Welcome to epicenter episode 49 teeth show, which talks about
the Technologies projects and people, driving
decentralization, and the global blockchain Revolution.
I'm Sebastian Cujo. And I'm here with my trusty
co-host, Felix, couch, and today we're talking with Ryan, zarur?
He is the founder of dialectic and also, So a super-early
epicenter listener, these OG epicenter listener.
One of few that I've stuck around, all these years and was
on the podcast, Believe It or Not 250 ish episodes ago.
So half of the life of epicenter, but yeah.
So today we're going to be diving deep into a whole bunch
of topics including n FTS psychedelics and maybe talking
about some investment strategies a little bit beyond that.
We also talked about defy and What he sees coming coming down
the pike in the future. Hey Ryan, thanks for joining us.
Thanks very much for having me and you don't want.
As I mentioned before very sincerely.
Thank you for all the work that you guys have done over going on
a decade. Now I remember that epicenter
became an outlet for me. I think Roma 2014 era in in
recognizing that like ah this When Community wasn't really,
the thing that I was after, and that there are other people who
are, who are thinking about things Beyond Bitcoin and, and
how this technology could be used, and you guys were really
the leaders in going Beyond Bitcoin, you know, at that time,
it was called epicenter, Bitcoin.
And and and then you generalize that and that important
ecosystem building, you know, I can't overstate how how
fundamental that has been to to the growth in the education of
the space overall. I'm so Very grateful for this
work that you've done over all these years.
Oh thanks. Thanks for saying that.
And yeah, it has been almost 10 years.
It is sometimes difficult to Fathom.
How long you guys could throw like a huge party for the decade
and like, have I don't? I'll kinds of guest Comer,
something like that. Do a big live, like multi, you
know, like multi-person podcast or something could be great.
It's important, right? The work that you guys do is
really important. No, thank you.
Yeah. But so you were on in 2018, on
episode 25 to 49. So, maybe for our listeners who
aren't familiar with your worker, who haven't been
listening for? As long as you have, can you
give us a bit of background about yourself and you know how
you got here? Sure actually in November, I
celebrated a decade in the game myself.
You don't early investor in the etherium make or do polka dot
file, coin definity file, or Solana near Rowdy, capital x,
infinity many others. I came into Polly chain capital
in the weeks after Olaf, founded the company and led a lot of the
early stage, a private Investments.
That time, we created a document called the Saft and that was a
really good really good mechanism that we use and I
continue to use. And so at this point I think
what I'm most known for in the spaces having been at the eye of
the storm of all three major Cycles.
So mining in 2012, 2013, you know, I cos and staffs in 2017
and then play during gaming. And NF T's in 2021, been
grateful to just be in the mix and and be doing my thing.
All these years, just love it and couldn't imagine anything
else cryptos a strange addiction.
Yeah. How did you I don't remember the
story that with how did you meet all off and and become a partner
at Polly chain? Yeah, I'll tell you the real
story which I don't think I've ever mentioned publicly.
I was talking with Pantera about putting investment into them and
I said I'll make an investment in you guys.
If you make any Theory, mm fund rather than a Bitcoin fund and
this is in 2015 and they literally Scoffed at me they're
like and I was just like you know what, like I'm gonna go do
this and so the Dow came up and I participated very expressly in
the Dow was fortunate to be to be called by majority Ballina.
On A Strange Day to contribute to the the Dow white hack
attack. And then after the Dow blew up,
I was like, okay, well, I was going to work as a venture, you
know, partner for the Dow, this didn't work out.
So I won around and look for who are the smartest people doing,
do you know, Venture style crypto Investments because I had
been doing some angel stuff. I had already written a check to
make er Dao and obviously putting into your theorem
crowdfund, a bunch of others and and met Olaf.
And we hit it off right away and, you know, and we got going
with with Pauly chain and, you know, that that's an example of
something that What you look for in startups, is for what I call
a company getting slippery, where it's growing at a pace
that you kind of can't keep up with.
And we felt like that in in poly chain.
There's this one moment I think it was actually the bank or Ico
where we had just passed 100 million a um and it was just two
of us and I'm an apartment in San Francisco and these guys
raised a hundred million dollars and we looked at each other we
was like geez these this probably five people Apartment
who just raised all this money. This is crazy.
Then we kind of looked at each other and realize like, where we
were and what we were doing we right, okay.
Back to work and so yeah, it was, it was a really fun time.
We remain good friends, but I'm happy to be doing what I'm doing
with dialectic, you know, automating yield in in Market
neutral and, and just taking a very programmatic approach to,
to Being in the major categories of crypto here in Switzerland
and being here in Switzerland, I think is is starting to pay off
as an important strategic decision.
Yeah, we definitely want to get into that a bit.
I think, for me personally, one of the first things, I think I
read from you was around like, keepers in Block Chain networks,
I see you like sort of evolved that topic over time can you
maybe explain to us a little bit?
You know what what you were thinking about there and maybe
also how it your view has changed since I think initially
you were thinking about just like in 2017 and obviously we're
like six years later now. So yeah, curious what your
current thoughts are. Originally, we were thinking
about that in terms of maker doubt because I co co rewrote
the white paper with with with Rune and Amanda and Nikolai, and
shout out to neckline who we tragically lost last year.
He was so important for our space and I miss him
tremendously. And you know, because we were
generalizing Beyond just Bitcoin in mining, I started to think
about it in terms, Zuv. Okay, there's a resource
provider layer that provides some important resource.
And then there's a user layer that uses this resource.
I'm, you know, one of the better examples are cleaner examples to
describe as file coin. Where that instead of mining or
transaction, confirmation its storage.
That is the resource layer and that's like the keepers and in
defy that wasn't called defy at that time.
But in liquidity networks and financial Networks.
The key resource is liquidity provision so people who provide
the market making and liquidity are kind of like the miners of a
of a of a liquidity network but we didn't really want to call
the miners. Zookeepers became the term that
came up in that in a long late night conversation between
Nikolai and I and that and really was just about describing
these networks as the resource provider layer and the user
layer and The user layer is subsidized by the inflation that
the resource provider gets over the bootstrapping arrow, which
were kind of coming to the end of an in Bitcoin.
But we can see, we're still in the bootstrapping are of many
other resource networks and this can be applied to too many many
things Beyond just, you know, financial transaction,
verification like in in a theorem and Bitcoin, you know,
file coin with storage. But I think there's a good
argument that it could be done with ISP.
