🎉 Happy 100th Episode 🎉 Cobie, fka Crypto Cobain, is a cultural staple in the crypto space. Wearing many hats as a narrative investor, thought leader, and memelord, we dive into the brain of one of our favorite crypto characters. Having been in crypto for nearly a decade, Cobie tells us his keys to surviving in crypto and what it takes to last long term. We also dive into how much decentralization matters, roles and responsibilities in shaping the world around us, and his outlook for 2022 and beyond. Cobie advises a healthy dose of skepticism and curiosity, and describes himself as a reality maximalist. He’s gone on an absolute tear recently, dropping a series of excellent thought piece articles that establish mental models for understanding narratives across the ecosystem. We also go through moral alignment charts and ask Cobie the big question… What does he think of Bankless? ------ ✨ DEBRIEF ✨ | Ryan & David's Unfiltered Thoughts on the Episode https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/debrief-cobie  ------ 📣 ONJUNO | Crypto from your Checking Account! https://bankless.cc/OnJuno  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🍵 MATCHA | SMART ORDER ROUTING https://bankless.cc/Matcha  🚀 SLINGSHOT | LAYER 2 SOCIAL TRADING https://bankless.cc/Slingshot  🏦 GEMINI | TURN FIAT INTO CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/Gemini  🦁 BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave  🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 5:30 How Cobie Survives in Crypto 13:41 Early Discoveries 21:22 Reality Maximalism 32:38 Responsibility & Roles 43:39 Tribes, Decentralization, Utility 53:10 Profit Maximalism 1:01:31 Staking & Incentives 1:10:42 Wins and Losses 1:19:20 Crypto Brain & Culture 1:28:45 Wealth & Purpose 1:36:18 Chaotic Good & UpOnly 1:39:58 Judging Others 1:54:00 Bullish or Bearish in 2022 2:00:42 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Resources: Cobie on Twitter https://twitter.com/cobie?s=20  UpOnly https://uponly.tv/  Cobie’s Newsletter https://cobie.substack.com/  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Cobie, co-founder of Lido and UpOnlyTv, and Chris Burniske, partner at Placeholder Ventures, talk about surviving a crypto bear market, the Terra collapse, lessons they’ve learned from their mistakes, and much more. Show highlights: whether Chris and Cobie think crypto is in a bear market why Chris says these are the times to buy what effect the Terra debacle will have on the crypto industry why Chris was expecting UST to blow up why Chris thinks there is going to be another massive liquidation event whether an algo stablecoin could work why bear markets are sometimes a good thing how USDT was stress tested and proved its resilience how macro is affecting the crypto space and what the role of the Fed is when will we see the bottom of this bear market how meme coins are the symptoms of a broken system why this crypto cycle is different whether regulations are helping VCs rather than the retail investors why risky assets are the ones that could increase 10,000x  whether the future of crypto is multichain or not how developers signal what ecosystem is going to win in the next expansion cycle whether Cobie thinks staking is dying how Chris judges market bottoms and tops what lessons Cobie and Chris have learned from their mistakes what innovations will catalyze the next bull cycle what needs to happen in the future for crypto to succeed Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021Cross River Bank: https://crossriver.com/cryptoBeefy Finance: https://beefy.finance  Episode Links Cobie Twitter: https://twitter.com/cobie  UpOnlyTv: https://uponly.tv/ Substack: https://cobie.substack.com/ L1 trading: https://cobie.substack.com/p/trading-the-metagame?s=r Death of staking: https://cobie.substack.com/p/apecoin-and-the-death-of-staking?s=r Token unlocks: https://cobie.substack.com/p/on-the-meme-of-market-caps-and-unlocks?s=r Cycle Tweets: Why “the next cycle” reasoning scares him https://twitter.com/cobie/status/1524965475813568512 What projects will survive the bear https://twitter.com/cobie/status/1469253171885318146 His call to “buy” on March 12 2020 https://twitter.com/cobie/status/1238282793244860417 Which VCs will win https://twitter.com/cobie/status/1515667977118826500   Chris Burniske LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/burniske/ Twitter https://twitter.com/cburniske Previous Unchained episode https://unchainedpodcast.com/chris-burniske-a-blank-slate-of-state/ https://unchainedpodcast.com/chris-burniske-of-placeholder-on-the-downsides-of-icos/ https://unchainedpodcast.com/want-to-diversify-your-portfolio-try-bitcoin-say-arks-chris-burniske-and-coinbases-adam-white/ https://unchainedpodcast.com/how-to-value-a-crypto-asset/ Cycle Tweets Feb 2022 bear call https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1495468570708426754 March 2022 bear call https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1523021991619428352  November 2021 top call