire.
Speaker 1: What kind of millionaire would that be? To millionaire? Yeah,
Speaker 1: an imaginary millionaire, I guess a lunatic millionaire. But but
Speaker 1: someone else is buying them. And you know, so this
Speaker 1: is a token basically left for dead, but yet it
Speaker 1: lives on in this zombie life, as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's trading hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 1: in volume a day. It stalls a market cap of
Speaker 1: about half a billion dollars. So it you know, it's
Speaker 1: like the old Monty Python movie. You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: dead yet they where they say, bring out you're dead.
Speaker 1: I'm not the other the other Monty Python friends. So
Speaker 1: I don't know what it says about investors psychology other
Speaker 1: than um people will jump in and buy these ridiculously
Speaker 1: low price coins. And we saw it with Shiba, you know,
Speaker 1: we saw it with doge coin. Um. When they get
Speaker 1: that low, there's a certain element of traders that are like,
Speaker 1: what the heck, I'll you know, here's my lottery ticket
Speaker 1: budget for for the week. I'm gonna buy some some
Speaker 1: Luna Classic. And then the pump and chill Twitter campaign
Speaker 1: just goes berserk, and you'll if you search for l
Speaker 1: u n C dollar sign lu n C. You'll see
Speaker 1: what I mean on Twitter, just NonStop promotion of this thing. Obviously,
Speaker 1: people that are trying to get it up to to
Speaker 1: break a zero, to to to lose another one of
Speaker 1: those zeros between the decimal point and the actual prices,
Speaker 1: break a zero real phrase with its yeah, it's someone
Speaker 1: invented it, I think recently to deal with these things,
Speaker 1: and it's broken to zeros, which is a pretty big deal.
Speaker 1: Congratulations to the Lunatics. Coming up. Elon Musk's appearance on
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live this week and didn't take a dose
Speaker 1: coin to the moon. In fact, the fifth most valuable
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency retreated after his comments on Weekend Update and that
Speaker 1: word hustle. You've written about a different set of zeros,
Speaker 1: people who were chasing thousand percent returns on things. Tell
Speaker 1: us more about that corner of the markets. You know,
Speaker 1: this is really fascinating just to hear sort of Michael
Speaker 1: describ what's been going on with Luna, and I think
Speaker 1: before we get into what you just describedent yield return
Speaker 1: on some of these coins, I think we just need
Speaker 1: to back up and understand sort of like how this
Speaker 1: entire ecosystem came to prominence last year and Michael mentioned
Speaker 1: she but you know indoorge coin, which really I think
Speaker 1: are the two coins that got this entire ecosystem started. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because those coins were you know, worth essentially nothing, and
Speaker 1: then um managed to get like a good following and
Speaker 1: a good hype around them to get their prices higher.
Speaker 1: And I think that sort of prompted the creation of
Speaker 1: all of these other you can call them zombie coins
Speaker 1: um ship coins another way that people a lot of
Speaker 1: times will call them in the DeFi space. And those
Speaker 1: coins could be created by anyone who could copy the
Speaker 1: same white paper of another you know coin that ran
Speaker 1: the same way, get people to buy into it and
Speaker 1: sort of push the price up. And last year we
Speaker 1: talked to so many investors who talked about the potential
Speaker 1: and the promise of this coin too. You know, if
Speaker 1: you bought in, say a million of them at zero
Speaker 1: point zero zero zero zero two dollars, if they were
Speaker 1: to you know, one in a million become the next
Speaker 1: big coin you could make a lot of money on.
Speaker 1: You would have a million dollars at least. And I
Speaker 1: think the appeal was you didn't really need to put
Speaker 1: that much money into it because it doesn't cost that
Speaker 1: much and so if you're losing a hundred dollars, that's
Speaker 1: a loss. I think a lot of these investors said,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm happy to sort of take um and
Speaker 1: so that created an entire ecosystem of a lot of
Speaker 1: other things happening. And going back to the thousand percent
Speaker 1: returns that we've written about, is, you know, these these
Speaker 1: coins needed to give a reason to investors to stay
Speaker 1: in and not just buy in and then dump. So
Speaker 1: a lot of times what they would do is they
Speaker 1: would offer you know, a percentage return to any of
Speaker 1: the coin owners if those coin owners were willing to
Speaker 1: lend out their their coin for other several activities in
Speaker 1: the DeFi space, and they would promise returns of one
Speaker 1: to two to three percent per day. That added up
Speaker 1: to be you know, numbers like percent annually. And so
Speaker 1: that was a way to incentivize coin um investors to
Speaker 1: stay into these projects long term because a lot of
Speaker 1: these people didn't want these coins to be a one off,
Speaker 1: but the market was so saturated um and that was
Speaker 1: just a way for them to jump in. I can't
Speaker 1: I I want to ask you a question about what
Speaker 1: you said, though, how long was long term? Long term
Speaker 1: in crypto lingo is like, you know, a year maximum.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I think coins like doge coin
Speaker 1: or Sima that have had the longevity that they've had
Speaker 1: are considered like decades in the crypto world. These coins
Speaker 1: would come into prominence for for weeks and then would
Speaker 1: would get you know, rug pulled if they were scams,
Speaker 1: or would just lose the hype that you needed to
Speaker 1: maintain in order to make that coin you know, have longevity. Um.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's a different market right now. You know, crypto
Speaker 1: markets getting a beating and a lot of that defy space.
