Ep 176: MALWARE, serious tech news from unserious people. 1) Bitcoin Nears All Time High, ETH Doesn't & Why 2) Polymarket Wash Trading Allegations 3) Apple Intelligence Fails

[00:00] Malware is a non-technical look at the tech news of the week. This is a podcast where we learn together about everything from crypto to AI to whatever comes next in tech. I'm Natasha Hoskins. I'm Dina Burke. And this is Boys Club. Wait, is it just Boys Club? It's just Boys Club. [00:18] The boys club podcast. No, no. [00:20] Just boy stuff. [00:22] How was your Halloween? Halloween was great. It rained. Oh no! I know. What? Yeah, so we were all in... well, Dave and I were in costumes, but the kids were in costumes. [00:38] Two and a half months. [00:40] I'm so sorry. I've been hearing about it. Yes. From you, from your children. Very, very excited for this holiday. I would say your guys' most celebrated holidays. A true heathen household. I think so. And so... [00:56] Like pouring or like drizzle? Yeah. Yeah. So, but we just had to do it and we just were fully wet and just embraced it and we had a great time, but it was, it was fully raining. Oh, poor guys. I know. How was your Halloween? It was really nice. I had a great time. I went to bathhouse. So I was not trick or treating. I was in a sauna and having a great time. So. Any like sauna costumes or not? [01:26] - No, no costuming. [01:28] I wasn't picking up any costumes in the downstairs at the Flatiron Bathhouse, but there was candy. They had candy on the way out. So that was a nice touch. So yeah, I had a nice time, a nice schvitz and cold plunge and glass of rosé. And honestly, wonderful.

[01:46] Absolutely wonderful. Incredible. [01:48] Yeah, so different speeds. But [01:49] all of my friends in Brooklyn who have kids, it was like incredible weather. It was like 70 something degrees, which is terrifying. But... [01:58] for them, iconic [02:01] - Totally. - An iconic Halloween. So lots of really cute photos coming out of that. And every year they're like, they've actually stopped asking me. They used to be like, come down Franklin Ave, we're gonna do all the shops and all the kids. And I went a few years and then I was like, I actually, [02:15] Don't. [02:16] like this. I don't think that's the move for you. It's very chaotic, you know? Yeah, totally. Yeah. So the energy is all time high. All time high. There's a lot of sugar anyway. So I went a different route this year. I respect that a lot. Okay. This is malware. This is [02:37] Serious tech news by unserious people. Is that the line? We're trying it out. Great. And we talk about what's happening in crypto and AI and emerging tech. And we do it in layman's terms. We do it in an approachable, fun way. [02:51] entertainment first way. So tell your, tell your friends, tell your wife, tell your kids. [03:00] And we have a few stories that we're going to cover today. What are we talking about today? Okay. So today we're going to be talking about Bitcoin price. It, it, [03:08] flirted with its all-time high didn't quite get there but want to talk about some of the reasons why it's pumping right now okay cool also get a vibe check on eth ethereum

[03:21] Down bad. [03:22] not quite in the same position so we're going to talk a little bit about crypto prices which is something that we never rarely do but it feels appropriate to do this week given it kind of ties into the election and it's like hitting a couple other buckets of stories that we do like to think about so we're gonna talk about that and then gonna talk about polymarket wash trading and [03:41] Allegations. [03:42] Oh, so that's a juicy story. And then we are going to touch on Apple's. [03:49] Apple intelligence update and how that is causing chaos abound. Great. I'm excited. [03:55] Let's get into it. Let's go. [03:57] you [03:58] Hey Natasha, so a question we get asked a lot is, what do you look for in a crypto platform? So let's talk about it. Well, Dina, I look for a secure, no fuss platform that I can dive into right away. That's why I love today's sponsor, Kraken. If you're waiting for the right time to get into crypto, Kraken makes it super easy and intuitive to get started. Plus, if you get stuck, they have an award-winning client support team that's available 24-7, along with a bunch of educational guides, articles, and videos to help you along the way. [04:28] go to kraken.com backslash boys club not investment advice crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to us customers through payward interactive inc [04:40] I have little anecdotes for all these stories. Well, I'm the personality hires on this. So you better come prepared. [04:49] Ha ha ha ha ha. [04:50] Okay, so the first one is Bitcoin all-time high. Bitcoin all-time high, yeah. Flirts with all-time high. Yeah. I have been tweeting some very funny tweets in my opinion. And I'm being shadow banned. I must be because they're not getting any engagement whatsoever. Okay. And I really love the format. Anxiety is so stupid.