Bees with energy networks. With you know anything that was
a Marketplace can be turned into a protocol with these two layers
where the user layer is subsidized and that's ultimately
the concept of Keepers is that there's a there's a resource
provider that subsidizes the users to get the service for
free or nearly free. how is your thinking evolve and like from
when you wrote those first articles which I believe is a
couple years ago has that thesis changed over time now that that
resource providing networks are a little bit more mature and and
also since these networks are no longer operating in isolation
and increasingly operating in sort of network of their own
right with interoperability I think like if you broaden the
definition enough, we actually see it continue to replicate
with fairly High Fidelity. So, for example, the newest
types of networks that we see are in play during gaming, where
the resources, incidentally, our eyeballs playing a game and they
are subsidized by inflation of an underlying token with that
game. So the first example that we saw
of that with success was actually, And generally, I just
think that that's a really powerful like fundamental
mechanism of crypto is that we can use inflation over a period
of time to bootstrap Network effects.
And then once Network effects kit can we can modify the, you
know, the economic trade off such that transaction fees are
are are more Paramount and and it's less about inflation.
So I think as game Ames games evolve.
What we're going to see next is we're going to see zero-sum,
right? Which I've actually been wanting
for a while, so today it's inflationary.
So if I play you in a, in a play during gaming context, you know,
and you win, I don't lose. You just win and and the cost is
socialized, across the whole network via inflation, where
it's going to flip is, is you win I lose now, there are some
questions of whether that On runs and to gambling and gaming
regulations and things like that.
And I think, you know, we'll sort those out over time but I'm
actually quite encouraged that. The general concept of Keepers
continues to you know, be relevant in the space.
There's been, you know, I see it be used all the time which is
really heartwarming. Like there's been like Dows
called keeper Dow and keep her this.
And so it's it's been nice over time to see that and see all the
things that that I've tried to make a call.
Attribution to the space in be relevant and be used by by folks
and so it's great. Right.
I think I mean yeah maybe it would be curious to hear I
guess, you know like actually Infinity was successful I guess
for a little bit in the market, then sort of the engagement I
guess, dropped off to you. So you think that's going to
change and like future future iterations or like sort of where
do you do you think maybe these first play to earn gave sort of
failed? Or what's there to entry?
Yeah, so I think the lesson learned that we take away from
from Maxie is and just be clear. It's like it's a lot of the same
lessons that we that we've had in previous, you know,
iterations in crypto is that that crypto economic design is
really important and changing it in the middle of the road can be
catastrophic. You know, the allegory that I
would use is that In layer ones, the crypto economic design of
the initial team distribution and how rewards are dulled out
over time either to validators or to Timor to community or to
investors. Those can those decisions can be
catastrophic to a project? I was part of the debate around
etherium is choice where they ended up going 9.9 to team 9.9
to foundation. And I thought that was a great
precedent but then we saw many other projects.
Deviate from that precedent over time and really do themselves.
A gigantic disservice, you know, the, you know, they start to be
calling VC coins. They lost Community from that
and, you know, and ultimately these things rest on on, on a
community with actually, you know, we didn't know how how
these things would we evolve and and then the change, I think
created a somewhat of a mistrust because I think we Estimate.
The fact that like very literally millions of people
were doing this as their job. And there is this Narrative of
like, oh Nova play the game because the game is fun and I
was like, man. I know.
It isn't like, I like to play this for a job and guess what?
That's fine. Financial incentive ization is
okay, and if that means that they're playing a game and they
otherwise would not. That's, that's fine because you
get to bypass the hundreds of millions and Billions of dollars
that it would require to to acquire customers to acquire
eyeballs in Instagram ads, and TV slots and and all these other
things, you just go right to the customer and you say, hey Will
incentivize you to put pay this game.
Play this game and I think that's the powerful thing.
Not how great the game is. And so what I look for today,
you know, we get, we get tons of pitches of like we're going to
make a AAA quality Crypto game, I'm like a night, you know, and
be you don't need to. You can make a pretty break
bones game and just build community bootstrap that through
the in financial incentive ization.
The other thing is, I think games will get more elegant in
their crypto economic design. So, you have to balance the like
you can't have pay-to-win where I can just like, pay to have
like the greatest swords and just like be running roughshod
through game like, I'm some kind of monster, right?
So the gameplay has to be half has to be High Fidelity to
talent and skill. However, you can have a condom
he's that kind of support the game in, you know, whether it's
like, like, providing resources or or like re-ups of energy or
various things like that where you can make for a more epic
experience that is supported by an economy.
And again that's where you have like user layer and keeper layer
read it. Deeper layer could be like the
providers of resources, swords would whatever it is and they're
going around a mining that in the game and consolidating it
and selling it in their shop. Whereas, the like the Warriors,
the game players, they there's is one based solely on skill.
I haven't seen a model that has completely solve that, but the
good thing is, there's lots of experiments and I'm very
confident that will solve it as a community over time.
So one of the reasons why I wanted to get you on was because
you know you're so plugged into like the nft space and also the
gaming space and this is, these are verticals in crypto that I
don't have very well form Theses about and I'm sometimes a little
bit skeptical of and you just said something that sort of
opened my mind to this concept that I think, you know, it
overlaps with a lot of other verticals and crypto and that is
that Yeah, intermediary elimination.
So essentially with gaming, you know, as you said you the the
game developer can bypass the the intermediaries that they
would usually interact with. So like marketing for instance
in order to or like need these intermediary costs in order to
attract players but by directly incentivizing players, they
don't have to have some of that like intermediary actor or cost
center. To attract the players, they
just attract the players directly.
And so it's sort of like eliminating the need for for
that intermediary, that middleman in the same way that,
you know, Bitcoin or other cryptos eliminate, the need for
other types of intermediaries with, with regards to gaming,
what do you think is necessary for sake like this this style of
gaming to have? It's, it's kind of mass Market
moment. I ask you this because I'm, you
know, I know folks that works at Ubisoft or, you know, I've
talked to say, Innovation departments there that are
looking at crypto and and from from the perspective of like
traditional game designers or game studios, there's this I
think this notion that the business model the crypto
business model, doesn't make sense for the economics of
building mass-market games, the costs millions of dollars to
produce Is is crypto gaming fundamentally, you know,
orthogonal to the traditional way that we think about building
games or do you think there's a, there's a middle ground here
that will, that will achieve at some point.
I would say my observation and these interactions with with
like epic and Ubisoft and and certainly like the drama around
Discord and things like that is more that you know, the
innovators dilemma continues to Prevail and that very rarely,
the incumbent will be the leader in a new Deluxe in the new
up-and-coming category. This is true across technology
in so many fields. And so, I don't think that, you
know, Ubisoft or AAA game manufacturers with with armies
of teams and, and the corresponding drama and politics
that are inherent in, in those size of teams will be the ones
that that catch fire here. I think that there, it's easy to
dismiss some of the core tenants and the power.
ER, of of crypto communities until you see it unfold.
And I think that that's what's going to happen and so like, you
know, they say, wow, you need all these millions of dollars
and an upfront cost and you do and you have to build, you know,
mass-market user base. It's like, well you could
actually kill two birds with one stone and get you know, like by
funding it, through the crowd and getting your community on
board both As users evangelists as well as as you know asset
holders. That's a great way to bootstrap
all of this together and and so crypto uniquely enables that the
the other component of this is I think it would be important to
set a parameter for what is like Mass market adoption.
