Backpack lost 90% of its capital when FTX collapsed in 2022, and Armani Ferrante reveals how the team survived with almost no money before rebuilding the company around a four-year global expansion plan “We shouldn't exist. Backpack should not exist” “Backpack, we did a round from FTX and others back in, I guess, 2022. FTX collapses, we lose all of our money. It was like 90% of our capital. The company's dead for all intents and purposes” “But we didn't shut it down, went into cockroach mode, had zero money, basically, and just hard pivoted. We really viewed the collapse of FTX as this really important inflection point” “We were just like, okay, forget all of this stuff. Let's rebuild everything from the ground up” “We literally sat in an office in Chicago, took a map of the world, color-coded it, and figured out a four-year game plan. How do we get the money? How do we build the product? How do we get the teams together? And we've literally been setting up teams and offices around the world for four years” w/ @armaniferrante, @Backpack

Banks loses it watching Ansem's viral moment at a Crypto Twitter charity 3v3 basketball game, claiming his aura is maxed out for the rest of the year “Bro, this is insane. At a fucking CT, crypto, charity, basketball, man, 3v3, this is actually fucked up” “Everybody was like, what the fuck, bro? Out of nowhere. Bro, I'd have been popping my shit the fuck off. Going crazy” “That was insane. That was tough. Not gonna lie. Aura meter at max for the rest of the year minimum, at least off that” “Oh man, look at the freeze frame, look where I was at. This is crazy. That's brutal, bro, not gonna lie” w/ @Banks, @blknoiz06

Ansem outlines four basic trading entries and how combining higher timeframe levels with lower timeframe price action can help identify stronger setups “If you're long, you're either buying support or you're buying a breakout. And that's very simply, on all time frames, what you're doing” “These are really your two general ways that you're getting entries. You're looking at either high timeframe levels or lower timeframe price action” “If you can get both of those things to align, that's typically when you have the best setups” “If you have a monthly support level that you know is super strong and has only been tested once or hasn't been tested yet, then you drill down to the lower timeframes” “For shorts, it's the same type of situation where you're looking to sell resistance with some stop above, or you're looking to get in on a breakdown to the downside” w/ @blknoiz06

Mayne shares how he prepares for major market corrections by marking weekly demand zones and setting buy orders or alerts before prices start crashing “We get a major correction, like, the first thing that I do is I go across all the charts that I like, and I just say, where's weekly demand? Like, where's the weekly retest?” “That's kind of where you want to set your stink bids, or at least alerts, because what happens generally is if we do get some sort of correction, and the market starts to nuke, when it's nuking, it's very hard to act” “Because you're like, oh, where's support? When's it going to drop?” “But if you do this before the nuke and you actually say, okay, here's levels where I should be interested in, it'll help you actually take action once the move occurs” w/ @Tradermayne

Mayne reveals his two-timeframe rule for every trade, using higher timeframes to identify key price levels and lower timeframes to find precise entries and stop losses “When you understand that these patterns are the same across all time frames, really the magic, at least for me, comes when you combine two time frames together” “I have a two time frame rule for all trades that I take. I don't take any trade off of a singular time frame. It's always two” “The higher time frame, whatever it is, it could be the monthly and weekly, it could be the four hour if you're a lower time frame trader, that's where you're looking for your levels, your demand, your area where you think price is going to get a reaction” “Once price gets to that zone, that's when you scale down to the low time frame and you look for that fractal to play based on what you think is going to happen” “When you start to get good at that pattern recognition, it helps you turn what a lot of people believe is noise on the low time frame into exactly how I get into my setup, why I know where the entry is, and why I know where the stop loss is” w/ @Tradermayne

AI stocks have dominated the market while crypto struggled, and Ansem is worried that a slowdown in equities could make things even harder “I don't think our macro cycles right now are aligned with the equities macro cycle” “AI cooked us. They outperformed us by a lot” “Nvidia is just like the best thing to look at for this” “It's pretty clear this was the dominant trend” “I was super bullish going into Q3” “I thought these were going to continue to rip up. Crypto was going to continue to go back to all-time highs” “If it's actually a slowdown coming for equities and risk in general, I think it's going to be difficult for crypto to outperform in that environment” @blknoiz06 reflects on how differently crypto and AI stocks have performed since the 2022 market downturn. Nvidia and other major AI companies captured much of the market momentum, while crypto struggled to sustain the recovery he had expected. He entered Q3 anticipating another move toward all-time highs across crypto, but now acknowledges that his outlook was too optimistic. His concern has shifted toward the broader equity market. If the leading AI stocks and major indices enter a prolonged slowdown, the pressure on risk assets could make a meaningful crypto recovery even more difficult. He is increasingly cautious about the possibility that crypto will have to navigate a weaker macro environment before its next sustained rally.

