1 00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:02,280 Welcome to Epicenter, the show which talks about the 2 00:00:02,280 --> 00:00:05,000 technologies, projects and people driving decentralization 3 00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:07,800 and the blockchain revolution. I'm Fredrika ANZ, and today I'm 4 00:00:07,800 --> 00:00:10,960 speaking with John Paller, who is the founder and Chief steward 5 00:00:11,040 --> 00:00:13,880 of East Denver. We're not crypto Denver. 6 00:00:13,880 --> 00:00:16,760 We're not blockchain Denver. We're not anything like that. 7 00:00:16,760 --> 00:00:19,240 We're we're very much Ethereum first. 8 00:00:19,360 --> 00:00:22,520 We were never propped up or supported by the Ethereum 9 00:00:22,520 --> 00:00:25,840 Foundation and we just did our thing and they sort of just 10 00:00:26,040 --> 00:00:28,640 said, hey, that's part of a permissionless world. 11 00:00:28,720 --> 00:00:32,600 You know, anybody can do an ETH event somewhere. 12 00:00:35,960 --> 00:00:38,400 I mean, as North America's largest event and probably the 13 00:00:38,400 --> 00:00:41,640 world's largest aggregator of Etherium folks, you know, we've 14 00:00:41,640 --> 00:00:45,560 done this for 9 years. I think that agentic AI in 15 00:00:46,400 --> 00:00:50,160 coming on chain is probably the biggest innovation that we've 16 00:00:50,160 --> 00:00:51,680 seen in the 12 years I've been in it. 17 00:00:52,400 --> 00:00:57,040 But it actually looks like increasingly traditional finance 18 00:00:57,040 --> 00:01:01,680 institutions are besting asset our own game, and they're 19 00:01:01,680 --> 00:01:06,400 executing extremely well. So the only reason why crypto 20 00:01:06,400 --> 00:01:10,360 didn't scale bigger than it is or didn't really make it in 21 00:01:10,360 --> 00:01:12,760 mainstream is because we didn't have distribution. 22 00:01:17,720 --> 00:01:19,960 Welcome to Epicenter, the show which talks about the 23 00:01:19,960 --> 00:01:22,720 technologies, projects and people driving decentralization 24 00:01:22,720 --> 00:01:25,480 in the blockchain revolution. I'm Vedrika Anst and today I'm 25 00:01:25,480 --> 00:01:28,640 speaking with John Pallor, who is the founder and Chief Steward 26 00:01:28,880 --> 00:01:31,600 of East Denver. E Denver just concluded the week 27 00:01:31,600 --> 00:01:35,480 before last and it is typically one of the biggest crypto 28 00:01:35,480 --> 00:01:39,960 gatherings in the space. Before we talk with Don, let me 29 00:01:39,960 --> 00:01:41,480 tell you about our sponsors this week. 30 00:01:41,840 --> 00:01:43,480 This episode's brought to you by Lido. 31 00:01:43,840 --> 00:01:46,800 As Ethereum staking continues to evolve, more teams building 32 00:01:46,800 --> 00:01:49,360 staking products are running into a familiar challenge. 33 00:01:49,920 --> 00:01:52,920 On one hand, pooled liquid staking gives you liquidity and 34 00:01:52,920 --> 00:01:55,400 access to Defy but can limit customization. 35 00:01:55,800 --> 00:01:58,600 And on the other, bespoke staking setups offer more 36 00:01:58,600 --> 00:02:00,880 control over things like pricing, performance, and 37 00:02:00,880 --> 00:02:03,240 operator selection. But they often come with added 38 00:02:03,240 --> 00:02:07,000 complexity and less flexibility. 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To learn more and start building 51 00:02:38,800 --> 00:02:43,400 with SD Vaults, go to Lido dot fi slash SD Vaults and get in 52 00:02:43,400 --> 00:02:45,160 touch with Lidar contributors today. 53 00:02:45,920 --> 00:02:47,400 Done. Thank you so much for coming in. 54 00:02:49,160 --> 00:02:52,120 Thank you for having me. Fantastic. 55 00:02:52,680 --> 00:02:55,560 Tell us about yourself. So before E Denver, what were 56 00:02:55,560 --> 00:02:59,520 you doing and what pulled you into Ethereum in the fast days? 57 00:03:00,560 --> 00:03:05,080 I would say serendipity pulled me into the space, but the 58 00:03:05,080 --> 00:03:07,160 actual story goes a little something like this. 59 00:03:07,160 --> 00:03:13,880 So I was in the Uber of era in startups, right, where you know, 60 00:03:15,160 --> 00:03:17,880 the Uber for laundry and the Uber for this and the Uber for 61 00:03:17,880 --> 00:03:19,600 that, right? So everybody was trying to build 62 00:03:19,600 --> 00:03:25,800 these marketplaces using apps to connect, you know, the bit in 63 00:03:25,800 --> 00:03:32,480 the ask on things. And I was involved in that and I 64 00:03:32,480 --> 00:03:35,200 was working on, I've been employment, I've been in the 65 00:03:35,200 --> 00:03:38,120 employment in HR tech space for a very long time. 66 00:03:38,840 --> 00:03:42,400 And so I was working on a project that was building, you 67 00:03:42,400 --> 00:03:46,080 could say, like the MLS system for recruiting. 68 00:03:47,080 --> 00:03:49,880 What's an MLS system? So the MLS system is like the 69 00:03:49,880 --> 00:03:53,120 real estate system that we use here in the US where like the, 70 00:03:53,200 --> 00:03:56,320 the buyer's agent finds the seller's agent and they get 71 00:03:56,320 --> 00:03:59,040 together and then they sell a piece of property. 72 00:03:59,360 --> 00:04:03,480 Well, we, we tried doing that with jobs, but some of the 73 00:04:03,480 --> 00:04:08,240 issues that we ran into were very, very challenging to scale 74 00:04:08,240 --> 00:04:10,520 it for lots of different reasons. 75 00:04:10,520 --> 00:04:11,840 And I'm not going to get into that. 76 00:04:12,360 --> 00:04:15,040 But I'd started talking about the democratization of 77 00:04:15,040 --> 00:04:20,480 employment back in 2005 before I knew anything about block chains 78 00:04:20,480 --> 00:04:23,440 or smart contracts or Web 3 or any of that stuff. 79 00:04:23,920 --> 00:04:27,080 Before it was even a thing, before Bitcoin was even a thing. 80 00:04:27,840 --> 00:04:32,160 I was thinking about these things and I started studying 81 00:04:32,160 --> 00:04:36,840 economic models and social anthropology and incentive 82 00:04:36,840 --> 00:04:40,160 design game theory. I started really digging into 83 00:04:40,160 --> 00:04:44,400 like, well, what makes things actually work the way that they 84 00:04:44,400 --> 00:04:48,160 work, right? Like I was curious to, you know, 85 00:04:48,160 --> 00:04:51,240 really think about how can we create better systems that 86 00:04:51,240 --> 00:04:54,520 actually create more sustainable outcomes? 87 00:04:54,600 --> 00:04:58,640 But then in, in building this sort of like platform for 88 00:04:59,320 --> 00:05:03,640 recruiters to, to like share information and share jobs or 89 00:05:03,640 --> 00:05:07,320 candidates or whatever, we, I mean, we really learned a lot 90 00:05:07,320 --> 00:05:09,000 about the game design of that industry. 91 00:05:09,720 --> 00:05:15,640 And I, in January 2014, I was at a technology conference in San 92 00:05:15,640 --> 00:05:20,040 Diego, CA, and I happened to meet a guy by the name of 93 00:05:20,040 --> 00:05:23,760 Dimitri Buterin, who was also at the conference. 94 00:05:23,920 --> 00:05:28,800 And he and I became friends and stayed in touch on social media. 95 00:05:30,320 --> 00:05:34,520 And then later in 2014, I started seeing about the 96 00:05:34,520 --> 00:05:39,400 Etherium white paper and I was curious about what all that was. 97 00:05:39,400 --> 00:05:42,600 And I read it and I'm not sure that I understood it. 98 00:05:43,360 --> 00:05:47,120 Actually, I know that I didn't understand it, but I had some 99 00:05:47,640 --> 00:05:51,800 early ideas of how to use the technology and I was really 100 00:05:51,800 --> 00:05:58,640 intrigued by some of the like after they did the the Etherium 101 00:05:58,840 --> 00:06:00,840 presale. I was intrigued. 102 00:06:00,840 --> 00:06:05,400 They like raised fifteen $16,000,000 in like a matter of 103 00:06:05,440 --> 00:06:08,360 hours and I'm just like, what's like tokens? 104 00:06:08,360 --> 00:06:11,600 What is all this like? So it started getting me curious 105 00:06:11,760 --> 00:06:16,560 and you know, but I, I still hadn't had my sort of conversion 106 00:06:16,560 --> 00:06:18,280 moment. I guess you could say my red 107 00:06:18,280 --> 00:06:20,200 pill moment. I hadn't had that yet. 108 00:06:20,600 --> 00:06:29,880 That came in early 2016 and I was talking with, well, my CTO 109 00:06:29,880 --> 00:06:34,200 at the time for my my startup. And he was like, duh, blockchain 110 00:06:34,200 --> 00:06:36,800 stuff, it's not going to be a thing and all this. 111 00:06:36,800 --> 00:06:40,040 And I'm just like, yeah, but we're in the middle of all of 112 00:06:40,040 --> 00:06:44,240 these issues as a company. Like, wouldn't it be better if 113 00:06:44,240 --> 00:06:48,320 we just had code that that sort of ran everything and then we 114 00:06:48,320 --> 00:06:51,880 could just not be in the middle? Like so behavior is organized 115 00:06:51,880 --> 00:06:56,320 based on the property designed incentives and he just was not 116 00:06:56,320 --> 00:06:59,080 having it. And I was speaking with another 117 00:06:59,080 --> 00:07:01,760 colleague of mine and he was big into Bitcoin and a few other 118 00:07:01,760 --> 00:07:03,400 things that were going on at the time. 119 00:07:03,920 --> 00:07:10,040 And you know, he's, he got kind of he, I wouldn't say he got mad 120 00:07:10,040 --> 00:07:13,200 at me, but he he kind of proverbially grabbed me by the 121 00:07:13,200 --> 00:07:15,960 ears and said, John, you're not paying attention. 122 00:07:16,160 --> 00:07:18,960 This isn't technology for corporations. 123 00:07:18,960 --> 00:07:22,920 This is going to rewire the entire system in a way that 124 00:07:22,920 --> 00:07:24,560 we're going to build all new things. 125 00:07:25,120 --> 00:07:27,760 And like, you know, I'd always been thinking about blockchain 126 00:07:27,760 --> 00:07:29,360 tech is like an efficiency capture. 127 00:07:29,360 --> 00:07:33,880 I mean, technology has always been in terms of corporations, 128 00:07:33,880 --> 00:07:36,400 like, you know, let's make it cheaper, let's make it better, 129 00:07:36,400 --> 00:07:39,320 let's make it faster so we have a market edge, right? 130 00:07:39,320 --> 00:07:41,080 We can build a Moat of some sort. 131 00:07:41,600 --> 00:07:47,120 Well, it finally dawned on me. I was like, oh wait, this is 132 00:07:47,120 --> 00:07:51,680 going to change everything and. To get a strong moment. 133 00:07:52,440 --> 00:07:56,360 You had this like, whoa, it's kind of like Neo coming out of 134 00:07:56,360 --> 00:08:01,680 the matrix playing it like, you know, you know, I what, what, 135 00:08:01,800 --> 00:08:04,360 you know, my whole life changed and you know, I, up to this 136 00:08:04,360 --> 00:08:07,160 point, I had a recruiting business that, you know, it was 137 00:08:07,160 --> 00:08:11,760 very nice business. And I had a startup that, you 138 00:08:11,760 --> 00:08:17,360 know, did pretty well. And, you know, all of a sudden I 139 00:08:17,360 --> 00:08:19,840 just like, I just lost interest in all of that. 140 00:08:20,600 --> 00:08:24,240 So, and I, I couldn't change it. It was just like, once you saw 141 00:08:24,240 --> 00:08:28,240 it, you, you couldn't Unsee it. Well, then I was talking to Dima 142 00:08:29,520 --> 00:08:35,080 Dimitri and I, I was asking him like, you know, about developers 143 00:08:35,080 --> 00:08:37,880 and like all this, because I had all these ideas and I, I, you 144 00:08:38,039 --> 00:08:40,440 know, at the time I didn't really understand how to code 145 00:08:40,440 --> 00:08:44,200 anything. And you know, I was the 146 00:08:44,200 --> 00:08:48,880 entrepreneur guy. So I needed AI need a few dabs 147 00:08:48,880 --> 00:08:51,600 to like, but I didn't even know what I wanted to build yet. 148 00:08:51,800 --> 00:08:54,240 So the only people I could get in touch with were people that 149 00:08:54,240 --> 00:08:58,360 wanted like 4 or $500.00 an hour just to like, you know, build 150 00:08:58,360 --> 00:09:02,120 you some little prototype thing. And like, if you don't know what 151 00:09:02,120 --> 00:09:04,000 you want to build, they don't know what to build you. 152 00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:07,440 So you know, it wasn't just like a hacking thing, like hey, let's 153 00:09:07,440 --> 00:09:10,840 practice, let's try, let's just figure some stuff out. 154 00:09:11,280 --> 00:09:14,480 So that didn't exist. You couldn't find anybody that 155 00:09:14,480 --> 00:09:19,120 knew solidity. So I found my way to the 156 00:09:19,160 --> 00:09:22,800 Etherium Denver meet up that was started by a guy by the name of 157 00:09:22,800 --> 00:09:26,720 Kent Barton. And Kent, we just had a passion 158 00:09:26,720 --> 00:09:31,160 for education and community. And you know, I started going 159 00:09:31,160 --> 00:09:34,960 when it was pretty small and then, you know, it grew in the 160 00:09:34,960 --> 00:09:38,120 spring of 2017 like exponentially. 161 00:09:38,160 --> 00:09:40,440 And it was one of those things where it went from like, you 162 00:09:40,440 --> 00:09:45,680 know, low double digits to like 4 or 500 people every month 163 00:09:45,680 --> 00:09:48,520 wanting to come to this thing. And, you know, so I started 164 00:09:48,520 --> 00:09:52,000 getting more involved and I, I was asking Kent and the guys 165 00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:53,640 that were running and I was like, you know, what have you 166 00:09:53,640 --> 00:09:55,000 guys thought about doing a hackathon? 