There is a point in 2021 where there's about 480, A thousand
daily active users of ethereum, addresses, and about four
hundred and ten thousand daily active users of Axiom, finity a
ronin addresses and you know, it's really inspiring.
In fact being like in the space as long as I have been, there's
two stories that I find the most inspiring in the history of the
space. The one is all the people in the
Philippines who were able to replace their job.
Plane actually Infinity during covid right there, you know,
there is no, you know, there's no government, bailout, or
handouts during covid, like they had to figure out a way to
survive, and they were able to replace their job that they lost
in tourism or manual labor, by playing this game.
And it became so culturally ingrained that, like, people
would buy houses and in the in-game currency and like, like
cities were operating using this crypto asset.
And I think that that's really important, especially as we see
a II am L, you know, take the World by storm.
We're going to have to get real about alternative approaches to
to effectively Ubi and and for me, these games could affect a
best first attempt at Ubi and and we've had glimpses of that
happen. And so it just conclude the
second really inspiring story and and I think this may be the
next topic that that we can discuss.
Are these artists these digital artists who for so long?
Didn't have a way to commercialize their work because
if you bought a piece of digital art and somebody copied, it you
didn't know who had the original who had had the copy and so
there was no, like, scarcity of it.
There is no collectability there.
And with the Advent of NF tease, these digital artists were able
to, to commercialize their work for the first time.
And, and, and that was really amazing.
I'm like we saw all these rags-to-riches stories that in
an industry that had been broadly based on the speculative
use case. Until now this I found these two
stories would be really amazing that that artists and the
individuals in emerging countries could bootstrap
themselves and and, and sort of, you know, take a step forward
and be able to provide just a reasonable income.
It, you know, in the case of artist Mike You know, more
commonly known as people he jokes around that the highest he
ever got for an everyday before. N FTS was $110, right?
And and that's like shows that like Crucible moment of digital
scarcity, conferred, Rarity to his work.
And then that conferred collectability and that then
conferred value and and ultimately for for an artist
Like Mike can confer Early life, changing value.
And and those I just find it be really inspiring stories.
And where I want to spend my time, my capital so, yeah, let's
let me talk about in a few little bit and and again, you
know, this is a space that I've sort of babbled in a little bit
like with in crypto verticals, you know, like the fine of T's
gaming cetera and you know, I there are moments where I felt
like Yeah, like this is, this is like super empowering for
artists, Etc. Write like this, this narrative
that you'd that that you just expressed, then there's other
moments where I'm like this is a hot shit show and there's
nothing would good will come out of this and you know most of
this will go to 0. Can you break a leg break down
your thesis for how and FTS are, you know fundamentally like a
game changer in terms of how artists Express themselves?
And how do we reason about what? actually, of cultural
significance and what isn't, you know, I guess I guess like one
thing I think about a lot is With with with the 2016-2017
cycle. 2018 your icos were a big part of the narrative and what
came out of that. I think you know are things like
saps or more structured regulated funding mechanisms
like coin list finalists. Yes.
Thank you so so I think that you know, from from that exuberance
came out like these interesting. Funding mechanisms now within
ft's. I don't know that we've yet,
maybe I missed it but like I don't know that we've yet really
see. Like what will, what will we
look back on and say oh this is what the nft summer produced,
right? And so yeah maybe maybe she want
to expand on that. It's interesting.
I think as venture capitalist we were at peace with a cycle where
We're 90 something percent of something rights to 0 because
because that, that few percent that survive often go on to be
incredibly valuable. And so whether it's ico's, which
is a really important funding mechanism, or whether it's, you
know, n ftes which is really important representation of
digital scarcity for a variety of use cases and I'll talk about
the taxonomy in a minute. I recognize and have gone on
record like in the the height of the bull market of both of those
saying, yeah, of course, 95% of these will will go away.
And that's fine because the five percent survive will create such
extraordinary value, that it won't matter.
Nobody, you know, nobody will care.
And so I think it's really important to to separate the
taxonomy of of n FTS because as a technology, it has such wide
sweeping a Patient's, right? Like today it's being used for,
you know, digital art and gaming and and some like Social Clubs
and and you know, different things, different things in like
that tomorrow. It will be your house deed, you
know, your your University diploma, it look and FTS will
Encompass eventually all capital assets but for for today's
taxonomy, what But the way that we separated is we look at
digital art, that is somewhat and So within digital art
there's some subcategories so you've got I'll go are like Rafi
Canada, all you've got, you know, pop culture are like
people you've got generative art generator or is kind of cool
because that's where a platform, a artist, and a user come
together in in a critical moment to create something that that
they've all participated in that.
It's a certain bond between the collector and and that that
outcome. And then, you know, you can kind
of go down down the list from from there in art, but that is
different. So digital find digital art is
different than say gaming assets that are supposed to have
utility and that's also different from what we
considered to be Social Clubs. So something like board.
Apes in its current iteration, is more like a social club,
right? People are signaling to the
world that they you know, can afford to spend Then six figures
on a on a monkey JPEG. And in overtime, it will it will
evolve into being a gaming asset.
We think we hope. And so those are, those are
very, very different categories of them, you know, we'll see
music and of teas which there's been some early experiments on
and and I think there will be some more will see full feature
films. You know, especially like Choose
Your Own Adventure films where like you can compose like six
nft. Get one outcome and compose
like, you know, 13 to get a totally different film outcome.
Then, than you, otherwise would have Right Down the Line until
again, all capital assets are an artiste in the digital.
So we with one of one are our collector pool, we focus just on
find digital art and not only that we focus just on fine
digital art that we can interface with museums because
our mission Mission is to help digital artists.
Find the rightful place in art Canon because again, digital
artists have been completely dismissed in in the art World in
our Cannon for Generations in part because there was no
collected in large part because there is no collectability of
their work and that has changed. That's what that's the.
That's kind of the interesting thing in the digital, art
category. And and from there, you know, my
friend Amy couple, that's what has this very famous I've been
Spending a lot more time in the art world because just got you
know, hurdled face first into it with purchasing both the refika
an adult moment piece as well as as human 1 by B people.
And I'm you know met some just unbelievably brilliant people in
the art World. It actually caught me by
surprise how many thoughtful remarkable people spend most of
their time and capital and art and my friend.
Amy. A palazzo told me this one piece
of advice, you said look in all categories of art across the
ages. Only about 52 maximum 10
artists, survive, a decade and matter.
And everybody else basically writes 20.
And I was like, that's interesting because that's kind
of like Venture, right? And so I take a bench or
approach to Art, but what we see is that Upper Crust will
survive, right? That bill Very important, he's
like cultural monikers these these, you know, these things
that we identify as representative of our time.
