#196 Arthur Falls: From Lobser Fishing to Blockchain Podcasting

Transcript

[Music] this episode of epicenter is brought to you by shape-shift I uh the easiest fastest and most secure way to swap your digital asset don't run the risk of leaving your funds on centralized exchange does it shape-shift the i/o to get started and by Jax Jax is the user-friendly wallet that works across all your devices and handles both Bitcoin and ether go to Jay a double xio and embrace the future of cryptocurrency wallets all right welcome to epicenter the show is talked about the

technologies projects and starts driving decentralization and the global blockchain revolution my name is Susan Cujo and my name is Bryan cogman crane we heard today with articles probably many of you know articles especially if you are avid podcast listeners I have known articles or articles majestic voice for many years I remember hearing he did this podcast back in may be 2014 called beyond Bitcoin which was a really excellent he did very in-depth interviews actually one of the people who was on that process once was man Roy which was a really good episode so I remember may hear from from that as well this is actually I think part of the

reason why I wanted him a we wanted him as a co-host I remember listening to that episode of a in Berlin actually running in Berlin and when I when we met for a conference at some point and then thinking we should have this kind of show guys well it's a pleasure to be here I mean I think it's probably exactly the same you find yourself having like a content creator crush on all the other podcasters around who are doing good work exactly into since then since young bitcoin right we shouldn't exist anymore but then he started also started some other podcasts one is he review which again has become you know certainly

the leading etherium you know purely here in focus podcast and then state change which is kind of available ends this project yeah that was those consensus specific that one year and he's been doing this world tour through for all things law chain and he wasn't going to we met up there actually randomly cemeteries there at the same time so yeah we have having on in Arthur on to talk about lots of things blockchain and his amazing lessons from his trip around the world so many lessons so many lessons hey it's really good to be here guys as well and it's funny you mentioned the that that

episode that had Maria here ROI on it because he wrote that white paper and architecture for the Internet of money which is about actually using like permissioned blockchains or in his case he was thinking of hyper ledger or like the original hyper ledger before it was an IBM thing or or a ripple ninja and also their co Deus projects which had like all these cool things like smart articles and stuff like that and I think they might actually be rebooting that but it was a really cool heads like idea of a permission blockchain world was like pretty pretty on point I thought at least at the time and that was actually the last episode of your on Bitcoin and that was like that was like that said it's a mission world it's going to be others guys figuring it out

well then etherion came along and you know it was time for a new podcast out came the microphone again how did you become a podcaster what would he journeys towards well I got into Bitcoin in 2013 start of 2030 I was in Melbourne and I was unemployed I was just there because sometimes you can get a good job that pays well and an Aussie and had a bunch of friends they're basically economic economic refugees from New Zealand and so we could run which is a mean thing to say New Zealand New York fine but um we went there we were all there and I just could not get a job and I wound up on a on the couch for a year just learning about Bitcoin basically and and then

come 2014 it was like man I've spent so much time learning about this weird Internet technology money thing I've got to do something with this you know otherwise it was a completely wasted year and so I created beyond Bitcoin and the rest is history no way well right now you're totally jumping over the part where I used to fish lobster right I am that was actually when I stopped I stopped lobster fishing then just because it was like what am I doing with my 20s on a frozen island in the middle of the Atlantic and sexy people out there it was like the most isolated place ever but I was really good about it is you had a spare time to do strange hobbies and research and so you know I

used to read a lot and then actually after 2015 2014 I made young Bitcoin and I was working as an arborist and then I 2015 I went back to fishing because it's the only thing I'd ever been financially successful at but I also started little arborist me with an arborist is somebody who like growth tree or what's an arborist like tree surgeon so climbing felling like problem tree removals it's not not someone who you know takes advantage of arbitrage opportunities like no you know I'd never I'd never even conceives of that as a potential as a potential income stream before for all

of us this carry on got it gully interesting yeah so what I podcasting like well you know from being interested in Bitcoin and wanting to sort of podcast about Bitcoin today or what we did you have a yeah you done podcasting before did you have some kind of interest in podcasting no but I did speech and drama when I was in high school not when I was a mustard h I think was before I was in high school and then I got like some diploma after leaving high school and that and and honestly it's I mean it's a bit different for you guys because you're in Europe right but if you're in New Zealand like there's no way you're ever going to meet anyone who knows anything about the stuff so it was actually 18

months after I first got into Bitcoin that I met the first person who actually knew what it was and that was actually a Bitcoin South in 2014 which is a this conference again and it was something like oh my god all these people you know but yeah just to meet people basically and also I don't have any any relevant skills to the industry so I just had to make one up and it's funny if you just like pick an area where there's a skill shortage and you don't even have to be particularly good in order to excel so that was kind of the kind of the thought process behind it and act like you want to meet the people right even when you were producing the podcast even you're

still working as an arborist and then you're working doing fishing as well yeah I actually think during a break from from the podcasting well no no so I let's see we're gonna do it I finished up and like January or February 2015 and then I moved out to the island again and honestly I was broke as well this is like it was like a it was because New Zealand you can't really you don't earn that much money there especially not if you at the bottom of the kind of labour letter and I I just got a credit card with the $2,000 limit bought a ticket to Maine and to this and and got a chainsaw and just started started felling trees

and got on a boat and I used to record out of so they have terrible entities out there but have a high-speed connection to what they call the neighborhood house which is like a it's kind of like a sort of light you might have mentioned a town hall it has a little library in there it's kind of there in case something terrible happens to your own house you've got this kind of large assembly area where you can go and anti-d to go in there and just and record using that connection because it was really fast but it was hilarious because it's just so so completely isolated and alien and environment especially to the relative luxury of kind of high-speed connections in the developed world so not only that I well it were you in me