167 00:09:55,000 --> 00:09:57,680 I mean, there's like all these people here that like, don't 168 00:09:57,680 --> 00:10:01,720 know anything about Web 3 or, you know, smart contracts or, 169 00:10:01,840 --> 00:10:03,760 but they're curious, right? Everybody wants to know about 170 00:10:03,760 --> 00:10:05,160 Ethereum. It's just like Cambrian 171 00:10:05,160 --> 00:10:09,640 explosion of interest. And so we asked a question one 172 00:10:09,640 --> 00:10:11,200 time at the meetups. It's like, you know, who would 173 00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:13,480 be interested in attending a hackathon and like, you know, 174 00:10:13,800 --> 00:10:16,520 half the room or more raise their hand. 175 00:10:17,400 --> 00:10:21,160 And I was like, well, we should do that. 176 00:10:21,920 --> 00:10:25,360 And they're all like, well, you know, we tried a hackathon one 177 00:10:25,360 --> 00:10:28,320 time and didn't really go anywhere. 178 00:10:28,320 --> 00:10:30,800 And Nah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 179 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:34,280 You know, it's just, I don't know. 180 00:10:34,280 --> 00:10:38,160 It was just, it was just not. They didn't want anything to do 181 00:10:38,160 --> 00:10:40,840 with it really, because they had said they tried it and it didn't 182 00:10:40,840 --> 00:10:43,160 work. So then I thought you swayed. 183 00:10:43,520 --> 00:10:45,560 Them. But I didn't sway them. 184 00:10:45,560 --> 00:10:48,840 I just went and did it. So I told them I was like, well, 185 00:10:48,880 --> 00:10:52,960 I'm going to go do this. So, you know, and they're like, 186 00:10:52,960 --> 00:10:54,200 well, you know, all the reasons why. 187 00:10:54,200 --> 00:10:56,360 And I was like, look, we're going to make Colorado the 188 00:10:56,360 --> 00:10:58,840 epicenter of blockchain and Whip 3 innovation. 189 00:10:58,840 --> 00:11:01,480 And we're going to, you know, why don't we get 3 or 400 people 190 00:11:01,480 --> 00:11:03,040 together? And like, what, you know, this 191 00:11:03,080 --> 00:11:05,880 is like, I mean, we got like 30 people last time and it was sort 192 00:11:05,880 --> 00:11:07,840 of weak. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. 193 00:11:08,080 --> 00:11:10,520 I'm talking about like, let's bring in the best educators, the 194 00:11:10,520 --> 00:11:12,400 people that know this. Let's bring in Vitalik. 195 00:11:12,400 --> 00:11:15,240 Let's bring in like all these people to do this. 196 00:11:17,120 --> 00:11:19,960 Why not? And so they're like, well, if 197 00:11:19,960 --> 00:11:22,040 you want to go for it. So I started reaching out to 198 00:11:22,040 --> 00:11:28,720 guys like Joe Lubin and Vignesh from from Landroid and you know, 199 00:11:28,720 --> 00:11:33,160 the guys from 0X and McClain from New Cipher. 200 00:11:33,160 --> 00:11:39,040 And I mean, just a whole bunch of people, right, that were 201 00:11:39,040 --> 00:11:42,800 early, you know, Joe, Joe Lubin from consensus, of course. 202 00:11:43,200 --> 00:11:48,320 And I just, I said, look, I've so I put together like a deck 203 00:11:48,320 --> 00:11:50,600 and I said, well, like, look, here's here's what you would 204 00:11:50,600 --> 00:11:53,400 get. And you know, will you support 205 00:11:53,400 --> 00:11:55,080 this hackathon? Like we want to, we want to 206 00:11:55,080 --> 00:11:57,280 build some debts. And at the time, like there were 207 00:11:57,280 --> 00:11:59,600 no debts. So like everyone's like, yeah, 208 00:11:59,600 --> 00:12:02,680 we should build some devs. So what we thought was going to 209 00:12:02,680 --> 00:12:06,880 be, you know, 3-4 hundred people ended up being 1500 people the 210 00:12:06,880 --> 00:12:11,000 first year. And it just, you know, it kind 211 00:12:11,000 --> 00:12:13,960 of hit hit the right sort of notes, you know, the location 212 00:12:13,960 --> 00:12:17,600 was good because everybody could get to Denver from, you know, 213 00:12:17,680 --> 00:12:20,520 either coast pretty easily. You know, the airports are very 214 00:12:20,520 --> 00:12:23,760 easy to get to. Cost of living is low. 215 00:12:24,480 --> 00:12:28,600 We used to do it over the Presidents Day weekend because, 216 00:12:29,360 --> 00:12:33,080 you know, we wanted to give people an extra day to travel, 217 00:12:33,080 --> 00:12:37,000 especially students. And we did it for free because 218 00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:39,880 we didn't want to paywall learning how to do this. 219 00:12:39,880 --> 00:12:44,080 Like you're not going to get people who are curious about 220 00:12:44,080 --> 00:12:48,200 something to come spend $500 on an event. 221 00:12:48,200 --> 00:12:50,240 So like we, we just didn't like any of that model. 222 00:12:50,440 --> 00:12:53,800 So we, we said it's like, you know, community of communities 223 00:12:53,800 --> 00:12:56,720 and like, let's, let's build some stuff, right? 224 00:12:56,720 --> 00:12:59,840 We invented the Biddle meme at eat #2018. 225 00:12:59,840 --> 00:13:04,680 So the whole huddle for Bitcoin, we built our version of it for 226 00:13:04,680 --> 00:13:08,280 Ethereum, which was Biddle, which is now been mentioned on 227 00:13:08,280 --> 00:13:10,800 acts like 90 million times or something like that. 228 00:13:12,080 --> 00:13:16,000 So yeah, so that that's how it kind of got started. 229 00:13:16,040 --> 00:13:18,240 I mean, it was it was out of the need for devs. 230 00:13:18,240 --> 00:13:20,680 It's just nobody had any and I didn't have any. 231 00:13:20,680 --> 00:13:24,440 And I wanted to build some and then, you know, it would just 232 00:13:24,440 --> 00:13:27,520 sort of took off. And then we're like, well, we 233 00:13:27,520 --> 00:13:30,680 should do it again. And then so we did it again in 234 00:13:30,680 --> 00:13:35,200 2019 and then we did it again in 2020. 235 00:13:36,640 --> 00:13:38,480 And there just was a lot of demand for it. 236 00:13:38,480 --> 00:13:40,960 And so it got a lot of recognition internationally. 237 00:13:40,960 --> 00:13:43,560 I mean, even the first year we had people from 35 countries 238 00:13:43,560 --> 00:13:46,400 come in. And now, you know, I think this 239 00:13:46,400 --> 00:13:52,920 year there was 140 countries or something represented over, you 240 00:13:52,920 --> 00:13:55,120 know, 6000 people or something that came in. 241 00:13:55,520 --> 00:13:59,800 So, you know, and this is significantly smaller than it 242 00:13:59,800 --> 00:14:03,400 has been. It's been about 20,000 people or 243 00:14:03,400 --> 00:14:08,080 more the last several years. So, you know, all the tourists 244 00:14:08,080 --> 00:14:11,120 are gone, right? So it's mostly just the core 245 00:14:11,120 --> 00:14:15,920 community people who really care about this and decentralization 246 00:14:15,920 --> 00:14:18,000 and the kind of ethos and values of Web 3. 247 00:14:18,000 --> 00:14:21,680 So that's how it got started. And, you know, nine years later, 248 00:14:21,680 --> 00:14:23,560 here we are. So we just finished our ninth 249 00:14:23,560 --> 00:14:25,080 season. Yeah. 250 00:14:25,080 --> 00:14:28,840 Before we kind of get into how it's changed over over the 251 00:14:28,840 --> 00:14:32,280 years, did did you find your defs for your project? 252 00:14:34,080 --> 00:14:35,480 Oh yeah, I did. And then. 253 00:14:35,480 --> 00:14:38,560 So, yeah, I can pretty much get anybody. 254 00:14:38,560 --> 00:14:41,920 I can get anybody I need now. Yeah, I know a few people. 255 00:14:43,960 --> 00:14:49,400 Good. Tell me how a kind of the format 256 00:14:49,400 --> 00:14:55,360 of East Denver kind of developed over the years and kind of how 257 00:14:55,360 --> 00:14:58,480 how that corresponds with kind of the sort of people who 258 00:14:58,480 --> 00:15:01,960 attend? Yeah, well, there's, there's 259 00:15:01,960 --> 00:15:05,920 narratives that form in the ecosystem and I've been pretty 260 00:15:05,920 --> 00:15:07,880 good at seeing them before they happen. 261 00:15:09,800 --> 00:15:14,840 Like we predicted Defy the, you know, 18 months before Defy 262 00:15:14,840 --> 00:15:19,120 Summer happened. You know, we saw it, we saw it 263 00:15:19,120 --> 00:15:22,320 early and we said, oh, you know, all this lent on chain lending 264 00:15:22,320 --> 00:15:25,480 and derivatives and all that's going to be really big. 265 00:15:25,480 --> 00:15:28,320 And then, you know, Defy Summer happened and it was just like, 266 00:15:28,320 --> 00:15:32,640 whoa, you know, that was, you know, post ICO boom. 267 00:15:33,880 --> 00:15:37,160 I was probably the biggest sort of driver of things. 268 00:15:37,160 --> 00:15:40,720 But then it it, you know, the narratives start shifting right? 269 00:15:40,720 --> 00:15:48,120 So then it got into NFTS and and then I got into Dows and then I 270 00:15:48,120 --> 00:15:49,880 got it. And then it gets in all sorts of 271 00:15:49,880 --> 00:15:52,960 stuff right now it's prediction markets and now it's, you know, 272 00:15:52,960 --> 00:15:56,080 perps and whatever. But if you look at the 273 00:15:56,080 --> 00:15:59,160 undercurrent of all of it, it's all financial use cases, right? 274 00:15:59,160 --> 00:16:03,160 It's all about, well, you could even argue that a lot of this is 275 00:16:03,160 --> 00:16:06,840 just neo casinos. Not that the stock market itself 276 00:16:06,840 --> 00:16:08,880 isn't really a giant casino because it is. 277 00:16:09,280 --> 00:16:12,160 But like, you know, we're kind of in the wild, Wild West. 278 00:16:12,160 --> 00:16:15,480 And you know, the asymmetric gains that people can get by 279 00:16:15,480 --> 00:16:18,880 playing the roulette of well, meme coins is another one, 280 00:16:18,880 --> 00:16:21,000 right? You know, let's get in early and 281 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:23,560 pump and, and then pump and then dump, right. 282 00:16:23,560 --> 00:16:26,880 So people don't really care about these projects. 283 00:16:27,360 --> 00:16:30,800 They don't I mean there, there's a few that they do, but like for 284 00:16:30,800 --> 00:16:35,160 the most part, these are vehicles for asymmetric upside. 285 00:16:35,160 --> 00:16:39,760 So it's gambling. So what happened in the in terms 286 00:16:39,760 --> 00:16:43,400 of the event was, you know, we, we were never propped up or 287 00:16:43,400 --> 00:16:45,200 supported by the Etherium Foundation. 288 00:16:45,200 --> 00:16:49,320 We just, we have a lot of friends there, but like, you 289 00:16:49,320 --> 00:16:52,920 know, we just did our thing and they sort of just said, hey, 290 00:16:52,920 --> 00:16:54,880 that's part of a permissionless world. 291 00:16:54,920 --> 00:17:00,640 You know, anybody can do an ETH event somewhere and the market 292 00:17:00,640 --> 00:17:03,560 physics are going to determine who wins and who loses. 293 00:17:05,000 --> 00:17:08,119 And so we were just really good at sort of protecting the kind 294 00:17:08,119 --> 00:17:11,240 of what's next, right? So every time one of these 295 00:17:11,240 --> 00:17:14,720 cycles would come up, we would see it coming, right? 296 00:17:15,000 --> 00:17:17,400 And now we're in the institutional phase with stable 297 00:17:17,400 --> 00:17:21,800 coins and, you know, modernizing the the current financial 298 00:17:21,800 --> 00:17:24,000 systems infrastructure and whatever. 299 00:17:24,480 --> 00:17:28,079 And we saw that coming, you know, with the President Trump's 300 00:17:28,079 --> 00:17:29,720 election, that was pretty much inevitable. 301 00:17:29,720 --> 00:17:33,240 That was going to happen. And in here we are, it's 302 00:17:33,240 --> 00:17:36,360 happening. So we pretty much let the market 303 00:17:36,360 --> 00:17:38,720 dictate what the kind of format was going to be. 304 00:17:39,000 --> 00:17:41,800 So as people became more interested in booths, for 305 00:17:41,800 --> 00:17:44,560 example, we figured out a way to cater to that. 306 00:17:44,560 --> 00:17:47,440 Now, what was that really about? It was about the need for 307 00:17:47,440 --> 00:17:49,320 engagement. They want to talk to people, 308 00:17:49,600 --> 00:17:51,240 they want their brand to be seen. 309 00:17:51,840 --> 00:17:54,520 So we just we, we appropriated space for that. 310 00:17:55,200 --> 00:17:59,000 When Vitalik started talking about the scaling road map free 311 00:17:59,240 --> 00:18:02,800 for Ethereum and the need for L twos. 312 00:18:02,800 --> 00:18:06,840 And you know what that meant to the ecosystem. 313 00:18:06,840 --> 00:18:10,880 What that was really saying to the market is, hey, we're kind 314 00:18:10,880 --> 00:18:13,360 of admitting that Etherium by itself can't scale. 315 00:18:14,040 --> 00:18:17,040 And so we're going to leave it to the market to figure out what 316 00:18:17,040 --> 00:18:20,760 the solutions for that are. This is very on brand for 317 00:18:20,760 --> 00:18:23,120 Etherium. They'll just kind of throw stuff 318 00:18:23,120 --> 00:18:26,440 out, Botalk will just throw stuff out and and then people 319 00:18:26,440 --> 00:18:31,520 will just build things, right? And so L twos became prominent 320 00:18:31,520 --> 00:18:35,480 and then all L ones or EVML ones and like all this kind of stuff 321 00:18:35,480 --> 00:18:39,840 happened. So the demand, but the demand 322 00:18:39,840 --> 00:18:42,720 for the same stuff was always there, you know, boost 323 00:18:42,720 --> 00:18:45,720 developers speaking opportunities to hackathon to 324 00:18:45,760 --> 00:18:49,440 engaging developers, hiring developers, like all these 325 00:18:49,440 --> 00:18:51,440 things were very, very hot topics. 