They will survive and be very valuable I'm cautiously
optimistic that that both works of Rafiq ended on em and people
will be among that that discussion.
But I don't know, you know? And that's why I take a
portfolio approach and we've got more than 50 artists, including
20 female artists in the portfolio and and I find that
that just is really exciting. That very clearly digital
artists Merit being represented in our Cannon very clearly.
They have not been properly represented in our can until now
and that will that will change and we can benefit and you know
and captured growth in that regard.
Do you think there's like a also maybe like a generational To
this I'll give you like an example that something that
happened recently like I was in Amsterdam and I went to this
this this Art Gallery its place called The Moko Museum and they
had a bunch of nft. They're actually I sent you a
picture right there. Was this there was a people
there and I sent you a picture of it and and so I was my fiance
and I were like by far the oldest people in this Museum and
like, you know, or in her late 30s and so and and there Was
just like in the nft room everybody was like climber Dan
nft room trying to take pictures of the nft S and then.
And then we had a very different experience at the Rick's Museum
which is like this, you know, this world-famous it's going to
sort of Fine Arts Museum and in that in Amsterdam where you
know, it's it's an institution, but you know, nobody's like
clamoring to take, you know, pictures of you know, You know,
Van Gogh or something or maybe a little bit, but like not as much
as like this people. So, I wonder if there's this if
there's like a very kind of generational cultural
significance, that that this digital art has to a generation
of people that Associates more with like this digital
component, and this from sort of very modern contemporary
components. Absolutely, I think this
definitely resonates with a millennial and gen Z audience,
much, more than traditional art. Now, one of the interesting
things that have come out from that is museums, major Global
institutions are recognizing this far faster than we think
far faster than I imagined. Like, if a year ago today,
somebody would have told me that we'd have a piece in both m+ and
MoMA. And by the way, the one in Moma
the roof, he can Adele is shattering records, has
completely broken the record for the longest period of time on
average that people spend in front of a work at the MoMA.
We can think about these, the MoMA like ever.
Like this is in front of Starry Night in front of, you know,
water lilies in front of all the Picasso's, all of everything.
Ever the Rafi Canada Liz tracking as you know, as having
the highest engagement and And you know, museums are waking up
really fast to to the fact that this matters because post covid
museums are having to get, I think more more creative about
how they get people back to to museums.
And and as a result, like, I what I'm seeing is again, I
can't speak broadly cross and FTS but in the fine, digital art
category major institutions are filling the hole where the
crypto Community has has sort of like lost lost the narrative and
kind of you know I'm sort of missing the forest for the
trees, right? Like we're too many people are
worried about like floor prices and airdrops and utility and we
got Pompey. Du Lac mom Moma.
You do. M+ look all these Global
institutions acquiring fine digital art and FTS like this is
a really big thing. And again if I would have told
you this a year ago, you would have said categorically
impossible if you know, if you know the art world you just
said, no way Pompey do is going to announce a major like
collection overhaul or the MoMA is going to announce the sale of
70 million dollars worth of. They're all important art
collection in order to lean into digital.
Right? Like that's a huge huge
movement. And so again like that's kind of
the thing that I find the most compelling, the most interesting
in that will Will Survive and Thrive and create Great Value
over time. Right.
I'm actually sort of curious. I think what you mentioned super
interesting that, you know, we're worried about these a
drops floor prices? Do you think there's some sort
of like I guess there's a big difference between, you know,
bootstrapping a keeper Network, let's say and the way to
incentivize and like the kind of crowd you, you get.
And and maybe in the nft space like how you become significant,
it's probably like a different mechanism.
Do you or do you see like some overlap of how you would like?
Sort of bootstrap, these different communities through
the inside of isolation. Or is it like something totally
different? Yeah, I think in fine in the
Fine Art, it's fundamentally different because it's not about
like, creating Network effects because you have like scarcity
that drives drives the value and you know, you actually don't
want like velocity in the in the network it's like, let's look
at, you know, let's look at a great collection, which is both
very high quality, Fine Art. And And also has great
community, and in digital art, which is squiggles right now.
Fro creator of this idea of this generative, you know, Trinity
that comes together. We're collectors feel really
deep resonance with that. There's no velocity, but you
can't, you know, you can't get a rare skin.
Squiggle a, you can offer whatever you want.
You just can't get it. Like, they're just not like
people like, no, this is mine and it's always mine.
And that is kind of what you're looking for and find her.
That's a bit that's very, very different than what you look for
in like gaming or in in other categories.
And that was, you know, I started out like being like,
okay, I don't know what is going to be cool and then ft so like
let's experiment and all the different categories and then
from a collection perspective kind of narrowed things down
over time to focus on find digital are even though the fund
continues to To do a lot of a lot more things in gaming.
I think, you know, the size of the gaming space will
dramatically Clips the size of the Fine Art space.
Like you don't gaming will be multi trillions or art will will
stay well and well into the to the like low billions.
And so those are very different. I think you will see like these
interactions of bootstrapping and inflation driving things in
gaming and Fine Art. It's a fundamentally different
mechanism. The art is the utility, right?
All right thanks. Yeah we definitely so much to
cover like topics and like vertical.
So like we're going to try to make it like a bit of a hard cut
here I think I read like on the dialectic website is like says
dialectic is a machine that's of ciphers to unlock exceptional
value for our members. Can you expand a bit on what
that means? So we are a group built by
crypto natives for crypto natives.
So the vast majority of our members member Families.
Our LPS are you know entrepreneurs that I've done
well with over the years or friends in the space and you
know and and there are a set of of challenges that that that you
face managing significant crypto wealth.
And so everything we do is very Krypto - you don't unchain Jane
and we look at the architecture and portfolio construction from
a crypto natives view with an understanding of the nuances.
The difference between investing in crypto assets that have, you
know, shorter timeline to liquidity higher volatility.
You some advantages, some disadvantages that you can
manage. Then we take a very technical
approach to those. And so, you know, one of the,
one of the things that I think I'm most proud about in and is
very emblematic of what we You is our Market neutral fun.
So we'll ever all of our vehicles are named after Swiss
watch complications and our Market neutral fund chronograph,
which has of today is yielding 18 point, 36 percent annualized.
I think that's probably around four X Out performance of our
peers. And the way that we're able to
do that is we have this software suite called Medici that oughta,
mates, harvesting compounding, It automates a bunch of the
analysis of like how to balance pools, how to balance between.
You know, what we've done is we've stacked taken regular defy
and on top of that stack delta-neutral and then on top of
that stacked Mev in Mev isn't like traditional Market neutral
but you can make it Market neutral and it sort of Pops once
in a while when you hit a strat and that's like, you know, when
a lottery every day for for a week until it gets hard way, but
still Good, and the combination of these things and then having
a software suite that that delivers more security and and
delivers, a programmatic approach of balancing, you know,
when defies down we balance more into delta neutral when delta
neutral is not available because of a variety of things, may be
worth more than Mev more defy. And then we diversify across a
wide range of of pools and having that long tail exposure
allows us to put small amounts of money into like high risk and
Deegan stuff which can have really high yields without
risking going below, zero percent in a month.
