VALUE: After Hours (S07 E19): Rudy Havenstein – Crypto Skepticism and Meme Coins

During their recent episode, Taylor, Carlisle, and Rudy Havenstein discussed Crypto Skepticism and Meme Coins. Here’s an excerpt from the episode:

Jake: [laughs] Oh, boy. Stepping on that mine already.

Tobias: Tips [crosstalk] [laughs]

Rudy: Hey, don’t set me off on a coughing ramp, please. Yes, bitcoin fixes all of this. I don’t know, it seems like every– Listen, let’s just say crypto, because I don’t want to–

Tobias: Yes, let’s not promote. [crosstalk]

Rudy: Satoshi was this libertarian ideal of this money that was exempt from government control. And now, you’ve got Larry Fink as its biggest backer. It’s been called crypto, because I don’t want– People say, “Well, you haven’t studied it enough?” Okay, crypto [Jake laughs] has been coopted by some of the worst billionaire scamming sleazeballs and nobody seems to care. And you know what? Trump with his meme coin and all that. There’s no shame. It’s just avarice. I don’t know.

President used to have some sort of dignity. Even Clinton was embarrassed I think when he got caught. I joked years ago. I should have a Rudy coin and I could probably make a million bucks, but I’m just not motivated. I probably could, because it’s such a joke. You’re just scamming people. And that seems to be the big business in America today is scamming people.

Tobias: Do any of the coins do anything?

Rudy: I don’t know. I looked into some white papers years ago, there was one coin called Monkey Coin. I was reading this white paper. They had the white papers back then, like Tether has attestations. I’m reading it, and it’s complete nonsense. It’s just complete nonsense. So, the CEO of Monkey Coin, starts calling me all these names on Twitter that I’m– And of course, they ended up I think being charged with fraud and all that. It’s just funny.

Tobias: It’s no Fart Coin, the Monkey Coin.

Jake: Yeah.

Tobias: Fart Coin is the gold– [crosstalk]

Rudy: Can you believe that had the market cap of forward at some point. I don’t know– [crosstalk]

Tobias: I think it’s probably holding up, isn’t it? I don’t know.

Rudy: Well, look at Dogecoin. The guy that created Dogecoin is like– He’s like-

Tobias: As a gag. Yeah.

Rudy: -“I created it as a joke. I can’t believe.” Someone asked, “Aren’t you concerned about the energy consumption that’s used to produce Dogecoin?” And his reply, I think it was on Twitter, goes, he’s like, “Dude, I thought about it for like 10 minutes before creating it.” He goes-

Jake: [laughs] Yeah.

Rudy: -“No, I didn’t put a lot of thought into the ecosystem that it would affect.” We’re in a time where everyone’s grubbing for money. You’ve got house hacking and all this other– My post today on Substack is like a great [unintelligible 00:10:14] of mine– I’m going to say for your home is shelter and suddenly home has become an investment. That’s been a huge part of the problem in our country. Young people can’t buy houses, but Tom Barrett can buy a $100,000 or $10,000 or whatever. It’s just not right. It’s not good for society.

I think Marc Faber had a great quote about GDP. He goes, “GDP doesn’t mean anything. You can add GDP by digging holes and filling them in. GDP is the standard of living of the average person, are they doing better. I think in this country, they’re not.” I think [unintelligible 00:10:51] talks about, you have an island where 10 people. Nine of them make a $1,000 and one of them makes $10 million. And the average is what? You’ll say, well, the average income on that island is $5 million or $4 million something, but that’s a total distortion. There is no average there. And the median is a little bit meaningless. But yeah. Anyway. I’m not coughing, so that’s good.

Jake: [laughs]

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