it's offer so so you know Mount Desert Island new Acadia National Park it's like same same latitude as Nova Scotia yeah and so you've got like tons of islands just up there and and they're all they're all lobster fishing lines yeah I mean I am from that part of the world so I'm from New Brunswick so yeah it's it's actually a that's right yeah yeah I mean it's a little bit more southern but this is pretty actually this is a good image so you were like 2015 you were there in the middle of nowhere going out in your boat fishing lobster you're coming back and then you took the next Island to this little library or something and then you did

these interviews with people producing this podcast episode about the curiam and in a nutshell and a nutshell that that's what it was like it was it was interesting I mean it's a hard life out there I mean it's like the simple life in you know simple life sometimes is just amazing but sometimes it's your own personal health and that was it was like a constant isolation between that living out in those and the main islands but ya know it is it's a romantic image did you at the time when you're producing these podcasts oh this little community house like in the sticks of Maine did you do you think that you know what you were doing you could you've gained some traction and become influential as it

did I never I never thought about like that I just it was just a way to meet the people and get closer Knology I kind of had an inkling that something might happen with it one day but it was never I never conceived of it I was on actually like it I was not a bit of a 5-year plan I was like well go out here I'll start a business I'll save some money and then you know and I actually got a tattoo actually got that tattoo can you see it's kind of hard to like right when I kind of decided to give up and become a fisherman and that year and then I got I was hired by consensus like about a month after getting it and it's never seen the deck of a working but so for those listening that was an anchor tattoo on on Arthur's

for her it was a typical kind of fisherman but it is a very romantic image you know he's for those who haven't those who have never seen Arthur like Arthur's is pretty burly guy like he's got applied straight on right now with a beard and he has a fricken anchor tattoo in his arm and there you go like you know of course you're fishing lost well I mean it's you know everyone needs to in a crust yeah I mean it's funny the difference and experience that you have coming for different places in the world like and and just even generationally is massive I mean if you come from these like these big nations like the US or like these large like like large kind of

unions like like Europe you have so much opportunity so you know you can kind of you can do just about anything and then find your niche but in a New Zealand you're one of four and a half million in a really small economy with nothing around it except for Australia and you've actually got to go out and find your fortune really and and so people do all different ways like a lot of people go to the mines and Western Australia and a lot of people go to London and yeah I went to Maine so something probably similar similar picture to where I'm from a lot of people willing to just get out of these and go work in mines or something Western Canada so right now you're still

what are you still producing now as a podcast so I'm I've canned of Kansas state change because part of the reason I did the two podcasts was I didn't want to have that I didn't want people to think that the ether review is going to be corrupted by the fact that I was working with consensus but at the end of the day so much great stuff is happening at consensus that it doesn't really make sense to you know I wound up not putting so much consensus stuff on the ether of you that as I normally would which is totally not in the interest of anyone so I so I've can there I'm doing a lot more a lot more ether of you now of a have this editor

who's helping me up she's an audio she has a master's and audio journalist of an angel alexis Kenyon she's for the States and she just does an amazing job and I am kind of thinking that it might be time for a slightly more ambitious content strategy but for now I'm just doing extra extra ether of you I got it's kind of weird you get on these threads one thing I find about content creation you guys might might identify with this is I was never aware that there was even an audience really I was just interviewing people and using that as a tool to pursue my own interest and

which is kind of why it's never been sponsored part of the reason that it's so rewarding making content is that you can use it as a way to it's like as a personal exploration of a subject and recently I just became really interested in the legal side of all the stuff and I started asking people if they'd want to come on this legal discussion call and the whole bunch of people said they did and a lot of them from actually Australia I found that a lot of great lawyers in Australia were interested but I got a whole bunch of random people from all over the place and then I started just kind of networking in the law space in the legal space and and I thought well I've got so much legal content I'm going to actually have to kind of brand this slightly separately

because otherwise people are going to be like what it's just like a law podcast now or something so I started making ether review legal it was you know that that's the title is not the ether review is illegal in the first place but I and so I kind of categorized those episodes differently and I've got a whole bunch of still go I just want to come out with my awesome lawmakers and from Australia and all the stuff about how they're about their approach to blockchain and it's they've recently cared they have a bipartisan initiative a lot like they had in the States to to push it in Australia part of the part of the big race to to become dominant in kind of a new technological field and so it's kind of I found that serialized

content if you split it off and do a whole bunch of whole bunch of lifts so it's about a single subject is a really good way of getting really deep and a specific subject and I'd like to pursue a bit of that actually look at like different things like you're you're intelligent protocols and and kind of the some of these more obscure consensus protocols that are out there like like snow white that they have up in and Cornell and is MIT got something and there's a university in Australia that's got something as well but I just keep meaning to go and really dig into but you just need to get around to it unless you make it a making a mission that sounds really really great I mean yeah of course I agree if you're gonna if

you're going to do something that's going to be extremely valuable to niche of people is producing you know a specific type of content about one topic and then you get you know you get to be super well-versed in that in that in that one specific area which is something that I mean we we've never really done I guess probably for because of lack of time or you know we it's we've always kind of focused on interviews but but doing this type of thing I can see would be extremely valuable to the you know just to the ecosystem in general as for people coming in you know this episode is brought to you by shape-shift the world's leading trustless visual assets change quickly swap between dozens of