https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1457884538806308868  DCA advice https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1525906152881459200 https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1500593438433021952  What could knock the market further down https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1525157945079496705 https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1524260987787902978  2017 ATH calls https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1524838447784947712 https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1524524188366635008  Trying to time the bottom https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1523573129431240710  Chris x Cobie Luna https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1524280637431164929  Feeling sorry for people who have lost $ https://twitter.com/cburniske/status/1524267901456248832 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

LinksCobieWebShow PartnerThis episode is presented by FTX. Trade on an awesome mobile interface fee-free, and still get all the great portfolio tracking features you know and love: https://uponly.tv/ftxShow NotesUpOnlyTV NotesIntroduction & Early Days ⁃ Bought Bitcoin first in 2012 but really down the rabbit-hole through 2013 onwards ⁃ Only other original CT person still active is Bob Laxative (formerly KingBTC) ⁃ Being early turned people into survivors. Cryptsy, MtGox etc hacked. Everything going to zero, only self custody BTC felt safe ⁃ Started with £200-300 ($500) and didn’t put any more fiat in other than one investment in 2020 (that went to zero) ⁃ Got shilled QuarkCoin by Bill Still on cryptsy and accidentally sold the top. Got a DM from Jebus911 about another coin that went 70x ⁃ Up significantly in BTC early but down in USD in bear market. Lost a lot of BTC on things like BTCBuilder ⁃ Sold Cryptsy listings via API for months while at uni for free multiples before the alpha got leaked ⁃ Saw BTC as the solution following the financial crisis and levels of corruption and incompetenceMtGox ⁃ Gox was the main exchange and allegedly had a bot to buy back BTC that had been lost ⁃ Constant buy pressure caused the price to run ⁃ Unsure what the outcome would have been on the state of the market if it hadn’t happened ⁃ Some friends got completely wiped by Gox ⁃ Psychologically put a lot of people off BTC having to consider the cost of buying the BTC they had lostTrading & Making It ⁃ Wouldn’t consider ever having been a full time trader ⁃ It was more of a hobby or side hustle. Decisions mostly based on instinct and prior cycle behaviour ⁃ It’s become much harder to call cycle bottoms and tops ⁃ People create narratives to rationalise things it’s easier to learn from your own mistakes with time looking back ⁃ Above average at most things when actually trying, except League of Legends ⁃ Deep down believed he would eventually be a millionaire. Without crypto this would still have happened from acquisitions/startups ⁃ Opens you to being more risk tolerant in other areas of life e.g. taking stock vs salary ⁃ Easier to have conviction when you don’t sit through large drawdowns and can gauge risk. “HODL is for poor people” unless disciplined you’ll let your gains evaporate and might become a forced seller at the bottom ⁃ Tries to estimate probability of it being over on every dip. Wants to sell as close to the top as possible, can buy back higher if wrong. Won’t work if you do this on every dipSupercycle ⁃ Idea of a Supercycle described by Su in earlier episode is probably right ⁃ If crypto becomes integrated into society and BTC becomes the store of value then it’s the only thing that makes sense ⁃ Thinks it’s not the right time for it to happen, integration is tertiary ⁃ If crypto disappears now how many lives are actually impacted ⁃ Unless you run …say a crypto podcast? (pls sir my family) ⁃ Maybe it is now but maybe it needs another boom/bust first before it reaches that level ⁃ Top 10/20 assets on CoinGecko right now – are we really ready for a supercycle??ETH ⁃ ETH DAO hack, ETC fork, ICOs put off. Didn’t buy more ETH because conviction was low with all of this. Still held original ETH but could have rotated into buying much more ⁃ Instead of focusing on ponzification it’s best to focus on change in products available e.g. genuine use case like lending on chain being built ⁃ Building blocks add value to the ecosystem because they enable future building blocks. OG DeFi protocols and things like MetaMask responsible for leading that changeFounding Lido & ETH 2.0 ⁃ Co-founded Lido but says Konstantin and Vasily are the real brains behind everything along with the core teams. Fought to not call it dPool. (Fought with Ledger to not have UpOnly called TokenTalk) ⁃ When PoS was created there was no real concept of DeFi ⁃ Staking Ethereum is just a better form of wrapped Ethereum and risk free yield is the bottom brick of DeFi ⁃ Thinks merge will be Q2/Q3 or later. Beacon chains have been live for a whole ⁃ People will think it’s bullish but $35B on the