[05:11] Like... [05:11] And then you say whatever it is that you're anxious about. So like the original one was anxiety is so stupid. Like what? [05:18] what if something happens? [05:19] Yeah. [05:20] Which is funny. [05:21] Like anxiety is so stupid. [05:23] sitting here like what if something happens yep yeah she's loving she loves it i love it it's a little bit of a thinker [05:29] It's there's a cerebral load. And I tweeted the other day, having anxiety is so stupid. Like, what if this is the last all time high? [05:39] A-T-H, which I think is a great tweet. [05:42] And also like baiting to a crypto audience, which sometimes I just decide to do because I'm like, I need to... [05:49] Give the people what they want. You need to kiss the ring. Exactly. [05:53] No engagement. None. Uh-huh. No engagement. Uh-huh. What's going on? Do you know? What do I do? Well, I think that Elon Musk wants you to pay for a subscription. [06:05] That's so embarrassing. To his product. I don't know. I'm too ashamed. I think that that's what people are saying. I might do it. I might do it. [06:14] But like, why? Why am I doing it? [06:17] The money is a business expense. [06:19] It's a business expense. Great. No, it's like, why do I need that? [06:23] validation the likes on my tweets oh you're not gonna do it i don't know i'm saying like i'm i'm trying to have some self-reflection about whether or not i should do anyway it doesn't matter i see i see so bitcoin almost did it right right right that's a deeper question why do you why do you need that it's a deeper question why do you need those clicks

[06:41] Yeah, but I... [06:43] feel like I've really had writer's block around tweeting. Like I just had no [06:48] no tweets in me. Yeah. And then the other day I started tweeting and I was like [06:52] It's fun when it's [06:53] Flowing. When the heart chakra is open. When the heart chakra is open, it's... [06:57] A great time. Tap in. [06:58] Yeah. So anyway, if you see a new little blue icon next to my name, just know that I was in turmoil about whether or not to do it. So talk to me. Okay. Bitcoin. [07:10] In this week's newsletter, I gave Bitcoin she, her pronouns. Oh my God. Your newsletter this week was incredible. It was incredible. The reason why it didn't get more play is because wet and ready. [07:23] Took over. That was that took over the timeline for me. [07:27] So you can't have two bangers back to back like that and expect both to be acknowledged. Thank you. That's the lesson. I appreciate that. [07:34] Bitcoin almost hit its all-time high. In doing some research for the story, what I'm most present to is how there's no consensus on what the all-time high number is, weirdly. Okay. You would think it'd just be, there'd be one number. How is that not, wait, what? It's not very different. It's somewhere around... [07:49] seven seventy three thousand seven hundred and thirty seven or seventy three hundred five hundred there's a two hundred dollar range but okay i was like i'll get a cold crisp number isn't that the whole fucking point of the blockchain but i think it's like yeah things trade at slightly different prices and there's like a little bit of a spread and some chart gets it here some chart gets it so regardless we're about two hundred dollars off from our all-time high okay according to coin

[08:19] 24. So it was fairly recently that we were there and it is up 8% on the week. So it was a [08:27] An 8% rise in one week for Bitcoin, which is huge. [08:30] Cool. [08:31] the speculation as to why two things one it seems to be retail driven [08:39] Okay. Retail investors. We love that. Regular Joe's. [08:42] You and me. And it seems to be around a Trump victory. In anticipation of a Trump victory. [08:51] So a bit of a mixed bag here. A little bit of a mixed bag, yeah. So there was a JP analyst report that came out earlier this week that was basically saying like a Trump victory will increase the Bitcoin price in the short term. [09:03] And... [09:04] So that I mean [09:08] Thank you. [09:09] That. That's... [09:10] may very well be true. [09:12] And so that could be what is running the numbers up. Have you voted yet? [09:17] I have not, no. I like the feeling of the day. I like to participate in a collective moment. Yeah. [09:24] What about you? I haven't voted yet, but I plan to do early voting. [09:27] I don't need the collective moment. I actually don't love. I feel like I don't want to be in community with people, with my neighbors. At all. There was a moment in my sauna last night where I sat down and they were like, okay, there's a class beginning. Uh-huh. [09:42] And I was like, [09:44] with somebody and I was like, do we want to do the class? Do we not want to do the class? And we're like, oh, let's just. [09:48] Do the glass.