Ansem breaks down why false breakouts and false breakdowns matter, as large traders can absorb aggressive buying and selling at key liquidity levels to build their positions “When you have a market trying to choose the direction that it's trending in, when you absorb a lot of activity at key spots, it's simply bad for the people who are trying to push the price there” “If you have this high, whatever market buys at this level, thinking this is going to be a breakout, a lot of people are absorbing all of that buy flow with their limit sells” “For people to build larger positions, you typically need to go to the areas of most liquidity” “The areas of most liquidity are where you're going to see a lot of market buying in whichever direction” w/ @blknoiz06

A livestream with just 100 viewers could generate 1 million clip impressions, and Tulip King details how better clipping and distribution can turn a small audience into a scalable media business “Let's just pretend you have like 100 live viewers, but you do like a million in clip impressions. Your business, which is selling views on the clip impressions, is actually based on your ability to convert stream into clips” “As you become more efficient, as you build out clippers more, as you get better at identifying the right moments, doubling down on working content, that multiplier grows” “The only two metrics that matter are total impressions and live viewers. Live viewers are what seeds engagement in everything you do. Total impressions is essentially the efficiency of the machine that you've built around distribution” “Our live viewers have grown a lot over the last year, and our multiplier of how many impressions we get per stream has also grown. If we can grow both of those, you have a multiplier to multiplier, you have an exponential business” w/ @tulipking

The biggest demand for tokenized U.S. stocks could come from outside America, with CZ pointing to limited brokerage access and inconvenient trading hours for international investors “Democratizing access is the right word. Today most of the tokenization happens with tokenizing U.S. equity market stocks and then putting them on chain” “The people who are in the U.S. don't have a high demand for those. They can already open a brokerage account. It's the people in the rest of the world” “Most people cannot even open a U.S. brokerage account. And even for the people in Asia, when they can open a brokerage account, the trading hours will be from midnight to 6 a.m. They can't do that every single day” “By tokenizing on the blockchain, the rest of the world can have access to the liquidity, to the investment instruments. We also see that a lot of the trading volume outside New York trading hours is actually higher” w/ @cz_binance

Some of the biggest opportunities in crypto can take months for the market to recognize, and Ansem reflects on how short timeframes and excessive leverage have cost traders potential gains “That's what f*cks up people a lot, being too levered or being too short timeframe. Even a few months is not a long period of time” “Stuff being in a downtrend for three to four months, if you're really convicted on this thing and you have an outlook of a longer six months plus, a year, whatever, and you have a job and you're making money, slam as much as you can into this stuff when you get the opportunity to” “Your knowledge is not what everybody else knows, and I think that's what people fuck up on a lot. That's what I fucked up a lot on crypto” “How is this shit not higher? How is this not trading a lot higher? What am I missing? It's just because everybody else hasn't figured it out yet. That's where the money's at” w/ @blknoiz06

After spending over a year exploring crypto integration in traditional businesses, Santiago R Santos reveals why his investment strategy shifted toward AI in 2026 “We actually pivoted earlier this year. We spent over a year looking at many different sectors where we said, let's apply DePIN or integrate stablecoins into a business or use some form of crypto technology to make that business more efficient” “The conclusion that we came at is, you can certainly integrate it. It's useful technology. It doesn't release as much value as something like AI. We pivoted away from that, and we see huge amounts of potential to make those businesses more efficient” “That's not a dig on crypto. On the contrary, I think it's quite useful. If a business is using a stablecoin, they may save something on the margin, but it's not a reason to buy that business in its own right” w/ @santiagoroel

Ansem reveals months of work behind solana:9cRCn9rGT8V2imeM2BaKs13yhMEais3ruM3rPvTGpump and ansemio, with more developments planned beyond the token and an update coming soon “People ask me about ANSEM in the chat. The past few months, a lot of the time I've been spending has been on that” “The first iteration of ansemio I put out, I kind of rushed it just because I wanted to get something out to show it wasn't just going to be me bull posting or posting about the coin. There are also going to be other things attached to it” “That's going to be true in the future as well, but I don't want to rush and put something out that's not what I actually want it to be. I've been spending a lot of time on that, and I'll give more updates on it soon” w/ @blknoiz06

Ansem pushes back against the criticism of Pumpfun as an extractive business, pointing to its loyal user base and ability to generate revenue even during bear markets “Their everyday users are not complaining. That's why they were able to make a million dollars a day, even during the bear market, because they have this core user group that continues to come back” “Every business that is successful in crypto, when they have revenue, people call it extraction. I don't really know how Pump has gotten so much of the heat for this. You could say the same thing about Axiom, Raydium, Coinbase, everything” “The reason they're able to have revenue is because user behavior enables that. If what they were doing in the market was not working, they would not be making any money. Every other launchpad outside of Pump has not been able to unseat them” w/ @blknoiz06

The next generation of social platforms could be built around trading, with users spending as much attention managing their money as they do consuming content “Social media is where a lot of the younger generation spends a majority of their time” “It's not where they spend a majority of their money” “That shift is something that's happening very quickly right now” “It's going to be difficult for the larger social medias to nail trading” “There's so much content on Instagram, there's so much content on Twitter” “Smaller applications that are focusing on trading first and then building out the user distribution afterwards are going to have an advantage” “You want to have the strongest lock in with your users where they're risking the most of their capital” @blknoiz06 expects the relationship between social media and financial activity to change as younger users become more comfortable trading through social applications. Platforms like Instagram and X already command enormous amounts of attention, but their broad content ecosystems make it difficult to consistently surface relevant trading information. He sees an opportunity for smaller platforms that begin with financial activity as their core product. By focusing on trading first, these applications can build an audience around shared market interests and gradually introduce additional social features. He also considers capital commitment an important factor in user retention. People may develop stronger habits around an application when they actively manage money through it. His prediction favors trading-focused platforms that build their own communities over established social networks attempting to add financial features to an already crowded experience.