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good-looking Fox you know that's where shape-shift is so to get started visit shape-shift I owe and start trading and we'd like to thank shape-shift for their support of epicenter so in in in all of this you know these interviews that you've produced interviewing all these people for the various podcasters you've done you can kind of kind of point it what are the things that you find have been most valuable or you know what are the things that you've learned that have been most valuable to you either as a you know as a personally or as a Content producer or just as working as someone working in this space one thing I always look for is one thing I always make an effort to do is this to always be trying to change my mind you know

and because what I find is it's so easy to be dogmatic and it's so easy to be seduced by a lot of there's so many smart people on this plate in this space you know if you're just a normal guy and you're trying to figure out what is actually going on you find that even a large volume of information won't necessarily mean that you get it right I thought like the end of beyond Bitcoin is really interesting because when I was really unimpressed with I didn't really think that like Bitcoin or any of the stuff that was being built back then is ever going to work and it was just because of usability I didn't even anticipate the scaling problems I mean that I just kind of presumed that it would be fine you know surely you would scale right you

know but uh but there was just such bad usability back then and it still hasn't been a lot of improvement and so to me it was very clear that bitcoin was never going to be a payment successful payment system and the rest of the stuff was still just kind of it was still science fiction and then me when I read my hair Roy's white paper and I also spoke to the guys at ripple labs the Cody esteem and was like man this is this is and also the hyper ledger guys like this is that how it's actually going to happen right because this whole decentralization thing is actually building something in parallel to a very functional system so if you take for example New Zealand and maybe Canada but maybe not I don't know

let's just say I trust the government here like I trust them this week I don't really trust the police quite so much but I mean either so it's still great I mean I can't complain and and so I'm quite happy for those guys to be running the show and and managing identity systems and all this kind of stuff I trust them explicitly and so when we think of like the decentralization paradigm or or model if you think of it as a like as a trust network you're building something so that you don't have to trust people but I do trust people so it's like why don't we just get the government to run a to run a

node and and then you know maybe a couple watchdog agencies and there's your scaling why do we have to why do we have to rely on this what do we have to circumvent trust and so coming from that kind of background obviously that doesn't apply everywhere and I know it's the absolute antithesis of this space and I mean yeah I'm an anarchist right but I'm also a pragmatist and so I just really thought that at the end of the day this was going to be a that model that the federated model was going to work out me in to the permission model was going to work out me and and me here did such a great illustration of it and

their paper and so I just kind of enter the sponsors as well I was talking to Tim Swanson too much I was hanging with a bad crowd guys um and so I kind of decided that yeah that's what it's going to be and but then when aetherium came out it was so great to just have my mind completely changed by by everything that's going on there and honestly it continues to change all the time all the time more more today than ever before do I find myself changing my mind just everyday ya know I had a somewhat similar thing that I also felt like okay public blockchain Bitcoin and stuff weren't

really going to work around 2014 and and then I joined the era's industry site which they became own acts you know kind of out of this idea as well I felt like okay permission blockchains is really kind of the way to go but you know I mean we're going to get to speak about this a little bit later I think especially ICO and crowdfunding has just turned this on the head again and there's only so much funding for public watching stuff that is you know it's not even there's no even way to compete with the pace of innovation at all I think when it comes to their permission blockchain world yeah it's not although although having some slightly some

insight information that probably shouldn't be too too liberal with because I'm not understand sure what is what's the publication or not but there is some huge money going into the development of public blockchain tech because the thing is like a lot of a lot of people I think you have all of this you mean grab it like in yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah private watch in tick because all these guys they have all of these tokens you know be they it be an ether Bitcoin or whatever the hell coin pardon my french and no offense suggestion um they they I think that there's some hedging of bets going on

you know there's some investment in different paradigms and there's so much money now yeah there's unlimited money now you know there's no way you couldn't spend money as fast as this thing it is gaining speed and I think a lot of people are recognizing that a lot of big players are recognizing that and I think that that is really what differentiates a successful platform from an unsuccessful one is the the ability of the investors to effectively deploy their their capital and a lot of it is going into these a lot of it is going into kind of technological diversification and these in these permission systems so let's let's talk a little bit about your

world trip power how long would you how did you decide to do this blockchain world to her yeah that's funny because this is where we actually finally met in person but you know there was conference week there was the kindest consensus conference etherial the the consensus consensus conference and then there was also token summit was going on and right before all that there was going to be a there was a series of events in India and so it was like that sort of on the way right I mean not at all but like no I'll give it a go and and so on the way over because I was going to go over record some

podcasts whatever you know meet some people reconnect with the mothership that is consensus at large and as I you know it's going to cost me a lot of money to do this you know to go from New Zealand to the other side of the world and you know accommodate yourself etc it wound up being five grand or something for two weeks so I'm like why don't we just you know why don't we just extend the extend the trip as long as I'm actually flying to that part of the world and and interview everyone and so I just I pitched the idea to bossman Joe and he was he'd hate being called there and he said yeah sounds like a good idea I think he was just like whatever man on that day whatever you're doing out there

just just good for and he and so so I flew to Mumbai but might with my little Kimber's little DSLR camera and all my recording gear and interviewed a few people there kind of got my khatma feed about me and went to then went on to went on to New York and I just kind of got the idea that yeah this could be a really great mini documentary series about a whole bunch of different subjects and so I wound up bookings all around the states through Europe and then back through and then back through Dubai and then Singapore on the way back to New

Zealand and and yet interviewing interviewed about 90 people just about 90 people on the whole trip and how many countries let's see it was us us Iceland I said I mean they accidentally that's a hilarious story Holland Germany London which is in Britain UAE and then Singapore and I always meant to go to Australia but I just never got around to it because it's right there and you never go to what Sonja dogs do so how did you accidentally get add Icelander well so I was at the airport and that you know it was not you know so I've done that classic thing when I was going

to JFK and I was driving to JFK no I checked on my phone it's in bloody Newark and so I had this one hundred and fifty dollar taxi from just about at JFK to Newark Airport and I got there and it's like this huge line and it's only one person to the disk and it's just you know are you guys all going away are you guys because I was going to London but how to stop over and Iceland and it's like you guys are going to on this Iceland fight it's like yeah I know I don't know that we're going to get on like this is taking forever and then this guy comes in behind me like exactly the same situation like am totally exhausted running and carrying off his bags and it was just and he was kind of behind me in line ER we were