326 00:18:51,920 --> 00:18:56,800 And so we just happened to attract everybody that wanted to 327 00:18:56,800 --> 00:18:59,720 be participating in that. I mean, as North America's 328 00:18:59,720 --> 00:19:04,160 largest event and probably the world's largest aggregator of 329 00:19:04,160 --> 00:19:07,080 Etherium folks, you know, we've done this for nine years and 330 00:19:07,080 --> 00:19:10,560 like even, I think we've even had a higher attendance than 331 00:19:10,560 --> 00:19:15,040 Devcon in aggregate. You know, so it's been a big 332 00:19:15,040 --> 00:19:17,320 thing. But but we really kind of let 333 00:19:17,320 --> 00:19:21,760 the market dictate it because again, open permission list 334 00:19:21,760 --> 00:19:25,280 decentralization sort of we never really tried to fabricate 335 00:19:25,280 --> 00:19:28,080 much. Now I would say today though, 336 00:19:28,960 --> 00:19:33,280 some of those choices, Etherium doesn't have as strong as a 337 00:19:33,280 --> 00:19:35,560 narrative I think is say Solana does. 338 00:19:37,280 --> 00:19:41,320 No one can really tell you what Ethereum's narrative is because 339 00:19:41,320 --> 00:19:46,520 it just is and just does right. And so those of us who are still 340 00:19:46,520 --> 00:19:50,160 very passionate about Ethereum are passionate about Ethereum 341 00:19:50,160 --> 00:19:54,000 because it's really the only credibly decentralized 342 00:19:54,760 --> 00:19:59,720 blockchain in my opinion. There are some that are doing 343 00:19:59,720 --> 00:20:03,960 great things, like our friends at Near are doing great things. 344 00:20:05,520 --> 00:20:09,280 We, there's the guy's base are doing great things is an L2, 345 00:20:10,760 --> 00:20:13,800 there's lots of interesting things happening around the 346 00:20:13,800 --> 00:20:18,720 space, but that doesn't mean necessarily anything to us. 347 00:20:19,040 --> 00:20:25,200 So we try to keep things as market based as possible. 348 00:20:25,560 --> 00:20:30,120 But then, you know, as Aetherium sort of just kind of took, you 349 00:20:30,120 --> 00:20:33,400 know, it's own intentionally sort of quieter voice, you know, 350 00:20:33,400 --> 00:20:37,200 from especially the foundation's perspective, other voices have 351 00:20:37,200 --> 00:20:41,160 tried to become more prominent, which, you know, has definitely 352 00:20:41,160 --> 00:20:44,680 made it a challenge for us to manage that being ETH Denver, 353 00:20:44,840 --> 00:20:46,960 right. So we're, we're not crypto 354 00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:50,080 Denver, we're not blockchain Denver, We're not anything like 355 00:20:50,080 --> 00:20:52,320 that. We're we're very much Ethereum 356 00:20:52,320 --> 00:20:56,040 first, but managing that's been really interesting because the 357 00:20:56,040 --> 00:20:58,600 narratives have been tried to push here and there based on 358 00:20:58,600 --> 00:21:01,160 what other people's interests are, but we've tried to kind of 359 00:21:01,160 --> 00:21:03,320 manage it based on market kinetics. 360 00:21:03,320 --> 00:21:07,480 And then also just what we feel like is, you know, at least net 361 00:21:07,480 --> 00:21:10,600 neutral to Ethereum or net positive for Ethereum this. 362 00:21:10,600 --> 00:21:12,800 Episode is brought to you by Near AI Cloud. 363 00:21:13,000 --> 00:21:15,160 Open Claw is one of the biggest stories in AI right now. 364 00:21:15,320 --> 00:21:18,880 Rapidly, it gained over 200,000 GitHub stars with adoption from 365 00:21:18,880 --> 00:21:20,880 Silicon Valley to Beijing. 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These are hardware levels secure 377 00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:56,240 on place where your agent operates in encrypted memory 378 00:21:56,240 --> 00:22:00,360 that even Near AI can't inspect. It's not a promise that they 379 00:22:00,360 --> 00:22:03,760 won't look, it's cryptographic guarantees that they can't. 380 00:22:04,040 --> 00:22:07,600 With Open Claw on Near AI Cloud, you get cloud convenience 381 00:22:07,600 --> 00:22:10,440 without data exposure. There's no hardware to manage 382 00:22:10,480 --> 00:22:12,600 and no trust assumptions required. 383 00:22:13,120 --> 00:22:15,000 You can learn more at Near dot AI. 384 00:22:15,840 --> 00:22:19,920 What do you think the narrative should be, and what do you kind 385 00:22:19,920 --> 00:22:26,000 of see as competition for that? What do I think that marriage 386 00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:28,720 should be? Well, that's a good question. 387 00:22:29,200 --> 00:22:34,680 I think that Ethereum, like the Foundation, should take a more 388 00:22:34,680 --> 00:22:39,200 prominent role in discussing the road map of where the community 389 00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:40,760 should go. I think they should. 390 00:22:41,440 --> 00:22:45,600 That is not a position that they share, at least not up till this 391 00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:47,840 point. I think, you know, I've worked a 392 00:22:47,880 --> 00:22:50,840 lot with Tamash and he's done an excellent job. 393 00:22:51,840 --> 00:22:54,760 He's still executive director for three more days, I guess, 394 00:22:56,080 --> 00:23:00,320 but he's done an an amazing job at sort of creating more, I 395 00:23:00,320 --> 00:23:03,200 guess you could say structural vision and just, you know, like 396 00:23:03,200 --> 00:23:07,560 intentionality around moving to where the puck is and like 397 00:23:07,560 --> 00:23:09,960 actually even guiding where the puck goes. 398 00:23:11,360 --> 00:23:13,040 No more. The infinite garden. 399 00:23:14,600 --> 00:23:20,560 Yeah, I, I mean, I look, I was never, I'm a 25 year 400 00:23:20,920 --> 00:23:24,800 entrepreneur, OK? The infinite garden always came 401 00:23:24,800 --> 00:23:28,240 off to me as a little naive and a little bit unrealistic. 402 00:23:28,680 --> 00:23:32,320 I think it's not uncommon for people younger, especially in 403 00:23:32,320 --> 00:23:37,160 their young 20s, to like have idealism as their sort of core 404 00:23:37,400 --> 00:23:40,280 philosophy. Like let me look back in 405 00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:41,960 history. This is not the first time that 406 00:23:41,960 --> 00:23:45,600 youth have been idealistic about how things should be. 407 00:23:46,720 --> 00:23:50,600 We're just now sort of taking a technological viewpoint to it 408 00:23:50,600 --> 00:23:54,680 versus something that's a little bit more just, you know, analog. 409 00:23:55,080 --> 00:23:58,920 But like, still, I think human behavior is a very complex 410 00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:02,040 thing. And you can't assume that people 411 00:24:02,040 --> 00:24:06,120 are just going to behave in ways that on paper makes sense. 412 00:24:06,120 --> 00:24:09,880 Like humans don't always follow what you think are good 413 00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:12,200 incentives, or they might not always do what you feel like is 414 00:24:12,200 --> 00:24:14,800 the right thing. And because the right thing is 415 00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:17,840 somewhat dependent on who you ask, right? 416 00:24:18,160 --> 00:24:23,520 There's infinite amounts of like individual incentives and goals, 417 00:24:24,080 --> 00:24:26,760 you know, and then whoever gets to define what's best for the 418 00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:30,240 collective, who gets to decide that, right? 419 00:24:30,240 --> 00:24:35,120 Like, I mean, there's so many variations of outcomes. 420 00:24:35,120 --> 00:24:37,880 In other words, that like designing A technological system 421 00:24:37,880 --> 00:24:41,120 for that is very hard where incentives are aligned at scale 422 00:24:41,120 --> 00:24:43,720 sustainably. And so the infinite garden 423 00:24:43,720 --> 00:24:52,000 thing, you know, I don't know, I mean, I just, I just I think 424 00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:54,360 it's a little too simplistic and I think it's a little too 425 00:24:54,360 --> 00:24:57,520 idealistic. Now do I, do I believe in 426 00:24:57,520 --> 00:24:59,400 positive sum games? Yes. 427 00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:04,480 Do I believe in moving from an scarcity based mindset or 428 00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:07,400 economic model to one that's based in abundance design? 429 00:25:07,560 --> 00:25:12,160 Yes. Do I believe that technology and 430 00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:16,520 you know, crypto economics and the tokenization of all the 431 00:25:16,520 --> 00:25:21,200 things and has the ability to drive those outcomes? 432 00:25:21,200 --> 00:25:26,000 I believe that I'm still in the camp that I think Web 3 is going 433 00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:29,520 to be a thing, especially with the advent of agentic AI on 434 00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:32,320 chain. I think if you expect human 435 00:25:32,320 --> 00:25:39,600 beings to use complex, you know, user interface to like sign a 436 00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:43,680 transaction or manage a private key, if you think that's going 437 00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:47,080 to happen at scale, you're high. It's not going to happen. 438 00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:50,280 People aren't going to do it. But if I have, if age, if 439 00:25:50,280 --> 00:25:54,760 agentic AI becomes a thing, does it matter what blockchain 440 00:25:54,760 --> 00:25:57,200 they're working on? Does it matter what token they 441 00:25:57,200 --> 00:25:59,840 move from here to there or whatever or how that money gets 442 00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:01,360 to you? It doesn't. 443 00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:07,400 So I think, I think that agentic AI and coming on chain is 444 00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:11,360 probably the biggest innovation that we've seen in the 12 years 445 00:26:11,360 --> 00:26:12,720 I've been in it. Yeah. 446 00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:18,120 The, the, the infinite garden, you know, I just, I don't know 447 00:26:18,120 --> 00:26:22,280 it, it just, it's very, it's very complex and, you know, the 448 00:26:22,280 --> 00:26:25,880 notion of abundance at scale to where private property is not 449 00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:28,520 necessary and all these other things. 450 00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:32,880 I don't know, just I just, I don't, I don't see it in, in my 451 00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:37,360 not infinite experience, but I've got enough to know a few 452 00:26:37,360 --> 00:26:39,520 things and I've got a few Gray hairs to prove it. 453 00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:44,880 Like, you know, I just, I don't, I don't have the comprehension 454 00:26:44,880 --> 00:26:52,080 of that in our lifetime. But I do still have lots of 455 00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:54,200 hope. And there's a huge amount of 456 00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:59,360 opportunity now with a Gintic AI combined with the primitives 457 00:26:59,360 --> 00:27:03,360 that we've built already for a decade and building these now 458 00:27:03,360 --> 00:27:07,640 into really usable systems that could very well disrupt most of 459 00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:09,480 what we know in the financial system. 460 00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:14,120 And whether that's going to be dystopian or a super positive 461 00:27:14,120 --> 00:27:17,680 thing, I don't know yet, but I think it's worth a try. 462 00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:22,640 But what does that mean in terms of kind of the the global vision 463 00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:26,200 for Ethereum? Is it kind of is it the the 464 00:27:26,200 --> 00:27:28,840 global financial settlement layer? 465 00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:33,600 Is it the world computer? Is it the anti censorship layer? 466 00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:36,960 Kind of like any of these narratives in principle kind of 467 00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:42,120 work technically, right, But kind of putting 1 front and 468 00:27:42,120 --> 00:27:46,520 center would would help the story because people in here and 469 00:27:46,520 --> 00:27:48,640 they kind of they like stories, right? 470 00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:51,400 Kind of if you say, OK, these are the docs, that's not a very 471 00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:54,840 good story. And if you say, look, this is 472 00:27:56,040 --> 00:27:59,120 this is credibly neutral and because it's very decentralized, 473 00:27:59,120 --> 00:28:02,960 it is it's it's also extremely resilient. 474 00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:08,920 That also doesn't doesn't move people, right? 475 00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:12,040 So kind of like, why, why, why would you care? 476 00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:13,520 So what? What? 477 00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:15,520 What do you think the story should be here? 478 00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:21,240 To the average person. Yeah. 479 00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:24,640 Or to whom? I mean, so I think, yeah, I 480 00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:30,400 think that's a fair question. So kind of both kind of to the 481 00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:34,280 people whom we want to build on this infrastructure rather than 482 00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:39,640 say Solana or base or near and to the people kind of who who 483 00:28:39,640 --> 00:28:41,920 end up using. And so kind of if you if you had 484 00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:45,840 to explain to your non crypto friends why Ethereum is better 485 00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:49,920 than Solana, what do you say? Well, I mean, that's an easy 486 00:28:49,920 --> 00:28:52,560 one. I mean, Solana isn't, isn't, 487 00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:55,800 isn't just sufficiently decentralized in my opinion. 