Latest / The Paul Barron Crypto Show / NEAR Top Or Supercycle?🚨SVRN CEO Sal Ternullo INTERVIEW

Transcript

NEAR Top Or Supercycle?🚨SVRN CEO Sal Ternullo INTERVIEW · The Paul Barron Crypto Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Is Near Protocol the only crypto AI play that is
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: worth anything today? Well, we're going to break it down
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: for you guys and get into it a little bit deeper.
• 0:08
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• 0:09
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• 1:08
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• 1:09
  Speaker 1: If you look at the charts, I'll kind of start
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: with that before we bring on our guest. And as
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: you can see, Near Protocol on the weekly, this has
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: had a pretty good run all the way down here
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: from trading around 94 cents up to a little bit
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: over 480 right now, even after this last week of
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: a retracement that we've seen in pretty much everything. And
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: if you look at one of the biggest players in Near,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: especially in reference to holders, this is SVRN holding Near.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: And when you look at digital asset treasuries like this, this,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: of course, is one of the ones that we're going
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: to be talking about today. And we'll have one of
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: their representatives on to break this down, some of the
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: things that you have to consider is if you're trying
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: to look at a NEAR or an AI play, and
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: NEAR might be the one, one thing to consider is this,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: and that is how it is positioned. It's one of
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: the only tokens that really position in all three of
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: these major macro trends that are now overlapping, and that,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: of course, is AI, privacy, and then revenue share. NEAR
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: sits in the center of all of those things.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: So quite a bit.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: We wanted to bring on Sal Ternolo, who is a
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: managing partner over at, of course, SVRN.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Great to have you. Sal, how are you?
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me on, man. Appreciate it.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: So we've got to get into a lot around NEAR
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: in general. And we will address some of the most
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: recent news today in today's video. But I want to
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit on the sense of an AI
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: play in crypto. When you think about NEAR, obviously you
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: guys believe a lot in this project. Would you say
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: that it is the only AI play in crypto right now?
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: I mean, there's a diverse market of players that are
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: looking at how decentralization can play into solving some of
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: the problems that we see across different AI workflows, whether
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: that's in the process of training models on a distributed basis,
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: in the idea of how do we imbue ownership of
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: weights and models to users. And where Nir really plays
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: in this is how do we bring some of the
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: principles around privacy and confidentiality that they've pioneered on the
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: layer one blockchain side into the AI space. And so
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: what they're doing on the private inference side right now
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: is extremely exciting and look forward to getting into it.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: To your point, let's get into it. I want to
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: go into the first thing, and that, of course, is intense.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: And this is something that I think maybe some of
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: our viewers don't completely understand what Nir intents are.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Can you explain it to us? Give us a rundown
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: on this.
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, Near Intents has been the most exciting
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: product in the Near ecosystem over the past 18 months.
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: Clear product market fit and scale now processing more than
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: 32 billion in volume. But I would think of Near
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: Intents as the easiest mechanism to facilitate an intent-based outcome.
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: And so a user says, I want Bitcoin. I want
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: to swap my USDC for Bitcoin. How do I actually
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: facilitate that behind the scenes? is how intense architecture works.
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: And so it basically abstracts from the user all of
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: the technical complexity. They just express their intent and that
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: intent is fulfilled by a network of solvers who offer
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: the best execution and price. And so abstraction of all
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: the complexity of bridging, swapping, et cetera, and give me
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: the outcome that I want.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: So with that being the case, when you think about,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I guess in general, an average user of this, do
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: you feel like this is something that they themselves are
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: going to understand versus what does it really do for me?
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Is this translating to the average buyer of Near today?
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the average buyer of Near today, how
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: they experience Intense is whatever app they're using, whatever wallet
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: they're using, if they're swapping within that application, they're likely
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: using Near Intense. And it's behind the scenes intentionally. What
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: the objective is to get the best user experience behind that.
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: I want Bitcoin or I would like to swap my
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: USDC for ETH.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay, so that's good. I want to go over
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: to Ironclaw because this is.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Something also that I think needs a little bit more explanation.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Give me a rundown on how this works and how
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: it benefits the ecosystem.
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so Ironclaw, you're probably familiar, your audience is familiar
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: with OpenClaw and kind of the rush towards the harness
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: space that played out in the beginning of 2026. Ilya
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: and the team looked at OpenClaw and said, this is
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: riddled with security issues that will ultimately compromise users' privacy,
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: their credentials to different types of apps and services. And
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: so Ironclaw is effectively a blown up and a re-architected
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: OpenClaw harness that allows you to have security over your
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: credentials and privacy in your interactions. And I think we've
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: seen this kind of secure harness space take off. There's
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: a number of players in the category But that is
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: very much what Ironclaw was aimed to do, was to
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: re-architect OpenClaw and design it in a manner that gives
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: users better security.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: How functional is this right now? I'm looking at just
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: all of the elements that it can go into. You
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: can kind of see the full layout here, inbox triage, monitoring,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: prep assistant, team chat operations.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: How usable is this today?