just talking about it and you know how we were probably going to miss his flight and I was like so what do you do it's like I'm a data center engineer is that what do you do and I'm like are men to this kind of data center e stuff yeah I didn't know I you know I just didn't want to get into an Easter site oh yeah yeah yeah what cryptocurrency I was like yeah okay yeah I work for Genesis mining and I'm near my data data center engineer actually and it was this guy Chris hast and he was like you should come too we were just talking about you're just yeah just yawning and he's like you should come to come to Iceland just don't go on to London the of good is this great place for I stay you should just crash there and I'll show you the

facility and and I was like sure why not I mean that sort of here phille and so hung out with this guy for a few days and just had hilarious adventures in Iceland Sun never sets yeah it was a it was awesome and to see those the inside of those mining operations is really eerie you know it's kind of where we're in this ivory tower where we just enjoy the enjoy the fruits of all of that pointless computation but to actually go down and go down there and see it happening was really awesome so as if you're like yeah in what way was it eerie to see them it's just a totally different side of it and also I've never seen so many graphics cards you know

I've got a graphics antenna mirrors I've got a graphics card around here somewhere and I did you remember you're a kid and you bought a leaves like you built your first computer and you had all the components and it comes and the box is like oh wow the CVE oh this is so cool it's a Core 2 Duo you know or like it's like all those when you get it and it counted it's so exciting and yeah open up the graphics card you look at it and you hold it and it's just like wow this is so powerful I'm going to play one or any games with this yeah this is going to be great like what a wait this is going to use up all my time but you know one billion transistors that is crazy just blows the mine and you look at it any like wow that is a bet as a

marvel and you just get this warm feeling like meanwhile they have hundreds of thousands of views to spread like it's just like amount of it so many I mean it's it's really weird and it's actually the one of the weirdest things to learn about with mining is that it's about it's all about sourcing graphics cards and how quickly you can hook them up because if you expand that capital and then don't you know you're comparing that capital expenditure to the performance of the highest performing asset in the world right which is Bitcoin or or ether so you need to actually get that stuff hooked up and you need to get the fastest gear the

most cost-effective hooked up as quickly as possible because everyone else is competing with you and I remember um speaking to actually that's bet oh yeah so here's a tangental story so I mean that's what makes it really that's what makes it really eerie is because you see all this you see all the stuff and you see the inside of these operations that are so competitive so competitive it boggles the mind this guy Teemo hunker who's he works with string Labs he's a cryptographer he developed a sixth which was part of this big controversial you know the scale and controversy yet so timur hunka he's a he's a guy has been around and he was working for terra how she was trying to

start he was one of the founders of terra hash back in 2014 or i think they founded in 2013 and they wanted to design their own ASIC and so they did this they got it taped out the engineering company that did it for them basically said that was going to perform have have half the heat consumption that wound up having and because it was so so competitive they paid to have all of the PCBs and packaging since to them you know assembled and sent to them in advance of actually receiving the chips and so they're the power supply hardware on the actual PCBs couldn't support the same before the performance that they'd predicted and so they went up with all of these slow Asics and that they're

trying to sell and then a major investor pulled out who had liked it who's going to buy you know 10 million Asics or whatever Timmerman dolls were the basics and so suddenly they're in the situation where they're like well we've got to plug these damn things in and so they started flying around the country plugging the stuff in and he described the sensation of feeling like wow I mean I've got to get these things plugged in because if I go to sleep it's going to cost me a hundred thousand dollars and I that is the you do see how efficient and how well refined those that that operation and Icelanders compared to you know the litecoin minor that you ran in your bedroom you know

over the winter yeah it's definitely a view excited is know and especially if you think about where this industry's going to go and let's say proof-of-work continues to have you know this role while with bitcoin where the frequency can succeed by definition unless there's some huge change they will continue having this dominant role the idea that this is going to scale I remember I think somebody told me that the Bitcoin network now consumes as much electricity as San Francisco and if you think of this scaling another 100 times and all of a sudden a huge amount of the global resources artistic putting out the

pointless hashes to compete in this crazy race it is such a weird concept in the weird image to think of it's not that much power actually I mean either that bench that's also like a ridiculous statement to make I was interviewing this guy David's to rinse turbo of iota and for one it was just you know it was actually on the trip actually it was in Berlin at Demetri DeYoung's house who works for big-time BB anyway I'm interviewing this guy and he is describing putting a sex in and IOT devices and it sounded ludicrous to me for iota and it still does to be honest but if we when we were talking about it

we kind of realized or I kind of realized that if you divide that power consumption that power consumption of San Francisco over all IOT devices you're only you wind up with you can actually reduce it to a kind of battery life limitation or something and it's probably not that much if you think of all of the IOT devices in the world and what they consume in terms of electricity even though they're very small there's so many of them it winds up being spread out so thinly that it doesn't even really matter and there's so much power in the world there's so much electricity being generated and I mean so for example I know it seems like we've there's an aluminum smelter and the bottom of New Zealand down there

down the bottom of the South Island and it's not profitable but they've built all of this infrastructure in order to run the damn thing and if they turn it off all the pipes go freeze up with aluminium and and it's it's got to be demolished and so they've got the situation when they're like wow we really don't know just we do really don't shut this thing down but it's costing us a lot of money and they have nothing nothing else to use all of this power for maybe ten percent of New Zealand's power generation and I think there's a lot of that because it's costs a lot to transport car you know you think of it as just plugging into the wall but it's not like that at all so there's a lot of surplus power around the place that can be that can be

directed toward computation and so it's those kind of little nooks and crannies in the world are going to suck up all of this all of that power consumption arey all right that's for that entirely sense to me but well because the thing is right when you lose power you lose a lot of power in the transmission of electricity so like for their aluminium smelter they've built a huge hydroelectric dam and the smelter that has to be also next to a next to the ocean and then what I found is that Australia can make it can do it cheaper than us and so we actually have all of this infrastructure around an ultra-high

