Joining me now, one of our favorites and one of my favorite all-time guests, Katy Perry, CMO of Zero Hash, also author of the brand new book Ticker Shock.
We'll talk a lot more about that in just a second.
Uh, thanks for being here, pal.
Happy Friday.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me and for having my book.
Of course, uh, Salt conference, yes, big potential market moving, you know, activity going on in the last few days.
Some top line takeaways for you and your.
Colleagues at Zero hats.
Yeah, so quick context, if you saw a bunch of people invest in cowboy hats in photos, they were at Salt.
Um, this is the annual blockchain symposium that's put on by the Mooch, and it really brings together the, the blockchain ecosystems, traditional finance.
They come together.
So we had a whole bunch of people from Zerohash on the ground.
They told me a few things about what was really being talked about.
One, The crypto extending beyond just thinking about it as buy and sell.
So a lot of stablecoins, real world assets, tokenized deposits, a lot of conversations not just around the price of Bitcoin, which had a very good week, but also sort of these other use cases.
The second one was quantum, which is obviously a very hotly debated topic.
A lot of these companies still believe that the so-called quantum threat is potentially not a threat or very far out, but there were.
Ecosystems talking about how they're getting ahead of this.
Of course, quantum computing can do those complex math problems that some people think pose a threat to the advanced cryptography that these blockchains are built on.
The third thing is, not a lot of people know this actually, but Wyoming has its own stable token, FRNT.
Zerahash announced there that they would be integrating that asset.
It's a really cool, interesting concept from a state that you wouldn't see that coming from.
And so.
What's going on there.
A lot of again people in boots that aren't normally in boots, and I'm sorry to miss the party at the Million Dollar Cowboy bar, and that was at Jackson Hole.
Yes, yeah, I think another big event at Jackson Hole.
It sounds like such a fun gig.
I always have FOMO.
I don't get to do the Jackson Hole.
I have the best outfits for it and I never get to go.
You mentioned Bitcoin's big week about Mr.
Crypto going to Washington, Brian Armstrong, Vlad, meeting with the administration.
What was the goal there and what do you think the top things to focus on would be?
Yeah, it was a, it was a symbolic showing of all these heavy hitters in crypto, as you mentioned, Vlad, Brian Armstrong, Ripple, all standing arm in arm with the president, and they're really making a case for why the United States, why it's an imperative that we lead in digital assets and why getting the Clarity Act done is so necessary to that.
And so they're really emphasizing the benefit to the everyday person, having the same financial regulatory structures and protections as the traditional.
Financial system, um, and so it was really symbolic if you look at the photos to see all of them standing there.
TBD, how that moves the needle on clarity though.
OK, fair enough, um, anthropic IPO chatter.
What's I mean, we've been talking about this for a while, but the, the streets are saying this could come within a month.
Uh, this is coming off, uh, news that, you know, their annualized revenue run rate is 65 billion.
Put that into context.
That's what Cisco's at and Oracle's at roughly.
Those are companies that have been around for decades.
Anthropic is 5 years old, so we're looking at potentially what could be the biggest IPO ever again just a couple of months after SpaceX.
It took SpaceX 7 years to break the record last time.
The new book, well, it's new for all of us.
You've been working on for quite some time.
Ticker Shock playbook for investor relations, comms leadership in the age of retail investors.
What is it all about?
What should people know?
Yeah, it's about the wave of retail investors, how they're following narratives, how narratives moves.
Market.
A lot has been written about that topic, but this is for companies.
If you're an executive, a coms person, IR teams, how to think about what this all means in the context of your business, whether you're thinking about IPOing or whether you're just looking out there and saying, gosh, I don't know how to handle all these Reddit investors.
There's a lot of anecdotes.
There's, uh, some funny stories, but a lot of really useful, uh, knowledge from hundreds of interviews I did with executives and IR teams to lead into it.
Um, and you can learn more at tickerhockbook.com.
And you're doing a university tour.
Do I have that right?
Yes, I'm doing a college tour.
My first stop is going to be at Notre Dame.
That's where I went.
Oh nice.
I'm picking a football weekend right now.
They're working with, they, they, they get it, right?
They're like, What football game do you want to go to?
And then you can, so, um, but yeah, if, if anyone watching is a professor, I'll be going around.
Hopefully you have a football team at your university, but if you don't, that's OK too.
The book is Ticker Shock, the author, the great Katy Perry.
Thank you for being here.
Enjoy your weekend.
Thank you, JD.
You as well.