So we still remain Market neutral up every month but you
can go and take like Deacon risk on some things if you're if you
isolate it enough and if you have the right infrastructure
around you, so that's like, you know, that's the kind of stuff
that that we do. That's very crypto native.
It's very technically driven and I'm really satisfied with the
returns. Radeon.
Super interesting and I guess I wonder is this something that
you have to do like proprietary or is there also like a way to
like sort of built this also fully on train or are there like
elements that you just because of the I guess Mev nature of it.
You can like build this into like a network type thing or has
is that something you thought about?
So there are parts of it that we do feel compelled to maybe in
the not too distant. Future release to the world for
Community Support. So for example like you know we
have this thing like Bridgewater and and also like pool Watchers
where what they'll do is they'll watch for specific signals and
imbalances in a pool or bridge and then automatically remove
Capital should any of those. Oils occur and it and does it in
multi cigs on chain and like the amount of money that would have
been saved by people and in exploits over the last year, if
you know, if the bridge Watcher was widely available, we've been
really significant. You know, we've seen it play out
for ourselves where we've been been able to get out of a pool
when it was showing these signs and, you know, a lot of other
people got got burned. So I think there is a moment
where We open source some of this because it's just important
infrastructure. But then we have to balance it
because like, you know, we're not, we're not a foundation.
We don't like we make money by making money for our members
and, and, and ultimately, we have to do that.
First and foremost and and and while these things are producing
really compelling outperformance on the yield, You know, where we
feel pretty good with where that is, especially in a really
highly volatile market. Right?
Like, people running, you know, like, hedge fund strategies of
liquid tokens or even Venture strategies.
I can empathize with, with that this is a more, a very difficult
Market to say fundraising, as well as deploy into because of
volatility and uncertainty, around a whole bunch of
different topics like regulation.
And so, our Market neutral feels like Just Like Home Base right
where we can like revert back to.
We know we make great money for LPS, we know we return great
money to our, our shareholders, as a result and and that that
just feels really comfortable right now in the sun, these
uncertain times. Tell me a little bit more about
this bridge Watcher. What kind of things are you
looking for in order to detect these signals?
Like what signals are you looking at to detect when like
there's a there's a bridge hack going on and what have what have
you learned from that in terms of how these exploits go down?
I mean, there's some really like simple ones just like capital
and balances that you can take. There's a bunch of social
signals that you can also be drawing on.
There are You know, there's a rank, I suppose, I shouldn't get
too far into this but some of it is sort of a, what would be
called like a defensive Mev. So you're kind of like any being
the bridge to not be any vide. And, and that like that, you
know, Mev broadly is is I often refer to, as like Inception for
crypto. Math Olympics.
And so that goes right down the rabbit hole.
But there's a bunch of Mev strats that, that that have
second-order implications and indications, that that are
certainly important. And then Capital balances,
social notifications and a bunch of things like that.
Because again, like if somebody is draining from the bridge it's
always going to be like one side of the bridge it drains, right?
And so if you see a delta in that very quickly, And it's to
the - right, it's not somebody's coming in with new capital.
It's like someone has taken off Capital then that can be a first
order. Certainly A first order signal
and then you can compare with all the other signals to then
automatically execute the multisig transactions to remove
capital from that pool. Okay.
So, how are you guys? Engaging in the nav space, more
broadly. I mean, you guys have been a
pretty prolific participant in that ecosystem.
What what what what types of things are you are you doing to
engage with the Mev space? So my co-founder Dean spun out a
separate organization which we you know which we seated and
incubated a call Project Blanc and together with a bunch of
math phds they run Mev across a number of different networks and
that is about sort of like building infrastructure that
goes beyond the simple sandwich Tack and and he will, he will.
Will literally shoot me if I if I kick Too Deep In The Weeds on,
on his strats. But what I, you know, what I
would say is that, I think it's really interesting because I'm
what we did internally, so he had spun that out that's been
spun out for over a year and they do and they do really well.
It's a cash flow business, it's less of a venture thing, but
they're just run, run, great, cash flows.
And then, the funny thing about Mev is every new layer 1 and
layer 2, Pops up presents a new set of Mev opportunities, right?
And so people are like, ah, yeah, well you know, you're
going to get our, you can get armed away in Mev and that may
be true and you theorem and certainly with like univie for.
I think, I think Mev any theorem will be Certainly a full house
at best and probably just like, you know, done not maybe not
done, but a very Full House, very competitive environment.
But the thing is, there's so many new layer ones popping up
every single day that like, you constantly have green fields
where you can reapply infrastructure and in other
categories and so we really like what they did, you know and then
what we do is we use some of their, their data and They're
their infrastructure to do this defensive Mev and our Market
neutral and, and that helps just like pop pop the yields and take
them from, you know, like mid teens to mid-20s and in this
environment when things are going well, and overall, I think
it's it's an interesting category, you know, I when I
explained Mev to people who have no idea of a crypto, I often say
I like, have you read Michael Lewis's, Flash, Boys.
It's kind of like Flash, Boys for crypto.
And if you take it to the second and third-order implications,
you know, the Advent of Flash Boys and and algo trading at
that time, ended up making for more efficient markets, and I am
firmly of the belief that Mev makes for more efficient markets
in crypto even though. And the funny thing is today in
the Mev space, I'm going to preface this by saying this is
speculation and not Confirmed rumor.
But our understanding was the top sort of four players in this
space were Alameda. CZ Finance who may or may not
have been doing very heavy Mev on their own chain, which I
think, I think there will be a long discussion about that if
that does end up being the case, Justin sun and And jump and the
three of those four are now gone right there out the door.
And I'm Evie is something that like a cruise to the.
So we were kind of like number five, number six, sort of thing
and it's want. It's a thing that accrues to
the, to the Upper Crust like many things and so, like top to
capture the line share on on a given Network and now that you
have the most like, the largest Most resource intensive players
out of the game. It's really like, you know, it's
a very interesting new day and that maybe I would say Actually,
I want to like sort of take it back also to what we said about
gaming and like the bootstrap networks and do you sort of see
a world where like these sophisticated actors I guess
like you know, Mev participants being like sort of more
automated than you know, like person playing a game.
Do you see like an issue there? Where maybe, you know, all the
players end up being Bots instead of like real players?
And how how does the future look like or is this something that's
just like, inevitable? or how can like projects kind of
defend against that let's say ER, So I do think that that will
be, you know, that will be a thing.