[09:49] And the whole time it's supposed to be relaxing. [09:53] And I am thinking about [09:56] everybody's experience and the teacher yeah and the emotional labor of this collective moment and i was just like what the fuck is wrong with me i'm literally in the most relaxing place on earth and i'm like how's everybody doing everybody okay i have been faced with that exact choice in that exact location for that exact class before with dave and we have both we both were like no we don't want to so you like the collective experience of voting but not the collective [10:26] That's nice. Yeah, you get your button or [10:28] sticker it's totally um i haven't voted yet that said in the analyst report he called it something [10:35] called a debasement trade. [10:37] And I did not know what that was. So I took to no dumb questions in the Boys Club Discord and I said, does anyone know what this means? What's a debasement trade? And Michelle, who works in TradFi and always comes through on my TradFi questions. Yeah, she's there. She's right there. She said debasement trade means it's betting on the lowering value of USD over time. [10:59] So it's kind of this idea ties into the bigger idea around de-dollarization and inflation. So not exactly an optimistic trade, but that is part of the speculation of what's going on with the Bitcoin price right now. I will say that the vibe doesn't seem to match Bitcoin. [11:18] the price [11:19] The vibe does not...

[11:22] Hence why my tweet didn't perform. Exactly. Like that's what I was expecting. [11:27] I don't know, we're in a few group chats together... [11:29] that are like, [11:30] not boys club really that are about crypto and very quiet around it the [11:36] timeline very quiet around like it's just there's not a lot of excitement not a lot of excitement you could say that we're not really in bitcoin circles we're not in bitcoin circles but i do get some ancillary stuff and i haven't really been getting much ancillary stuff no laser eyes this that and that's not happening this time around and i'm not quite sure why if it is retail that's driving this price action it might be the fact that eth is not moving up and so there's this tension because most of our [12:02] world is a dot eath moment yeah that it's not coming together in the same way [12:08] in the collective excitement around it. Yeah, perfect segue to the next part of the story, which is Ethereum. I'm a pro. [12:16] is is not there what's the price of ethereum right now i don't even let myself look so it was 24 two and a half [12:23] $1,000. Wow, look at me. [12:26] 25 2575 today the all-time high is 4 700 oh i know that's [12:33] what i bought it at that's what you bought it at no i think i bought it at like 39. [12:37] Yeah. [12:37] Amazing. [12:39] Yeah. Incredible. So good. So the story is not quite as [12:44] compelling i will say that it is up 15 in the last 20 days [12:48] honestly that's that's more depressing i didn't realize it was down that bad yeah it's not and okay the general vibes around ethereum right now are are bad atrocious i want to talk about that but i do want to say that part of part of i don't know if this is true or not but there's the chat around some of the price stuff for sure has to do with like the l2s and we can talk about that and just general eth versus lana stuff that's happening right now but also vitalic

[13:18] vitalik sold or effectively sold 400 eth which is about 1 million dollars to donate it to four ukrainian humanitarian non-profits oh wow but because people track his wallet so closely there's like fud that comes up whenever he moves eth out of his wallet people are like you're selling you don't believe in the people get all uptight about it yeah and even though it was for these non-pro these like incredible humanitarian aid things people were still being assholes about [13:48] you hate to see it you really do [13:51] You really do hate to say it. So I saw you take to the Discord also for... [13:56] understanding why people are so down on Ethereum right now and [14:03] Well, why don't you explain why? And then I'm going to ask some dumb questions about it. So a few of the ones that are like getting headlines are the L2 explosion is extractive on Ethereum value. [14:16] We've seen a lot of L2s launch recently. We don't have to name any names, but people are saying that that splinters value [14:23] Splinter's Ethereum's value across all these different chains and fragments liquidity and fragments action and stuff like that. So that that's one big narrative. And then the second one is Solana dominance, where people are like, it's a better place to be building. It's [14:38] There's more energy. It's super cheap. It's all consolidated into this one chain. It's not like you have all these different things that are happening everywhere on all these different sub chains. So I think that's kind of the other that's the other part of the story.