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's live and usable right now. I think what
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: you see is that the user segment that actually adopted OpenClaw, Hermes,
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: these different types of harnesses in many ways were kind
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: of prosumers. They were users that were pretty hands-on and
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: sophisticated in AI. And what I think you'll start to
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: see over the next several months is components and parts
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: of Ironclaw being delivered in a seamless user experience behind
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: apps like near.com, where similarly to Intense, you don't need
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: to understand anything about Intense.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: You just have to have a great user experience.
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: And so- I may in natural language say, I want
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: to swap my USDC for ETH when ETH hits 2,500 bucks.
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: And Ironclaw behind the scenes facilitates that alongside Intense.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: This could be big then.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: If this gets rolled, I mean, if you get some
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: adoption here, this could be a major, because we're seeing
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: more use case, especially on personal LLM or AI in general,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: language models, Do you think that that is going to
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: pick up and compete with things like Muse or some
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: of these other platforms that are rolling out these AI
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: computers in the cloud?
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do very much so.
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: And I think it's really about the convergence of these
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: different product pillars.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: So we talked about Intense, Ironclaw, and.
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: What's actually powering the privacy behind Ironclaw is private inference.
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: And so a technology stack focused on confidential computing, where
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: you can interact with open models and have your prompts
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: be fully protected and confidential, have the outputs be fully
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: protected and confidential, and as a user, be able to
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: prove those things.
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: And so even with Muse moving in.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: The direction of user privacy and security, you still have
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: transparency of what's happening to Facebook employees. NIR is designing
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: in such a manner where even the people that are
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: building and the engineers and the operators can't see what's
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: happening in those interactions.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: So I think it's super powerful.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I want to go over to NIR revenue.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: When you look at overall intents and TVL on this,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: been climbing, but on the daily change, this had a
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: bit of a retracement here.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: What happened to TVL? Why did we see this reversal?
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this morning, I'm not sure if you were tracking it,
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: but there was a security event on Intense, which I
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: think likely was the driver of TPL dropping this morning.
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: And so there was a compromise of an underlying infrastructure component.
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: It resulted in a $ 3. 8 million estimated loss. I think
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: the incident response process around that from the team was great.
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: Communication was very clear and ultimately a commitment to make
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: all users whole in a very, very timely fashion. These
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: types of events are inevitable. in a public system. And
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: so I think it's really about how do you control them?
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: How do you respond?
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: And what do you do to make sure that users
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: are always made whole? And I think they covered all
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: those bases today.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: When you, okay, so obviously we see damage control with
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: projects a lot when they're trying to deal with something
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: of this nature. The other area that I'm always concerned
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: with is exposure. Obviously you could see intense right here
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: and just the relationship in terms of Zcash is, do
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: you feel like I'm sure you don't feel this way,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: but I'm sure the market is looking at it to say, hey,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: is NEAR a little bit too exposed here in reference
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: to Zcash?
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: I think Zcash has been a great partner over the
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: past year. But if you've noticed over the last several weeks,
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: we just announced a partnership on the intent side with
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: Ondo to support more than 400 tokenized assets. And so
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: the dependency and volatility that we've realized on Zcash trading
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: pairs is going to scale beyond that into not just
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: digital crypto assets, but also tokenized assets as well. And
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: so I think that dependency or kind of like single
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: supplier relationship risk that you're pointing to is naturally going
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: to fall away. But I do, you know, in terms
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: of Zcash interactions and exchange, Near Intents is a great solution.
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: And so I expect it will continue to have high volumes,
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: but I do expect the volume mix to diversify over time.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: I want to jump back to the AI hack side
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: of things. In terms of the market in general, and
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not just talking about Near, we've seen a lot
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: of exploits over those last six months. The likelihood is
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: this could accelerate. Or maybe it's just social media that
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: it amplifies these exploits. But do you think that the
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: market is really prepared for the kind of potential exploits,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: especially if you look at the agentic issue that's being
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: faced around all sorts of deployments out there, whether it's
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Anthropic or OpenAI or many others that could get into this?
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Are you prepared? Do you feel like Nir is prepared
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: for this?
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, in terms of the market, NEAR is
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: one of the most well-prepared projects and has been thinking
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: about the future risks from a cybersecurity perspective to public
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: blockchains and smart contracts all the way back to 2019, 2020.