488 00:28:55,800 --> 00:28:58,000 And that's just a function of how many nodes they have 489 00:28:58,000 --> 00:29:01,280 validating their blocks. Their uptime is questionable, 490 00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:05,480 their downtime is unacceptable. And quite frankly, the only use 491 00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:08,320 case that they've demonstrated is meme coins at this point. 492 00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:11,480 So if they've got other things up their sleeve, that's fine. 493 00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:15,480 And I'm I'm rooting for everybody more so in the space 494 00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:18,640 than I am for the banks. OK, so like, don't get me wrong, 495 00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:23,600 I'm not like anti Solana, like I have my criticisms and I have, 496 00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:27,840 but it's based on just objective understanding of, you know, how 497 00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:29,960 these things work now, their design decisions. 498 00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:33,720 You know, they are going to argue one set of things that 499 00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:38,160 they made these these choices about scaling and and getting 500 00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:42,360 product market fit and all that over pure decentralization, and 501 00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:44,560 then we'll decentralize later. Well, it doesn't always work 502 00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:48,200 that way, right? Like, you know, people in power 503 00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:50,800 are very unlikely to give up power, right? 504 00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:54,240 So I don't know, I have my criticisms about it. 505 00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:58,480 I would say DUIOR, do your own research, figure out what you 506 00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:01,560 care about and then align that with what you feel like. 507 00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:07,000 The objective analysis is actually ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok. 508 00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:09,760 These are all good tools nowadays to actually like. 509 00:30:09,760 --> 00:30:12,960 Ask them like what are the features of a good blockchain? 510 00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:15,080 Like theoretically, what should it be? 511 00:30:15,360 --> 00:30:19,520 And do a comparison analysis against all the major chains and 512 00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:23,880 it'll tell you it's not hard to figure out like which ones are 513 00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:28,480 actually doing it. Etherium isn't impenetrable. 514 00:30:29,080 --> 00:30:31,080 Etherium isn't the guaranteed winner. 515 00:30:32,640 --> 00:30:36,640 I think that Etherium, what I said earlier about Etherium 516 00:30:36,640 --> 00:30:41,560 needs to take a more prominent role in figuring itself out as 517 00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:45,840 far as like what its actual stated goals are versus these 518 00:30:45,840 --> 00:30:48,880 theoretical sort of pseudo religious narratives, right? 519 00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:52,440 Whereas though the infinite garden, it's like, yeah, OK, 520 00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:54,480 well that's not really actionable. 521 00:30:55,680 --> 00:30:59,240 Like how are we actually getting there and what what should we be 522 00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:02,360 doing as, you know, people in the ecosystem? 523 00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:12,880 So what should the narrative be my point of view is I think the 524 00:31:12,920 --> 00:31:16,040 global settlement layer is probably the most likely 525 00:31:16,440 --> 00:31:20,840 everything gets built well, trustlessness is important, 526 00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:23,920 right? It's you don't have to trust 527 00:31:23,920 --> 00:31:27,240 somebody on the other end of a smart contract transaction if we 528 00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:32,840 do this correctly, right, and I don't have to trust the people 529 00:31:32,840 --> 00:31:36,440 running the blockchain either, because it just is and does 530 00:31:36,440 --> 00:31:37,800 right. It just works. 531 00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:43,080 So however we get there, I think largely. 532 00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:45,520 Well, there was a piece that I saw somebody write that said, 533 00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:48,280 well, the non financial use cases for blockchain. 534 00:31:48,600 --> 00:31:52,320 No, they're all financial uses. They're all financial uses. 535 00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:56,960 Dow's are all financial and if teaser financial, you know, 536 00:31:56,960 --> 00:31:58,480 they're all financial in some way. 537 00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:00,680 Like I think it's the World Economic layer, right. 538 00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:03,960 So how do we actually engage in commerce to with each other 539 00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:06,560 globally? I think it it happens on 540 00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:09,280 Ethereum. Now, why the institutional 541 00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:12,440 adoption makes a lot of sense is because, you know, quite 542 00:32:12,440 --> 00:32:14,800 frankly, it's going to be much easier to get people to do 543 00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:16,400 things when they're already on chain. 544 00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:20,720 We were never able over 10 years to get people to come on chain 545 00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:23,560 in droves unless it was for a particular thing like buying an 546 00:32:23,560 --> 00:32:25,360 NFT. But they didn't want to do 547 00:32:25,360 --> 00:32:27,440 everything else in there. They didn't want to do social 548 00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:28,880 Unchained. They didn't want to do all these 549 00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:30,640 other things because it's too complex. 550 00:32:31,360 --> 00:32:33,720 It's not cheaper, better faster, which is kind of the rule of 551 00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:36,200 thumb. So like if you're not going to 552 00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:39,320 get to cheaper better faster, people aren't going to use it 553 00:32:39,320 --> 00:32:43,040 long term unless you're incentivizing them by a lot. 554 00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:47,080 But it's not enough. But it actually looks like 555 00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:54,360 increasingly traditional finance institutions are besting asset, 556 00:32:54,520 --> 00:32:57,680 our own game and they're executing extremely well, right? 557 00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:00,840 So kind of if you look at kind of what Stripe is doing with 558 00:33:01,160 --> 00:33:06,760 integrating staples and crypto rails directly onto global 559 00:33:06,760 --> 00:33:09,520 payment infrastructure. And if you look at what kind of 560 00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:14,360 brings people on chain or kind of what gets them tokens, it's 561 00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:19,120 the revolutes and binances of the web, the Robin Hoods, then 562 00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:21,960 Black Rock is tokenizing assets on Ethereum. 563 00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:25,560 So kind of in many ways, kind of these players are shipping 564 00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:31,400 faster user experience and reaching more users than native 565 00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:32,680 crypto teams. Well, yeah. 566 00:33:32,680 --> 00:33:34,680 They have natural distribution too. 567 00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:38,600 I mean, Stripe already has a huge distribution network for 568 00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:42,600 their analog products, right? So Web 2 is not an unfamiliar 569 00:33:42,600 --> 00:33:44,960 thing to any of these guys. They already have what? 570 00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,880 Does that say about us that kind of like we've been trying to do 571 00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:50,720 this for 10 years and kind of failing? 572 00:33:50,720 --> 00:33:52,320 Well, it says. That we were trying to tackle 573 00:33:52,320 --> 00:33:55,600 too many things at once. I think we were trying to get, 574 00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:59,200 we were trying to innovate technology, right, trying to 575 00:33:59,200 --> 00:34:01,440 prove entirely new economic models. 576 00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:06,040 And we're trying to get users to to opt in to using something 577 00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:11,280 that's more difficult than just signing into your bank all the 578 00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:14,280 same time and trying to get product market fit for 579 00:34:14,280 --> 00:34:17,000 completely new things. I mean, we're trying to bowl the 580 00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:21,400 ocean and for trying to bowl the ocean, we did pretty damn good. 581 00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:25,800 But like what I'm saying, what I'm saying is when everybody 582 00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:31,639 comes on chain and look, I'm just going to say it, but like, 583 00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:39,480 it's kind of like when the Roman Catholic Church was formed, it 584 00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:42,679 got, you know how it got formed. I mean, the Emperor Constantine 585 00:34:43,159 --> 00:34:46,040 was basically faced with a situation in Rome where there 586 00:34:46,040 --> 00:34:49,120 was all of these sects of Christianity that had popped up. 587 00:34:50,280 --> 00:34:52,880 And they didn't even really call it Christianity back then. 588 00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:55,520 But there's all these various sort of things happening in Rome 589 00:34:55,800 --> 00:35:02,000 and it was a lot, OK. And they basically TLDR, 590 00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:04,280 Constantine said, well, if you can't beat them, join them. 591 00:35:05,240 --> 00:35:08,440 He couldn't stop it. He tried, he tried, or even his 592 00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:12,560 predecessors tried like, but he claimed that he had this big 593 00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:15,960 vision where the, you know, the Roman army would had this big 594 00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:19,680 cross on their shield. So he felt compelled to convert 595 00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:23,400 to Christianity and then like, oh, well, we're just going to 596 00:35:23,400 --> 00:35:26,000 make it the state based religion and all this. 597 00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:29,160 Well, what was that really? What that was a Co opting of 598 00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:33,920 Christianity is what it was. So the principles of 599 00:35:34,560 --> 00:35:39,200 Christianity were up for debate. We had dozens and dozens of 600 00:35:39,200 --> 00:35:41,440 various types of sex believing different things. 601 00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:44,080 And he wanted to consolidate it to one thing. 602 00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:47,360 And then he outlawed everything else, right. 603 00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:50,720 So the council of Isaiah and all that, the kind of canonization 604 00:35:50,720 --> 00:35:52,640 of the Bible and all of that became a thing. 605 00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:56,520 So that was that was kind of like the institution's taking 606 00:35:56,520 --> 00:36:00,080 over crypto. Now Fast forward, you know, 1800 607 00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:03,920 years, 1700 years and where are we now? 608 00:36:03,920 --> 00:36:06,320 Well, Christianity is all over the globe. 609 00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:08,440 And it's not just the Roman Catholic Church. 610 00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,640 The Roman Catholic Church is very small component of overall 611 00:36:11,640 --> 00:36:13,880 Christianity, although there are a ton of Catholics. 612 00:36:14,840 --> 00:36:20,320 But generally Christianity is a a worldview now more than it is 613 00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:23,520 just a religion, OK. It is kind of how a lot of 614 00:36:23,520 --> 00:36:25,640 people operate from a principles perspective. 