Speaker 1: Where last year in a bear market where everyone had
Speaker 1: time to trade because they were you know at home. Um,
Speaker 1: the you know, it was, it was, it was thriving.
Speaker 1: And this year it's just it's just not the same
Speaker 1: the same returns. There's definitely not the same energy. It's
Speaker 1: really hard to get people to buy into projects now, um,
Speaker 1: and so those those returns that they were promised um
Speaker 1: last year are just not you know possible anymore. Right,
Speaker 1: what's twenty on a dollar? That was coincidentally, I think
Speaker 1: that was my first credit card grade that communitis We'll
Speaker 1: be right back with more from Bloomberg Reports ms Relina
Speaker 1: and Bloomberg Senior editor Mike Nan. I remember around last
Speaker 1: year when people were buying into Dog and Sheba, you
Speaker 1: had some anecdotes about, you know, folks that you knew
Speaker 1: that were kind of like Does and Sheba millionaires effectively,
Speaker 1: how are they doing these days? That's so good. They
Speaker 1: don't talk about it as as much as they used to,
Speaker 1: but you know, to me, Um and Misty has probably
Speaker 1: interviewed a lot of people like this. You know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting when we we hear so much from sort of
Speaker 1: the high minded crypto people who want to change the
Speaker 1: financial system and and you know, disrupt this and disrupt that,
Speaker 1: and then on the other side of here from all
Speaker 1: the traditional financial people saying it's a big ponzi. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a scam avoided all. I feel like those two
Speaker 1: are sort of the tales of the Bell curve. And
Speaker 1: in the middle you've got these guys like my friends. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I hate to use the word degen or degenerate,
Speaker 1: but let's you know, that's that I think that is
Speaker 1: the industry official term for Yeah, it's just people who
Speaker 1: are like I don't know if this is the future
Speaker 1: of finance or if it's a PONDI or not. All
Speaker 1: I know is this queen was up a thousand percent
Speaker 1: last week. I want in, But I think there's also
Speaker 1: a lot of people who treated it as who went in,
Speaker 1: you know, clear eyed, and knew this could all disappear overnight. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the key is never to to invest too
Speaker 1: more than you can afford to lose in any in
Speaker 1: any type of situation, and especially this you know so
Speaker 1: um yeah, they're not. They're not wearing their bitcoin necklaces
Speaker 1: like they used to, and the gold chains. I think
Speaker 1: the laser eyes are gone from the you know, your
Speaker 1: profile pictures don't look at it. Well, missy you talked
Speaker 1: about the energy, right, like say, more about like that
Speaker 1: vibe or lack of vibe. Yeah, so I think I'll
Speaker 1: definitely agree with with Michael here. It depends what kind
Speaker 1: of investor you are, and there's different kinds of crypto investors.
Speaker 1: If you are one of the crypto investors that jumped
Speaker 1: in in November when bitcoin was an all time high, um,
Speaker 1: because you had FOMO, then odds are right now you're
Speaker 1: probably facing several losses. But I think there's still some
Speaker 1: crypto investors who see this as an asset class that
Speaker 1: despite its volatile, its volatility isn't going to go anywhere.