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: And Ilya's co-founder, Alex Gidinov, has been focused on formal
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: verification as a potential solution to have basically math proofs
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: over security properties of different types of applications and And
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: I think inevitably you will see the market move in
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: this direction where, you know, the advancements in AI pose
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: additional cyber risks. And then we start to build new
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: tools and technology that give greater assurance over security posture.
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: And NIR has been at the front edge of that
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: curve in the Web3 space, but also candidly across kind
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: of the Web2 cyber landscape as well.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: I want to go into another area, and that is
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: where we're seeing platforms In some cases, DeFi, we've seen
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: all sorts of apps that have moved into bank-like activities.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: And it's not that it is a bank, but it's
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: looking more and more like a bank every day. You guys,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: of course, have launched a very similar component right here.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: And I want to scan down here on the page
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: and notice your money. Now, it seems that you've got
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: where you can swap. You can do sends, invest in RWA's.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: earn on the assets and then eventually act almost as
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: if it is a bank. How soon is that before
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: we see those kinds of things coming in terms of features?
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: So if you look at near.com as an application right now,
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: it effectively offers the types of features that you experience
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: in a bank to your point, but in a non-custodial
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: manner where the user controls their assets with no centralized
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: third party involved. And so today you can swap assets,
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: you can earn on assets, You can trade perpetual futures
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: contracts on hyperliquid, for example, and very soon to the
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: point that you're alluding to, there will be a card
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: that goes in pairs with this account. And so you
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: can actually spend from that non-custodial surface into any traditional
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: kind of point of commerce.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: What about partnerships?
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Cause this is typically the on ramp for most of
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: these platforms to go in this direction. I know you
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: guys are partnered with Venice. We had the Venice founder
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: on not too long ago talking about that. You guys
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: can go back and watch that video. It's an interesting
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: view of, I guess, privacy-based AI usage. Are there other
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: partners out there that are helping you kind of ramp
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: this up?
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I alluded to this before on the tokenized
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: asset side, but just last week, a partnership was announced
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: with Ondo, which will present through the same experience in Near.com
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: and through Near Intense, the ability to hold one of
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: 400 tokenized equities inside of this account. And so by
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: swapping anything, it's not just digital assets. It's swapping tokenized equities,
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: tokenized money market funds. All of those products are available.
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: And I think the Ondo partnership is going to be
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: kind of a flagship moment for the year.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: So a couple of things I want to showcase here.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: One is this is on your website. This is a
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: breakdown of revenue share. because this was something I was
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: looking at and trying to understand it.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: Can you explain how this works?
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: And for many of you guys can go out to svrn.net,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: you can kind of zone in onto what I'm looking
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: at here on screen, but it shows the universal swap fees,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: distribution channel, et cetera.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Explain this to me a little bit.
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so effectively there's a revenue mix and depending on
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: where a transaction is processed through, if it's through near.com,
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: which is kind of the first party application built by
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: Diffuse Labs, There is a 20 BIP take rates that
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: accrues 100% to the protocol, meaning through buybacks of Near tokens,
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: all of that.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Value accrues there.
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: I was alluding to as well, many users may use
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: Near Intents and not actually know that they're touching it.
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: So for example, you pointed to Zcash, a number of
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: the Zcash retail wallets have integrated Near Intents as a
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: distribution partner. And in the context of those distribution partners
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: like Zotel or like Ledger as a hardware wallet provider,
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: there are fee share arrangements set up where the basis
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: points on the transactions are split between the distribution partner
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: and the Near buyback system. And so depending on the
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: channel that the transaction occurs, there's a different monetization and
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: value accrual mechanic to Near.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Do you think a lot of other projects are going
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: to get to this phase where they really start to
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: do revenue shares to amp up their market and some
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: of their own communities and kind of go in this direction?
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Near's been somewhat of a leader here.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I totally agree.
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: I was just on a conversation with Matt Hogan from
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: Bitwise prior to this. And, you know, this over the
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: last six months, we've kind of seen this revenue meta
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: where Hyperliquid in particular inspired a number of projects to
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: really think hard about value accrual to the native token.
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: And NEAR was right behind them with intense proving product
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: market fit, scaling in volumes and monetizing for the token
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: holders benefit. And so I think, you know, the market
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: will continue moving in that direction. projects that are focused
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: on value accrual to token holders are outperforming noticeably in
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: the top 20, but also beyond that. And I think
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: that trend will continue as this bull market ensues.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I want to look at liquid staking because this is
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: another issue that we obviously have seen with linear LNR.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: You can kind of see it. Where is the best
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: place right now to liquid stake near?