615 00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:29,800 And it all started, you know, you can trace it all the way 616 00:36:29,800 --> 00:36:33,280 back, you know, and the real scaling of it happened with 617 00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:36,560 Rome. What's different? 618 00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:40,000 It's really not that different. It's just going to accelerate a 619 00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:42,040 lot faster because it's technology. 620 00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:44,640 And it's not just, you know, I don't have to get on a horse and 621 00:36:44,640 --> 00:36:46,920 go travel somewhere. I get on a boat and go travel 622 00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:48,680 somewhere to spread the good word. 623 00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:52,000 I can literally type it into a Reddit chat and I can do 624 00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:54,640 whatever I want. But if the banks are on chain 625 00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:57,560 and all the payment companies are on chain and everyone's on 626 00:36:57,560 --> 00:37:00,640 chain and everyone you learns how to use these things, and 627 00:37:00,640 --> 00:37:03,800 agent AI is kind of running around doing things for you on 628 00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:05,800 chain. Like what's to stop 629 00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:09,000 decentralized applications from then already having access to 630 00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:13,280 distribution? So kind of let, let me push back 631 00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:15,680 a little bit. So kind of if, if you kind of 632 00:37:16,040 --> 00:37:22,840 look at Jesus's kind of kind of the statements that he actually 633 00:37:22,840 --> 00:37:26,760 made kind of they are not very commensurate with kind of what 634 00:37:27,520 --> 00:37:29,960 Christian doctrine is today, right. 635 00:37:29,960 --> 00:37:32,440 And I did not see the podcast going this way. 636 00:37:32,440 --> 00:37:38,040 So kind of I'm a little I'm a little rusty on on my I'm only. 637 00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:40,160 Using it as an example is not to be precise. 638 00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:44,040 Yeah, I know. But yeah, but in the same way 639 00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:52,360 kind of that kind of Constantine kind of Co opted Christianity as 640 00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:56,320 a tool, kind of banks and financial institutions are doing 641 00:37:56,320 --> 00:37:58,720 the same, right. Kind of like they're not using 642 00:37:58,840 --> 00:38:04,320 it as a paradigm shift, like kind of we thought should happen 643 00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:08,000 in the sense that kind of like this enables coordination at 644 00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:12,680 unprecedented scale and kind of it, it allows collective 645 00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:18,400 ownership of what whatever and the end kind of distributed 646 00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:22,720 reward systems and kind of just making everything fairer and 647 00:38:22,720 --> 00:38:25,960 better with a little man. Kind of, I mean, even kind of 648 00:38:25,960 --> 00:38:29,080 the, the, the platformification argument that kind of you 649 00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:32,080 alluded to in the very beginning with kind of like the Uber of 650 00:38:32,080 --> 00:38:34,640 this and the Uber of that. Kind of like if, if everyone 651 00:38:34,640 --> 00:38:37,520 kind of came onto the same platform, we wouldn't have this, 652 00:38:37,520 --> 00:38:41,080 we wouldn't have the problem. And kind of like your HR, your 653 00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:43,320 HR problems would have gone away and so on. 654 00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:50,200 So kind of the the idea that kind of this would be a paradigm 655 00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:57,360 shift in kind of how societies work that is done away with by 656 00:38:57,480 --> 00:39:00,080 banks just using it as a back end upgrade, right? 657 00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:02,720 By kind of saying, OK, in principle, kind of we're we're 658 00:39:02,720 --> 00:39:06,280 now we're kind of we're we're, we're. 659 00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:08,360 But what's the ban? What's the banks? 660 00:39:08,360 --> 00:39:13,240 What's the banks mode though? So I agree with you that that if 661 00:39:13,240 --> 00:39:16,920 that's where it ends, then we've completely and totally failed. 662 00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:21,800 Yeah, if that's where it ends. And I think for some people, the 663 00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:24,760 Co opting of crypto by the banks, by the financial 664 00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:28,880 institutions is failure. I think some people actually 665 00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:34,360 believe this. What I'm saying though, is once 666 00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:37,080 the cat's out of the bag or the genies out of the bottle when it 667 00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:41,680 comes to, you know, the the tools, the crypto tools and 668 00:39:41,720 --> 00:39:47,200 making it easier for people to just function on chain, How do 669 00:39:47,200 --> 00:39:50,840 you stop any of these other things from researching again, 670 00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:55,960 what's the bank's mode like? What's if I if I can, if I can 671 00:39:55,960 --> 00:39:58,760 cut out? So let's put it this way. 672 00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:01,720 The bank's coming on chain isn't going to save me any money as a 673 00:40:01,720 --> 00:40:05,080 consumer. It's not going to save me a 674 00:40:05,080 --> 00:40:06,600 dime. They're not going to charge me 675 00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:09,800 less for my meet my visa transactions that I swipe. 676 00:40:10,440 --> 00:40:14,160 Because they sell it on Arbitrum or whatever, OK, They're not 677 00:40:14,160 --> 00:40:17,560 going to charge me less. It's a way for them to automate 678 00:40:17,560 --> 00:40:20,880 and abstract complexities away on their end so they can charge 679 00:40:20,880 --> 00:40:24,480 me more probably. OK, when when PayPal charges 680 00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:28,520 you, you know, or even anybody charges you just to move crypto 681 00:40:28,520 --> 00:40:30,640 around, well, we're charging you 2 1/2%. 682 00:40:30,640 --> 00:40:32,520 It's like, why are you charging Me 2 1/2%? 683 00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:35,240 It's the same thing that we're already doing. 684 00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:37,880 Why do I, why do I care about crypto? 685 00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:40,760 Because supposedly it's peer-to-peer cashless 686 00:40:40,760 --> 00:40:43,400 transactions. I pay a small fee, I send money 687 00:40:43,400 --> 00:40:46,600 to you, you receive it on chain. I can verify that you received 688 00:40:46,600 --> 00:40:48,760 it on chain because the blockchain said it happened. 689 00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:53,440 And all we're doing is moving the Ledger numbers around, you 690 00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:57,680 know, at the end of the day, and cool, it's great. 691 00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:00,800 But it's not fundable. It doesn't compose right, kind 692 00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:03,360 of like say you're, you're on Revolute, kind of like your, 693 00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:07,520 your, your ETH on Revolute. You can't do anything with that 694 00:41:07,720 --> 00:41:11,320 with with it that they're not explicitly permitting you to do. 695 00:41:11,480 --> 00:41:14,120 I kind of right What? What, what I'm saying though, is 696 00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:19,800 like once, so the only reason why crypto didn't scale bigger 697 00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:23,720 than it is or didn't really make it in mainstream because we 698 00:41:23,720 --> 00:41:27,960 didn't have distribution. So if you look at the adoption 699 00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:31,440 curve of things, you know, like there's a the, the typical 700 00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:35,120 adoption curve, we were down here in the early adopters, 701 00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:37,080 right? So those people are willing to 702 00:41:37,080 --> 00:41:40,560 do things that other people aren't to adopt things based on 703 00:41:40,560 --> 00:41:44,840 philosophy is based on an ethos. And we got all those guys. 704 00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:48,200 OK, so we start, we started building things for those guys 705 00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:50,680 because they're willing to do all the things and sign all the 706 00:41:50,680 --> 00:41:53,880 transactions and degen all the things and whatever. 707 00:41:54,080 --> 00:41:56,560 But we could never get up into the deep, the steeper kind of 708 00:41:56,560 --> 00:42:00,120 pieces of the mid adoption and the later adoption and all that. 709 00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:02,680 We could never get there. And it's because again, we're 710 00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:05,080 trying to do too many things at once and we just didn't have 711 00:42:05,080 --> 00:42:07,360 distribution because it's not easy to use. 712 00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:12,400 So we never solved UX, we never solved UI and we basically are 713 00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:15,600 now looking to solve it through institutional adoption. 714 00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:17,720 But I don't think it's start stops there. 715 00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:20,920 In the end, what are the banks going to be able to do to 716 00:42:20,920 --> 00:42:25,600 protect their, you know, their, their Moat? 717 00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:31,800 Like is it going to be possible that regulated collectively 718 00:42:31,800 --> 00:42:35,520 owned digital cooperatives, for example, exist on chain? 719 00:42:36,160 --> 00:42:42,480 Yeah, it's going to happen. So credit unions at scale, high 720 00:42:42,480 --> 00:42:46,400 frequency ethereal network, state based credit unions are 721 00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:50,920 going to eat the banks. OK, so but that's once 722 00:42:50,920 --> 00:42:53,520 everybody's on chain. We weren't able to do it because 723 00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:55,720 no one's on chain and nobody knows what it is. 724 00:42:55,720 --> 00:42:57,640 Nobody trusts it. It's like, oh, it's too Sperry, 725 00:42:57,640 --> 00:43:02,240 oh Terra Luna, oh SPF. Oh, I see OS oh meme coins. 726 00:43:02,240 --> 00:43:08,200 Oh, Trump, you know, it's like, OK, let him go on chain and then 727 00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:10,200 we're going to build around it and we're going to basically 728 00:43:10,200 --> 00:43:12,280 build better products than what the banks have. 729 00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:15,720 And we'll just once the distribution networks are on 730 00:43:15,720 --> 00:43:18,600 chain, now we can actually do the things that we want to do. 731 00:43:19,160 --> 00:43:25,920 It's it was just, it was too ambitious to completely without 732 00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:30,160 simplicity and users. And like for users, you can't 733 00:43:30,160 --> 00:43:32,840 get everybody to do it, even if it's the best thing ever. 734 00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:36,480 Now I'll just use my own experience, OK, If I have a 735 00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:40,960 choice to take out an Ave. loan against my assets or to deal 736 00:43:40,960 --> 00:43:46,760 with a bank forever and over and over and over and over again 737 00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:49,600 with my KYC and this and that and all this. 738 00:43:49,880 --> 00:43:53,760 I would even rather KYC with Ave. just, you know, have my 739 00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:56,360 portable. I was talking to the SEC about 740 00:43:56,360 --> 00:43:58,760 this last week. You know, let's let's have 741 00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:02,160 portable KYC and there's companies working on this, 742 00:44:02,200 --> 00:44:04,960 right? That that actually, like, for 743 00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:09,680 example, if I had a company that I went to and and got my 744 00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:14,000 identity verified, I could go get my KYC. 745 00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:17,080 It's on my wallet, It's a soul bound token. 