[14:51] Okay, two things that I don't understand about it. One is that [14:54] How can all of these L2s that are built on top of Ethereum, [14:58] not increase the value of like the foundational blockchain that they're all working from. That just doesn't make sense to me. I would love for someone to come on and explain why that totally because you would think that it would that like it's not splintering value. It's increasing value because you're building on top of it. But I'm sure someone somewhere knows why. And then the second thing is. [15:20] Why is the price of Solana not going up faster if everybody's like, that's the chain that's going to win? Because... [15:27] I've also bought some Solana and it's also not gone. So let us just pray. [15:33] that it starts moving, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So those are my two very basic... [15:39] questions. So come on down, slide into the DMs if you are... [15:44] have answers, you know? Great. [15:46] Totally. I would love to know. Last part of the story here, just on like money and stocks and crypto and that category of interest. Mm hmm. [15:54] Meta had their earnings call. There was actually a bunch of earnings call this past week. I saw these. And Meta and Microsoft both had really great earnings calls, beat estimates, beat estimates, [16:05] on sort of where they were going to be financially. But yesterday, both of their, Meta and Microsoft's stocks both slipped because basically in the earnings call, [16:15] Though they beat estimates, they were basically like, we just got to spend a ton of money on AI infrastructure and R&D. And it's like a blank check.

[16:24] Wow. [16:25] Write it out to cash. [16:26] Yeah. And they're just like, we have to just keep spending, spending, spending, spending, spending. [16:31] And... [16:33] Investors don't like to hear that. And so both our stocks slipped. That's what my bank account feels like right now. It's like, we just have to keep spending. [17:03] No matter where you are, you can send funds easily and quickly to almost any part of the world. Plus, forget about waiting times and waiting lines. You can send, receive, and trade crypto anywhere near instantly. Visit kraken.com backslash boys club. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to U.S. customers through Payward Interactive Inc. No third-party transfers available. Okay, let's move to Polymarket. Great. Polymarket, prediction market. Okay, here's my anecdotal story about this. Okay. [17:33] Sean? Sean? Shane? [17:35] Shane, the CEO, the CEO, the founder and founder. Yep. [17:38] 26. Yes, he's young. I've never met him, but I was walking down the street the other day and in Soho. [17:45] And someone was walking towards me. And I was like... [17:48] Thank you. [17:49] I don't know that person. [17:51] And I was like, I must... [17:52] I know that person. Is that a celebrity? Do I know that person because they're a celebrity? Do I know that person because I met them somewhere? And then...

[17:59] I... [18:00] As he was passing me, I... [18:02] was like, oh, that's the polymarket guy. [18:05] And then the moment had passed, but there was a... [18:08] there was a part of me that I should have been like, oh my God, poly market. But then I thought, [18:14] This 26-year-old [18:15] does not need some woman... [18:18] on the street being like, [18:19] you're the founder of polymarket i'm sure he would have been so happy i'm sure to hear from you but on that there's no doubt in my mind that he would have been pumped about it well oh you mean he didn't he doesn't need it he doesn't need that he doesn't need that for his ego he doesn't need that for his ego certainly i think it was actually like a service to him that i didn't was yes i see where you're i see your point now yes yes yes anyway that's my story about polymarket um my story about polymarket is that [18:43] boys club discord friends will know that i put a bet on months ago i put a bet that trump would go on joe rogan and the odds at the time of me putting placing that bet on polymarket [18:53] were really in my favor. I think it was like 20% or something that he was not going to go on. And so [18:59] I, [19:00] but [19:01] I don't know, 50 bucks, 50 bucks on that, 40 bucks on that. And, [19:06] Trump goes on Joe Rogan. I win $150. Nice. And so I had $200 in my polymorphic account, basically. And she's a traitor. I'm a traitor. I was so happy. Honestly, that's like the only thing I've ever won. [19:21] Of course. [19:23] Ha ha ha. [19:25] All it takes is a little bit of conviction when everyone else is telling you no. Totally. And I'm like, no, yes, I believe that he's going to go on Joe Rogan. I should have spun up a market around Kamala going on Call Her Daddy. Yeah. If I had had the...