energy consumption industry that is not competitive in our environment and so what you have is this is this kind of sweet spot where what are you going to shut down a couple of turbines on the hydroelectric dam shut down this like huge facility and then you're going to have just lose a bunch of jobs and not be creating any economic benefit and there are little pockets like that all over the world we're just through weird admin you've got a opportunity to get super cheap power or even free power so it's yeah I think you think that's the story largely also what's happening in China know that there's at least so I've

heard right that they have a lot of subsidies to build things there to build resources and build infrastructure and then they will build all these higher you know all these power plants in all kinds of places anticipating that some CDs will spring up for some development and then that doesn't happen and we have all of a sudden power plant there that's already been built so the kind of the cost is written off for that but then you know delicacy is not being used so you can go there plugging those Bitcoin miners and you can use that but of course you and you know to some extent sure that's true but if you think of the value of they con going up and up and up right then presumably at some point also this free access velocity

will be kind of used up and you will actually have in real real costs there yeah real cost it's weird to think that those you know you think about it as just plugging it plugging it into the wall socket you know plug in your minor to the wall socket but really it's that game is so competitive it's about finding it's about finding a little places in the world where power is cheap and it has low humidity and the right climate and all these common things there are that you you travel all around the world right so all these different aspects of blockchain which you know we also see in in kind of different ways reading about it and in quite obviously I think to anybody listening here you

know we are at a very special moment and as a historical moment in this in this industry it has really gone mainstream to an extent that I guess many of us anticipated right which falters would come but when it actually happens it's so feels strange and very different so what are the kind of surprising aspects in which this is expressed itself during your trip or you know the things that you you can go to okay you know this is it's happening here in this way that I I didn't wasn't aware of before I can only really see because I'm here physically and I'm seeing this and I'm not just reading on coin desk or speaking with people on skype I think it's the awesome

question so many layers to that one I think what I found really interesting was actually meeting a lot of the people who do this work and the two most interesting groups I found or the two most interesting things to compare were the investment funds and their investments theses were really interesting and then the actual teams that were building the technology and how healthy those teams were the actual culture and the general and enthusiasm and happiness of an office so and it sounds quite quite weird but the so when I saw one team that I really liked

so consensuses like this awesome place it's like this Giants like it's like a hive of activity when you're there I mean that the the Brooklyn consensus offices and it's a really exciting place to be but everyone's working on these different projects so sometimes you can't tell exactly who's doing what and but to go to see a team like like big chain DB or the string Labs guys and they're just just grinding it out I wanted to see the protocol labs guys I just miss them when I was in Palo Alto I just didn't have time to catch up with them but they were on they were on my on my list of people to save it they just to see these like these guys just smashing stuff out and I remember other

than the string labs and they're having this meeting and in their hacker house and bendlin the L and BL s signatures bond England shakin signatures which is awesome really interesting cryptography right like those threshold signatures where you can have you know 200 or 400 pieces of a pieces of a key to create a signature really interesting stuff and so this is like the guy who figured it out or one of the one of them and and so they're having its meaning and then he runs it runs into the room with a be like guys guys guys I've got some crazy idea I don't know what it was it was something to do with maps which I hope you know I never did well a mess but it was really really cool to see see those

guys like actually having ideas and kind of critiquing them and getting into them and then being honor that won't work but it was your classic like geniuses you know and like big chain DB those guys are really interesting just and that they have such a healthy team environment you know it's you know I'm a laborer right I don't get how you guys work you know like people work in front of computers my first day and consensus 8 it was weird I actually nearly had a panic attacks because I'd never been in a room where people are sitting down and working before and it was really eerie and a hard thing to actually come to terms with and learn that these people are actually doing

work and and to see like the big chain guys and how like team re-entered they were that was it was hilarious because people do all this team team stuff they get excited and then they go sit at their desks just like where's the activity guys but that's it because we're making software so that was really interesting and the other one was yeah the different attitudes that people have to investing in the space so poly chain capital is really interesting and that they see a multi-protocol future right and that's kind of like that's like an obvious and pragmatic view on all the stuff the but it's like but it's also how you actually how do you select what

you think is actually going to work and what actually makes for a good investment and there are lots of people have a lot of ideas make I've always been really good friends with Jake bruckman of coin fund I disagree with a lot of the ideas that he expresses about what's going to be big and what matters and stuff but but at the same time he has an amazing view into the space and and quite similar to the poly chain guys but then outlier ventures is this correct has who is a they're like outlier ventures is another fund like like poly chain but they they focus entirely on the convergence of technologies so they look at IOT as an emerging technology for example and then

blockchain as this other emerging technology they're like okay put the two to put the two together you get Iona you get an investment you know you get a an investment that fits their investment thesis and that was really interesting to think about it like that to actually think that rather than trying to predict how this is all going to play out why don't you just find places where there's going to be high alpha right you know places where you have two exponential technologies is pulling a Tim that is that really is and and seeing how they can provide that kind of this multiplicative effect on on investment which I mean I've never thought about

like that right I'm like a buy-and-hold kind of guy and in panic sell and then buy back guilt-ridden and and sorrowful you know for breaking faith but but yeah it was cool to see all of those different those different approaches to investment and different communities actually right so there's these different communities as well like the academic community totally different from the enterprise community which it's cool again working at consensus you get to see the enterprise guys alongside the the products guys and that the kind of debt makers and yeah they just have their they're very very different sensibilities and everyone thinks that they're the best

everyone thinks that they're kind of they're their ilk has has the best view of the stuff but and everyone does have it in their own little way and the hanging out with I was a witch Cornell super hot like I mean it's just like just beating down the the the Sun over there and I was hanging out with good and you know Eman good and so and who's hilarious like just hilarious and some of the students and he going to gave me a tour of the place and we talked about all of the various going on that they have I interviewed in my extensive extensive interview and just well well touring around well touring around Cornell University