There's a really interesting project called altered state
machines that makes autonomous agents for pleasure and gaming
games and there are a bunch of other people thinking about
that. What my hope is on the other
side is that play during gaming will represent an opportunity
for effectively Universal basic income and so people will play
against the Bots to like to earn you know to earn income and and
then log more sophisticated operators will operate the Bots.
And it makes for this like human and bought interaction that like
you don't like Mev and like us, The things we're we're greater
levels of sophistication or driving towards efficiency.
You will have checks and balances in overtime rights like
games will have their version of unity.
For that is like bought resistant but then at the same
time, there still needs to be some Bots because there needs to
be enough players to play against the people and the
people need that. Because again, that's going to
be Universal basic income or it's going to be like one of the
options for Universal. You can go, I always am firmly
of the belief that the future that we occupy will be much more
inspiring. And frankly better than then the
present. And as these things evolve, we
will find solutions for them and it will just be better for
everybody. Yeah, I'm also quite quite
optimistic that that will be the case.
I think that I think it Bears reminding ourselves sometimes
just how early we are and I know there's sort of a meme that says
like people say like you know that about about about being so
early. But we are really fucking early.
I mean there are many people that have interacted with crypto
today. As there were people on the
internet in the earth in the late 90s.
You know it we haven't crossed the billion users Zurs yet.
We're far from it and And yeah, I mean there's like just so much
more ahead of us that I think it's for those of us who've been
in it. So long, it's difficult to
remind to like, sort of remind yourself that that this is still
a very, very early space. I want to take a step back a
little bit and maybe bring it up a little bit more high level,
you know, given the the GE, the current global geopolitical
climate and how is that affected your your thesis about crypto
and you something? really interested in as how has
that affected your, how you look at investing in crypto, I'd
start this by saying I would love your your view on this as
well you don't because you're you've been a super smart
investor in the space for a long time and I'm and I really
respect your opinions. Who would love love your view on
this as well? Generally I think for the dream
of why most of us got into crypto in kind of the 2011 2012
era Seems to be coming to fruition, right?
We got into it because we believed ultimately that the
world was going to suffer through a high inflation moment
that the u.s. dollar is maybe the most over valued asset in
the history of the planet and was going to go through a
significant evaluation. And in that environment,
deflationary assets were going to matter much more than they
ever had this sort of, like return to a version of the
Standard once again, and we see this playing out, right?
Like, this is like happening in front of our eyes in this
moment. So like broadly, I'm leaning in
to the, into the market and and very confident that we're up and
to the right from here. Like, you know, when it, when we
start a poly chain, I used to go around saying that by 2023 3.
No. Self-respecting hedge fund on
the planet would be without exposure to crypto and by 2025,
no, self-respecting Capital pool of any kind, you know, pension
fund, or otherwise would be without exposure to crypto,
think of a little precipitated on maybe both of those.
But by like a year to Tops, I do think that we're hitting the
knee of the curve that we've long been waiting for and and
that's really Interesting. However, as Venture capitalists
what that means, is that our scarce beef and Bitcoin that we
are then giving to a, an entrepreneur has to perform even
better because we know that like, I know each has a 10 X in
it. I bet the farm on that, right?
So that means, for the entrepreneur that I give money
to be is mine. Like my opportunity cost has a
Neath, he's got to go out and deliver you know, 100 X or more
and so it has been you know, it's been making it causing us
to pause somewhat and and seek like a more Consolidated
portfolio of very high outcome possibilities I would say on the
Venture side but on with respect to like liquid toe Guns.
I mean I think I don't I don't think a collection of just like
thoughtful like high-quality liquid, you know liquid assets
like Cosmos and Ethan polygon and wormhole on a few others.
Just look like so obvious right now in my view and I don't know
maybe I'm maybe I'm just a hammer and all I see is nails
but I think it's like I'm more excited in this moment than I
think I ever had. Been in the space ever.
But what's your take? Like, how do you, how are you
thinking through this from perspective of like the tectonic
changes in geopolitical landscape and how and how that's
affecting you as an investor? Yeah, I mean I wouldn't be
starting an investment fund if I didn't think that we were up
into the right from here so that very that, that idea very much.
Resonates with me. We are also approaching our
investment strategy with a very concentrated portfolio strategy
and which is why we started with a fairly reasonably small sized
fund because we need to deploy it.
And we also wanted to play in really high quality projects
that You can generate 100 tax returns because because we are
our investors are crypto investors or LPS are crypto LPS
and so for them to deploy their, you know, their Ethan, their
Bitcoin and and these high-value Assets in, in a fund they also
have to, you know, to have that that that conviction that the
fun will outperform. So that that resonates with with
our Strategy. With regards to where we're at
and and the types of things that we're looking at.
I think that there Still Remains a lot of infrastructure to be
built and I feel that that that the next cycle is going to be
heavily infrastructure focused. So you know, we've got the,
we've got the initial building blocks of of crypto
infrastructure in the form of a Block Chain networks with like a
decentralized values are set that allows you to settle and
this sort of thing. But the The. the way that that
will look and say five years is going to be very different and I
I take a lot of take a lot of lessons, I think, from the way
the web has has sort of distracted, the different layers
of its stack and I see that happening in crypto as well
where you know in the early 2000's.
You know if you wanted to run any website you know like you
had to buy physical server space.
Install a NOS on their, you know, run a web server and you
were essentially operating all of that.
Structure in one machine, which is sort of what blockchains
looking like now. But as things went on all the,
basically the layers of abstraction between an
application and and, and the hardware there's like, you know,
perhaps dozens of layers there and I think that's also
happening in crypto what what we need to keep sort of the you
know, our eye on this is decentralization and this is
Why? I like the reason we built
reason we're building this is because we want censorship
resistant, scalable applications and we've been I think I think
this space for a long time. The narrative has been that we
need to DC. We need to keep blockchains
decentralized and scalable and usable.
That doesn't really matter. We've had the around the wrong
thing. What we really really need is
decentralized. Scalable usable applications
that are decentralized and so whatever the stack looks,
Underneath I think doesn't really matter so much.
As long as the applications, were May retain those properties
as the applications that are going to matter.
And so we, you know, we need to be careful about what kind of
stock were building. And one of the things I look
here. I look at here, for example, is
like the fact that most RPC providers are centralized,
right? Like that is that's the
centralizing point that we need to address but if if every layer
of the stack sort of maintains those properties, to some
extent, any Applications will also maintain those properties.
So anyway, that's the sort of long winded way to say that I
think like infrastructure is a big part of what, what will play
out in the next cycle. And certainly something that
interop is like highly focused on investing in and where, I
think a lot of value will continue to come from right,
like infrastructure has been over the last five years like
through the outside of like nft using.
And so things like the infrastructure has been a one of
the highs returning verticals or say yeah and in crypto and I
think that will continue to guess.
Oh absolutely. I mean no no no no.