746 00:44:17,440 --> 00:44:19,760 I could go to Hove. I can automatically log in, it's 747 00:44:19,760 --> 00:44:22,680 verified that I'm good. And then I can take put put put 748 00:44:22,680 --> 00:44:25,120 up my assets and I can take out a loan. 749 00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:28,480 Yeah. Why would I want to deal with 750 00:44:28,480 --> 00:44:30,920 the bank? Why would I ever go to a bank if 751 00:44:30,920 --> 00:44:32,960 I can just do that? OK, the answer. 752 00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:37,200 I wouldn't, but we didn't do it because nobody knows about any 753 00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:38,800 of this and it's like they don't trust it. 754 00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:44,320 But once it becomes normal, people are going to do it, and 755 00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:47,160 they're going to leave banks in droves because they don't really 756 00:44:47,160 --> 00:44:49,600 want to deal with banks, but they're necessary evils. 757 00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:56,960 I financed my house with a maker CDP years ago, so kind of there 758 00:44:56,960 --> 00:44:57,520 you. Go. 759 00:44:58,280 --> 00:45:03,040 But to be to be fair, I, I would have gotten a better rate with 760 00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:05,040 my local bank, but it doesn't matter. 761 00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:09,560 Well, actually I got a fantastic rate because I borrowed, because 762 00:45:10,920 --> 00:45:14,800 I borrowed USD. So kind of and paid for my house 763 00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:16,120 in euros. So it's. 764 00:45:16,520 --> 00:45:18,520 Yeah. Anyways, I want to share your 765 00:45:18,920 --> 00:45:25,000 enthusiasm, but I don't, I don't for various reasons. 766 00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:31,040 So kind of this idea that kind of we just need to get people 767 00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:33,520 here and then we can get them to care about this. 768 00:45:33,840 --> 00:45:35,440 I think this is something they don't. 769 00:45:35,480 --> 00:45:37,000 Care about it. So kind of exactly. 770 00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:38,200 No, no, they don't care about it because. 771 00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:41,000 I've I've actually, I've actually had my people, Paul 772 00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:45,160 kind of pretty regular people about ownership. 773 00:45:45,160 --> 00:45:49,840 So kind of we, we, we kind of so kind of my company knows this. 774 00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:56,800 So kind of we we were going to start an on chain neo bank 775 00:45:56,800 --> 00:46:00,240 that's kind of like the modern version of a cooperative bank, 776 00:46:00,240 --> 00:46:03,880 right, where basically everyone kind of Co owns the bank and 777 00:46:03,880 --> 00:46:07,240 kind of that means and I mean cooperative banking it it used 778 00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:09,800 it used to be huge. It's still huge in some parts. 779 00:46:09,800 --> 00:46:11,880 It's still. Used in, I mean used in the US 780 00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:15,440 regionally, it's not a national scale thing, but regionally it's 781 00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:19,000 very big here. It's actually this, this is 782 00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:21,880 funny because kind of it's, it's, it's kind of, it shows you 783 00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:24,520 that Germans are kind of the, the sort of people who kind of 784 00:46:24,520 --> 00:46:29,640 bring spreadsheets to the party. So kind of we, we, we have, we 785 00:46:29,640 --> 00:46:36,360 are on the UNESCO wide heritage, untangible wide heritage, 786 00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:40,280 intangible wide heritage list for cooperative banking. 787 00:46:40,520 --> 00:46:44,560 So kind of, and I mean other other countries have like Italy 788 00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:51,360 has pizza culture and Belgium has beer and Spain has flamenco 789 00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:53,120 and kind of we have cooperative banking. 790 00:46:53,120 --> 00:46:56,520 That's how cool we are. So, so yeah, so kind of and kind 791 00:46:56,520 --> 00:46:59,880 of so we know a lot of people very German of us. 792 00:46:59,880 --> 00:47:03,280 Yeah. So kind of, so we part a lot of 793 00:47:03,280 --> 00:47:06,400 people about ownership and kind of show them pictures of OK, 794 00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:09,720 this is this is Revolute. It's a billion dollar company 795 00:47:09,880 --> 00:47:13,840 who helped build it. You own 0%, the investors own 796 00:47:13,840 --> 00:47:17,400 70%, the founders own 30%. How does that make you feel? 797 00:47:18,240 --> 00:47:20,760 And people don't care. So The thing is the the, the the 798 00:47:20,760 --> 00:47:24,640 sad thing is people don't care because they but. 799 00:47:24,920 --> 00:47:26,040 But but people don't. Care. 800 00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:30,920 Well, I think it's more what am I going to do about it? 801 00:47:32,200 --> 00:47:34,920 Yeah, I don't know, because kind of for other problems that kind 802 00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:41,760 of have a similar to have kind of a similar output matrix kind 803 00:47:41,760 --> 00:47:44,720 of we also don't care. So kind of if you for instance, 804 00:47:44,720 --> 00:47:48,040 look at privacy, so kind of everyone knows that kind of 805 00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:51,200 having a Proton e-mail is probably better than having a 806 00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:54,080 Gmail. It's also free kind of it's it's 807 00:47:54,080 --> 00:47:56,000 feature. It kind of it offers feature 808 00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:59,200 parity, but for some reason still everyone has a Gmail 809 00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:01,800 address because people are lazy and they don't don't like to 810 00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:04,160 move right as all kind of increments. 811 00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:09,560 Well, and I think I think the reality is the worst that people 812 00:48:09,560 --> 00:48:12,400 have used our data for us to try to sell us more stuff. 813 00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:18,760 You know, if they started using it politically or to put you in 814 00:48:18,760 --> 00:48:20,280 jail, I think you'd care a lot more. 815 00:48:20,280 --> 00:48:22,000 We are. Using it politically, kind of. 816 00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:23,240 They are. They're. 817 00:48:23,240 --> 00:48:26,280 Starting to more they are definitely. 818 00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:33,000 Look, I agree with you that there is a possibility that 819 00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:37,200 regardless of how much good intention and good economic 820 00:48:37,200 --> 00:48:40,960 modeling and incentive structure that we build, that humans, 821 00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:44,280 because of human frailty and laziness, are just going to 822 00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:48,880 default to what's easiest. Now, if we can make it easiest 823 00:48:49,080 --> 00:48:54,760 to do the things that are, you know, better for them, that's 824 00:48:54,760 --> 00:48:56,760 how you win. You've got to make it cheaper, 825 00:48:56,760 --> 00:49:00,000 better, faster. If you can't make crypto 826 00:49:00,000 --> 00:49:03,840 cheaper, better, faster. That's how market physics work. 827 00:49:04,200 --> 00:49:08,280 Cheaper, better, faster. The reason why Google wins is 828 00:49:08,280 --> 00:49:11,720 because it's it's fully integrated into everything. 829 00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:15,320 It's Oauth into everything. Like I can manage it. 830 00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:17,520 I can do it from my phone. They've made a user experience 831 00:49:17,520 --> 00:49:22,040 so easy that like I'm literally willing to trade my privacy for 832 00:49:22,040 --> 00:49:24,120 it. You know it's sharp, isn't it? 833 00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:28,480 It is, and I can't say that I'm completely innocent on that. 834 00:49:28,880 --> 00:49:34,240 Like I, I probably am on a scale of 1 to 100 in terms of like 835 00:49:34,240 --> 00:49:37,680 living all of the Web 3 principles and probably 5050, 836 00:49:38,240 --> 00:49:42,000 you know, like I'm 6040 maybe if I'm generous to myself. 837 00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:49,560 So I don't know, I I think that big organizations are not going 838 00:49:49,560 --> 00:49:52,960 to go down without a fight. I think they're going to try to 839 00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:57,640 protect or Co opt anything that gets in their way, even quietly 840 00:49:57,640 --> 00:49:59,880 if they can. Like the whole stablecoin thing, 841 00:50:01,040 --> 00:50:04,000 the maker CDP, we don't even really do make or die anymore, 842 00:50:04,000 --> 00:50:06,920 you know, like it, it's still there. 843 00:50:06,920 --> 00:50:09,400 You can still do it. But like the collateral that we 844 00:50:09,400 --> 00:50:12,240 use was largely USDC. So it's like you're 845 00:50:12,240 --> 00:50:15,320 collateralizing with a counterparty asset, you know, 846 00:50:15,320 --> 00:50:18,440 like it's. A few word assets now it's 847 00:50:18,440 --> 00:50:20,640 T-bills and so on because kind of yeah, yeah, it's going. 848 00:50:20,640 --> 00:50:22,840 More that direction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 849 00:50:23,560 --> 00:50:25,960 So, yeah, exactly. So I mean, and some of that's 850 00:50:25,960 --> 00:50:29,040 not all bad, but like, I mean, at least the the permission to 851 00:50:29,040 --> 00:50:31,760 use it is permissionless, right. So whether or not you've got 852 00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:35,160 counterparty risk, I mean, the US financial system has a ton of 853 00:50:35,160 --> 00:50:39,040 counterparty risk. So I mean, the whole global 854 00:50:39,040 --> 00:50:41,040 economic system has a ton of counterparty risk. 855 00:50:41,040 --> 00:50:43,440 So like to say that Oh, well, Dye is not officially 856 00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:46,000 decentralized. It's not like USDC doesn't have 857 00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:47,480 counterparty risk. Of course it does. 858 00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:52,360 So like, yeah, the volatility is probably the more the the weapon 859 00:50:52,360 --> 00:50:57,720 or the the the enemy of decentralized stable coins 860 00:50:58,480 --> 00:51:02,520 because even 1% volatility seems like a lot when you're moving 861 00:51:02,520 --> 00:51:06,440 around a lot of USDC, right? So people don't like it. 862 00:51:06,600 --> 00:51:10,760 So they like the solid peg of $1.00 is $1.00. 863 00:51:10,880 --> 00:51:14,720 They like that and that's how USDC got its market dominance in 864 00:51:14,720 --> 00:51:17,480 the US And that's how, I mean, that's how USDT got it 865 00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:20,800 internationally. You know, just parody. 866 00:51:20,800 --> 00:51:25,240 It's always a dollar anyways. I, I don't, I don't disagree 867 00:51:25,240 --> 00:51:27,960 with you. I'm being, I'm saying best case 868 00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:32,720 scenario, the way I see it and the thing I'm working toward is, 869 00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:36,480 you know, look, the, I think the financial system coming on chain 870 00:51:36,480 --> 00:51:38,520 is inevitable. I think it makes sense for them. 871 00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:43,520 I think if if I'm them, there's huge Greenfield opportunities 872 00:51:43,520 --> 00:51:47,760 and market share and and all sorts of revenue streams that 873 00:51:47,760 --> 00:51:50,520 can come from this. I mean, stable coins are 874 00:51:50,520 --> 00:51:53,840 probably the most profitable use cases would come out of crypto. 875 00:51:55,120 --> 00:51:57,800 So it's all it's, it's, it's inevitable and natural that they 876 00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:00,680 would do that. It's very rational thinking on 877 00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:02,360 their behalf, on their on their behalf. 878 00:52:02,640 --> 00:52:05,880 So I'm not going to get in the way of that, but I almost think 879 00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:08,720 like to an extent, it's like bringing the Trojan horse 880 00:52:08,720 --> 00:52:12,880 inside, you know, Because once everyone's using these things 881 00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:19,560 more commonly, and if we legitimately figure out scaling 882 00:52:19,560 --> 00:52:24,360 issues where we're not paying 2 and 3% for where I can literally 883 00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:30,760 send you a wire transfer peer-to-peer with, you know, 884 00:52:30,760 --> 00:52:33,880 cost me $0.25. People are going to use it. 885 00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:37,440 If it's easy to use, for example, easy to use to me would 886 00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:46,040 be imagine a future state where I have a self sovereign AI agent 887 00:52:46,080 --> 00:52:50,640 bot. OK, and let's call him Buffy. 