and those guys are so smart and they see stuff that you never even thought about and in these in these the designs of these protocols you know you look at 70 star that's their that's that you know nothing then wonder the Sun then it turns out some of these tiny little tweaks that people make things like the ghost Protocol and it's specific implementation in aetherium really like endless discussion about that because I wouldn't know you know I wouldn't know I can see how it works I can say it looks plausible to me portability is right that's basically my measure for truth you know I don't the word truth I just have portability but to see those guys really like dig down and and kind of explain the the advantages and shortcomings of all of

these like meticulous these all these little designs and a lot of stuff and in iota which I've obviously been looking at recently just because it's just a great illustration of the of the dag you know and and also and and the threshold relay chain which is what string lasers are working on because that of course becomes your own little your own little research projects because you go and you see these various various teams and you become obsessed with the work that they're doing so that was another really interesting thing was to meet these different communities especially the academics because I've never had anything to do with academics before so that was really cool really cool to run into let's take a short break to talk about Jack Jack's is your wallet your

complete user interface to cover all your block Chinese I've been using it math and loving and chat supports a lot of different cryptocurrencies cause bait corn Easter like corn if you're in classic Disney cash order rep and you're adding many more keep the responding to users needs I was Jack the nice thing is that do to manage all of those coins within a single wallet and you are in control of your own private keys they're not on their server and there's a single 12 third seed that you can use to back up your wallet all your coins and sync them across different devices talk about devices they're on pretty much any device that you can think of you can get it on PC Mac Linux you can get on smartphones like Android and Apple and

iPhone you can get it on tablets or even very even browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox and on top of that in Jack's you can actually change the different cryptocurrencies for each other because they've integrated a shape shift and more partnerships and integrations are coming down the line in 2017 that are going to make Jack's even better so Jack's is really making blockchain and cryptocurrencies accessible for the masses needed use for the masses make sure you sure to get your own Jack's wallets at Jack's at i/o or you can get it from any of them source you are using we'd like to thank Jax for their support of epicenter one things that strikes me is really interesting of everything you just went

through there is how how interesting it must be to you know meet all these different teams that of course all think they were the best you know because I mean when you work for a company when you're working at a start-up like of course like you're the best you're doing the you know the best work you're doing the most innovative stuff but not necessarily recognizing that you know there are other really passionate teams that are doing really good stuff you know basically maybe total blocks away from you and then and one thing also that must be really really kind of fascinating to see is moving from from team to team and seeing the different cultures in every one of those teams so like the the company culture but then also in the context of like a broader

like you know geographical sort of kind of culture of that country where you're in must be really cool to see like how say for instance consensus is so different from like 18 DB or any of the other teams that you worked with Oh totally yeah the one of the funniest things is how you know the u.s. thinks it's the center of the world and then you go to and I love I always make fun of the u.s. I'm a citizen by the way so I'm allowed to make fun of the US you guys are mad to make jokes at the expense of of that green nation but you know Europe has so much diversity that there's a different understanding of how the world works in Europe to how it

worked how it is in the u.s. where you're bombarded with endless US propaganda right and endless us centric viewpoints and and people there's so much there that you don't have to look outside the walls of that of that country to get a lot of what you need but say Europe I mean there's so much diversity there people have these really hold a lot of different viewpoints simultaneously that you just don't have you don't see that same that same thing in the US but at the same time the US has the sight epic pioneering culture and drive just so much hard work you know I mean like those guys are its

almost pathological probably not enormous it's probably outright pathological they work so hard there and and I mean not that people don't work hard elsewhere but just that is something that really characterizes their that space and then you go to you go to say countries like Australia and I've been trying to figure out why is Australia why Sydney so big and block team and why are that's why is why are Australian lawyers so interested because if there's one thing like Australia is leading the world and blockchain more and that is a really like they're also the Secretariat of the ISO Technical Committee for blockchain standardization

as as standards Australia so they're actually hosting the the standards the you know the the standards body that is that is figuring out these the ISO standards and that's it's bizarre they don't even have they have a lot going on there they have a lot of great people but and that like in that room I remember actually being in an ISO meeting and it's like no technical people it's all lawyers and which is fine because laws it's different in such a different standard to interoperate whether it's the right way of thinking actually about stuff but yeah the those guys and then who else is that even

Eastern even the different coasts you know like San Francisco and Palo Alto have a totally different attitude to stuff then then New York does because presumably on the New York side you've got these this finance orientation and this enterprise orientation and on the partly on that the West Coast you have this kind of snooty oh we're in Silicon Valley we make you know we're billionaires everyday you know and so there's there's two different two very different cultures there yet and I guess just sort of during your trip as well is Wendy for I feel thing continued to explode or maybe that was even a bit

afterwards because I think this is just one of the things that is a incredible to watch currently and I was reading this article the other day which should be discussed before the show briefly but it was on TN NBC NBC but the claim is that in the last two months June and July more money was raised through IPOs globally then through venture then in seed rounds and an angel financing round and this is not just for the blockchain industry but for all internet technology which is completely crazy

you already years if you dad I guess I wasn't so much the case yet that you know everybody comes up in uses I wanted to be nice here to this is funny because it happened right I remember so the whole trip started actually with blockchain NZ which was a conference that was put on a New Zealand awesome conference and and that was right when I think ether had like I know twenty or thirty dollars and everyone was just glowing people just couldn't like contain their smiles you know people looking like smugger like yes finally I picked a winner admit I knew this was going to happen I knew this is going to have I told you man there was a lot of