Yeah without question and you could just boil it down to The
like the conceptual decision Tree on infrastructure of people
outside the space always ask me like why do you like dozens of
blockchains are worth tens of billions of dollars?
And I say because the decision Tree on it is a Monumental
payout. Like you're talking about being
the financial substrate of the modern world, that's a
multitrillion-dollar outcome. So even if it's a point, 01, %
the net present, Value of that you know ten billion dollars
that's why these letter wands and some letter 2's are
efficiently priced at this value, it's not it's not
incoherent, it's not irrational. It's actually very rational
because you're talking about literally like the financial
substrate of the world and Beyond over the next, you know.
However many decades, you know, I often say there's never been
an industry on planet Earth is Bulls programmable money.
And within that the infrastructure layer is, where
naturally all of the value accrues or not all the value.
But, but the Lion's Share of the value of cruise.
If you look at the like top 10, most successful Venture outcomes
in the space, I think I think acts.
He's the only one, that's not a layer, one more layer to you do.
And I think that that's a really Smart investment strategy,
especially in a concentrated fund.
I'd actually like your feedback on the way that we look at at
early stage investing in a slightly different approach and
that we have these buckets. So we go conviction thesis
exposure generally as buckets and then we create this long
tail across the different buckets, conviction, buckets, or
larger bets. Done really deep due diligence.
We know the team, they have traction, all these things that
you would look for. And that's, you know, that's
that's kind of like your traditional Venture place you've
thesis which, you know, maybe there's like one red flag in
there, but you like the team team is always a hard box check
in that one. And and outcome, it can be
really interesting. And then differently than most
Venture funds we have this long tail.
Of exposure. It can be like, Angel checks,
you know, kind of 100 to 300 K that usually rest on is the
technology interesting. Like is this conceptually a
massive outlier outcome or do you really like the the founder
and question and we we leave sort of single digit percentage
of the portfolio in our Venture book which is called resonance
available for these long tail, exposure bats that are somewhat
Experimental and often allow you an option on making a conviction
bet later on. So like at the at the precede,
you maybe make this exposure bet because it's a party round and
they're only raising a million dollars.
So you know, you've right the 200k check and that's really to
like get the information to to then later on make a conviction
back and in crypto different from Venture.
So it traditional Venture would. Tell you that's a waste of time
but in crypto because you have shorter timelines to liquidity
and because you have much higher Delta's in the return profile,
right? Like things go very rapidly into
the hundreds of X. Those exposure bats are
actually, in our view, in our analysis, the exposure bats are
actually an important part of a coherent crypto portfolio
because you don't know, you know, you can't constantly
telling my team, like, don't think you're that smart.
You don't know what a outcome will be a big, a big outcome,
and those can be really fast turnaround sun exposure bets.
Yeah, that like I love how you think about this because as a as
a new manager, right? Yes yes.
These are things that that were trying to sort of, you know,
construct and like put down on paper.
You know, what is our strategy? And I think when you're
investing as an angel you make investment decisions that that
affect you and no one else. And and when you're investing
LPS money, I think it It forces you to have a little bit deeper
thinking around how you're constructing your portfolio.
How the, how these allocations, what word for word, portion of
your portfolio is allocated with like these convictions or the
these high exposure things. And yeah, this is an interesting
way to look at it that I'll certainly take back and
probably, you know, integrators in some form into into into the
way. We're constructing our
portfolio. But that, but I think you know,
when we We have we haven't like, sort of expressed it that way
but it does it does I think they resemble the way in which we
have been thinking about how we want to construct a portfolio.
I like we have these things that are super high convection.
And then we have a smaller part of the portfolio that, you know,
we've sort of labeled like these high-risk more like high-risk
bets and you know, some something in the middle there.
So but yeah, it's a it's cool to know that.
You're also thinking about it this way and so built built your
control for fellow press strategy around it.
I'm happy to send you some analysis that we've done on this
and that's they just look at it because again it you know, it's
not it's not like normal Venture like this flies in the face of a
lot of the long-held tenants of normal Venture.
Yeah. So we had so many other things
to discuss here but I just realized we're way over time but
I do want to talk about your work in psychedelics a little
bit and then you've been what you've been wanting to talk
about this as well. So you're also one of the
founders of Vine VC which is a VC firm that has focused on
health and wellness and Consciousness and certainly
psychedelics, you know what? What what are some of the for
thinking things are seeing in this space?
And what's your involvement with maps?
This multi-disciplinary Association for Larry.
Likes a good audience. Yeah, science.
Yeah. It started just very quickly, it
started, when I went with a friend of mine to to Peru, he
was dealing with a really debilitating addiction problem,
and I saw the transformation that he went through, and I kind
of went like, okay, like something's going on here, this
isn't just people tripping out the forest, you know, mental
health is a massive is the largest pandemic that mankind
faces before the pandemic. One in five people, People
suffer from mental health problems.
I think. Post pandemic, it's probably
close to maybe 40% of the globe. So there's a problem.
And ssris are not doing them are not a solution and I think you
know, for many people who have tried a psychedelic therapy of
any kind that you realize that it's wonderful experience both
for curing the SEC as well as betterment to the well.
And so I just kind of wanted to like learn more about this.
So I I spun up a very small separate.
Experimental fondant in Vine which is now kind of it got
really slippery and took a long. It took a look on a life of its
own and we've been fortunate enough to back some really
interesting things in mental health.
So like you should try other ship.
If you can if it's in your in your area, it's a community and
people in crypto would really resonate with other ship using
holotropic breathwork and hot cold therapies to 2 + Community
to like take a new approach to mental health, but the most sort
of the highest conviction bet that we made certainly was in
maps. I'm so Maps is the
multidisciplinary association for psychedelic science, 37
years as nonprofit led by Rick, doblin to bring MDMA over the
line of FDA approval. They will get that FDA approval
by February March of next year. Ear and then they can actually
legally sell MDMA in North America for PTSD.
But very quickly. I think you'll see The Dominoes
fall for depression as well as couples therapy MDMA for I
funded a study in couples therapy a couple years ago and
the results are shocking of how effective it is for for for
couples, going through various challenges.
You know, generally I just like I didn't look at this as like a
for-profit thing because again like we work in the most
profitable industry on the planet, right?
Look, if I want to make money, I'll go over crypto, right?
Like, you know, nothing's more profitable and programmable
money. I just looked at it as kind of
an exploration project that where I wanted to be a good.
Custodian of LP Capital, I'm very grateful for the LPS that
have supported Vine and very You know, very happy and very
optimistic about the returns that they will have but you
know, ultimately just playing around on the capital model
because these are, you know, this is the largest problem that
mankind faces and Maps is unquestionably, the leading
organization. They've been a non-profit and I
would like them to be able to stay a non-profit because I
think the social experiment of a non-profit leading a Pavel
Pharmaceuticals category is really important.