888 00:52:50,840 --> 00:52:55,920 OK, so Buffy is my bot and I just, you know, one day he's on 889 00:52:55,920 --> 00:53:00,560 my phone, he's in my telegram. I was like, oh man, you know, I 890 00:53:00,560 --> 00:53:03,320 forgot to send Frederick that 50 bucks that I owe her. 891 00:53:03,320 --> 00:53:05,920 Can you send that to her right now? 892 00:53:06,200 --> 00:53:08,760 Done. I don't need to sign anything. 893 00:53:09,240 --> 00:53:11,440 He's already got access to a wallet that has some 894 00:53:11,440 --> 00:53:14,280 discretionary money. You know he can go do it right 895 00:53:14,280 --> 00:53:16,440 now. He can even send me back if I 896 00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:20,200 want the Etherscan transaction receipt and it's done. 897 00:53:20,520 --> 00:53:23,200 Can already do that and it it doesn't and that's what I'm. 898 00:53:23,200 --> 00:53:26,280 Saying it's like but imagine it being so easy the average guy 899 00:53:26,280 --> 00:53:28,920 down the streets doing it OK but open I'm just. 900 00:53:28,920 --> 00:53:30,600 Saying easy to use have have you I. 901 00:53:30,640 --> 00:53:34,560 Know but I'm of course I've tried it like we just had a huge 902 00:53:34,560 --> 00:53:38,600 component of east Denver that was all claws out AI open claw 903 00:53:38,600 --> 00:53:41,680 agents. We built literally Buffy bot the 904 00:53:41,680 --> 00:53:44,400 thing I'm talking about to be the Co host of the opening 905 00:53:44,400 --> 00:53:47,080 ceremonies. We built an AI agent to do that. 906 00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:50,240 So like, it doesn't even have to be 5 years from now. 907 00:53:50,240 --> 00:53:52,680 But what I'm saying is it might take five years for your next 908 00:53:52,680 --> 00:53:55,000 door neighbor down the street who knows nothing about crypto 909 00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:59,120 to be doing this that. But it will inevitably happen 910 00:53:59,120 --> 00:54:01,320 though, because it's like, oh, well, crypto's not scary because 911 00:54:01,320 --> 00:54:04,120 it's now everyone uses it, right? 912 00:54:04,160 --> 00:54:05,720 Right now, nobody wants to touch it. 913 00:54:05,840 --> 00:54:08,120 It's just, it's an evolutionary thinking. 914 00:54:08,120 --> 00:54:11,360 It's it's partially generational thinking and it's part just 915 00:54:11,360 --> 00:54:14,880 evolutionary thinking around what's acceptable, what's scary, 916 00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:18,120 what's risky. And once things are not seen as 917 00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:19,640 risky, people are just going to do it. 918 00:54:20,760 --> 00:54:28,200 So kind of when we zoom out by what, what metric do you think 919 00:54:28,320 --> 00:54:34,640 we should monitor to see whether blockchain is actually making 920 00:54:34,640 --> 00:54:36,680 the world a better, fairer place? 921 00:54:36,680 --> 00:54:40,640 So kind of is it since things like, I don't know, self custody 922 00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:46,720 adoption or new cooperative modules or censorship resistance 923 00:54:46,720 --> 00:54:50,840 or capital formation without intermediaries, I mean, there's, 924 00:54:50,840 --> 00:54:56,480 there's an endlessness, right? Oh my goodness, what are the 925 00:54:56,480 --> 00:55:00,840 metrics? Sorry, it's. 926 00:55:01,120 --> 00:55:03,080 Just a little bit of kind of like it's, it's kind of like 927 00:55:03,080 --> 00:55:08,280 like putting my finger on it because I, I, I feel like it's, 928 00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:11,960 it's something sometimes where we idealists kind of we blank, 929 00:55:12,160 --> 00:55:14,280 right? You say, oh, but clearly this is 930 00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:16,520 better infrastructure. Clearly this is fair for people. 931 00:55:16,520 --> 00:55:18,560 Clearly this is but kind of like how? 932 00:55:18,680 --> 00:55:21,560 How will people's lives actually improve? 933 00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:28,120 Well, I think a common metric is GDP per capita. 934 00:55:28,120 --> 00:55:32,400 I think right now, for example, cooperatives contribute to about 935 00:55:32,400 --> 00:55:37,760 $600 billion in GDP for the USI think it'll be really 936 00:55:37,760 --> 00:55:41,080 interesting to see like how are we going to measure the network 937 00:55:41,080 --> 00:55:47,920 state GDP, not the USGDP, not the German GDP, not the EUGDP, 938 00:55:48,320 --> 00:55:52,160 but like the GDP of the network state, meaning on chain. 939 00:55:53,480 --> 00:55:55,640 I think that's really interesting metric to follow. 940 00:55:55,640 --> 00:56:00,680 I think that you're going to see active daily users balloon, but 941 00:56:00,680 --> 00:56:02,240 then we got to know like, what does that mean? 942 00:56:02,240 --> 00:56:04,680 Like how much you know, what does that equate to in terms of 943 00:56:04,680 --> 00:56:07,720 transactions? So I think average transaction 944 00:56:07,720 --> 00:56:11,480 might be an interesting metric to see. 945 00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:15,520 And like geographically, what geographically where are people 946 00:56:15,520 --> 00:56:17,920 using it? Like if the network state really 947 00:56:17,920 --> 00:56:21,320 takes hold, you're going to see people globally doing business 948 00:56:21,320 --> 00:56:23,320 with each other. And that's going to be pretty 949 00:56:23,320 --> 00:56:27,160 hard to get away from seeing it. And I don't think it's going to 950 00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:31,840 be easy to measure like India's GDP versus the USGDPI think 951 00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:34,440 you're going to have to start measuring network state GDP. 952 00:56:35,240 --> 00:56:38,760 So and then what is that? How, how do we actually analyze 953 00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:43,280 that in the context of what we know is, is, is existing kind of 954 00:56:43,280 --> 00:56:48,440 metrics and fundamentals? I don't know the exact metric 955 00:56:48,440 --> 00:56:52,240 that's going to nail it, nail it like the North Star metric that 956 00:56:52,240 --> 00:56:54,160 you might say and like a business pitch like, well, 957 00:56:54,160 --> 00:56:56,000 here's our North Star metric. Here's how we measure 958 00:56:56,000 --> 00:56:58,040 everything. I'd have to think on that for a 959 00:56:58,040 --> 00:57:00,760 little while. But like, I think it's probably 960 00:57:00,760 --> 00:57:03,000 something around on chain activity. 961 00:57:03,400 --> 00:57:04,920 Like we look at ghost chains, right? 962 00:57:04,920 --> 00:57:07,280 They have all this activities, but then you look at it and 963 00:57:07,280 --> 00:57:09,000 there's no one really moving anything around. 964 00:57:09,000 --> 00:57:12,400 It's just nonsense. Etherium is probably the best 965 00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:14,760 one because you can see the total active users or the 966 00:57:14,760 --> 00:57:16,720 monthly active users. You can see the transaction 967 00:57:16,720 --> 00:57:20,040 volume and that's sort of a correlation to to ecosystem 968 00:57:20,040 --> 00:57:22,640 health. Now, how do we see the 969 00:57:22,640 --> 00:57:25,800 difference between whether somebody at at BlackRock is 970 00:57:25,800 --> 00:57:29,200 using Etherium versus somebody who really needs it in Mexico or 971 00:57:29,200 --> 00:57:32,600 somewhere like that's a good question because anonymity or 972 00:57:32,600 --> 00:57:34,920 pseudonymity is going to be a thing in the future even more 973 00:57:34,920 --> 00:57:38,160 the more so than it is today. I don't know how you're going to 974 00:57:38,160 --> 00:57:43,040 measure that, but does it? Matter that it's by people who 975 00:57:43,040 --> 00:57:46,520 really need it. Well, does it matter? 976 00:57:46,520 --> 00:57:49,320 I think it matters because if all we're doing is creating a 977 00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:51,880 better system for the banks to move stuff around between each 978 00:57:51,880 --> 00:57:54,160 other, than it's just vanity project that. 979 00:57:54,160 --> 00:57:56,760 That, that, that's totally, I mean, that's, that's, that's 980 00:57:56,760 --> 00:57:59,200 totally fair. And I, I, I, I conquer. 981 00:58:00,120 --> 00:58:04,640 But kind of if, if you kind of say the, the the average 982 00:58:04,640 --> 00:58:09,000 transaction size is kind of like what you're looking for. 983 00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:14,920 We'd have to have some way to delineate enterprise Oregon 984 00:58:14,920 --> 00:58:17,600 institutional movement versus just average movement. 985 00:58:18,200 --> 00:58:19,600 I don't know that we're going to have that. 986 00:58:20,200 --> 00:58:23,880 So I'll tell you what I'm going to punt on this particular 987 00:58:23,880 --> 00:58:25,120 question because I think it's a good one. 988 00:58:25,120 --> 00:58:27,800 And the next time we talk, I'm going to have a better answer 989 00:58:27,800 --> 00:58:30,120 for this. But I think there's there's some 990 00:58:30,120 --> 00:58:35,560 economic measurement here that that is going to, but we can't 991 00:58:35,560 --> 00:58:39,200 get away from the fundamentals that GDP is what drives the 992 00:58:39,200 --> 00:58:44,960 world. We can't we'd be foolish to say 993 00:58:44,960 --> 00:58:47,000 that we're going to get away from GDP in general. 994 00:58:47,000 --> 00:58:48,440 I just don't think that's going to happen. 995 00:58:48,440 --> 00:58:51,720 I don't see how you. I mean, GDP is also somewhat 996 00:58:51,720 --> 00:58:54,480 misrepresentative, right? So kind of for instance, Germany 997 00:58:54,480 --> 00:58:58,800 has a lower GDP per capita than West Virginia, West Virginia, 998 00:58:58,800 --> 00:59:02,880 which is the, the poorest state in the US and kind of quality of 999 00:59:02,880 --> 00:59:06,640 living is, is much higher than it is in West. 1000 00:59:06,920 --> 00:59:09,800 So kind of it's, it's kind of it's an, it's an imperfect 1001 00:59:09,800 --> 00:59:11,680 measure, right? But kind of if you look at 1002 00:59:11,680 --> 00:59:16,640 things like economic agency, for instance, kind of like how, how 1003 00:59:16,640 --> 00:59:21,640 much, how much choice do I have in what I can do? 1004 00:59:21,640 --> 00:59:22,480 How do you? Measure that. 1005 00:59:26,160 --> 00:59:32,880 If I if I want a loan, how how hard pressed for choice am I 1006 00:59:32,880 --> 00:59:38,680 kind of do I have one payday lender or kind of do I have the. 1007 00:59:38,680 --> 00:59:42,760 Right, infinite opportunities on on Chan or whatever, Yeah. 1008 00:59:43,640 --> 00:59:47,840 And then I think what, what also might be kind of, I, I know this 1009 00:59:47,840 --> 00:59:51,960 is somewhat dystopian, but I feel that kind of censorship 1010 00:59:51,960 --> 00:59:56,960 resistance might become much more important in the future. 1011 00:59:57,200 --> 01:00:01,280 And I mean, you kind of, you can see how kind of large tech 1012 01:00:01,280 --> 01:00:10,360 companies kind of kind of lose their principles faster than 1013 01:00:10,360 --> 01:00:12,200 you'd like. Well. 1014 01:00:12,480 --> 01:00:18,080 You know, it's I there was some censoring that happened recently 1015 01:00:18,080 --> 01:00:19,920 with Tether. Did you see that? 1016 01:00:20,920 --> 01:00:25,440 No where they they froze the accounts of certain, they froze 1017 01:00:25,440 --> 01:00:30,480 the assets of certain people in their USDT. 1018 01:00:31,640 --> 01:00:33,040 OK. I mean, it happens all the time. 1019 01:00:33,040 --> 01:00:35,320 I mean, basically it's it's fully, it's fully permission to 1020 01:00:35,320 --> 01:00:39,640 adjust as, as as USDC and so on. So kind of, I mean, basically 1021 01:00:39,640 --> 01:00:41,840 it's yeah, it's it's, yeah, it's. 1022 01:00:42,440 --> 01:00:43,440 You're on a blacklist. And. 1023 01:00:44,360 --> 01:00:49,160 Yeah, yeah, yeah, You know, the, the libertarian to me doesn't 1024 01:00:49,160 --> 01:00:52,080 like any of that stuff because it's like, you know, a lot of 1025 01:00:52,080 --> 01:00:54,200 that's just subjective political warfare. 1026 01:00:54,720 --> 01:00:59,400 And, you know, I don't know, not all of it, but a lot of it is. 1027 01:00:59,440 --> 01:01:03,200 And, you know, you could say we're doing the good work and 1028 01:01:03,200 --> 01:01:06,520 all of this, but, you know, we all know that political pressure 1029 01:01:06,520 --> 01:01:09,760 and political censoring is the oldest tool in the kit when it 1030 01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:14,040 comes to like, you know, you know, tamping down the 1031 01:01:14,240 --> 01:01:18,040 opposition or whatever from, you know, removing you from power or 1032 01:01:18,040 --> 01:01:21,720 whatever. So I don't know, it's a hard 1033 01:01:21,720 --> 01:01:24,040 problem. I think privacy is going to be, 1034 01:01:24,040 --> 01:01:26,400 you know, the censorship resistance is really correlated 1035 01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:29,800 to privacy. And if you've got privacy, then 1036 01:01:29,800 --> 01:01:33,080 you don't have to worry about censorship resistance as much 1037 01:01:33,080 --> 01:01:34,800 because I can do things privately. 1038 01:01:36,640 --> 01:01:39,560 But then you've got all the worries about I would. 