[19:39] idea [19:40] Anyway, continue. I parlayed that winning. [19:45] I don't know if that's what parlay means. Is that what parlay means? It's not. It's not. That's not. That's inaccurate. But that's okay. I parlayed that winning. [19:55] into... [19:57] I put that winning into so Kamala's odds to win the presidency have been bad. [20:05] Which is what we're going to talk about today. There has been a turn in... [20:08] the story today, I think this morning, in Kamala's favor. But basically, for the last week, Donald Trump's percentage [20:16] on Polymarket is like 65, 69%, like really, really high. And so [20:21] if you think there's a chance that kamala will win this was the week to put in your bet i put in 200 if she does win [20:28] I get $600. Wow. So, so also, [20:33] You're like, I have many incentives for this woman to win. [20:38] There's $400 on the line for Tina. I have $400 on the line, Kamala. Do it for me. [20:46] But it's interesting that today it slipped Donald Trump's at 62%. She's at 38%. I do think it has to do with the Epstein story that just came out that we're not gonna talk about here. But I almost tweeted. [20:58] And then I thought better of it. [21:00] If Kamala Harris texts me one more time, I'm going to vote for Donald Trump. That woman needs to get off my dick. I'm like, I'm not. I'm done. I'm done. I'm voting for you. Yeah. Let it go, babe. Yeah. Like, it's too much. I'm surprised she's texting you that much in New York State.

[21:16] It's for primarily donation-based. [21:20] I see. Stuff. I see. She's like, you've done it once. Do it before. And I'm just... Unsubscribe. [21:27] Yeah, I did hear that a good deal of donations come in at the last in the last week or something like that. There's like an outside based on how they're direct marketing. I can imagine so. [21:37] Okay, so Polymarket, whatever, he's at 62% today, he's been at 69%. [21:43] It... [21:44] has very much been in the zeitgeist of this [21:47] election. [21:48] People are talking about it all the time. Elon Musk is talking about it all the time. People are using it as a proxy for polls. [21:54] that is an inaccurate thing to do. People should not be doing it. It does not reflect people's intention to vote. If you've ever tried to place a bet on polymarket, you will know that it does not reflect the average person. [22:06] You fire up the VPN. Exactly. You bridge to Polygon. The fact that CNN is like, this is a place where we're like actually learning about what people want is a crazy thing to be doing. Yeah. Some people would say to that point, [22:20] It's not a poll, but it's actually even more accurate than a poll because people are putting their skin in the game and people are putting their money on who they think is going to win. [22:28] But... [22:29] To me, I'm like, that's exactly why it's less accurate, because they're just saying who they think is going to win. It doesn't reflect any intention to vote. And so I get that it's an interesting signal to look at. [22:40] For sure. [22:41] I think it's, I've been looking at it basically every day. I think it's really... [22:44] Interesting. [22:46] Uh-huh.

[22:46] But it's not the Bible. [22:49] It's a signal. [22:50] Not to say that I think any of the Gallup polls are accurate either. I think those are just interesting signals too. But people have been like, it's the truth. Which is crazy. It's a crazy thing. Which is a crazy thing to do. Okay, so there's a couple of things that have happened with Polymarket lately. The first thing that got news this week is basically there's been two separate investigations by two separate crypto firms that found that there was significant wash trading on the platform. Wash trading is basically when... [23:16] it can take a lot of different forms but one form is like an investor sells and then immediately buys the same crypto asset or that they send stuff to a wallet that they also own okay um like you send an nfg from one wallet that you own to another or like you buy something on openc from a wallet that you also control so it's just moving around to the same wallets basically the money there's no exchange really a value but it does drive the volume up and some people look at volume [23:46] And is the speculation that they internally are doing that? [23:49] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's just happening on Polymarket. Okay, that's basically just like people are using this as a place to [23:56] that people are wash trading on Polymarket. The speculation as to why is because there has been rumors that there will be a Polymarket token at some point. [24:06] and... [24:07] some of these retroactive airdrops are based on activity. And so if you have like a ton of activity on – [24:16] Polymarket or somewhere else where there is a retroactive token drop. The thinking and the hope is that you would get a higher percentage of the tokens. Yeah. Because you're seen as like a heavy user.