Speaker 1: Cryptos here, and we're gonna keep trying to find places
Speaker 1: to make money um. And I think a good example
Speaker 1: is one of the people we spoke to who said that,
Speaker 1: even though you know, thousand percent yields are not available anymore,
Speaker 1: a stable coin like USDC will give you maybe a
Speaker 1: nine percent yield, which is not great compared to what
Speaker 1: it used to be, but they argue it's better than
Speaker 1: banks will give you. I mean, it's aggressively better than
Speaker 1: what packs will give you. It's suspiciously better, and they're
Speaker 1: happy to take that risk despite the collapse that we've
Speaker 1: seen the past a few months. But all in all,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like last year we just saw
Speaker 1: so much of the hype everywhere, and I think that, um,
Speaker 1: this was a good reality check for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I think that it's a lot harder to get that
Speaker 1: sort of momentum um And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who were the sort of facilitators and instigators
Speaker 1: of that hype throughout the last year have really cooled
Speaker 1: down and I'm talking about you know, popular Twitter accounts,
Speaker 1: popular Instagram accounts, popular discord channels where a lot of
Speaker 1: these conversations were taking place. Just as a as a
Speaker 1: final question, because you've both reported, I think on the
Speaker 1: the ups and downs and and the shenanigans, what do
Speaker 1: you think is coming next? Like when whenever you know,
Speaker 1: financial markets go through cycles, right, there's like in every
Speaker 1: in every bust or the seeds of the next boom.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you're seeing Are you're like, ha,
Speaker 1: that's going in an interesting direction? Contry anybody else? Well,
Speaker 1: I think Timissy's point about these suspiciously high yields, I
Speaker 1: think there's you know, and I'm I'm not necessarily basing
Speaker 1: this on any reporting. It's just what I would guess
Speaker 1: is going to happen next, is that now there's going
Speaker 1: to be a small skeptical I pointed at everything you know,
Speaker 1: is this yield they're promising sustainable? And we might get
Speaker 1: to the point like, you know, what's what's the going
Speaker 1: treasury yield at like three and a quarter? You know,
Speaker 1: if you can get three and a half out of
Speaker 1: crypt though, that might look more attractive than trying to
Speaker 1: get twenty percent and and beating the system, like, is
Speaker 1: there a way is there legitimately a sustainable way to
Speaker 1: be traditional finance yields in a safe or at least
Speaker 1: not ridiculously unsafe manner in crypto? And I think that's
Speaker 1: where you know people are gonna focus next, is like
Speaker 1: how much of this was all sort of snake oil salesman,
Speaker 1: and how much you know, what is the real potential
Speaker 1: for yield farming and rewards from staking in crypto that's
Speaker 1: sustainable and not so so risky that people are gonna
Speaker 1: just stay away a mile away from it, a return
Speaker 1: to boring, which is good for guys like UM. I
Speaker 1: think that there's definitely a lot of parallels to what's
Speaker 1: happening now with what happened in the dot com bubble.
Speaker 1: I mean, we just hear this over and over and
Speaker 1: over again when I talked to a lot of these
Speaker 1: investors that throw money into crypto. I think although the
Speaker 1: losses have been have been sort of you know, big um,
Speaker 1: I think they're excited to see what comes out alive
Speaker 1: on the other side. And I think we've all been
Speaker 1: waiting for this moment because it's just such an oversaturated market.
Speaker 1: So it's nice to see what projects can actually survive,
Speaker 1: what coins are actually going to be there for the
Speaker 1: long haul, if if, if I may so, I think
Speaker 1: that's an eye something to keep an eye on. UM. Separately,
Speaker 1: I think the M and A industry, crypto industry is
Speaker 1: becoming increasingly autions. Yeah, mergers and that cruis Asians industry
Speaker 1: within crypto is becoming increasingly interesting. Obviously, you know, we
Speaker 1: had some news out about robin Hood potentially being acquired
Speaker 1: by by f t X. I think, you know, it
Speaker 1: kind of feels like we're in the same place we
Speaker 1: were when sort of Facebook was buying everything, you know
Speaker 1: ten years ago. Is the Facebook of the cycle? You know?
Speaker 1: UM and I think that, you know, that was a
Speaker 1: crazy announcement. It obviously hasn't been officially announced yet, but
Speaker 1: if that were to happen, you're seeing some of you know,
Speaker 1: the biggest crypto exchanges getting access to the U S
Speaker 1: stock market UM crowd in a way that I think
Speaker 1: is going to be very interesting to to keep an
Speaker 1: eye out. I'm going to predict fewer Super Bowl ads
Speaker 1: to go out on a limb that's actually not as man.
Speaker 1: But what about what about celeb endorsements? Because I don't
Speaker 1: know which was the Ronaldo Ronaldo come it was Binance?
Speaker 1: Was Binance? Right? That's crazy? So yeah, we'll see, We
Speaker 1: definitely will and we'll have you back to talk about
Speaker 1: more chaos in the future. Thank you, Mrs Leina, and
Speaker 1: thank you Mike. You can find more of Mike Regin's
Speaker 1: reporting on the Bloomberg Terminal on Bloomberg dot com or
Speaker 1: follow him on Twitter. He's at reaganonymous. And you can
Speaker 1: find Missy or miss Relina on the Bloomberg Terminal on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com, and of course she's also on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Her handle is at miss Relina. That's m I S
Speaker 1: Y R L E n E. Since the founding document
Speaker 1: that led to the invention of bitcoin, first to Pay
Speaker 1: It in two thousand and eight, Bitcoin's true believers have
Speaker 1: adopted a philosophy that resembles one for all and all
Speaker 1: for one, or so, the theory goes in bitcoin, everyone's equal.
Speaker 1: But does that theory match the reality of the ecosystem? Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: Data scientist Alissa Blackburn and Dr Eris Lieberman Aiden, an
Speaker 1: associate professor at Baila College of Medicine, join me to
Speaker 1: discuss their research into who controlled bitcoin in those very
Speaker 1: earliest days. I'm Stacy Marie Ishmael, and this is Bloomberg Crypto,
Speaker 1: a daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more shows from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Email your questions, comments, or suggestions for the show to
Speaker 1: Crypto at Bloomberg dot net, and you'll find us on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Crypto. The supervising producer of Bloomberg Crypto is
Speaker 1: Vicky Vergalina. Our producer is Mohammed Farrup. Desta wonder At
Speaker 1: is our engineer. Original music by Leo Sidron