that going around and so it was this trip actually coincided with that whole with that whole rise and I'm everything and after that I was in Mumbai and I was at Andrew keys who's your classic kind of trader enterprise guru he's actually one of the most important people in in blockchain and that he is good at speaking with finance people he he spot he's one of the principal architects of enterprise aetherium he started the Microsoft relationship so he's like he's like a really key figure but he's just kind of hilarious roly poly trader guy and I remember we

had like these really bad hotels and he's at one point is like that's it I'm moving us all to the Taj and so and rookie's moves us to Taj Mahal Palace which is one of the nicest hotels in India and you know had we had these rooms overlooking like you know the Gateway to in the yellow stuff it was incredible and setting by the setting by the pool and talking to him about how this was going and the men the momentum of all the stuff and then subsequently you know this an absurd luxury and then subsequently going on that trip and watching and watching the price rise and the enthusiasm and the different attitudes that people are getting yeah this is funny seeing different people's attitudes to the to

the price rises was really interesting and I don't know though I don't know about a lot of the ideas that people have about this there's something fishy going on with it I think you know I don't like the due to the fad protocol investment thesis yeah sure is that right you know that it seems so logical but it just seems like it might not be right you know it seems like it might be the case that the protocols are really just a payment gateway to the stuff and because all the money is kind of going in just sort of listeners maybe we're not aware of this we should do a podcast about this at some point I think we talked about it

actually with Olaf in the Polish in it so basically it's the idea that in the in the past he had these protocols like HTTP SMTP etc and they create a lot of value but it wasn't it wasn't you know monetized and then all the value that was really monetized just built on top you know people building Facebook and Google and Gmail and all that and basically the argument of a protocol is that you have to kind of switch where the protocols themselves get monetized most of the money gets made there and then people build applications on top but not so much money isn't that so I think that's that's essentially also that investment pieces I think that's driving you know poly chain and many of

the investors in in all these protocols right but is that really the case you know that the Union Square Ventures are the guys are just reading that blog post yesterday who kind of really champion the fair protocol idea but I don't know you know it just did something something about it just doesn't jive with me there's a few things one is the cyclical nature of it how many people are really catching up I mean honestly I've bought a second-hand car and both that's very very second-hand you know I mean not much money from you know I have not cashed out much money at all I mean

that's like that was like fifty thousand dollars in total and that's my present to myself for New Zealand dollars so probably that's like 34 thousand US dollars and that's it like I've done it I've made it big I've got to get a second hand Boatner and a car that's less than ten years old I don't actually think it is different ten years old but you know people aren't actually cashing out big time some people are but a lot of people are keeping it in there and it's just a merry-go-round right where they make money in there I see oh so they you know then they cash out of that and back into ether but they don't sell it you know or Bitcoin and then they invest in the next thing and so you inflate these prices but but there's very little sell side pressure to remove

to remove value from Fiat from crypto into Fiat and so I think that this when people look at those market capitalizations that's those are not comparing those worth say the the valuations of companies or industries it's not apples and apples it's not well understood what these valuations what these valuations are that were that we're seeing that kind of incestuous nature of this ecosystem where that capital stays in there and this goes on this kind of this hamster wheel of moving between these products and looking really plausible is kind of affects what how it affects how this is

actually how this appears and how the price dynamics and then the price dynamics of all this stuff and and I think that's the part of the of the eye of the ico bubble although you should call it a total launch because that does not imply a of any form specifically it does not imply that it's a security but the one thing that I found really interesting and I've had actually tons of mixed reviews talking to all of these legal people that have somehow been made friends with recently but it does seem really influential and that's the seft that the poly chain guys came up with the simple agreement for future tokens and what is interesting about it is that what the way they did that on coin lists people were incentivized to invest fiat

heavily incentivize to invest Fiat and it looks like that might be a new avenue for fiat to into the ecosystem and I think through this weird roundabout way the the seft might be one of the driving forces behind kind of future value games and in the space in general especially in the token launch space yeah no III mean I did a lot of time looking at the whole final coin and coin list and all that was going on and I agree it's very interesting and we are seeing some some new developments there and and I think you're totally right I mean what was happening there also would happen that

things with Falcone is that they really reach a very different investor base in that they did you know a lot of traditional BC to put in money I think in traditional Silicon Valley people and then of course because pointless being essentially tied to angel list which again is like a place where all these people do invest in basically film Silicon Valley startups do DC angel around so that's essentially how you can kind of link tosu together so I think you're totally right and you know I was last week also some lunch in Berlin where you know some BCE that we need to do something on icos and it seems like everybody is kind of getting into that and and I wanted to think about this a

little bit more in detail actually from from a few angles one is a solid article at the other day which was also very interesting so some hedge fund administrator said that they had 62 of their 562 of those hedge funds were all preparing into cryptocurrencies and and that's just you know that's a one hedge fund administered now there's a few thousand hedge funds in the world right I don't know how what percentage of headphones at that with Venus trader is managing but let's say now ten is the same intent to send the page funds are getting into like investing in cryptocurrencies that it sounds very plausible if it's one single one and sixty two of those and and and this is just going to take on a

crazy dynamic because also if I if I'm a hedge fund right and if I'm if I know that the other hedge funds are going to get into this thing and it's still a pretty small total market cap you know that the price is going to go up the more people go into I rather be first and and I think we're really at the point where it's become common assumption I think in the financier of that this is happening and money is moving into space in the big time and of course that means you want to be you want to join that trend and you want to be for the others in that same trend so and I've also another thing that have to think about in that aspect is to sort of

we're done I think that's going to create because all of a sudden did the amount of money that's there it's just orders of magnitude bigger than the amount of actually quality projects right so I think you're going to see and then especially if you take this kind of portfolio approach where you say okay you're going to put a little bit of money and diversify and lots of assets it's just been huge amount of money you're going to flow into all these different projects that don't necessarily have any any merits because also people don't know right they'll understand too details I mean it's already like that you know it's already like that I mean there's so much garbage I mean even in even in the big protocols I see a lot of great technology but just because there's great technology doesn't

mean we need it z cash you know like I don't you know I know lots of things like that I don't really get it I mean you know zero knowledge proof it's not like a it's a useful thing to exist I don't understand why Z cash would exist long term when you can just build zero knowledge proof into a smart contract enabled platform but you know because it has value people will people will pump it and and develop on it and and build a plausibility structure around that value and kind of treat it as a lightning rod I think to attract some of that investment you're talking about and I think yes is weird it is weird

