PANDAPALS ROUNDTABLE: 4:30 PM ET (+ After Dark 🐼)

Host: Panda (@PandaPump_) with co-hosts Waldo (@waldoforrealz) & Curtis Gore (@curtisgore) · Mon Aug 17, 2026 · ~10h05m across 3 restarted rooms · ~30 speakers

TL;DR

• The weekly PandaPals roundtable ran nearly ten hours across three restarts. The evening's real spine was one prompt: what was your biggest mistake in crypto, and how did you learn from it?
• Panda told the full PandaPals origin story — a 2017 ICO-era Telegram group that convinced him he could build community, then two years assembling a token, an audited staking contract, and a dual male/female NFT collection.
• The near-universal confession was not selling / round-tripping: Röcky lost ~30k his first year, Waldo made others millionaires but round-tripped his own bag from a $30M run down to $5k, Peanut re-locked funds one fateful night and never saw them again.
• Base cat mania vs. Robinhood dominated the market talk; WAGBi effectively CTO'd a base cat space and held it down overnight.
• Curtis minted Coda, the collection's only red-panda one-of-one.
• After Dark dissolved into voice-changer chaos, a replayed archive clip of a listener getting arrested mid-Space on his "Ethereum phone," and a Waldo-narrated panda-survival epic.

Highlights

[P1 9:08] — Curtis on the trading "pauses." Curtis Gore, calling in from work, explained that the GameStop/AMC/Tupperware freezes weren't Robinhood-only — Webull did it too. His read: they "lose their minds and freeze the market" to let insiders cover shorts before price runs again. He came out ahead on the meme trades anyway.

[P1 32:27] — The PandaPals origin story. Panda traced his arc from a 2015 CNBC Bitcoin banner he dismissed, through the 2017 ICO boom and a private Telegram group people called "the best group on Telegram," to two years (June '23–'25) building the token, a staking contract that survived a near-scam dev and two audits, and the dual panda/pandarina NFT collection.

[P1 49:39] — The flock rug legend. Panda relived presenting a flock-camera clip while unknowingly muted for ~20 minutes as the whole room emoted at him. "I said, I got the formula, I'm connecting with my people" — meanwhile Curtis "did a whole grocery shopping trip." Nobody left the packed room; Carrie still calls it one of the greatest times he's had in Spaces.

[P1 1:02:52] — Joseph on agents of chaos. Joseph (@TrudoJo) drew a careful line between people who "incubate chaos on purpose" and communities that can "sit with chaos and let it have a voice for a second before it settles" — reframing a rough weekend of community reshuffles as forced shadow work he'd signed up for.

[P1 2:27:43] — Röcky opens the mistakes roundtable. Röcky (@Rockchilld3) said his hardest stretch was his first year — down ~30k and depressed for weeks — until he decided "sheer power of will is not going to stop an uptrend," spent eight months learning to chart, and rebuilt from his remaining "moon dust" past his old losses.

[P1 3:08:02] — SLAVA on morals and euphoria. SLAVA (@LAVAwithanS) said his repeated "mistake" was being too early (Ohara, code) and having morals that cost him millions he refused to rug for. He described running a project to 400M holding 3%, and how the euphoria was mostly stress — a road that "pointed out who I am."

[P1 4:23:09] → P2 — Waldo's $30M run. Waldo walked through CTO-ing a rugged base project, "swap rallies" of $8 between 15 people to game Coinbase trending, and calmly checking off dollar "check boxes" to a $2.78 / $30M market cap. He made "literal millionaires that night" — and round-tripped his own bag to $5k out of loyalty. The lore continued in Part 2 with the community that later kicked him for building "for reels" and a member they rallied to reimburse after a wallet drain.

[P2 44:45] — Torrey's tattoo bridge. Torrey Fleury (@TORREYBROBOT) said his biggest miss was ignoring the clientele he already had: 30-year friends running tattoo studios who are "100% ready" to onboard, redeem NFTs as tattoos, and even award "best tattoo NFT artist" at conventions. "That bridge is there — no one's using it yet."

[P3 7:52] & [P3 30:11] — Billabong on not taking his own advice. BillabongMonkey (@BillabongM) — the room's pattern-reader — confessed his flaw is calling tops for everyone else and never acting on it himself. His cautionary tale: a legit founder whose good-faith "flywheel" second token diluted attention and helped tank the primary from 2M to a $300k cap. "Memes are culture and attention; when you add tokens, you dilute."

