Doug Polk on crypto, poker, and epic scams
UpOnly: Chats with Crypto Experts
Is Cryptocurrency a Scam Industry?
CNN's John Defterios talks about how he got into the crypto industry. He says it was by accident, but there were two different reasons for getting involved. The first is that when your poker player bank suck, and being able to have your money is pretty useful for games where you need money to play. But the second, and frankly, more important reason was, do you member all the t old school dicites justice ato genmis yes?
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Show Notes
FTX?
- Ledger nailed new intro
- UpOnly sponsored by FTX now!
- Blockfolio is now FTX (as everything soon will be)
- Doug was watching an MLB game and saw FTX on an umpire
- So wild
LEDGER DRINKS EVERY DAY
- *one beer*
- *has cravings if he skips his beer*
- *in a weight-loss competition with Primo to lose 10% of body weight*
- Doug: “That 1 beer per day is costing you 16-17 pounds per year!”
Doug’s Crypto Journey
- 2012-2013ish
- Got in because of poker - online poker caused onboarding
- Doug: “the asset appreciation element kinda made sense to me” lol us too sir
Bitcoin v Banks
- People complain about bank fees and then Bitcoin fees spike lol
- Block time also kind of a hassle
- Cobie: “Nowadays if an Ethereum block takes like a full minute I’m pissed”
- Cobie: “Solana is fast enough and if you use it you can afford to live in New York”
Zoomers & Internet Native Generation
- Ledger: “How many people bought SafeMoon and bridged to BSC? Like how did they do that???”
- Cobie: “We had an interview with Teen Exec and he just understands the internet way better than I do”
- Also have the YouTubers who can show you step by step exactly how to buy the top
- Cobie: “Every time a project comes on UpOnly its the exact top of their thesis”
- Light - super bearish at the bottom
- SCAM and CUMROCKET - top tick on the episode
- Charlie Lee even top ticked Litecoin
Coping
- DOGE founder is coping so hard that he won’t come back
- People would easily donate like millions to this guy
The B Word Conference
- Cobie: “I think Cathie Wood is fking phenomenal”
- “Elon just kept talking about Tesla chargers”
- Doug: “I think Jack needs to have a better idea of how Bitcoin can actually be implemented to fix these issues”
- “Also Elon has a firm belief in ‘Bitcoin has to be 50% renewable’ for someone who’s dad was an emerald miner”
- “His Bitcoin takes felt not extremely researched”
- Ledger: “At some point do you stretch yourself a little too thin if you’re trying to create Mars money and [xyz other stuff]”
Doug’s Challenge
- Poker career focused on 1v1 poker
- Challenged a rival troll guy who was after him to a 1v1 for $1,000,000
- This guy was a major underdog
- He said yes LOL
- $40k buy in, any time you dropped off you bought back in with $40k
- Doug won $1.2M off of this guy lol
- Now they are boys
- Ledger: “you had a lot of reputational tie into this as well - like if you lost it’d be like me losing to Cobie in a trading competition”
- Cobie: “you’ve had some anthropologically bad trades that should be on wikipedia” lmao
Poker & Crypto
- Is it banking the unbanked? Or math, trading, etc. stuff?
- Doug: “Poker guys understand having an edge and are used to losing”
- “Today 200 guys played, 15 paid, so 185 lost” fack
- “Can’t handle losing, can’t do poker”
- “Some edge/ trading aspects, some keeping your money off the books aspects… some of the poker community is DEEP in crypto”
No More Poker 4 Doug
- Basically turned from an art to an exact science that you need to memorize
- Doug: “The reality is the guy who spent 2x the time is going to be better”
- Online vs. in person is the same *at the higher levels*
Doug’s Journey
- Just moved to Austin TX
- Was part of the mass migration
- Left Vegas, “I wanted something idk less stripper-ey” lol
- Nashville would also be great
- Doug: “The ‘Keep Austin Weird’ signs need to come down like that is so far gone, its a tech hub now!”
Ledger’s Fame
- Going to give Doug some Alabama BBQ places off air to not dox his micro location
- Cobie and Doug start laughing at the exact same time
- Cobie: “We have the same joke don’t we”
- Doug: “Ya Ledger you wouldn’t want anyone driving 700 miles out to see you” lmao
- Ledger got recognized 2 weeks ago
Scams
- Doug called BitConnect like a week before it happened
- Everyone knew him as the guy who called it lol
- “Save The Kids Token”
- Fake charity token that was somehow supposed to save the kids
- FaZe & some youtube guy Sam Pepper
- creep
Tether FUD
- Doug: “I actually don’t agree with any of the Tether FUD” YES DOUG
- Doug: “Like pretty much people won’t be happy unless they have $60 Billion in a checking account”
- based
ETH 2.0
- If/ wen ETH2 happens, are people still rushing to send their money through MATIC? prolly not
- Probably won’t be a scaling benefit until sharding
- Cobie - prolly rollup-centric solution to scaling when it all works out
ZK-Rollups
- Created down only tokenomics of ZCash *disclaimer: this is FUD*
- Uses security of L1 w/ cheaper scaling
- Vitalik said it’d take like 5 years of optimistic rollups before ZK rollups but now looking like straight to ZK rollups
- More gigabrain Cobie
Top Scams Ever
- 1. Poker guy knew the guy in god-mode and won legit every tournament
- Won like $250k
- 2. Joshua Tyler - installed a trojan on Doug’s computer and could see his cards
- Got investigated and Doug got his money back!
FINAL ALPHA
- Doug: “In life, you should always bet the biggest on yourself”
- “No one is going to work as hard as you or be as honest as yourself”
- “When you get opportunities to bet big on yourself, take them and you’ll never regret it”
Notes by Kevin
Music by GiovanniPickle
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