beacon chain will become unlocked too⁃ Wider ETH community attitude to scaling is bad in level of acknowledgement it’s atrociously bad right now. Optimistic roll ups have felt like a disappointment so far and ZK aren’t EVM compatible yet ⁃ Misaligned incentives between people who got rich holding ETH and the usability of the network ⁃ Equally sceptical of alternative L1s. Fragmented liquidity and most will fail to sustain ecosystems without incentives ⁃ Easier to trust that ETH will be around in future vs a coin flip on some other L1s. Max 5% survive and likely still struggle. Maybe new L1s just keep getting funded forever?Identifying the Meta ⁃ Used to be buying things before it got listed on exchange, playing on APIs ⁃ Moved to buying when it listed on smaller exchanges before it hit the bigger exchanges ⁃ Shifted again to how to get coins before they hit any exchange and people would monitor BitcoinTalk and cloud mining was popular ⁃ 2017 was ICO meta trying to get in before main token sale ⁃ 2020 was DeFi farming ⁃ 2021 was BTC -> ETH -> DeFi complacency -> meme coins -> NFTs -> L1s and OHM forks ⁃ What’s next? There is no crystal ball, you can guess the narrative that makes sense or watch what’s happening and being aggressive when you spot it ⁃ Short term playing the meta it doesn’t have to make sense a lot of the time it’s just a game of chicken anyway. Narrative just needs PMF ⁃ People assume they’re already late rather than factoring in if the narrative really takes off ⁃ Narrative can drive both supply and demand and people underestimate how it can get out of hand ⁃ Figuring out the meta game is the most important thing and how to make money in crypto. Avoid things like YouTube they’re good at content marketing not crypto ⁃ Have to avoid maximalism and accept these trades and rotationsBear Market Predictions ⁃ Metaverse and GameFi have crazy valuations but a couple with war chests that will enable them to keep building in a bear market ⁃ Main goal can possibly become preserving the treasury vs delivering ⁃ Meme coins all to zero ⁃ Anything with a constant token emission requirement all to zero ⁃ Regulations could cause decentralised in name only projects to disappear ⁃ Young hungry teams will keep building ⁃ 60% of people who made life changing money this cycle will lose it allWorking in Crypto & DAOs ⁃ Shift recently between keeping a normal job alongside crypto to now. It’s become much more mainstream and more risk effective to now join a crypto project or protocol. In crypto it can be better to be an early employer vs founder which is quite different to traditional tech ⁃ DAO currently a type of regulatory arbitrage which operates worse but can have a token. There are examples of very good and very bad DAOs ⁃ Best DAOs won’t be the ones people like in a bull market, maybe even those with concentrated ownership like 15 addresses vs retail owners getting angry at teams over token economics ⁃ DAOs will demand a new type of VC. More contributor type VC involvement e.g. what Paradigm and Delphi are moving towardsFinding a Crew ⁃ Early days had a TG group called 27 club to talk about the markets and probably wouldn’t have made it in crypto without it. 70/80% of the members did not make it in crypto ⁃ Most people who make it have a group like this to share alpha. Essential to have people in your life who are all inMaximalism ⁃ Picking a group and hating an opposing group is historically quite common for humans ⁃ BTC and ETH maxi people are very similar people that would be friends irl but project hatred at each other online instead ⁃ BTC maximalism used to be people speculate on new things while quietly all knowing that BTC was the only thing really worthwhile but could experiment to see if there was value elsewhere ⁃ Fees similarly now except it’s expanded beyond just BTC to a small number of other coins ⁃ Maximalism now has changed similarly to political influencers and become inflammatory and toxic ⁃ See it a lot now in BTC and ETH with the same talking points, it’s counterproductive⁃ Staying open minded is only positive for you as a person within this space. On a long enough timeline all maximalists are wrong at some pointFuture Prediction ⁃ Most probable future is maybe a KYC country chain with DeFi, but without governance tokens, with the base currency being a CBDCRisk Management Pyramid Changes ⁃ Reason it’s wrong is that if you take a 5% entry in something risky that performed really well, by constantly taking off the position to keep it at 5% you’d ruin your upside ⁃ Pyramid makes sense as an entry tool and rebalancing once the trade actually ends makes more sense ⁃ There’ll be an updated version coming soonFinal Alpha ⁃ “Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance” – Albert Maysles ⁃ Be wary of anyone intentionally removing or ignoring nuance from a conversation as often they have an agenda ⁃ Being a structured critical thinker is probably the most important thing going into 2022 and the following decadeNotes by Kevin and LukeMusic by GiovanniPickle