1039 01:01:39,560 --> 01:01:41,360 I was just meeting with the SEC last week. 1040 01:01:41,360 --> 01:01:46,640 And, you know, there is a deep belief by Commissioner Purse 1041 01:01:46,640 --> 01:01:51,680 that who's the crypto task force leader that, you know, privacy 1042 01:01:51,680 --> 01:01:54,560 is a fundamental human right. That's her personal view and. 1043 01:01:54,640 --> 01:01:57,960 And I mean, that's, that's, that's admirable. 1044 01:01:57,960 --> 01:02:02,160 I mean too often, I know. Elected, I know well, and she's 1045 01:02:02,160 --> 01:02:04,480 not elected. She's an appointed official and 1046 01:02:04,480 --> 01:02:07,440 she is. But she's very well respected 1047 01:02:08,360 --> 01:02:11,920 inside her community and ours for these points of view. 1048 01:02:12,200 --> 01:02:15,760 But what's sad is the US Congress, there are people on 1049 01:02:15,760 --> 01:02:19,760 both sides of the aisle that actually, you know, want the 1050 01:02:19,760 --> 01:02:21,480 government to be able to see everything. 1051 01:02:22,520 --> 01:02:26,040 And it's just like, yeah, it is. I mean, it really is. 1052 01:02:26,040 --> 01:02:31,400 And and you know, I was AI was a victim of the operation choke .2 1053 01:02:31,400 --> 01:02:36,640 point OI got debanked after 26 years of relationship with Wells 1054 01:02:36,640 --> 01:02:41,880 Fargo and no explanation, no nothing, just a letter in the 1055 01:02:41,880 --> 01:02:45,960 mail saying you're done and the decisions final. 1056 01:02:45,960 --> 01:02:48,760 And there you, we, we can't tell you anything about it. 1057 01:02:50,360 --> 01:02:52,920 And it's happened, it's it's, it's happened happening 1058 01:02:52,920 --> 01:02:56,400 systematically. So kind of the the judges at The 1059 01:02:56,400 --> 01:03:00,880 Hague were recently put on the economic sanctions by the US 1060 01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:07,400 because of judgement they had reached in relation to Benjamin 1061 01:03:07,400 --> 01:03:10,800 Netanyahu. And so basically which meant 1062 01:03:10,800 --> 01:03:14,400 that kind of other banks debanked them. 1063 01:03:15,280 --> 01:03:18,840 They kind of were de platformed from tech platforms. 1064 01:03:18,840 --> 01:03:24,760 They, their Google accounts were closed and they're not even able 1065 01:03:24,760 --> 01:03:27,480 to kind of book a flight anymore because kind of they can't have 1066 01:03:27,480 --> 01:03:31,920 a Visa or MasterCard because those are US entities. 1067 01:03:32,120 --> 01:03:34,320 And kind of like it. It's kind of the the guy who 1068 01:03:34,320 --> 01:03:37,280 gave the interview, he said it's basically like being in the 90s 1069 01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:38,640 again. If I want to go to a hotel, I 1070 01:03:38,640 --> 01:03:42,360 have to call them and say, look, I want to come day, day after 1071 01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:43,880 tomorrow. Do we have do you have a 1072 01:03:43,880 --> 01:03:45,560 vacancy? Yeah. 1073 01:03:45,560 --> 01:03:47,640 And it's crazy. And I think kind of just the 1074 01:03:47,640 --> 01:03:50,680 fact that, and I mean, this is not a terrorist, right? 1075 01:03:50,680 --> 01:03:53,520 Kind of like these are the judges at the at the 1076 01:03:53,520 --> 01:03:56,800 International. And it depends on who you ask, 1077 01:03:56,800 --> 01:03:59,120 right? I mean, it sounds like, it 1078 01:03:59,120 --> 01:04:01,920 sounds like the US is treating them kind of kind of like 1079 01:04:01,920 --> 01:04:03,920 terrorists. Yeah, exactly. 1080 01:04:03,920 --> 01:04:07,600 Today, yeah. So, yeah. 1081 01:04:07,600 --> 01:04:11,360 So maybe you find the question. So kind of when you kind of 1082 01:04:11,360 --> 01:04:14,600 think about the next couple of years and kind of you say that 1083 01:04:14,600 --> 01:04:16,440 you are very good at kind of predicting trends. 1084 01:04:16,440 --> 01:04:22,800 So what, what, what do we absolutely need to get right for 1085 01:04:22,800 --> 01:04:28,200 kind of this kind of in higher ownership narrative agency kind 1086 01:04:28,200 --> 01:04:30,600 of paradigm shift to matter structurally? 1087 01:04:30,600 --> 01:04:33,560 Do you think it's kind of like it's things like user experience 1088 01:04:33,560 --> 01:04:37,520 or interop or governance or economic sustainability or 1089 01:04:37,520 --> 01:04:39,960 where, where, where do you think kind of we should? 1090 01:04:41,320 --> 01:04:43,720 What do you think we should pay most attention to? 1091 01:04:45,720 --> 01:04:49,320 Well, I have a personal belief that we don't, especially in the 1092 01:04:49,320 --> 01:04:53,040 US, we don't have currently a legal framework that would 1093 01:04:53,040 --> 01:04:56,960 actually support the network state appropriately at the 1094 01:04:56,960 --> 01:05:00,640 federal level. So if you look at the 1095 01:05:01,480 --> 01:05:05,040 contortionist act that we've put together in terms of launching 1096 01:05:05,040 --> 01:05:09,000 tokens and doing TG, ES and things, we've done it basically 1097 01:05:09,000 --> 01:05:11,480 around a very murky regulatory environment. 1098 01:05:11,480 --> 01:05:15,880 And we've done it, you could say with creative lawyering and 1099 01:05:15,880 --> 01:05:22,360 using offshore entities to skirt the system, right? 1100 01:05:22,360 --> 01:05:24,880 So we've launched what would be in the US essentially A 1101 01:05:25,080 --> 01:05:30,000 securities, but we do it offshore or we do it to cutesy 1102 01:05:30,000 --> 01:05:31,720 ways like governance. What do you? 1103 01:05:31,840 --> 01:05:34,680 Mean this is a governance token. Right. 1104 01:05:35,520 --> 01:05:38,320 It's. It's, it's a governance token 1105 01:05:38,320 --> 01:05:42,760 for, for Ave. And like, yeah, but I mean, this 1106 01:05:42,760 --> 01:05:45,760 goes against the entire principle of the the number one 1107 01:05:45,760 --> 01:05:48,960 coordination mechanism in the history of mankind is profit. 1108 01:05:50,360 --> 01:05:53,800 Profit is a wonderful coordination mechanism because 1109 01:05:53,800 --> 01:05:56,880 we can profit, we can coordinate around profits much better than 1110 01:05:56,880 --> 01:06:01,320 we can probably coordinate around decision making much 1111 01:06:01,320 --> 01:06:03,520 better. But we don't have a way in the 1112 01:06:03,680 --> 01:06:05,640 US, for example, to share profits. 1113 01:06:06,840 --> 01:06:10,320 So with with non accredited investors without a lot of 1114 01:06:10,320 --> 01:06:12,880 complexities and without a bunch of crap that it just doesn't 1115 01:06:12,880 --> 01:06:15,520 work. So we've created things like Dow 1116 01:06:15,520 --> 01:06:18,400 LLC's and Doonas and all these things to like do that. 1117 01:06:18,880 --> 01:06:21,560 Well, I've been working on a project that I think is probably 1118 01:06:21,560 --> 01:06:23,760 one of the most. And of course I think my baby's 1119 01:06:23,760 --> 01:06:25,880 cute. But like, I think it's important 1120 01:06:26,240 --> 01:06:29,720 to get the legal stuff right. So what we did was we built a 1121 01:06:29,720 --> 01:06:34,960 proposal for Congress to include in clarity in the clarity Act, 1122 01:06:34,960 --> 01:06:39,080 which is currently in Congress to basically give a federal 1123 01:06:39,080 --> 01:06:43,560 exemption for cooperatives from securities registration. 1124 01:06:44,320 --> 01:06:46,880 So it's like The Reg D for co-ops. 1125 01:06:46,880 --> 01:06:48,840 So we call it regulation membership. 1126 01:06:48,840 --> 01:06:50,880 So anybody who's curious about that can go to 1127 01:06:50,880 --> 01:06:55,200 regulationmembership.com and you can see see what we're working 1128 01:06:55,200 --> 01:06:56,720 on. So I think the legal framework 1129 01:06:56,720 --> 01:06:59,480 has to be right. So if we're not going to get to 1130 01:06:59,480 --> 01:07:02,000 the, if we can't get the legal framework right, I don't think 1131 01:07:02,000 --> 01:07:06,880 any amount of, you know, acutely lawyering or engineering around, 1132 01:07:06,880 --> 01:07:09,720 you know, trying to work around stuff is going to actually get 1133 01:07:09,720 --> 01:07:12,880 us where we want to go. I understand the reason why we 1134 01:07:12,880 --> 01:07:14,280 don't want to be securities tokens. 1135 01:07:14,280 --> 01:07:18,200 And I don't think that that network state tokens should be 1136 01:07:18,200 --> 01:07:20,520 securities. I think that if you're actively 1137 01:07:20,520 --> 01:07:24,040 participating in a business or protocol, then that should be 1138 01:07:24,040 --> 01:07:26,640 exempt because it's my work, not somebody else's. 1139 01:07:27,200 --> 01:07:29,760 That's the, IT doesn't pass the Howie test, in other words. 1140 01:07:30,640 --> 01:07:32,920 So that's why regulation membership is so important. 1141 01:07:33,120 --> 01:07:36,480 OK. Now other than that, I think the 1142 01:07:36,480 --> 01:07:40,240 single most important proliferation in Web 3 is 1143 01:07:40,240 --> 01:07:44,760 agentic AI by a landslide. So what do we need to get right 1144 01:07:44,760 --> 01:07:47,680 with that? I think user usability, yes, 1145 01:07:47,680 --> 01:07:49,720 it's very easy to set up open claw, I know. 1146 01:07:51,040 --> 01:07:56,400 But I would say there are going to be optimizations and 1147 01:07:56,400 --> 01:08:00,560 methodologies and security and making sure that you don't let 1148 01:08:00,560 --> 01:08:03,760 your you know, Austin Griffith was telling a story at East 1149 01:08:03,760 --> 01:08:07,160 Denver the other day about how his open claw agent tried to 1150 01:08:07,160 --> 01:08:13,120 export his private key. And you know the you know. 1151 01:08:13,120 --> 01:08:15,520 So This is why you do it on. A virtual machine. 1152 01:08:17,319 --> 01:08:20,200 Right. No, I know and and it's but, but 1153 01:08:20,200 --> 01:08:21,880 there's that. You think that's going to be the 1154 01:08:21,880 --> 01:08:24,600 beginning and the end of it? No, we're going to have a whole 1155 01:08:24,600 --> 01:08:28,200 bunch of problems with this. So I think the smart maturation 1156 01:08:28,840 --> 01:08:33,120 of self sovereign agents where my agent isn't controlled by 1157 01:08:33,120 --> 01:08:37,000 Google, my agent is running locally on my hardware, whether 1158 01:08:37,000 --> 01:08:40,880 it's my phone or or it's my machine or whatever, it works 1159 01:08:40,920 --> 01:08:45,439 only for me. And that combining with the 1160 01:08:45,439 --> 01:08:48,080 primitives that we've already built, call it the sort of 1161 01:08:48,080 --> 01:08:52,080 agentic Legos, you know, how do we build, you know, the crypto 1162 01:08:52,080 --> 01:08:56,080 economy with the primitives, the money Legos that we talked 1163 01:08:56,080 --> 01:09:00,200 about, but building around it with a gentecag Legos to 1164 01:09:00,200 --> 01:09:03,279 interact with other agents that abstracts complexities from 1165 01:09:03,279 --> 01:09:06,319 humans in a legitimate way, making it cheaper, better, 1166 01:09:06,319 --> 01:09:08,080 faster, because I don't have to spend time. 1167 01:09:08,640 --> 01:09:11,680 It's just easier to do. I think those two things, 1168 01:09:11,680 --> 01:09:15,520 getting the legalities right and getting the agentic AI right are 1169 01:09:15,520 --> 01:09:18,680 the most important things. But then not too far behind is 1170 01:09:18,680 --> 01:09:20,800 we really got to get privacy right. 1171 01:09:21,880 --> 01:09:25,960 We've got to get privacy right. And I think it has something to 1172 01:09:25,960 --> 01:09:31,840 do with 0 knowledge identity. So like how do I prove who I am 1173 01:09:31,840 --> 01:09:35,319 without me having to tell every person that I interact with who 1174 01:09:35,319 --> 01:09:37,920 I am? How can I, with a 0 knowledge 1175 01:09:37,920 --> 01:09:42,040 proof, prove who I am on chain so that even if I've got some 1176 01:09:42,399 --> 01:09:49,000 weird pseudonym like original buffer corn right, nobody needs 1177 01:09:49,000 --> 01:09:53,040 to know who I am and I can transact freely on the Internet 1178 01:09:53,040 --> 01:09:56,000 because there's a zero knowledge proof that I've been verified. 1179 01:09:56,280 --> 01:09:59,520 But how do you do that safely without being censored in an 1180 01:09:59,520 --> 01:10:02,760 inappropriate way? That's the question. 1181 01:10:04,480 --> 01:10:07,880 Exactly. Fantastic John, it's been a 1182 01:10:07,880 --> 01:10:10,880 pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on. 1183 01:10:11,680 --> 01:10:16,280 And where can people find out more about your baby and 1184 01:10:16,280 --> 01:10:20,480 Ethanville? Well, ethanville.com is the the 1185 01:10:20,480 --> 01:10:22,720 most common place. If you're looking for content, 1186 01:10:22,720 --> 01:10:26,480 go to our YouTube channel. So just look up Ethan Denver or 1187 01:10:26,520 --> 01:10:30,600 an Etherium Denver on YouTube. We also have presence on X. 1188 01:10:30,640 --> 01:10:33,320 You know, it's quieting, quieting down quite a bit now 1189 01:10:33,320 --> 01:10:36,880 because you know, most of that's kind of over for a season. 1190 01:10:38,160 --> 01:10:40,720 If you're interested in the legality side of things, go to 1191 01:10:40,720 --> 01:10:43,960 regulationmembership.com. That's my personal project and 1192 01:10:43,960 --> 01:10:48,320 then my day jobisopolis.co OPOLI s.co. 1193 01:10:48,320 --> 01:10:52,120 That's the US based employment platform that we built for 1194 01:10:52,120 --> 01:10:56,000 independent workers and you know, digital nomads and you 1195 01:10:56,000 --> 01:10:59,600 know, solopreneurs and things that or Dow workers that don't 1196 01:10:59,600 --> 01:11:03,080 have an employer to give them legitimacy, payroll and 1197 01:11:03,080 --> 01:11:05,480 benefits, including health insurance in the US. 1198 01:11:06,360 --> 01:11:08,880 So that's where you go. Thank you. 1199 01:11:09,200 --> 01:11:11,280 Thank you so much. You're. 1200 01:11:11,280 --> 01:11:12,200 Welcome. Thank you.