Brian I don't know this is it makes me uneasy because it's just I want the money to go to the right places and it seems you know and it seemed it makes it's uncomfortable seeing you know too much money go to dumb money go places you know it's a strange time it's kind of it's becoming too mainstream I wish it was weird still you know yeah my my thoughts exactly I mean it's interesting to see how you know if this is the case that money is coming in through these in sort of more institutional avenues you know like a few years ago we were talking about Bitcoin and Bitcoin becoming massively adopted it was always unclear how the money would start coming

in because though because these frictions with the existing payment system without and what what does it mean if all of a sudden all this money coming in is just coming from the same institutional investors and hedge funds that have been funding technology for the last 20 30 years are we just coming into Airy just creating the same system once again but on some somewhat more decentralized rails yeah and are they even decentralized I mean right you know like I was just at a bloody you know a mining factory and an Iceland and that thing is tiny compared to what to what Genesis has around the place the very very tight-lipped about it because it's so

competitive but I bet they have 20 times that facility and elsewhere probably even more you know and so that being the case what if you're controlling Genesis mining 'he's not Genesis mode this is called Genesis Genesis is also a mining company in Western Australia so you know it's easy to learn it's easy to trip over your companies but they have this they have this mining mining farm management software called hive where you spin up your mining farm you build the mining farm and then you manage it using their software and because Genesis makes the best software and still you know and they they can tweak your miners

and everything and make it all real real real makes it make you the gravy they wound up in control of your - and so I met Genesis mining is the biggest is the biggest miner on every network of it either you have these poles and stuff but I love it they hold the hold the keys to I mean actually known of course but Clinton urban Clinton China put you know I bet they hold the keys to a lot of a lot of cryptocurrencies especially with all the graphics cards of course they do they could totally just totally attack just about any cryptocurrency in any public blockchain but with all of those graphics cards you know so it's not really it's not really decentralized it's notionally decentralized and I suppose that's probably all you need you don't need to be really decentralized

you just need to everyone just has to believe that it's decentralized and it seems to work so before we wrap up let's come back to your your world tour and you know just get your thoughts on who was the most interesting person you talked to or who were you most excited to talk to in all of this all these people you met and that you've interviewed wow that's hot I mean I spoke with a computer science professor whose name eludes me at this moment who explained to me that that blockchain was about the coming of a new age of Brahman and in India and it was he yeah we talked about it for ages it's like a man this is crazy this is like

straight out of the betas and stuff and down or something like that I don't know I'm not I'm not schooled up on that on Hinduism everything but term but that was a really really interesting conversation to see another really interesting one was with the sky in a similar vein described in Vickers who runs a who's a based in London and he he operates a an art gallery and he had he was really really interested in in religious tips and texts and the relevance that blockchain had to all the compare that the comparisons that could be made between blockchain and some other and and some other and some of the some cultures around like copying texts

and stuff over the years he was like obsessed with the stuff he was this was his thing that he was researching and had been doing really hard for an extended period super smart guy and and so it was actually encountering the opinions that you never thought you'd run into right that is weird you know the whole religion thing comparing it to religion is strange but it's an easy comparison to make and so like those are the really interesting ones honestly it was a real pleasure to hang out with the poly chain guys have talked those about that so much but that's disgust they're real cool guys and they have I had some really productive conversations with them I had a great discussion with Jake bruckman at the EOS party we goes up there EOS party you know that you know they had stilt

walkers and stuff it was like on a roof it's like guys I don't know you should stay away from the edge there I mean it's it was it was a strange choice of strange choice of footwear for a rooftop party but I was talking to Jake Brockman about value of cryptocurrency and these tangled hierarchies and that represented in this book called girdle issue but by the sky douglas hofstadter awesome book real trip tower it's one of the coolest it's what it's the best book it's as good as the Bible honestly even be even better but but it was that was a really really great conversation one that stood out you find it's not the people it is it's the conversations and those

encounters that you have with people that you can't have with anyone else because no one else is in a state of such a state of disbelief and and excitement and I think at the end of the day that's what makes this place this whole space so interesting I mean you could you could I could find so many people who just blew my mind who I never would have never would have thought I'd even run into never knew existed but gave me insight that I didn't have before I mean I spoke with a ton of people I spoke as a teller I spoke with some who else today actually sequel to his famous probably no one pretty much the only famous person I think I spoke to was was foretelling but and and you know we had like really great

conversations it was really insightful but it's just those weird things those weird little encounters you have equipped their people that really that really stand out always I mean that's what makes us stay so great cool well Arthur thanks so much for coming on as a pleasure hearing about your journey and hopefully we'll see you again soon and Pope in person and online hi yeah absolutely and you know it's great to hang out with you guys actually it's hilarious to see people in the flesh you've only heard heard or seen on screens before so yeah absolutely it's been a pleasure and yeah thanks heaps Brian and thanks as well Sebastian for so you know having me on and keeping me entertained cool well of course you're

going to links here to arthur's sources podcast in the show notes and people check that out actually i really want to check out this legal series because that sounds interesting so yeah thanks so much for coming on and thanks so much for listening for watching geniune so we're going to be back next week but in the meantime if you want to go to show you so by leaving an iTunes review for us help show and mix it up Thank You mostly toward communiques