[24:27] And you will then be like rewarded as such. So there's people who are saying that that wash trading is happening because of that. And there's also no fees to trade on Polymarket. So it makes it really easy to do that type of step. Okay. And also you can certainly... [24:41] Inflate volume. [24:43] which can help create a narrative that you want to create. But I actually don't know that you can move the price. [24:50] Okay. That's an important part of the counter to the story, which Aubrey Strobel wrote a great article and a long thread, which basically like counters some of the more damning parts of this investigation. It's on the blockchain, so we can see it. And that's crazy and cool and something that you can't see with the online bookmakers, traditional betting places that are also taking bets for... [25:12] the presidential election. They're regulated, so you have to hope that they're doing things above the line and in a way that Polymarket is unregulated. But we can see all the stuff that's happening on Polymarket. And I don't know, that kind of gets stepped over in the story, but I do think that that's actually a really compelling part of it that makes it really different. One of the firms found that there was up to a third of all the volume is wash trading. [25:37] Thank you. [25:38] wow yeah it's a lot it's a lot of the volume it's a lot of volume [25:43] Now, there was another story that came out a couple weeks ago that basically did the same thing where they looked at all the data. [25:50] And [25:51] they were like, there's a few whales here that are... [25:56] responsible for a lot of activity on the presidential market in particular and they

[26:03] found that there's basically these four traders that are [26:06] Accountable for 30 million [26:09] dollars in bets and that there's one person a french national is the only thing they were able to find about this person that really went hard and long [26:18] on trump to win okay and that that did affect the odds but there's nothing manipulative in that that's just the bet that he placed and so that did change the odds 2.7 billion dollars in bets in the presidential election market damn yeah so that's all happening and that's been used for people to say [26:40] to freak out about polymarket and say like everyone who's using the polymarket as like a proxy for for polls and for donald trump's dominance like shame on you basically they're using it as a way to [26:52] discredit the platform and therefore discredit [26:54] the authority [26:57] as a data point that's stronger than the polls around who's going to win. Exactly. Because it's a bad narrative. [27:03] Because right now Donald Trump is winning if you look at Polymarket. Yeah. Which... [27:08] in my opinion. [27:10] Just stop talking about Polymarket. You're legitimizing it. [27:13] by giving air. [27:14] to [27:15] this as like a smoking gun gotcha on polymarket because it's just like you should just say like yeah this is a betting this is vegas this is las vegas on the internet like that's my opinion that's my opinion

[27:35] Let's end here with a very quick hit story. A very fun story. Very funny story. Very funny story. So there's a tweet from Farrell this week. [27:45] It goes, my mom, that hike almost killed me. [27:47] And then it's a screenshot of Apple's AI summary. And it says, attempted suicide, but recovered and hiked in Redlands, Palm Springs. [27:57] So funny. So there's a new Apple intelligence was released on the latest iOS update. [28:04] And it is doing the honor of summarizing some notifications. It summarizes iMessage notifications. I've seen a lot of really funny ring notifications that it's summarizing Slack notifications that it's summarizing in your home screen. [28:18] and it's getting it wrong hilariously it's so funny it reminds me of when google's ai summary was happening and it was taking all of the reddit threads and then saying like how do you cook a pizza and it's like you add two tablespoons of elmer's glue and like it has the same energy of just like man these bullshit machines really can pump it out when they're [28:41] left to their own devices totally and like the like nuance of humanity is totally lost yes exactly like humor sarcasm all of that is like just not flattened completely like an ai an llm that looked at all of my text messages and all all of the output that i put onto any written form on my phone it would [29:04] it would red flags everywhere.

[29:08] Totally. So there's a subreddit that's spun up Apple intelligence fail, really funny stuff. I'll link it in the show notes. And it just has all the all the hits on where AI has gotten it wrong. And you know, [29:22] Love to see it weirdly. I don't know why, but it's so fun and satisfying to read. 100%. 100%. Okay. That's this week in tech. Thanks for listening. [29:34] *music*