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's three different liquid staking protocols that have achieved
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: scale in the ecosystem. There's linear, There's Metapool, STNIR, and
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: then there is RNIR from Brea Finance, which is effectively
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: an aggregation of the different DeFi Legos between exchange, liquidity pools,
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: and lending. And so those are the three kind of
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: dominant liquid staking tokens in the ecosystem today.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious for our audience that are watching
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: this right now, how many of you guys are liquid
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: staking today? And you don't have to give me the asset,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: just let me know if you are.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: In the comments.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Do you think this is going to be something that
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: investors start to really act on in the future?
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, liquid staking tokens are an interesting way
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: that allows you to get protocol yield, but also use
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: the asset at the same time. And so oftentimes you
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: see users who want the yield, but also want to
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: use that asset as collateral to potentially take leverage and
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: buy more of the underlying or use the dollars or
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: stable coins that they're borrowing in a tax optimized way
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: to pay for things in their daily life. And so
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: those are generally the two kind of directions of travel
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: I see with LSTs is I want the yield, but
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: I also want that collateral asset either to take leverage
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: or to think about tax planning around utilization of the
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: stable coins I borrow against it.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and I think the point you're getting at
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: is that the opportunity for this getting into mainstream is
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: probably much bigger than I think a lot of people
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: really understand. You're sitting at right now, what are we at? $ 6. 3
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: billion in market cap on Near Protocol. What do you
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: think this potential is for this project right now?
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think today when you look at
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: the valuation, $ 6. 3 billion, the majority of investors, both retail
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: and institutions, are underwriting Near Intent's volume, revenue, and buybacks
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: to Near tokens. And they're looking at the entire AI
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: product suite as effectively a free call option where you
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: can underwrite the network at this valuation today on this
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: one product vertical that we know well. And then you
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: have the upside asymmetry for that call option. If private
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: inference or one of the AI products takes a similar
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: trajectory in terms of growth and product market fit, and
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: then finally monetization to the token, you have a significant
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: upside event. And so my view is that as the
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: user adoption and kind of consumption of the AI.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: Product suite scales, we will see a fee switch come
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: on that side.
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: And that will very likely be the next repricing event
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: where we see the market cap expand materially.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Okay. You danced around it.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: How much of a growth potential are we talking about here?
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we're going to see near in the
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: top 10 by the end of the cycle. And so
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: you can put benchmarks that's 25 billion or I think
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: we're somewhere between the three to five X, assuming we
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: prove product market fit and scale on the near AI side, right?
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: We're 17 today. I think the top 10 is what?
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: Hyperliquid ads. Yeah.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Hyperliquid at 22. Yeah.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: 22 billion right now. Um, so you're at seven near,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: is it 17 billion at six, three, six, uh, Zcash
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: right above that at number nine at 22, almost 23 billion.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: And then you move into Tron and Solana land, which
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: is significant. So that's a big move overall. I'm going
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: to take that one and take a look at this.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Is there anything that you look at on the road
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: map or anything within the AI trade, because this is
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: always something that I think traditional finance is worried about
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: right now, and that is a potential unwind. Are you
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: at all concerned about some sort of gray swan or
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: an impact on the market that could affect this in
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the near term? And I'm talking about next 12 months.
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I'm generally concerned about kind of the
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: gray swan event on the centralized frontier lab side. It's
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: going to be very interesting to see how these IPOs
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: go over. But I think the trend and direction of
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: travel that really started with Alex Karp on CNBC talking
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: about AI sovereignty in the context of enterprises is a
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: massive tailwind to all of the products that Mir is
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: building on the AI stack. They're designed to enable both
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: user and business sovereignty, privacy, confidentiality around their data and
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: information and edge. And so I do think it's possible
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: that we have some type of shock event on the
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: centralized AI side, but I think ultimately despite whatever short-term
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: impact that may have on AI related tokens in the
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: kind of crypto space, that will be a driver of
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: adoption and then ultimately repricing on the near side.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, if you look at just the interest
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: by region right now, I'm looking at privacy, flock, and
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: data privacy, all of course on significant uptrends right now
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: here on Google Trends over the last 25 years. It's
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: been a spike specifically here right around 2025 and started
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: to move specifically toward this direction, which NEAR has been
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: focused on for quite some time. So you may be
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: exactly right here, as there could be some big benefits
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: to the upside here. Hey, Sal, thank you so much
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: for coming in today. We appreciate the breakdown, learning a
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: little bit more about it and where NEAR is heading.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: So thanks for stopping in.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: Of course. Thanks for having me.
• 22:07
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• 22:09
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• 22:12
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• 22:13
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