I think if we could prove to the world that you don't need these
20 or patents and Pharma margins and the whole Farm industrial
complex to deliver life-changing therapy.
I think that that really matters and so I designed a SPV 4 maps
last year which I led and we would raise been under fifty
million dollars. And and what that was was a
Revenue share. So you could as a for-profit
investor, you could you could make money.
As you know, Maps has has increasing revenues but then
there is a reciprocity component to it.
So as you make more money as you go, you know, 2X and 5x.
And and you know, 8 x Mo I see on your return you give
progressively more back to maps. The organization's of the can
stay nonprofits that can fund other other research and other
philanthropic entities. And we're kind of coming up to
two maps, needing to do another fundraise to get to the point of
sustainability. They would need probably around
another 60 to 80, and I have started to think about you.
Don't how much overlap there is in crypto and and psychedelics.
Like, these are my two life's two, passions.
And I've constantly tried to keep them apart and not have any
interaction between the Areas. But we saw a glimpse of how much
the two communities love each other in the Christy cell last
year. We did a digital art sale
Christie's for the benefit of maps and all it was just
amazing. The, the artist that showed out
for that and that kind of got me thinking of like, okay are there
things that we could be doing to to have the crypto Community
engage further. And I think this would be an
important moment for Do to support a company like this in
part because we have a narrative problem in crypto right now that
the outside world thinks of all we are is a bunch of like Ponzi
scam. ER, you know, profit tears that
are just interested in the speculative, use case.
And so supporting something that really matters, that really
moves through the ball forward for mankind.
Solving, you know, arguably the largest problem that mankind
faces the mental health pandemic, I think could be
really really compelling and then the joke that I've made
with Rick is, you know, when we originally designed the
regenerative financing vehicle last year for four Maps, it was
like 40 pages to have this reciprocity pledge in the actual
company in the vehicle and I was like, you know, this is like a
few dozen lines of code in a smart contract.
Look like, you know, in crypto this is like, you know, refi And
decide like these things are like native and natural to us.
We're in like the traditional farming.
I'm Destro complex. They're like nah this is crazy.
Like you're gonna like give profits back to a different
organization on a program based. I'm like yeah because if you
just ask somebody at the end of the day, to give a philanthropic
donation after they've made, 100x on investment The Wretched,
25k check, and tell you to go fuck off, right?
And and so you have to program it in.
It has to be like baked into the Of model and that's true.
That's trivially available in crypto.
So I've been trying to think around you know there's I'm not
here now seeing anything. I'm just sort of like thinking
through like okay what could be a model that provides cash flows
to investors like provides a really compelling Venture
outcome but has this reciprocity baked in, you know, could we
draw on the crypto Community to support this?
This fundamentally important organization that has done?
The most to push, psychedelic therapies forward across the
world and and you know, and then could we kick start regenerative
financing as like a new defy summer, but have refi summer and
we're doing more, you do more good for the world outside of,
you know, of just pure pure profits.
Could we kick start real like decentralized science and in
Something like this and I feel like, you know, not to be too
hyperbolic, but I feel like crypto needs maps and Maps needs
crypto, and the two belong together, even though I've tried
to keep them apart for as long as I've been involved with both.
So that was a bit long-winded my apologies but but yeah no it's
super cool. And I mean, certainly the
Psychedelic space is one that I think.
Yeah, I think you're right. Like there there there are a lot
of synergies with the crypto space and certainly People in
crypto, I think are more likely to have done psychedelics than
most other people in most other Industries.
So, I think it makes sense that the, the maps and in crypto sort
of come together in some in some form or fashion it seems it
seems quite natural. And yeah, I do also like agree
that the mental health pandemic as you call it is.
Feels like it's it's getting worse and I think covid
accelerated it. But also, what's going on in the
world right now? I think is certainly not helping
and Anyway that we have to come back from that is is a good
friend that net positive for Humanity.
Yeah a lot of the things that are happening in the world that
are terrible for Humanity are functions of of mental health
like why is Russia in Ukraine? Because Putin, sat in a basement
for two and a half years. You don't only allowing people
to sit on the other side of a 30-foot tapeworm.
Table from him in his own, you know, in his own thought cycle,
just doing away until he convinced himself that he was
going to like reunite the, the former USSR think that's a
mental health issue and you go right down the list of so many
other things that are like world leaders have us Alice on these
like insane Misadventures and they come down to mental health
problems. Right?
This is a, this is, you know, with the exception, One of
death. This is the largest problem that
mankind faces, maybe for a different time.
We could die die. The I think we've really, to do
another one, like deep deep into maps and psychedelics for
epicenter spin-off, podcast about psychedelic.
But yeah, it's a Bromley I'm looking for feedback right now
from the community, like, you know, is this something that the
community wants to get behind like we do need to come through
from apps. Like somebody's got a gotta
write this check, like, there's no way we're going to let this
37 year. Journey of Rick doblin like die
at this precipice moment, right? Or even have like a you know a
farm of EC come in and own it in the end and it's like all this
was for naught that doesn't seem like the outcome that we've been
waiting for. And so I do think I am
optimistic that that there's a important Synergy to be realized
between crypto and Maps. I haven't cracked the nut of
what that is yet, but would just love the community.
Unity feedback. Cool.
Ryan, thanks so much for coming on.
It's been a pleasure. Thank you guys with you on all
these topics as love to have you on again at some point.
Maybe not in 250 episodes though.
You know what the important thing is?
I know that you guys are going to be around in 250 episodes
because you do great work, your is as photo.
I hope so. We're super grateful for for
everything, you do. Thanks Ryan, cool, thanks again.
And I do want to I do want to plug one thing before we go,
just because we didn't have any sponsors today so it feels
fitting. So maybe Other Summit, it is
happening and it's happening in Paris on July 24th and 25th.
So never let someone is The Interchange Builders conference.
It's two days it's going to be epic for anybody who was there
last year and I know Felix you were there last year so I know
you can you can vouch for this that never this time it is
probably one of the best investments in feds events in
Europe for interchange Builders. So anything related to Cosmos
interoperability Cosmos D Phi and cos awasum staking Surah.
So this year we're doing it again.
It's going to be two days. It's happening at this place
called Albert School in central Paris which maintains his is
larger than our veteran venue last year.
But you know, tries to keep the Very Cool vibe that we had at
last year's venue and tickets are on sale.
So the early bird tickets went on sale on Monday April 3rd and
we still have some available so I think by the time this goes
out they'll probably be some very few early bird tickets
left. So if you plan on being at ECC,
this year, you should definitely get a ticket to another Um, it's
going to be great and we've already got some like 15
speakers lined up, and probably will go up to 70 80 speakers.
So yeah, that's happening. And would love to see all of you
there if you can make it. So, thanks again for joining us
this week and we'll talk to you in the next week's episode.
Thank you for joining us on this week's episode.
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