[P3 1:57:21] — Curtis pulls a one-of-one. Waldo spotted it first ("red panda"), and the room realized Curtis had minted Coda, the only red panda — pointy ears, phone, Pico's sidekick — in the entire collection. "You got a fucking million-dollar panda page. Congratulations, Curtis."

[P3 3:34:50] — After Dark unearths the Drew Roberts clip. Panda dug through the archive to replay a legendary night: a listener drunk in a Florida hotel getting arrested live on-mic while trying to explain his "Ethereum phone" (laser and all) to police. When he begged Waldo to vouch for him, Waldo instead "confirmed" his order of condoms was too small and too plentiful, and threw him to the wolves.

Notable quotes

• "Just because you can't see the growth happening, it doesn't mean it's not happening." — Panda, on watering the bamboo [P1 1:20:32]
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• "Money will dry up… but innovation won't, and creativity always wins out." — SLAVA [P1 3:15:04]
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• "That's what happens when you actually don't rug a coin." — Waldo, on launching for reels [P1 4:25:55]
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• "When somebody hurts you and they feel bad about it, that means they're a good person. Bad people don't feel bad when they hurt you." — Lil Southern Mama, to Carrie [P1 3:53:33]
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• "It falls on the fate of the father to teach the son. And if the father fails to teach the son, then it results in society suffering from it." — Wulfu [P2 36:29]
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• "A 5X could have been a 10X, but I also could have lost it all." — Beast, on a grateful exit mindset [P3 39:06]
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Topic timeline

Who said what

• Panda (@PandaPump_) — host; steered every segment, told the origin/"water the bamboo" philosophy, and shared his own misses (not selling in 2018, over-diversifying to 60 tokens, fumbling Solana and SHIB).
• Waldo (@waldoforrealz) — co-host/comic engine; the $30M-run lore, the for-reels charity NFT grind, and most of After Dark's improvised universe.
• Curtis Gore (@curtisgore) — co-host; Forex/GameStop background, collector's mindset, and the night's biggest mint (Coda).
• keRRy (@kerrymcook) — music sampler and bookworm (1984, Brave New World); vulnerably owned lashing out in a friend's community.
• Röcky (@Rockchilld3) — TA-native; turned a brutal first year into a charting discipline.
• SLAVA (@LAVAwithanS) — "too early" builder who never rugged; euphoria-as-stress and moral-boundary insights.
• Joseph (@TrudoJo) — deep-thinker takes on chaos, discernment, and Durov-style attention hygiene.
• BillabongMonkey (@BillabongM) — pattern-reader; flywheel-dilution and take-profit discipline.
• A-VOID (@AVOID_TheArtist) — Australian artist; dead punks lore, honeypots, and the "not merch, real streetwear" foot-in-mouth moment.
• Torrey Fleury (@TORREYBROBOT) — tattoo-industry ↔ NFT bridge vision.
• Peanut (@peanutt) — the Oct 2023 scheme he re-locked into; "not all money is good money."
• Beast (@JRBeast713) — new to web3; options-trader "play the people," gratitude over greed.
• Zoltan (@Zoltan_Hank) — blue-collar AI power user building on Doge/Robinhood chains, free Oracle AI training tip.
• Wulfu (@0xWulfu) — scams, exchange failures, and education as a father-to-son duty.
• Larry Pink's Pool Party (@LarryPinkPool), Steve Walson (@Steve_Walson), Kilo S (@KiloSilo47), Bankyo (@Bankyo), Brandon (@notbrvnd0n), WAGBi (@WAGBi_), TOEZ (@ToezOGToeken), Lil Southern Mama (@Lilsassmouth), Based (@Based_AllMight), Free Flyer (@Lakelander22) — all contributed origin stories, mistakes, or After Dark chaos.

Worth a full listen

• P1 2:25–4:10 — The core "biggest mistake" roundtable and, near the end, keRRy and A-VOID's genuinely tender exchange about owning your fumbles and extending grace. The summary can't carry how disarmingly honest the room got.
• P1 3:39–3:47 — SLAVA and Lil Southern Mama turning "I'm too scared to ask a girl out" into a numbers-game pep talk ("go get 19 no's as fast as possible"). Warm, funny, and quietly practical.
• P3 2:15–4:31 — After Dark in full: voice-changer bedlam, the game-show "$15k/month + one permanent annoyance" bit, the Drew Roberts arrest replay, Billabong's real-life train-heist news, and Waldo's marathon panda-survival monologue. Pure late-night chaos that a recap can only gesture at.