Santiago sees greater opportunities in public markets than venture capital, with the potential for venture-like returns, deeper liquidity, and lower early-stage risk “There's way more opportunity in the public markets. There's like 100 billion plus that was deployed in crypto venture because it's easier to underwrite. You talk to foundations, LPs, they love the venture aspect, but there's way less sophisticated capital in the public markets” “NVIDIA, you could have invested in NVIDIA like four years ago and done like a 14x. That's a remarkable return. Tons of liquidity, super well telegraphed” “The public markets, both in crypto and in the stock market, allow you to have venture-like returns because the outcomes are just getting larger and larger. And arguably, they carry way less risk than early-stage investing” w/ @santiagoroel

Avi Felman warns that chasing memecoins and sports bets could cost investors their chance to benefit from major long-term trends in AI and crypto “People are attracted to this idea of investing. I can grow my wealth. And over the last two to three years, a lot of that energy has been directed into meme coins, gambling, and sports betting” “Maybe don't buy the meme coin. Maybe focus on the fact that there are genuine world-changing mega trends happening right now, and you need to take advantage of that” “If you believe that in 10 years crypto is going to eat the world, or you believe that AI is going to grow massively, you need to be invested in the market. You can't be blowing yourself up buying the latest meme coin or gambling on sports” w/ @AviFelman

Ansem sees a lesson in Mert's long-term investing mindset: strong conviction in a few assets matters more than knowing when they'll take off “I think Mert honestly does this really well. He has a few assets in crypto that he knows eventually are going to do really well. He has no idea of the timeframe, but he has super strong conviction” “His way of approaching investing in crypto makes sense because he just has a super long time horizon. It's this really strong conviction on a few different things” “The reason why Bitcoin did so well in its early days, they weren't looking at the price. They weren't traders. They believed this was a way harder, way better form of money, and they were just going to hold until everybody else agreed with them” w/ @blknoiz06

Ansem loves what fomo has built so far, but he believes that educating the next generation of traders represents the platform’s most significant opportunity “I love fomo” “I think fomo's done a great job so far this cycle with hitting the social trends” “What is going to be interesting going forward is the education piece” “It's really easy to trade, cross-chain, any assets, stocks, perps, meme coins” “It's kind of hard for your person who doesn't know what all these assets are to get good education” “Most people don't even know what market cap is” “They might size things the exact same way” Asked by Frank Chaparro what he would like fomo to incorporate, @blknoiz06 focused on helping newer traders understand the markets they're entering. He appreciates the platform's social trading experience and the accessibility of different asset classes, but sees a gap between making trades easy to execute and helping users make informed decisions. Someone unfamiliar with market capitalization might approach a $1 million memecoin and a $1 billion asset with the same position size, without understanding the differences in liquidity, volatility or risk. Ansem also wants users to have better ways to evaluate the traders they follow, understand their strategies and learn how different markets work. As @fomo attracts people with varying levels of experience, he sees education as an area worth investing in alongside the trading experience. Making the platform easier to navigate is valuable, and helping users develop better judgment could give them more reason to keep using it over time.

One of Mert's favorite use cases for Zcash is private donations to Roman Storm, where he says the majority of contributions on Storm's donation website are made in $ZEC “One of my favorite use cases that we were talking about, now that we're talking about Satoshi, is Roman Storm” “If you look at his donations on his donation website, the majority are in Zcash” “That's a perfect use case of private money, which is politically sensitive donations to people who are fighting against the actual criminals who are the ones banning open source code” “That's a particularly favorite use case of mine” w/ @mert

Mayne wishes more experienced traders had shared their thinking when he first entered crypto, and now he's helping make that knowledge accessible to the next generation “It helps me reinforce my thesis if I'm able to speak about it confidently and describe it to other people simply. This is why I'm bullish on this for this reason” “We were talking about this backstage. It's kind of like the trader to content creator pipeline that we're all inevitably on. You just kind of want to share the message with the world” “A large part of doing content for me was wishing there were more people willing to share their market thoughts and just how they think and view trades publicly” “That wasn't really available when we first started. It was a lot harder to get information, where now we're in an information abundance era” “You have genuinely guys like Avi, guys like Flood, extremely sharp people talking on podcasts, sharing their thoughts, how they view markets” “If we can give that back in any way at all to the next generation, I think it's super cool. I love the way that crypto is going. I love the way that crypto media is going as well” w/ @Tradermayne, @blknoiz06